Like many dramas, Antigone and The Celebration (originally realeased as Festen in Denmark) tells the journey of the protagonist’s resistance to the antagonist's power. But what is the nature of this resistance to power and what is the basis of power in general?
Among the many challenges that Christian and Antigone had to overcome, one of them was physical force. In both dramas, neither Helge nor Creon had to directly exert physical force on those who resisted them. Everything was done indirectly. Creon had influence over agents of the sovereign so all he needed to do was to issue some law or “proclamation” (Sophocles, line 34) and use his agents to physically enforce them. Just like Creon, Helge had influence over his guests and Michael in particular. In fact, Helge’s influence was so strong that Michael and a couple of the other guests forcefully removed Christian from the dinner party without needing Helge to instruct them first. They were quick to brush off Christian’s accusations and eager to continue with the celebration as if nothing happened. Basically, Helge and Creon could use individuals that they had influential power over to exert another kind of power, the physical kind, on to others. This highlights the distinct difference between physical power and influential power – physical power is a tool attained by influential power which means that it is the lesser power and thus cannot be the basis of power.
Physical power is really a subset of a more general kind of power, which is the power to give others the incentive to cooperate. When one threatens a person with an act of violence, one is essentially giving that person the incentive to cooperate and thus has power over that person. Creon uses incentives to exert his power over his people – Creon stated that “death by stoning” (Sophocles, line 38) awaited those who disobeyed him. Violence is not the only source of incentive; materialistic things can also provide incentives. The incentive for Michael to side with Helge when Christian made those accusations was for his father to hand down control of the lodge to him. (Although it is not that clear, it is definitely certain that Michael’s actions against Christian were a mix of respect for Helge and his desire for the lodge, after all, Michael comes off as someone who wants the lodge: he instructs the servants on what to do, he is ecstatic when Helge told him that he will pass down the lodge to him, etc.) Helge has materialistic things that provide him with incentives for others to cooperate with him. Helge also has sources of incentives that he probably did not realize he had – an incentive for Christian to cooperate was to maintain connections with his siblings, an incentive for Mette to turn a blind eye to Helge’s sexual crimes was to maintain a sense of a happy family. Incentives invoke cooperation which means power.
Yet, does that mean that the basis of power is the ability to provide incentives? No, it does not mean that. If it were, what was the incentive for the guests to essentially ignore Christian and remove him physically? Helge had nothing to offer them; they were even willing to leave had the lodge staff not hidden their keys. It all comes back to influential power. Helge’s influential power over the others made the others want to believe in his perspective. Similarly, Creon had influential power too which encouraged people to follow his guidance: “Once Creon was a man worthy of envy…For he saved this city…and attained the throne of the land, with all a king’s power. He guided it right.” (Sophocles, line 1161-1164) With influential power, one does not need to bribe others with materialistic objects or threaten others with acts of violence; one has power over the mind of the people and not just their bodies. What this ultimately means is that one has the power to maintain silence, which is the act of making one’s truth to be the universal truth.
As a result, the act of breaking that silence is resistance to power. But the first step of breaking the silence is to not deny one’s feeling of oppression by those in power. Throughout the celebration, Christian not only battled with his father, he also battled with himself. There is a part of him that wants to say that his father’s crimes are not true and there is a feeling of shame in him as he weeps right after Gbatokai says “Mom, Dad... you suck.” This feeling of abjection is especially evident by his initial willingness to accept defeat against his father after he unsuccessfully made his first speech. Antigone also had to break the silence within her before confronting Creon. What both of these dramas come to show is that resistance begins by refuting the perception of the person in power just as Christian and Antigone had done as they finally mustered the courage to reject Helge’s and Creon’s perception of universal truth, respectively. After breaking the silence within themselves, they can break the silence in the public realm.
The silence must be broken in the public realm and not just the private. Helge knows this as he tries to keep the matter in the private realm: “It has to be sorted out in private” says Helge to Christian. It is important to break the silence in the public realm because the person in power has power only because he has influence over the public. Just as Haemon says, “You would be a fine dictator of a desert” (Sophocles, line 739): one needs people to actually have power. So if the power that one has over the public were to be taken away, then one is left powerless. But how do you break the silence? In The Celebration, Christian does this in his speech for his father’s 60th birthday in front everyone that had respect for his father, specifically Michael, Mette, and Helene. In Antigone, it is the news of her actions: “Oh, oh, oh! Shout it out. I will hate you worse for silence – should you not proclaim it, to everyone.” (Sophocles, line 86-88) It is not the action of burying her brother but the actual “proclamation” of her actions to Creon’s people. It is for this reason Christian opted to do everything, from his first speech to the reading of the suicide note, all at the dining table in front of everyone who respected Helge. The “proclamation” against power is the nature of resistance to power.
However, acts of violence against power are not resistance to power. The reason why Elsie cried out “They mustn’t!” as Michael beats Helge to the point where Helge was about to die is because the struggle against power is a non-violent one. If Helge dies, his crimes will be left unresolved and thus the struggle against his power was futile. This is the same as in Antigone. Antigone is not physically resisting Creon, she is not attacking him physically or anything, she is merely letting the public know why and what she is doing. She does not deny what she has done and accepts Creon’s sentence as her death would make a better weapon against Creon than anything else; after all, it did started the chain of events that led to his downfall. All of this points out that the nature of resistance to power is not violent but entirely a public performance that is “proclamation”.
The reason why it is a proclamation is because only words can cause the respect of someone to be lost, thereby leaving that someone powerless. Creon was left powerless because he lost all the respect that he started with including his wife’s, his subordinates’, and especially Haemon’s who probably had the most respect for Creon: “Father, I am yours; with your excellent judgment you lay right before me, and I shall follow it.” (Sophocles, 635-636) Helge lost the respect of his family and friends as seen in the end of the film, particularly when Michael, who was one of the characters who had the most respect for Helge, instructs Helge to leave so that “the rest of us can have breakfast”. Helge lost his influence over Michael which means that he lost his ability to exert force on others as Michael was the most aggressive among the bunch. He also lost his ability to provide incentives to Michael – the moment Michael instructed Helge to leave breakfast was the moment that Michael took Helge’s final source of incentive that is his lodge.
Since the nature of resistance to power is a proclamation that is intended to destroy the influential power of a ruler, does that mean that influential power is the basis of power? Actually, the basis of power is more specific than that. To rule, one needs people; to rule the people one needs influential power; yet even then, an individual among the people can break hold of that influential power and, from there, they could break hold of the influential power of the remaining people. This is exactly what Antigone and Christian did in both dramas. This ultimately means that the basis of power is the public – the alliance of the people being ruled over.
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