I’m looking at Oedipus again. This time it’s for a screenplay that I’m mulling over… have been mulling for some time.

I’ve read the play many, many times with many different translations, but the most recent by Robert Fagles (Three Theban Plays) is by far the most interesting. The introduction to the play he provides is not only illuminating, but it has had immediate repercussions to things that I’ve been considering.

The most interesting topic that Fagles brings up, IMO, is the importance of the time period in which Sophocles was writing. According to Fagles,

So far as the action is concerned, it is the most relentlessly secular of the Sophoclean tragedies. Destiny, fate and the will of the gods do indeed loom ominously behind the human action, but that action, far from suggesting primeval rituals and satanic divinities, reflects, at every point, contemporary realities familiar to the audience that first saw the play. 134

This is of very great interest to me. Again, as I’m writing a screenplay based on Oedipus the notion of how Sophocles made the story interesting to his own audience at his particular point in time is a central concern that I face.

Fagles also notes that there has been a tendency, in our time, to romanticize the religious aspects of Greek life, pointing directly to WB Yeats, who “conjure[d] up mystic romantic visions” but was “for Sophocles and his audience, a fact of life, an institution as present and solid, as uncompromising (and sometimes infuriating) as the Vatican is for us.” 135 This too is critical, pointing to the realities of life in 5th century Greece. The Oracle was no romantic force, steeped in mystery and incense and cloaked in the wonders of the Order of the Golden Dawn. It was a source of frustration and power and something that had to be paid off or cajoled or catered to. It’s religious grip was stubborn, as was its power over the masses who adhered to it’s pronouncements and had to be pacified when decisions were made. No greater demonstration is necessary of the power that a religious institution can leverage than the very institution to which Fagles points: the Catholic Church. Today, for instance, much has been made of Obama speaking at Notre Dame, and provides concrete example of the power that the Catholic Church can mobilize against a leader—if not the media itself, which has been drooling over this ‘event.’

Similar to our own time, belief itself was under attack. Fagles points clearly to the tension that existed at the time Sophocles wrote Oedipus surrounding prophecy and belief. Some believed in prophecy, the gods, and their ability to see the future. No where is this tension better expressed than in the play itself. Tiresias, who in the end proves to be the true seer, versus Jocasta, who offers nothing but disdain for prophets and her own hypocrisy of ‘enacted’ religious offerings. As Fagles puts it, “prophecy was one of the great controversial questions of the day.” 137 Today, similar questions abound, with often surprising results reported in surveys that show Americans resounding belief in God, and yet fewer and fewer Americans seem to demonstrate said belief in the way they live their lives. Very like Jocasta there is a disconnect between what is said and what is practiced.

More interesting to me, perhaps is the general environment of 5th century Athens, which Fagles describes as “an age of intellectual revolution,” one that lent itself to challenging received belief and casting “scorn” on the practices of the past—such as “self-appointed professional seers.” 136 This time period might be compared to the rise of medicine in nineteenth and twentieth century America and the rejection of “quacks” or those who postured as medical doctors but were not certified or approved by the traditional establishment—such that as it was at the time. This notion that Fagles points to of an intellectual revolution combined with other aspects of the Athenian character to produce an “ideal man,” which is what Oedipus represents. Such characteristics include:

• Belief in self-made destiny—self-made man;
• Contemporary language (not mythic);
• Man of action—a will to action;
• Experience—which, as Fagles points out, is the result of action
• Courage
• Desire to know the truth
• Anticipation—action based on reflection (i.e. not rash action)
• Adaptability
• Dedication to the interests of his city; public spirit; statesman
• Creative vigor and intellectual daring
• Investigator, prosecutor, and judge
• Questioner, researcher, discoverer
• Calculator, physician
• Belief in individual responsibility

What Fagles describes is that Athenians:

