Living in a Media World

Editor’s Note: Dear Wife and I saw The Odyssey at the Grand Theater’s Ultra DLX premium format screen (With Atmos sound) in Lincoln, NE over the weekend. I loved it, and DW enjoyed it despite it being way over her limit of two hours (it has a running time approaching three hours). But there is a lot to digest in this film. So this post will deal with all the talk that has surrounded the movie before it was released, and my next one will discuss what I and other critics have to say about it. In the mean time, go see The Odyssey at the best theater you can locate!

You can find all of my posts dealing with The Odyssey here.

New Yorker cartoon by Brendan Loper, click on for link to cartoon at New Yorker web site.

So by now everyone who has the slightest interest in movies knows about  several “controversies” surrounding Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. There are absolutely serious and legit criticisms to make about this film and all other Nolan movies, but I think it’s generally a good idea to see it before talking about what’s wrong with it. So here is a brief discussion from the we-haven’t-seen-it-but-we-know-it’s-bad brigade:

• Members of the manosphere on social media are very angry that trans actor Elliot Page is in the movie. (Initial complaints were that Page was playing Achilles; he’s not – Achilles is not in the film, unless he has a tiny spot in the visit to Hades. Instead, Page does an excellent job of playing the solider Sinon, who enters the Greek army as a child. Sinon is not in Homer’s text, but he is in Virgil’s Aeneid, which covers much of the same material.)  Conservative online star Ben Shapiro actually praised Nolan’s film after seeing it, but still can’t get over the casting of Page as a male character. Apparently he does not believe that being trans is anything other than mental illness; the link is to The Hollywood Reporter, not Shapiro’s site.)What these critics don’t notice is that in Homer’s original epic poem (at least the form we know originating around 800-700 BC) the goddess Athena is constantly switching back and forth from presenting herself as the beautiful woman Athena and the wise older man Mentor. So the sacred “original” text literally has a major gender-fluid character. In Nolan’s film, he does not make it clear whether Athena takes on the form of Mentor or just treats Mentor as an independent character. (To clarify: In the poem, there is an older male character called Mentor who is in charge of Odysseus’ household before he leaves, and a second Mentor who is an alternate identity of Athena.)
• Much the same group objects to the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy because she’s a Black woman. They say she’s not “historically accurate.” (The most notable of these is the world’s richest man, trillionaire Elon Musk.) Given Helen is a fictional character from a  3,000-year-old epic poem, it is hard to see how color-blind casting does violence to her character. It is worth noting that far more than race, the defining characteristic of Helen was that she was hatched from an egg as the offspring of a human woman’s coupling with a Greek god in the form of a swan. No one has seen fit to complain about the actress playing Helen being born in the usual way…What does matter is that Nyong’o is an amazing and beautiful actress who gives a memorable performance as the person who is unfairly blamed for causing an horrific 10-year war. The Wrap has an interesting article on how our view of what is “historically accurate” often comes from older classic films that featured all-white casts.  Critic William Bibbiani points out that under the Hays production code that ruled movies from the mid-1930s until the rating system came in during the late 1960s specifically prohibited “homosexuality, non-Christian values, sex, foul language, and mixed-race romance.” We never saw these things in older movies because they were specifically forbidden.
• Finally, there have been complaints about the modern language used in both Dr. Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation of The Odyssey  and in Nolan’s film. (Let me note that Nolan did not base his screenplay on Wilson’s translation, but he has spoken admiringly of it.) Both Wilson and Nolan had the characters use relatively modern English in conversation rather than some form of Victorian English. For example, Tom Holland’s Telemachus (the son of Odysseus and Penelope) has been blasted for referring to the absent Odysseus as “Dad.” Given that in the early part of the film Telemachus is portrayed as being a somewhat callow youth, “Dad” seems perfectly fitting for his character. But as for the bigger issue, it should be noted that English did not exist when The Odyssey was being composed, so there can be nothing wrong with using contemporary English to make the characters more accessible to a modern audience.

Nolan says he is supremely unconcerned about the advanced criticism of The Odyssey. He is quoted in Variety as saying:

“Comes with the territory…. Remember, I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman. When I came on Begins, writers and artists had been working on this beloved character for almost 65 years, and a lot of freighted thoughts were out there about what he represents. And what I learnt over my time on that trilogy is you can’t worry about any of that at all. What you have to do is honor the original text by interpreting it in the strongest way you personally can.”

So far, audiences don’t really seem to care about these criticisms as The Odyssey has as of July 24th (right about a week after release) brought in more than $181 million domestically and $322 million worldwide.

Former late night talk show host Stephen Colbert had an extended interview with Nolan discussing the movie back in May. Here’s their full discussion:

Coming up next – Reviewers take on Nolan’s Odyssey.

“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?
Illustration of Homer from the NY Times. Click on image for link to an essay on how our stories, like The Odyssey, tell us who we are.

My favorite line from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical Hamilton: An American Musical comes near the end of the show when George Washington asks the question: “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” That inquiry can be applied to so much of our art and literature – especially with all the various adaptations of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey.

