And while it at first seems as though our time with the Domingo family is merely meant to illustrate the tension between a proud sovereign — a sputtering suburban dad — and those subject to his rule, pointing beyond the home successfully introduces a bigger political context.

In the original plays, state order breaks down once family order does. This fear has made its way into American politics, where threats to the nuclear family are deployed by the right (the endangered traditional family) and the left (the family representing a body of citizens with shared values). “We are all part of one American family,” Barack Obama has said.

Real families are hardly so stable and harmonious. They are divided by politics. Family members argue, they fail to understand one another, and they become estranged. Or, in the case of Autumn and her father, they suffer from a case of creative differences.

But family is not just the parents and siblings, but the environs, the whole context of a person’s formative years. It is an inherited viewpoint or structure; resisting those rules can translate into larger social resistance.

The family should be a place for love and respect, but, as many people know in their own lives, sometimes family doesn’t always live up to this reputation; sometimes family is just what you’re born into, what you’re stuck with, no matter the conflict or injury.

“Sophocles in Staten Island” doesn’t push too hard on this, and it ends far more brightly than the Greek originals — no deaths, and ice cream all around. This Creon realizes the error of his ways and praises his daughter for making her own statement, even though it differed from his. He has faith in, and newfound respect for, the next generation.

Nationally, we too are in a moment of rebellion. We’re fighting back against our fathers and uncles wearing the crown, and right now that fight looks like a Thebes racked with conflict and ravaged by plague.

Source: New York Times

Powered by NewsAPI.org