Could have seen in Oedipus a man endowed with the temperament and talents they prized most highly in their own democratic leaders and their ideal vision of themselves. Oedipus the King is a dramatic embodiment of the creative vigor and intellectual daring of the fifth-century Athenian spirit… The fifth century in Athens saw the birth of the historic spirit; the human race awakened for the first time to consciousness of its past and a tentative confidence in its future. The past came to be seen no longer as a golden age from which there had been a decline if not a fall, but as a steady progress from primitive barbarism to the high civilization of the city state. 140

As such, much of what Oedipus says in his speeches reflect this: as Fagles writes, “[Oedipus’] speeches are full of words, phrases and attitudes that link him with the ‘enlightenment’ of Sophocles’ own Athens. ‘I’ll bring it all to light,’ he says.” 142

Above all Oedipus is presented…as a symbol of two of the greatest scientific achievements of the age—mathematics and medicine. Mathematical language recurs incessantly in the imagery of the play—such terms as measure, equate, define…and the mathematical axiom: “One can’t equal many.”

As well, in the play “the city suffers from a disease, and Oedipus is the physician to whom all turn for a cure. ‘After a painful search I found one cure; / I acted at once.’” 142

This leads Fagles to a dramatic point, that the fate of Oedipus, is the fate of Athens.

The catastrophe of the tragic hero thus becomes the catastrophe of fifth-century man; all his furious energy and intellectual daring drive him on to this terrible discovery of his fundamental ignorance—he is not the measure of all things but the thing measured and found wanting. 143

There is much in what Fagles says of Athens that can be said of America today (and in the past). The American spirit has great similarity with that of the Athenian ideal in the 5th century and we are at a point in history when technology leads us to believe that we are capable of measuring all things and setting the direction of our own destiny, history, and fate. It remains to be seen if we are the measurers or the thing measured: if we, as a culture, will suffer the same fate to which hubris and self-confidence led Oedipus—to his own fall. The only question is the means of this fall, which will not, in our time be brought about by gods; but we dare not dismiss what the gods fundamentally represent: the impersonal and terrible force of nature, which we court and unleash with every new experiment in virology, genetics, and computer intelligence. Chaos theory applies. We cannot predict the forces that we play with or that we may unleash—like the character played by Jeff Goldblum in Jurrasic Park, and like the Chorus itself in Oedipus, we are caught between the belief in self-made destiny and the implacable force of gods.

The Realistic Jones

Why realistic Joneses? Perhaps the sidelong look at our neighbor has turned more to issues of plain old health and sanity rather than that of material wealth? Perhaps Eno is touching on the reality that many of us are floundering around in the same pool and that any aspirational measure of superiority—-or fear of inferiority-—has long given way to something much more frightening.

Both sets of male characters have a mysterious disease that causes pain, affects their vision, and undermines their memory. Dementia? Something else… But as memory is suspect, this affects virtually every aspect of each of the two male characters, making them impossible to trust. The blindness that each experiences, while certainly medically disconcerting, also points, metaphorically, to a troubling set of character issues—-certainly Oedipus would have a thing or two to say about the nature of blindness.

The characters, all around, are worth comparing because Eno uses two sets of couples—each in a similar set of circumstances (but at different ages). This sets up comparisons of gender relationships, age relationships, generational attitudes, as well as cross comparisons between how the couples work internally. The men, for instance, are predictably resistant to speaking about how they feel or what they feel, but mask it in different ways: the older male Jones—-Bob (Joel Hammer), resists talking at all about his feelings, fears, etc., mostly by gruff barking, harrumphing, or deflecting defensively—pushing any emotional engagement right back at his wife—-Jennifer (Tracee Patterson); the younger male Jones—-John (Chris Richards), resists talking about his feelings, fears, etc., by engaging in verbal puns, non sequiturs, and rhetorical question that, often as not, are barbed jabs at whomever else is around: a method that works remarkably well with his wife/girlfriend/significant other—-Pony (Rachel Zake), who is oblivious to nearly everything going on around her.

