The Odyssey Discourse Is Embarrassing

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]This video is sponsored by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. What's the actual heck? Everyone seems to be ruining the Odyssey, and it seems as though people out there are doing everything they can to trigger any of us who are in classics or ancient history, and they're doing a really good job of it. Ah, I do not think I can hide the fact that I'm going to be really sassy in this video because I'm feeling extra sassy and it was going to start off as like sort of a little innocent video critiquing the latest Nolan trailer for the Odyssey. Uh, and that's sort of been usurped by my feelings of hearing other people talk about it online and particularly one video on here on YouTube that has over 1.7 million views and it spews absolute nonsense. Like the biggest nonsense I've ever heard. And may I emphasize to an audience of 1.7 million people who have actually regurgitated that nonsense in my own YouTube channel comment section.

[00:01:01]We're not having it. We're not having it. How do people have the audacity to spew such nonsense so confidently?

[00:01:10]Seriously. So, it's kind of two parters.

[00:01:13]I'm first going to address the the silliness, the melodrama, the lies um that was spread by a single video here on YouTube in their analysis of the trailer and then I'm going to talk about my own analysis of the trailer. But as I'm writing this script, I realized that news has evolved because we have heard rumors that there has been new cast confirmations. I believe we have Lupita Nyongo who has been confirmed as Helen of Troy, but also Clive Estra. I need to do a whole video on my analysis of the cast, including my own analysis of who I would have cast in particular roles. I think I had a better cast choice. But, you know, we're not going to focus on cast choices in this video because really my main goal with this video is to put to bed this stupid rumor and this stupid nonsense lies that have been spread by a single YouTube video and potentially also Reddit because quite frankly, it's causing a lot of damage and it's making people think that they know things that they don't. They don't.

[00:02:11]So, allow me, I'm afraid, to be extra sassy in this video. But, you know me.

[00:02:16]What I'm going to say is I always emphasize this in my videos. I hope that comes across is I always aim to critique or look analytically at the actions and things people have said rather than the people themselves. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested entirely in actually the messages are being relayed and how they're being relayed, etc. I never want to mention channels or creators, although in this instance it may be quite obvious cuz they're a big creator. But I hope they realize that I'm just here to critique the flaws in one's argument or the misinformation one is spreading because to anyone who has actually read the obviously they were talking absolute out of their bottom um in this video and unfortunately the things that they said would perpetuate misogynistic ideas about women particularly in academia. So, please allow me to just pop this this this chap in their place for just a hot minute, okay? But not in a critical way. You know, I concede that this creator and I are on opposing political positions. And I want to emphasize that purely because it that in itself is not my issue. They have every right to critique ways in which they believe Hollywood may be overdoing it in terms of political correctness. And I will never agree with that in many ways, but that's absolutely fine. However, where I will call people out is if they are so blinded by their hatred of left-wing politics that they spew misinformation at a dril. Now, we have to talk about it. So, please allow me the floor to just decimate their sentiments. So, the video that I'm discussing was just a critique of the trailer. It was absolutely largely fine.

[00:03:51]I naturally agreed with many of their takes regarding the aesthetics of the movie. But but then the creator caught me off guard uh by saying something about Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey, the translation which Nolan has apparently used when working on the film. So they go on to say that the the film is based on a translation from Greek by the British writer Emily Wilson. And they say the following quote, why exactly does this matter?

[00:04:18]Well, because Emily Wilson just so happens to be a hardcore progressive feminist who specifically set out to rewrite sorry reimagine Homer's text through a female-coded gender critical postmodernist lens because of course she did. Basically stretching the very limits of the original text to bend it around modern sensibilities.

[00:04:41]And to that I say, what a load of melodramatic nonsense. Tell me you've never read a single translation of the Odyssey without telling me you've never read a single translation of the Odyssey. Particularly, tell me you've never read Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey. How do people have the absolute audacity to say such things about text they've never read because it makes them look like a real fool, quite frankly. And I can say this as someone who has read five translations of the Odyssey, and I've read it at least 10 times over the past decade. And I don't like being brutal, but everything the person said in this section of their video was completely idiotic and untrue.

[00:05:19]No, Emily Wilson's translation is not a reimagining, and it's not a retelling.

