Word: oedipus
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...possible," he says, and "I don't pay much attention to television." So no one was more surprised than Morris at the furor that ensued in March 1982 after British Actress Vanessa Redgrave was hired to narrate the B.S.O.'s planned production of the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex. Redgrave, as anyone who does read the newspapers should know, is a Trotskyite and ardent supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and her selection immediately inspired an outcry. Faced with protests from musicians, threats of violent disruption, and possible withdrawal of funds by Jewish orchestra patrons, Morris canceled Oedipus, casting...
...novel seems to be building toward a contemporary inversion of the Oedipus myth, in which the father would possess the son's bride. That impression is heightened by the best and perhaps most autobiographical scenes, as the narrator recalls a childhood of willful rudeness and neglect by his father, accompanied by pitiable flirtation from his mother. Yet just when Arlen, working through the accumulation of small, freighted moments, reaches an apparent climax, the ruminative and wistful tone turns frantic. In the culmination of a night of frenzied incident, the father is shot and gravely wounded by a romantic rival...
...notes defensively, "that this skittish footnote to the austere chronicles of our folk-culture heritage has itself an ancient and learned history." As proof, he ventures back to Babylonia to unearth an early example: "Who becomes pregnant without conceiving? Who becomes fat without eating?" Answer: Clouds. In ancient Greece, Oedipus solves the riddle of the Sphinx: "What is it that goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening?" Answer: Man. (First he appears as a crawling baby, then upright in maturity, then in old age with a cane.) The Old Testament...
...that wasn't always the case Ancient Greek tragedy portrayed the definitive screw-up. There's no way you can argue that Oedipus, the father of screwing up if you're a Freudian, was responsible for what happened to him. The oracle said he would sleep with his mother and kill his father, so he did what any sensible person would do. He left town. Then he pushed that limit, took those risks, to become king. And Fate tripped him up. Just like Newman and Redford, or those test pilots who crash in flames early on in The Right Staff...
...fire murky, malevolent impulses find their perfect expression in the Mather House Drama Society production of Antonin Artaud's The Cenci. The little-known play, set in sixteenth century Italy, details the family problems of the slightly offbeat Duke of Cenci, who in the course of the play turns Oedipus on his ear by killing his sons and sleeping with his daughter...