In Sophocles' play Oedipus Rex Jocasta hangs herself shortly after finding out that Oedipus is both husband and son. In Euripides' play The Phoenician Women, Jocasta stays alive a little bit longer to try and reconcile her sons Eteokles and Polyneikes but stabs herself after they kill each other. But in Kermani's Jocasta, Jocasta does not kill herself. She survives after her sons' mutual murders to perform a ritual sacrifice to save Thebes, and to satiate Ares' ancient fury of Kadmos' slaying of the dragon. Jocasta chooses the creative act of writing over the act of suicide. Her ritual act re-members that Body is Presence and that the origins of writing are sacred manifestations of Being. She reverses the taboo, and reestablishes the symbolic. Jocasta takes its genesis from an ancient Greek play, but it displays a contemporary condition of exile and communicates how ancient wars resonate for modern America. Jocasta reflects a historical mirror on the tenuous present in which we are living.—Elise Kermani
The film is inspired by Euripides play The Phoenician Women. The actor Michael Potts portrays a modern Euripides, a playwright struggling with the creative act of writing. He decides to have Jocasta perform the ritual sacrifice to save Thebes. Jocastas sacrifice is the ancient act of writing, and her sacrifice reverses the curse on the family of Oedipus. The film ends with Antigone bringing Oedipus back to Jocasta and having the family reunite in a dance.