[00:05:25]It is a translation. And no, Emily Wilson's translation does not stretch and contort the mirror material in the slightest. Now, not only is Emily Wilson more loyal to the original than most translations for her poetic meter alone, but her translation is more loyal than say Fagel's translation, for example, in so far as that she refuses to sanitize the text. And she refuses to use terms like or to describe Helen of Troy like all the male translators did because those words are not in the original text. the male translators have put them in there. So, the real contention here is actually over the words, the ancient Greek word konopes, which translates to dogface. And when using this term dogface, the vast majority of male translators have always said or But Emily Wilson doesn't use that. She uses the term dogface. And in doing so, she is more accurate, not less accurate, and more honest to the original translators than the male translators have been. You see, male translators have more often than not casually slipped in misogynistic terms into the text with their translation that weren't there in the original. And this is emphasized by the fact that they don't call Agamemnon a or a despite the ancient Greek word being employed against him by Achilles, the same word that they then chose to translate into and when dealing with Helen. Now, Emily Wilson doesn't do that, not because she was catering to modern woke sensibilities, but because she was being academically honest and thorough and loyal to the text. To translate it as anything other than dogface is to impose your modern ideas of women and modern ideas of what an insult should mean rather than be honest and accept what the ancient Greeks had because they had different notions about the term which we can never truly come to terms with because we weren't there and there very limited evidence. Although this has been debated academically for centuries and we can genuinely agree that the term means shamef face or shameful which we can all agree is very different from the words and And likewise Emily Wilson doesn't sugarcoat terms like slaves which are in the text like male translators did. Ironically male translators are more often than not sanitizing their translations to cape with the sensibilities of the time. So words like slaves became handmaidadens.

[00:07:55]Wilson on the other hand does not sanitize the text to a Christian gentle audience like male translators have in the past. And she doesn't impose her own modern thinking onto the translation like male translators have done so for centuries. Ironically, people who slag off Wilson's translations because they haven't read it. Whereas if they had read it, they would know that Wilson's translation is one of the greatest translations in English because of its loyalty to the original text because it feels the closest to reading the ancient Greek in terms of pace and poetic meter.

[00:08:28]And she does all of that with such scholarly precision and epic intensity that it took her five to six years to complete it alongside her thinking about this translation for 20 years.

[00:08:41]Additionally, what's wonderful about Wilson's translation is that it's written in plain contemporary language, which makes it one of the most accessible and easyto- read translations out there, and it highlights the inequalities that were otherwise, again, sugarcoated or worse, completely removed by male translators in the past. There is more records of male translators removing things they didn't like from it or sugarcoating or softening the translations of the Odyssey to appease their contemporary audiences at the time than there is any evidence of Emily Wilson doing that at all. So in my advice in the future when you're so eager to take the opportunity to try and take down a woman and reduce decades of academic work into a misogynistic talking point to foam at the mouth over how wokeness is ruining the literary cannon and all modern media. Perhaps actually read the text that you're so eager to defend before spewing nonsense and fanning the flames for other uneducated womenhating people in your comment section to feel justified in their disdain for educated women and anyone of a marginalized status.

[00:09:44]Now I've got that off my chest, let me return to my analysis of the latest trailer. But before we go any further, I'd like to take a moment to thank today's sponsor, which is Squarespace.

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[00:10:50]Again, all from one place. So, if you're interested, check out squarespace.com for a free trial. And then when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/ladyofthe library to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So, I've already done a whole video on my reaction of the first trailer regarding my feelings towards the difference between historical accuracy and mythology and fantasy. I explain that in great depth. So, I shan repeat the foundations of my thoughts here.

[00:11:17]Although, we will see many disappointing elements from that trailer repeated in this trailer. I mean, my initial understanding of the trailer is that it is incredibly dull. It's terribly dull.

[00:11:28]There is nothing exciting about this.

[00:11:30]for such an exciting story. The trailer is not selling it to me at all. And also, I agree with other people. The accents were initially a shock to me. I wasn't expecting Nolan to enforce such a pronounced American accent upon his cast. You know, I suppose it's nice maybe to break away from the typical white voice of power employed by most of Hollywood historical films, i.e. the British RP. Though my main gripe there is that if you're going to give the cast, you know, American accents, don't make Adysius have a Boston accent because we all know Ithaca is in New York. Really, I can understand why the American accent felt a little bit jarring to a lot of us. I think we've become more comfortable with historical films set in ancient Europe being given a British RP accent. uh because if the film is in English obviously because British accents feel closer to the rest of Europe geographically and thus by default feels more fitting of a European story line than an American accent does.

[00:12:31]Though that does bring me on to the daddy issues which has got everyone talking about. So a very notable clip in this trailer is Antinois played by Robert Patterson is confronting Telmicus who is played by Spider-Man. I can't remember his name. And then Robert Patterson's character Antonyois tells Tmicus, "Oh, you're just a boy pining for his daddy." Uh, to which then Tmicus retort, "Uh, my dad is on his way home."