This summer’s biggest non-kids movie will undoubtedly be Christopher Nolan’s epic production of  The Odyssey, which also promises lots of criticism from people who have yet to see it; though given The Odyssey’s history, that can hardly come as a surprise. People have been getting bent out of shape about a recent translation of the classic by Dr. Emily Wilson; been entertained by British comedian and actor Stephen Fry retelling of a range of Greek myths, combined with current commentary and a queer perspective; and been upset about Black actress Lupita Nyong’o playing Helen of Troy along with trans actor Elliot Page reportedly playing the Greek trickster Sinon (who is portrayed in Virgil’s Aeneid as allowing himself to be captured by the Trojans to convince them that the Greeks have all departed from Troy and left the Trojan Horse behind as a gift).

So instead of wallowing in internet twaddle surrounding all this, let’s find out a bit more about how who re-tells this classic story of Western culture affects how we perceive it.

Perhaps the hardest thing here is knowing where to start. So let’s start with Homer himself.

Click to purchase Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey.

You’ve likely been taught somewhere along the way that Homer was a blind, illiterate poet who composed The Illiad, about the decade of fighting over the city of Troy; and The Odyssey, concerning primarily the hero/king/warrior Odysseus’s attempts to get home after the sacking of Troy. Wilson, with her translation published in 2017, starts off with an extended introductory essay explaining what we know of the origins of these two epics:

“This takes us to what is known as the Homeric Question, which is really a whole cluster of questions about the composition of The Iliad and The Odyssey. The Question is given a capital Q, because scholars still disagree on some crucial issues even after a couple of centuries of discussion. How exactly did the Homeric poems as we have them emerge from the oral tradition that preceded them? Who was Homer? Was there a single author of The Odyssey, or several? Did the same person produce The Iliad and The Odyssey? When exactly did the poems get written down, and how? Can we trace earlier and later parts of the poems, or tie particular passages to different geographical locations? And to what extent do the poems reflect real historical events, cultures, and peoples—a real Trojan War, or the real Mycenean civilization of late Bronze Age Greece (which existed from the sixteenth to the twelfth centuries BCE)? Most generally, how exactly did multiple people over hundreds of years across the Greek-speaking world work together to create this magnificent, challenging, and coherent work of poetic storytelling? Design “by committee” has a very bad name, and yet The Odyssey seems like an unexpected success. How was it done?”

Wilson doesn’t supply us with easy answers to these questions, but does note that our modern understanding of these epics is drawn from medieval manuscripts. Before that, where did these stories originate? It’s too complex to go into in depth here, but Wilson says there is a strong consensus that The Odyssey is a “written text based on an oral tradition.” Perhaps an oral poet worked with a literate scribe to compose the work.  Wilson thinks it is most likely that the Illiad and Odyssey were written by multiple people over an extended period of time. As to when The Odyssey was written down is just as problematic, with the best estimate being something between the eighth and seventh century BC (or BCE – Before Common Era as scholars would typically put it).

In an essay for The New Yorker published in 2017, Wilson writes that people expected her to portray Odysseus’ wife Penelope in a more heroic light, as “an empowered woman.” But instead she instead portrays female characters in what she describes as a more realistic light, dealing with the limited choices women of the era had. While Odysseus had many affairs and fathered multiple children while he spent 10 years trying to get home, and he expected no criticism for his behavior; the ever-constant Penelope had only the options of either staying true to her missing husband or marrying one of her suitors. She did not have the agency to make any other decisions.

Wilson gives as an extend example how the slave women in Odysseus’ household are portrayed. A number of these “house maids,” as they are often called in previous translations, are presented as disloyal “sluts” or “whores” for having sex with some of the suitors of Penelope. Previous translations show them as being “disloyal servants” to their master. Wilson, portrays them as slaves who have little control over their lives and who are victimized a second time when they are all hanged for the crime of being raped.

Wilson has also been criticized for having the characters in her translation speak in modern English rather than some 18th or 19th century version of the language. Wilson points out that English didn’t even exist as a language when The Odyssey was being composed, so a modern translation is no less authentic of a presentation. While the original Greek text was written in  dactylic hexameter, as was expected for poetry of the time, Wilson’s translation is written in iambic pentameter, the meter that Shakespeare and much of English poetry is composed in. So while she has changed the meter from the original, she has created a translation that feels like poetry to English readers.

For myself, I’m a little over halfway through Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, and I find it eminently readable and enjoyable. And the more modern take on the language and meter makes it easier to read and allows it to maintain the spirit of the Ancient Greek original.

You can read more about what Wilson has to say about her translation in the following articles.

• The First Woman to Translate the ‘Odyssey’ Into English – Wyatt Mason, NY Times, Nov. 2, 2017
• A Translator’s Reckoning with the Women of the Odyssey – Emily Wilson, The New Yorker, Dec. 8, 2017
• No One Has Dealt With More Angry ‘Odyssey’ Bros Than Emily Wilson – Jason P. Frank, Vulture, June 23, 2026

Emily Wilson on why she has done new translations of Homer

Emily Wilson reads from her new translation of The Odyssey, in Greek and English:

Which translation of Homer’s The Odyssey have you read? Tell us about it in the comments.