The characters are representations and commentaries on our current cultural condition. As funny as they may often be, it is a bit depressing. Pony, certainly, is cause for consternation. If her hold on reality and competence were to be judged by ten strands of hair, I’d say that nine of the strands were snapped already. Pony is flighty, airy, inconstant, and largely indifferent—-especially to anyone with a disease or health condition—-whom she’d prefer to avoid entirely. In short, Pony is very much a child. John, her SO, is overly confident and opinionated, though he immediately admits that his opinion are based on nothing and many not even be correct. It is my assumption then that Eno is pointing to something very frightening about our society: inattentive, unconcerned with truth, uncommitted, etc. And yet, despite these flaws, the pair of characters is human, emotionally vulnerable, and clearly hurting—-thus deserving of compassion.

Bob is battling his own mortality and reckoning with a disease progression that he cannot control and one that is not predictable. It is one thing to suffer from a disease whose progression is clear, with markers by which you can judge your own health or lack thereof. But when the disease is unpredictable, whose symptoms affect memory and, thus, personality, the effect is to shake one’s sense of self. Bob is angry, an anger that he levels on his wife, Jennifer. He is also defensive, and unwilling to even discuss his thoughts, fears, and emotions with his wife. On the whole, Bob is inconsiderate, cranky, and often just mean. He’s lucky, however, in the love of Jennifer, who is filled with empathy, and willing to tolerate much. Strangely, Bob finds his softer side with Pony, as well has interest in speaking about this thoughts, fears, and emotions, a fact that leads to an affair with Pony. It is likely Pony’s complete indifference that leads Bob to this attraction. The surreptitious relationship between Bob and Pony is not surprising, in that these two characters are the most self-involved and seemingly indifferent.

John suffers from the same malady as Bob, with the same set of unpredictable symptoms, however, in Pony, John has a “spouse” that is not empathetic at all. In fact, it is clear that John hasn’t even bothered to tell Pony what is happening to him, for fear that she will run away. Pony evinces no courage. Strangely, or perhaps predictably, this set of character flaws in Pony and Bob lead John and Jennifer to each other. Though they do not have a physical affair, one can argue that they do have an emotional affair. It is clear that John receives what he needs from Jennifer: compassion and empathy, and Jennifer receives from John what she does not get from Bob: a man who talks about his thoughts, fears, and emotions.

Eno does a masterful job revealing the more intimate nature of each of these characters by forcing each character, and the audience, to peel back (or hack off) the crusty exteriors to find the soft underside. The fact that Eno uses a small town on the edge of a mountain as his setting, as well as night encounters with plenty of star gazing, points explicitly to the “higher” nature of this play’s consideration. Often the play has that aspect that one can only get when staring up at the stars: a wistful sense of one’s smallness, an expansive sense of history, a confrontation with one’s mortality, a sense of God or the infinite. The external setting often leads to shocking statements in the midst of banal small talk.

I’ve seen two plays by Eno at Dobama: Thom Pain (Based on Nothing), and Middletown-—Eno’s response to Thorton Wilder’s Our Town. I’ve read others, including Tragedy: A Tragedy in New Downtown Now: An Anthology Of New Theater From Downtown New York. In each play Eno is obsessed with the tenuous nature of meaning inherent in our language and how we understand or misunderstand others and the world around us, and the things happening within us: thoughts, emotions, etc. All of this is rife in The Realistic Joneses. Virtually every statement by John, for instance, is undermined in the next statement, sometimes within the same sentence. An example, when the couples are parting ways at the end of scene one, might shed a bit of light, when John says: “This was fun. I mean, not fun, but definitely some other word.”

Some other word. That might be the best description of this play, or any of Eno’s plays. The quote might be, “I’m telling you something important, something vitally important; but not really important, maybe trivial, in fact. I’m not sure.” Thom Pain is one hour and ten minutes of savagery that is similar to this: a brutal search for meaning, for something real, that may or may not quite come to be. It’s as if Eno’s characters are frantically searching through a sand drift for something lost, but they can’t quite remember what it was, and maybe he or she finds something else.