[00:12:58]Everyone, including myself, felt that was incredibly strange. Now, here I am again to defend. Wilson's translation does not use the word dad or daddy at all. She uses the word father not just because it's the formality of Tmicus being a prince um of Ithaca, but it's also because it's a translation of the word pater. Uh he does not use any more informal words like papa or ta uh talking about his daddy. It's always about his father. So Noden's employment of dad and daddy compounded with his choice of Adysius yelling let's go uh to his army of men. um just seemed incredibly modern and out of place for a king. Um although I would argue that Adysius, you know, doesn't really give off the uh sticking to the royal protocol vibes in any shape or form uh throughout the Odyssey. However, with American accents and the colloquial modern dialogue uh that we have briefly heard so far, it is giving more ancient Avengers vibes uh and which is not what a lot of us wanted in an Odyssey film. I know a lot of us have really been craving an Odyssey film, but we're not denied it. I want to talk about The Return because that came out in 2024 and that is a glorious retelling of the Odyssey. And yes, there is a mix of accents in this film as well. But everything's also played down. So, if there is an American accent or there is an English accent, they're not very pronounced. And there also Greek accents scattered throughout, creating a more Mediterranean bubble for the film. and Fines who plays Adysius is brilliant. He looks apart. He is the part. He's exactly how I imagined Adysius to be at this stage of life. And also, it's a really colorful film without taking away any of the severity of the story line.

[00:14:44]It actually looks as though it was filmed in the Mediterranean. It and but also it's gritty. Oh, it's beautiful. I love it. I love it so much. The tension is stunning. And I think what gets me frustrated is that the news of Nolan's Odyssey came out around the time that The Return was released. So it completely overshadowed The Return. But trust me, if you watch The Return, it looks and feels far more authentic. From the costumes to the look of the people, finds looks as though he's actually seen the sun. Like he's been stuck in the Mediterranean Sea traveling it for like basically 20 years. Uh unlike Damon, who looks like he hasn't seen the sun in 20 years. And what I can see from the trailers and then also The Return is that the difference between these two films thus far is that The Return isn't an action film and it's not trying to be one. It's not trying to tap into the hero trope of the epic return because with all due respect, the Odyssey isn't like that. Like yes, on the basis of it, it is an epic and it is a return, but it's not like Avengers Endgame Hollywood idea of epic. The Odyssey is very quiet.

[00:15:53]Like the Odyssey's movements are incredibly slow and calculated. And that's emphasized particularly when he returns to Ithaca. Odysius is a man of many turns. He isn't Achilles. He isn't action man charging forward into battle.

[00:16:06]If Nolan truly wanted that kind of battle scene, he should have really gone for the Iliad instead because Adysius and the Odyssey isn't that. You know, Adysius by this stage of life, he's basically a pirate and he's cunning.

[00:16:18]He's aged and he's the brains behind everything. You know, he was the chief architect of the Trojan horse. He comes up with the idea. He is the reason that Troy finally fell. You know, the Greek army used brute force for a decade and they didn't get anywhere. But it's only when Adysius comes up with his plan, which is calculated and quiet, that Troy finally falls. But the scenes that we've seen so far in Nolan's Odyssey have been all focused on action when really the violence of Adysius that erupts at the end of the Odyssey comes a bit as a shock. You know, it's a very slow build.

[00:16:56]It's like water being slowly and slowly heated for years and years and years and then suddenly it's at boiling point and it's spewing and it's gory and it's violent and it's really intense because we've seen a pretty damn calm man until that point. Now, how can you build up to that climax in Nolan's Odyssey when it's evidently forefronting battle and action hero montages over the subtlety of both Adysius and Penelopey's very slowb building plans? And speaking of battles, there's a lot more armor in this film than I expected to see. I already talked about my ideas on the Batman armor and Adysius's armor already in the last video, but in this recent trailer, we see new armor. We have these armored men in a forest whom I'm going to guess are the Lstragonians. Uh the men eating giants in the Odyssey. I don't know who else they can be. I could be completely wrong there. But if they are the Lreonians, putting them in armor is just a bit jarring really because they no longer feel like mythological monsters. They just feel like any other army of men.

