Can't shake the devil's hand
Mar. 20th, 2004 12:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2Out from the kitchen to the bedroom to the hallway
Your friend apologizes, he could see it my way
He let the contents of the bottle do the thinking
Can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding *
I listened to two tragedies tonight. The second was NPR's The Play's The Thing... Oedipus Rex, the Greek tragedy. The first was the Washington Huskies losing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Ah well.
There once lived a man called Oedipus Rex.
You must have heard about his odd complex.
His name appears in Freud's index
Because he loved his mother ... **
I'd never read or listened to the Oedipus tragedy before. It's not a tragedy in the way we tend to think about them, because everything that leads to Oedipus's downfall has already taken place before the play even starts. Nor was there ever a chance that anyone could have stopped it -- in fact everyone tried to stop the predicted events from happening, but at every turn their actions become the vehicles by which the tragedy occurs. Naturally... it's ordained by the gods. There is no escape from your fate.
But as director Nicholas Rudall (who created his own translation for this performance) points out, Oedipus didn't have to ever learn about his past and what he'd done. At the begining he has no idea that he's killed his real father, that he's wed his actual mother, etc. etc. But because he seeks truth and is determined to root out the cause of the curse on Thebes, and can not be disuaded, he discovers the dark secrets of his own past.
Sophocles was trying to say that the gods control our fate, but we still have free will. A Greek conundrum, I suppose. ^_^
It was a well-performed play. It put me in the mood for a good Shakespeare tragedy. Or to try and write a tragic tale. Or something.
It also reminded me of an old war story I watched last week. Tom has been digging through his old tapes and watching them so that he can label them. There was some World War II movie, I don't remember the name, but essentially the Captain of this one American unit is an idiot, a drunkard, and a coward, but his commanding officer is someone who's been his friend since they were kids, and so won't remove him. Because of him, lots of people die, and in the end one of the guys just below him shoots him. (I don't remember any of the characters names, so let's call him "Bob").
"Bob" wants to turn himself in, but the other guys insist that he can't, that the jerk was killed by Germans and all of them witnessed it. Anyway if he tries to tell the truth he'll hang -- a court martial won't see things the right way. Then the other guys all shoot the corpse to try and make all of them complicite.
Finally the commanding officer who was the guy's friend shows up, and he's not fooled for a second, but wants to go along with it. His buddy can get a medal and it can be declared that he died a hero. Heck, everyone can get medals and be heroes. Just as long as "Bob" goes along with the cherade.
But of course, "Bob" is an upstanding guy and can't stomach lying, so at the very end of the movie he's calling up command to tell them what really happened. Even if it means that he'll likely be court martialed and probably executed.
It was one of those movies that was clearly made back in the late fifties/early sixties, when most people could accept that the TRUTH was the most important principal that any of us could hold to. Not that our leaders necessarily did that... but I digress. The point is, you probably wouldn't see that kind of ending in a movie today.
I dunno. I'm all for seeking out the truth, but probably not at any cost. I think I would have taken the promotion and the medal and kept my mouth shut. The jerk who was killed deserved what he got. ^_^
And Oedipus should have stopped asking questions when everyone around him said, "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!" Because in the end, he really couldn't.
* They Might Be Giants (of course)
** Tom Lehrer (of course)
Your friend apologizes, he could see it my way
He let the contents of the bottle do the thinking
Can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding *
I listened to two tragedies tonight. The second was NPR's The Play's The Thing... Oedipus Rex, the Greek tragedy. The first was the Washington Huskies losing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Ah well.
There once lived a man called Oedipus Rex.
You must have heard about his odd complex.
His name appears in Freud's index
Because he loved his mother ... **
I'd never read or listened to the Oedipus tragedy before. It's not a tragedy in the way we tend to think about them, because everything that leads to Oedipus's downfall has already taken place before the play even starts. Nor was there ever a chance that anyone could have stopped it -- in fact everyone tried to stop the predicted events from happening, but at every turn their actions become the vehicles by which the tragedy occurs. Naturally... it's ordained by the gods. There is no escape from your fate.
But as director Nicholas Rudall (who created his own translation for this performance) points out, Oedipus didn't have to ever learn about his past and what he'd done. At the begining he has no idea that he's killed his real father, that he's wed his actual mother, etc. etc. But because he seeks truth and is determined to root out the cause of the curse on Thebes, and can not be disuaded, he discovers the dark secrets of his own past.
Sophocles was trying to say that the gods control our fate, but we still have free will. A Greek conundrum, I suppose. ^_^
It was a well-performed play. It put me in the mood for a good Shakespeare tragedy. Or to try and write a tragic tale. Or something.
It also reminded me of an old war story I watched last week. Tom has been digging through his old tapes and watching them so that he can label them. There was some World War II movie, I don't remember the name, but essentially the Captain of this one American unit is an idiot, a drunkard, and a coward, but his commanding officer is someone who's been his friend since they were kids, and so won't remove him. Because of him, lots of people die, and in the end one of the guys just below him shoots him. (I don't remember any of the characters names, so let's call him "Bob").
"Bob" wants to turn himself in, but the other guys insist that he can't, that the jerk was killed by Germans and all of them witnessed it. Anyway if he tries to tell the truth he'll hang -- a court martial won't see things the right way. Then the other guys all shoot the corpse to try and make all of them complicite.
Finally the commanding officer who was the guy's friend shows up, and he's not fooled for a second, but wants to go along with it. His buddy can get a medal and it can be declared that he died a hero. Heck, everyone can get medals and be heroes. Just as long as "Bob" goes along with the cherade.
But of course, "Bob" is an upstanding guy and can't stomach lying, so at the very end of the movie he's calling up command to tell them what really happened. Even if it means that he'll likely be court martialed and probably executed.
It was one of those movies that was clearly made back in the late fifties/early sixties, when most people could accept that the TRUTH was the most important principal that any of us could hold to. Not that our leaders necessarily did that... but I digress. The point is, you probably wouldn't see that kind of ending in a movie today.
I dunno. I'm all for seeking out the truth, but probably not at any cost. I think I would have taken the promotion and the medal and kept my mouth shut. The jerk who was killed deserved what he got. ^_^
And Oedipus should have stopped asking questions when everyone around him said, "You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!" Because in the end, he really couldn't.
* They Might Be Giants (of course)
** Tom Lehrer (of course)
