[Xmca-l] Imagination: Greek Drama (as radio) with accompanying historical critique

[Annalisa Aguilar]

Hello esteemed xmcars,


After reading the paper Mike posted about radio vs. television and their effect upon imagination, I thought this might be a worthy topic to follow on its heels.


Today, I learned of a dramatization of the Greek Bailout this past summer on the BBC Radio 4. It is audio only and beckons to the radio format of past times, with narrator and sound effects and English speakers with foreign accents!


See:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06s1s5x



Believe it or not I learned about it from Varoufakis on his blog, and he has a critique of this dramatization here:

http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/12/19/a-greek-drama-the-bbcs-radio-play-10-factual-corrections/


<http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/12/19/a-greek-drama-the-bbcs-radio-play-10-factual-corrections/>What I find intriguing is not so much the production value of this "historical artifact," but instead why does it exist exactly? There is somewhere a need in the UK, apparently to shape how Britons (and English speakers) think about the event. Why?


One obscurity I muddle through while listening is how does one dramatize a massive complex of political economic processes, where multiple causes have been distanced from their multiple effects to such a degree that one would have to be Varoufakis himself to understand them completely!


Then I think about the (over) usage of "the Greek Drama" or "the Greek Tragedy" as a cognitive cultural-historical container to present to the "agora" of the Internet. Then, what does it mean for Varoufakis to offer a critique THAT?


What would it be like for us to possess a text handed down through the ages from Antigone that is a critique of Sophocles on his play about her father, Oedipus?


It's a strange möbius strip. Mighty strange.


Kind egads,


Annalisa