Family Drama: From Oedipus to Ozu

Continuing the Conversation: a Great Books podcast by St. John’s College

Family is an inexhaustible source of conflict for dramatists, novelists, and filmmakers—perhaps more inexhaustible than war. From Greek dramatists Aeschylus and Sophocles to Confucius, Vyasa, and Ozu, family is a problem, a question, and a source of both self-destruction and self-actualization. In this episode, Santa Fe host Krishnan Venkatesh is joined by tutor Aparna Ravilochan for a journey deep into the heart of Thebes—where King Laius has died at the hands of his own son Oedipus, and Oedipus has unwittingly married his mother Jocasta—and a subtler journey into the world of famed Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu, where a happily domiciled father and daughter, Somiya and Noriko, will be ripped apart by the norms and expectations of tradition.

This episode searches for insights into the nature of family, the tension between the safety and anxiety that family creates, and the rich and multiple ways that different artists, works, cultures, and mediums express these insights.