Using Film to Increase Literacy Skills

Abstract

I n the fifth century BC, a man walked out on a stage with blood pouring from his eyes. He had discovered that, despite his struggles against fate, he had killed his father and married his mother. In the resulting anguish of this terrible recognition, he blinded himself. Even if one's classical education is minimal, the plot of Sophocles' Oedipus the King is probably recognizable. Jump forward 2,500 years. Two brothers and their friend devise a plan to keep money discovered in a crashed airplane rather than turn it in to the authorities. From this simple but far-reaching decision, a series of violent events begins to unfold with disastrous consequences for all involved. What do these two dramas, separated by thousands of years, have in common? Both deal with violence in a unique but similar way and both were presented as the most popular culture of the day. Oedipus the King was as popular with Greek audiences as most films are with today's audiences. The Greeks knew the inevitability of the plot. This man was going to kill his father and sleep with his mother. Many other poets had tackled the same story. They knew nothing was going to change in the plot and could recite the lines uttered by Oedipus in his blindness. It was through this familiarity that the concept of pity and fear was invoked: pity for Oedipus and fear that it could happen to them. Knowing the ending to the story also led to a strong sense of irony that destiny could not be avoided no matter how one tried. The Greek playwrights also recognized that violence in drama had its greatest effect when the play was concerned with the consequences, not the act of violence itself. The violence usually took place offstage, and the audience members had to visualize the act in their imaginations. What they did see was the primary concern of the drama: the impact of the violence on the characters' lives.