Free Expression on the Weekend: Is "The Odyssey" Movie Woke?

[00:00:00]These are huge parts of the online discourse. They're They're very minor parts of the movie, and it's kind of an interesting case study in how online is not real life.

[00:00:13]>> Hi Spencer, thanks so much for joining us. You and I have both written pieces on Homer's Odyssey this week. The newspeg, of course, is the brand new movie from director Christopher Nolan. I have not seen the movie. You have seen the movie. So, Spencer, I want to start with just a Siskel and Ebert simple consumer question.

[00:00:32]Thumbs up or thumbs down? Should I go see this movie?

[00:00:34]>> Super easy. Thumbs up. Go see it. Don't be deterred by the silly online controversy. It's good movie.

[00:00:40]>> Why then? What do you like about this new movie version of the Odyssey?

[00:00:45]>> The longer answer is no adaptation of Homer is perfect because Homer is a genius. What makes these poems bottomless sources of wisdom and inspiration and beauty is that they really can't be beat. They They are perfectly composed, in my view, and there's always more that you can draw out of them. Christopher Nolan's movie is no different. He's a great director, but he is not greater than Homer. His interest is in these big mythic set pieces and these giant kind of philosophical themes. One of my favorite things about this movie is that it's doesn't have the usual modern hesitation or fear about the supernatural. Nolan is not great about the gods, but he's really good about the monsters and the myths and the the legendary parts of the story. So, that's there on screen in a way that we haven't gotten in a long time. He makes some changes to the story that I think a purist will be angry about. I don't want to spoil too many of them. If there's something in Homer that you feel is missing from this adaptation, or if you're excited by this adaptation, and you want to know where all this good stuff comes from, go read the poem. Anything that you're mad about the movie not doing, the great news is we have this incredible cultural treasure that we can be celebrating off the back of this movie as as well. And I think Nolan's failures, such as they are, don't touch that.

[00:02:15]>> One criticism a lot of people have made online about this film from having just seen the trailer or maybe certain assumptions they've They've wondered, "Is it woke?"

[00:02:24]>> The caricature that took shape online was that this was going to be a like this was going to be the trans Odyssey.

[00:02:31]It was going to be Odyssey decked out in a rainbow flag, and every scene was going to be about how women aren't respected in ancient Greece, and that's just not what's happening in the movie.

[00:02:42]It's gotten blown so far out of proportion that, you know, Lupita Nyong'o, who's black, is playing Helen, and he's cast Elliot, formerly Ellen Page, this trans person in in one of the roles. Um these are huge parts of the online discourse. They're They're very minor parts of the movie, and it's kind of an interesting case study in how online is not real life. It's no more woke than like pre-2020's average Hollywood.

[00:03:09]Nolan's not a a right-winger by any stretch of the imagination, but neither is he trying to make this into some kind of crusade for black trans disabled rights or something like that.

[00:03:19]>> I was interested in the singer role in this film, not necessarily cuz of the race of the of the of the actor, but because it it hearkens back to the oral tradition out of which this story emerged. And that was That was a subject of my free expression column this week, which was the discovery that this was not always a written text, but that it comes out of a a tradition of singers and people who who performed extemporaneously, and that it would change with every performance, really.

[00:03:51]And and the guy who figured that out was an American scholar called Milman Parry.

[00:03:56]They got proved it really. And it's embedded in something that a lot of readers are familiar with, which is the repetition of certain stock phrases. A big part of the reason Milman Parry said is because it helps the poet hit the meter, the dactylic hexameter, in which he's performing the song. And he needs these stock phrases to do that.

[00:04:16]So, this is this is the evidence that this is actually originally an an oral poem. But 100 years ago it took a young American scholar to figure this out. He saw it in the text, then he went out into the field and listened to the last remaining epic singers who were in in in the former Yugoslavia, these illiterate singers who would perform these long songs, sometimes going on for days, and they were doing exactly the same thing.

[00:04:39]And Milman Parry is like, "Aha, this is what Homer was doing. These are his authentic heirs, and this comes out of an oral tradition."

[00:04:46]>> Something that I think is really cool about that is the Odyssey itself is obviously really self-aware. It's even been called kind of postmodern in this way, that Odysseus is telling most of the most famous parts of the story. It's not Homer himself who tells you about Scylla and Charybdis. It's Homer telling you about Odysseus telling his friends about this story. And so, from the beginning, the story is a retelling. The original is a retelling. So, adapting this poem in a weird way is kind of a way of being faithful to it and passing the story along and and and telling different versions of it, too.

[00:05:22]>> Spencer, you've read Homer in in in Homeric Greek, but most of us won't have that opportunity.

[00:05:29]If we want to read the Odyssey, which translation would you suggest a reader go to?

[00:05:37]>> So, I'll give you the headline, which is you should read either Daniel Mendelsohn's 2025 translation or Robert Fagles' slightly earlier translation.

[00:05:46]Those are both terrific. But, I'll also say there are a lot of great translations of the Odyssey. It's obviously one of the most translated texts. As you indicated earlier, this is a really listenable poem, even in translation. That rhythm of dactylic hexameter, which you mentioned, is a rhythm, right?

[00:06:10]You can hear the way that it kind of trips along in this in this dactylic hexameter rhythm. And I think the best translations are ones that pick up that propulsive power. I think of it as like hoofbeats and heartbeats. It's got this incredible beat underneath it. Nolan himself stepped in it a little bit. One of his many kind of publicity stunts or failures or whatever was name-checking a very notorious translation by Emily Wilson, which is uh famous among other things for Wilson's having been the first woman to translate the Odyssey into English. I don't like her translation very much, so I wouldn't commend or recommend that to you.

[00:06:50]>> Why do you think Christopher Nolan went straight to the Odyssey, you know, the sequel? Why not do the Iliad first and then the Odyssey second?

[00:06:58]Uh instead, he just went right to the Odyssey. Is it Is it a better poem? Is it a better work?

[00:07:03]>> Nolan himself said something interesting. He said it's not just a story, but the story. It's not just a good story or a particularly exciting story. It is somehow essential. And I think there's a lot to that. There's a long history, as you probably know, of people debating whether the Odyssey or the Iliad is better. In any case, I think the Odyssey is probably more exciting to us now. And that's because of its psychological elements and because of its mythological elements, both. It's because it's so sensational with all the myth and story and the and the magic and the witches and the gods and goddesses, um which again is something I like about what what Nolan does. But then also at the same time Odysseus is this person who we know we feel that we know so intimately. You know, he um appears it takes a long time for him to show up in the poem. And the minute he does, we find him trapped on the island of Calypso, this beautiful deathless goddess. And poor guy, he's forced to sleep with this beautiful woman for potentially all eternity. She's offering him an immortality of beauty and passion and and pleasure. And basically the first thing out of his mouth is, "Look, I know that all of these things are great, but none of it can compare to my home.

[00:08:22]>> Help me go home.

[00:08:23]>> So much of the poem is just about unfolding the different layers of external and internal obstacles to coming home from war. And that's such a recognizable relatable thing. We we know war veterans who struggle with this, of course. We all in various ways, I think, have to clear away the obstacles between our our truest selves and the things that get in our way or attract us or kind of lead us astray. So, that combination of mythic greatness with personal relatability, I think that's probably what drew Nolan to him, makes him think of it as this as this core story. And that's definitely something that people still connect with and will connect with for as long as the poem endures, which will hopefully as long as humanity endures.