Analysis of Jason Wishnow´s Oedipus the King

The name “Oedipus” is commonly associated with concepts of power, incest, and fate due to Sophocles’ enduring play Oedipus the King, but it is not a word that many Greek historians or literary students would associate with vegetables. In 2005, however, Jason Wishnow created exactly this strange association by directing an eight-minute, stop-motion rendition of Oedipus the King where all of the characters were portrayed as different vegetables, speaking to each other in human voices and acting out the story of the King of Thebes and his tragic fate. Videos such as this that portray ancient stories in a comic light have a few positive attributes including a wider audience base through the use of the Internet and a light-hearted, aesthetically pleasing distraction from the potentially disturbing themes, yet many essential qualities of classic Greek literature are lost in the conversion. Though portraying the story of Oedipus through the medium of a vegetable movie may be more enjoyable than the original text for some audience members, this entertainment value comes at a high cost: emotional attachment to characters is lost, the dramatic ancient Greek setting is upset by multiple anachronisms, and many profound themes are cheapened or omitted in order to make way for the ultimate goal of comic relief.

The obvious and intentional difference between Sophocles’ original Oedipus and Wishnow’s adaptation is the use of vegetable characters as opposed to real humans. While this may appear to be an innocent switch, there are fairly large repercussions concerning how the audience empathizes with and reacts to the characters and their ideas: by using potatoes, broccoli, tomatoes, and cauliflower, Wishnow removes the human element that is arg...

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... few common elements to be shared between the two. It is important to remember, though, that both works serve their respective purposes: the play presents scholars and students with moral and philosophical questions regarding a man’s fate and fitness to rule, while the vegetables don costumes in order entertain the Internet-surfers of the digital age. The tragic and the comedic versions play off of one another: without the original tragedy, the vegetable Oedipus would have no basis for its puns and irony, and without Wishnow’s adaptation, there would be no foil or contrast to compare Sophocles’ dark text with. “Success” and “failure” are relative terms, and while it is evident that Wishnow failed to create a morally-charged play that could be performed in 5th-century Athens, he just may have succeeded in providing a humorous stab at Sophocles’ most famous creation.