Oedipus The King

Over two-thousand years ago, Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote Poetics describing the necessary elements of a tragedy. Aristotle highlighted several aspects of a tragedy, but he emphasized six key elements: plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle. With the integration of these six main points, a work of literature could be defined as a tragedy. Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex fits Aristotle’s definition of tragedy perfectly. In 1967, Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini created Edipo Re, a modern day interpretation of Oedipus Rex. He uses cinematographic elements to highlight certain tragic elements in the story with varying degrees of success. Although his use of sounds seems to oscillate back and forth with its effectiveness, Pasolini’s

When Oedipus goes to see the oracle, he is dressed in white. According to Aristotle, the character in a tragedy should be essentially good except for one fatal flaw that the tragedy will exploit. The character should be oblivious to this fatal flaw. By dressing Oedipus in white at the oracle, Pasolini is successful in emphasizing Oedipus’s good nature. White is a color associated with innocence and pureness. In order words, it represents that he is good-natured. However, the white also represents someone who is naive, which fits Oedipus’s fatal flaw perfectly. He lacks the wisdom that he cannot escape fate. As a result, he tries to escape it the whole play, which eventually leads to his downfall. By dressing Oedipus in white, the director fulfills Aristotle’s tragedy definition of a character that is good-natured, but has a fatal flaw. Towards the end of the film, Oedipus starts dressing in black as he pieces together what he has done. This change in color of his clothing goes to emphasize Aristotle's tragic element of discovery. A character in a tragedy must undergo a discovery and change from ignorance to knowledge. Black is a depressing color that represents secret knowledge. By dressing in black, Oedipus is starting to recognize the hidden knowledge that he killed his father and married his mother. The director did a very effective job changing the color of his wardrobe from white to black as it emphasizes the Aristotle’s element of discovery for a