Category: Arts & Culture

Two angles on Oedipus Rex

Now that I’m trying out semi-retirement, I’m filling in some of the gaps in my education, and today I read the play Oedipus the King for the first time. Having only a minimal acquaintance with the story’s outline, I’m struck to find that the story’s horrible crimes (parricide, incest) aren’t presented as arbitrary results of blind fate, but are rooted in an older crime, a long-hidden attempt to kill a child. In a way, the later horrors were a divine vengeance (or nature’s vengeance) for that failed act of infanticide.
To me, the devastating force of the play’s revelations comes not from the attempted infanticide alone, but from the mother’s consent to it: in putting her husband’s interests first, Iocasta makes a perverse substitution of husband for child that eventually proves mortal to both parents.
Other folks are paying attention to this play too: a Maryknoll sister recently helped a group of inmates at Sing Sing put on a production of Oedipus the King in November.
(Incidentally, further down, that page has reviews of Sr. Chan’s own 2003 play that takes on China’s ruthless one-child policy.)

Time Magazine, verily thou hast outdone thyself

Truly, Time has descended into asinine self-parody:

Time Magazine’s Person of the Year: You

NEW YORK (AP) – Congratulations! You are the Time magazine “Person of the Year.”

The annual honor for 2006 went to each and every one of us, as Time cited the shift from institutions to individuals – citizens of the new digital democracy, as the magazine put it. The winners this year were anyone using or creating content on the World Wide Web.

“If you choose an individual, you have to justify how that person affected millions of people,” said Richard Stengel, who took over as Time’s managing editor earlier this year. “But if you choose millions of people, you don’t have to justify it to anyone.”

Thanks, editor dudes!

Gregorian pop

I guess the boy band trend survived in Europe after a fashion: here’s a bunch of guys who dress up in robes and sing Gregorian-style arrangements of pop tunes. Here are some of their videos: one with Sarah Brightman and one with some waif named Desireles; and a U2 song. There are also fan-made videos with the group’s renditions of “Stairway of Heaven” and a tune by “Green Day”.
It seems to be a totally artificial project of some music producer, and somewhat laughable in the way of certain European pop groups, but the fact that this is popular is a good sign.
Update: LOL: Another group is doing the same thing in Polish.