Culturally Refigured: Assimilating Oedipus Rex into the Yoruba Mythical Universe Through Television Adaptation Processes

Abstract

In Africa, ancient texts have increasingly been transformed into adaptations that have been screened as TV miniseries and long duration movies that are often distributed through digital media platforms. These adaptations are used by producers for ideological, resistance, protest, aesthetic and entertainment purposes. However, theorists have generally raised two methodological problems concerning adaptation processes: hierarchy and succession. Lorna Hardwick has proposed three methodological approaches and a list of keywords that help to explain trends and patterns of creative and cultural appropriations of classical texts. Through a mediated conversation between Lorna Hardwick and Michel Foucault, I explore the possibility of resolving the adaptation methodology. As a case study, I discuss the emerging canon of Ola Rotimi’s adaptation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, the gods are not to blame, as an example of primary adaptation and extended/succession myth by Wale Adenuga Productions with the same title, and Funke Fayoyin’s the gods are still not to blame. This chapter asserts that the succession myths have achieved the calibration of the acculturation process of the Oedipal myth into the Yoruba mythical universe. The chapter shows how certain African television channels and streaming platforms have contributed to solving the problem of access to productions for entertainment and research purposes.