Brigham Young University: "a hotbed of apologetics"

[_Blixa]

It would be nice to have a book which updates past the mid-80s, true. I would imagine that the decade of the 90's in and of itself produced many changes.

Any place to read "Enlightened Despotism: The Fountainhead of All True Culture" other than in a Tangents archive?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Any place to read "Enlightened Despotism: The Fountainhead of All True Culture" other than in a Tangents archive?

Not that I can think of.

But the real tragedy is the unavailability of the classic satirical Super-8 home movie Oedipus Wrecked, which had only one public showing (to a mixed audience of students and perplexed faculty at an annual Classics Department banquet). The single extant copy of that masterpiece is now in the possession of one of its three producer/directors. Appropriately enough, he's a psychiatrist now.

[_Blixa]

Any place to read "Enlightened Despotism: The Fountainhead of All True Culture" other than in a Tangents archive?

Not that I can think of.

But the real tragedy is the unavailability of the classic satirical Super-8 home movie Oedipus Wrecked, which had only one public showing (to a mixed audience of students and perplexed faculty at an annual Classics Department banquet). The single extant copy of that masterpiece is now in the possession of one of its three producer/directors. Appropriately enough, he's a psychiatrist now.

Quite a condemnation of the state of the BYU archives!

[_Daniel Peterson]

Quite a condemnation of the state of the BYU archives!

The BYU archives are quite good, actually. Technically state-of-the-art and very well run by a friend of mine.

They never had Oedipus Wrecked. It was never offered to them, though perhaps it should be. (Whether they would want it is quite another matter.)

[_Dr. Shades]

Can you give us a synopsis and/or review of Oedipus Wrecked?

[_Daniel Peterson]

It's a bit dated, probably. It follows the story line of the Sophoclean play (sort of), except that Oedipus wears a Nixon mask and insists that he's "not a crook"; Teiresias (played by perhaps the most vicious Mopologist in recorded history) is a white-bearded wizard surrounded by foaming beakers, wearing a lab coat and a conical hat ornamented with stars and moons and topped by a blinking light bulb; the Sphinx (the future psychiatrist's very attractive wife) is dressed in a black leotard and wears cat ears and cat whiskers; and the text features all the stupidest translation errors that we had managed to generate while studying the play. An Indonesian warrior makes a cameo appearance, as well. It's a silent movie, with deliberately hokey dialogue cards. The Sphinx's riddle is "What have I got in my pocketses?" to which the astute Oedipus responds that she hasn't got any pocketses.

It was produced by a group calliing itself People's Centennial Productions, which had grown out of an earlier group calling itself the People's Centennial Coalition and later morphed into the People's Centennial Party, whereby hangs a tale. (Bergera and Priddis allude to some of this on pages 36 and 253-254 of their book, but they miss most of the story and somewhat garble what they do have.)

I myself haven't seen the film for years. I thought it was pretty funny, then. But it's probably good that it's in the safekeeping of a mental health professional.

[_Dr. Shades]

Holy cow, that sounds absolutely bizarre. Almost like a form of performance art.