[00:18:01]Uh, let's talk about the actual silver armor itself because obviously steel did exist in Bronze Age Greece. Even though it's Bronze Age, it did exist, but as you can tell from the name, it was exceptionally rare. Uh, it was more of a novelty that was produced accidentally by smelting iron ore. Um, and that didn't exist enough. You know, there weren't enough accidents to have made the quantities to create thousands of pieces of armor. So, again, the armor looks anacronistic here, though. Again, playing devil's advocate, perhaps that's what he was going for. You know, perhaps the mythological element of these creatures for Nolan is their employment of steel and their access to it. I know it's it's tenuous. Um, but maybe that signals their mythological status, even though it would be incredibly subtle uh and not quite so obvious to the majority of people. And again, looking at them just aesthetically, not analyzing it very deeply, it looks medieval from a first glance. And I'm not sure if that's something Anolan will play with in this film. Are they all time traveling? Is that why, you know, we can see Batman armor that's been clearly 3D printed or medieval style steel armor in another scene? I'm not I'm not really sure. The problem with this idea that I'm throwing out there hypothetically is that yes, medieval looking armor would look very mythical and magical to a bronze age Greek, but in a film for a modern audience, it just looks like a mismatch of really strange historical time pieces. We have Viking ships, we have 3D printed armor, we have steel medieval armor. It is like a whole prop cupboard from a school was raided to make this film happen. I don't understand the inconsistencies here. And for me personally, I would want to make the monsters look like their powers. You know, nothing about these men, if they are the Lonians, scream men eating giants to me. You know, I'd give them like big mouths and teeth, you know, but maybe that's what's hiding under their helmets. But still, it's just not giving me mythological monsters, but they may not be the life scrians. That's just me throwing out ideas. I can't think what they are. But in general, you know, we obviously see the Cyclops a little bit in both trailers, but nothing about this is screaming luscious mythology. You know, what we've seen from, I think, Cersei's Island, it's bland. It's like a bland desert. There is nothing on there.

[00:20:20]It looks like uh a new installment of the June film series, like June part 7 BCE. And perhaps when we see the actual film, the the scenes in the film will be more filled out than that. But my god, if that's what it looks like, poor goddess. Living there in such a bland wasteland is truly a punishment for anyone. And of course, again, biggest gripe of my life, bloody monochrome statues. We see Adysius cutting off the head of a bloody monochrome statue instead of the beautiful polychrome that it should have been because heaven forbid Hollywood accepts that the ancient world had a personality. It's not garish just because it doesn't match the elitist maturity associated with the marbles adorning the British Museum.

[00:21:03]They had color once upon a time. Give them paint, gild them, dress them in garments and cloth like they had, you know, that's what it looked like. I mean, the only highlight of the trailer was the baby Argos, the sweetest little bean in all of ancient mythology. And if Nolan creates a film where the audience doesn't sob their hearts out at his death, then that will be proof that he has no idea about the Odyssey because no one can even read that passage without crying. And I'd comment more on Penelope and Tmicus. But really, there's not much to say. They all look incredibly bland, and I can tell that despite the Botox paralyzing her forehead, that Anne Hatheraway is really giving it her all.

[00:21:44]But aside from that, you know, they just it looks so blah. If the casting is true, in my opinion, Nolan's missed lots of opportunities to actually have a really interesting diverse cast, but he's done it in the really backwards way. He's done it in a rage bayy way when his spoiler for my discussion. I think Lupita Nyongo would have been a better Penelopey than Anne Hatheraway.

[00:22:06]You could have swapped those two roles over and it would have made a far more interesting discussion, particularly regarding Helen of Troy and Penelopey being opposites of each other. You know, the loyal wife versus the straying wife.

[00:22:18]They are perceived as complete opposites. I don't know what he's doing by making Helena Troy and Clive Tinestra look identical because that means there are two faces that could have launched a thousand ships. I don't think that's really the point. I don't know. I have to write more about it. But there could have been way better choices that would have made for a more interesting cast that would have channeled a lot of misconceptions about ancient Greece, how diverse ancient Greece was, what the people were like. Um, and he's just missed all those opportunities for a really cheapl lookinging cast and a cheap looking film thus far. Obviously, these are just trailers. I could be proven completely wrong like I was with Withering Heights. It could be a really interesting film in its own way. I don't know what he's doing. So, these just my initial thoughts, but if you'd like me to talk about my cast ideas and what I think Nolan may have missed the opportunity to do with the cast, please let me know. I'm happy to do that video.

[00:23:11]I'm not going to lean into rage baiting stuff because with all due respect, a lot of people are all but hurt over nothing. Like, I'm sorry to say that the ancient world was far more diverse than you realize it was. I'm not going to cater to those sensibilities. The irony.

[00:23:26]The irony that apparently Nola is meant to be catering to sensibilities or Emily Wilson's translation was when the most sensitive people out there are the ones who haven't even read the bloody obviously in the first place. Sorry I was sassy in this one. It really drives me nuts. But thank you as always for your support u and your kindness. And also to my patreons for being so wonderful. We have my top tier patreons.

[00:23:47]Hollywood's autistic, Joshua Heredia, Gil the Gilded Dragon, Lady of the Labyrinth, Ellen Eric Taylor, Ivonne and Ivonne, Jenny Edane, Marina We Lauren, Nicholas Reed, and Andy Brazil. Thank you all so much as always. I hope you are happy and healthy. And books save lives, so keep reading.