Ridiculous Idealism

Antigone by Sophocles

I don’t know how many of you’ll have read the play Antigone, both the version by Sophocles and the one by Jean Anouilh. The story is about a young girl who perceives something which she believes is wrong and decides to make it right again, in spite all the risks she would have to take to do so. And at the end she dies, along with almost everyone else in the play, but that really isn’t the point here.

The point here is not about the story of Antigone per se, but of the ideology behind the play. In the past few months, in the middle of frantic rehearsals, endlessly repeating lines, unbelievable tension and worry, we took some time of to actually understand what the play is about. And it’s not about some girl wanting to bury her brother to give him eternal peace, but it’s about rebellion, the force of protest, sticking your tongue out at an authority gone completely to seed and this theme, this ideology has never been as important to us, the youth of the world, as it is now.

Because the world around us is crumbling. Governments are now nothing more than exalted edifices, built on the rather tenuous support of corruption, greed and hunger for power. And this is deep-seated, reaching far within the houses of power. And we know all this. We know what is happening around us. But we close our eyes and ears and go the opposite way, because it doesn’t concern us.

How many of us turn a blind eye against injustice? There are crimes happening all around us: rapes, murders, hate-crimes, racism. Women are still a mostly subjugated race; wife beating and female infanticide is still rampant. Politicians scramble greedily for power and we let them, we allow them to start unnecessary wars, to sign biased treaties, to spread false information. All this is happening right in front of us and we ignore it, safe in our own secure bubble of so-called happiness, because hey, it doesn’t affect us, does it?

Of course people are waking up. All around us are signs that people do care, people are trying to make a difference, however much they can. But how much can they achieve when the majority of the world does nothing to help them? How much can they do when you and I don’t even bother to appreciate them, let alone help them?

It’s because we’re so comfortable in our existences that we really couldn’t be bothered about the rest of the world. A half-way decent house, a steady flow of income, a loving spouse, two cute kids, that’s all a lot of us look for and that’s all is happiness for us. Once that is achieved and we have settled, we balk at uncertainty, balk at the thought of moving our sedentary bottoms and help someone else get as ‘good’ a life as us. And so we let things flow, to carry on the way it has always been because trying to change it would mean a complete shift of rhythm, a complete sea-change in our life pattern, something we are not willing to do.

Which is why a play like Antigone is so important for us living in the world of today. It teaches us to fight for what we believe in, to not fall into antiquated ways of thinking, to tear out the bubble-wrap which has isolated us from the world and to turn the world upside down, if that is what it takes to make that wrong a right.

And then we can sit back and watch as everything falls into place.

(A lot of this was discussed at an impromptu session with our director Mallika Prasad. It had quite a bit of influence on this piece, as anyone who was there will be able to testify. But it is important, especially today, and I thought by sharing this, others out there would be as influenced by these words as I was)

This piece was posted first at The Martini Lounge, a place where I do the weekly speak out column with another girl. Once it was taken down, I decided to put it here, which explains why it is so late, since the play was performed more than a month ago.

posted by Books inc @ 12:38 AM