Speaker 1: Warning, today's episode may contain spoilers for a several thousand
Speaker 1: year old orally transmitted story soon to be in theaters
Speaker 1: as Christopher Nolans The Odyssey, but it was you know.
Speaker 1: You can't spoil a story this long.
Speaker 2: You probably already know the story.
Speaker 1: Let's be real. Hello an Adminstration Concepcion and I'm Rosey
Speaker 1: Night and welcome back to x ray Vision, the podcast
Speaker 1: where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics,
Speaker 1: at pop culture, comedy, for Myheart, Wor'll bring you three
Speaker 1: episodes we play those plus news on SAP today.
Speaker 3: In today's episode, we are getting you prepped for Christopher
Speaker 3: Nolan's Odyssey by diving into the history of the original story,
Speaker 3: the Falsehoods of Homer, and then we will jump into
Speaker 3: our expectations for the movie. What we expect to see,
Speaker 3: what we would love to see, what we don't expect
Speaker 3: to see. But first let's talk about it. Christopher Nolan
Speaker 3: adapting one of the greatest stories of all time, Jason
Speaker 3: the Odyssey.
Speaker 1: The Odyssey. Let's start with the facts. The Odyssey slated
Speaker 1: for release in just over a week from our recording time.
Speaker 1: Recording this on July sixth, US theatrical releases July seventeenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. However, the London world premiere is tonight
Speaker 1: or probably right now.
Speaker 3: I think it is right now, and that makes sense
Speaker 3: because I've seen a lucky few who I guess are
Speaker 3: doing the junket are seeing it tonight in la Well,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 1: Now, actually runtime two hours and fifty two.
Speaker 4: It's a chunky, chunky, chunky I'm old, I'm old, Jason,
Speaker 4: I gotta go to sleep. Give you an mission, chunky
Speaker 4: chunky what man.
Speaker 1: One thing that I've been thinking watching a bunch of
Speaker 1: old movies and Criteria and elsewhere, is man. They used
Speaker 1: to just like blow movies used to just blow by
Speaker 1: hour and a half, two hours at most.
Speaker 3: I watched an incredible five, an incredible like Croatian folk
Speaker 3: horror movie the other day.
Speaker 1: Guess how long it was? One hour and four minutes.
Speaker 2: At Perfection, Left Terror cut Perfection.
Speaker 3: It was amazing. No, two hours and fifty two minutes.
Speaker 3: Christopher Nolan cobbed out. But then again, I will say
Speaker 3: rad to hear me defend Christopherola's right. But you know what,
Speaker 3: this is a story that is like so so so
Speaker 3: long that to even begin to comprehend to tell it,
Speaker 3: you're gonna need a kind of long time.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into the It's an epic the oral tradition.
Speaker 1: This was many scholars believe this was a multi day story,
Speaker 1: you know, like you gather around the hall or whatever,
Speaker 1: and the bard would come in and start going, and
Speaker 1: then it would be break see you tomorrow and then
Speaker 1: come back for part two, part three, et cetera. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it is rated R.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: This is Christopher Nolan's first rated R film since Insomnia.
Speaker 3: Which was by the way, like twenty four years ago,
Speaker 3: which seems insane because he's not necessarily a man.
Speaker 2: You think of as like a PG. Thirteen. Yes, pal,
Speaker 2: you know, but I guess, yeah, I guess.
Speaker 3: Oppenheimer didn't have the swears or the bloods, even though
Speaker 3: it had the many many deaths.
Speaker 1: Yes. And Insomnia, which which itself was a adaptation of
Speaker 1: I believe in Norway Danish question Dani film Dana question Mark,
Speaker 1: which I enjoyed, sadly, sorry, Chris, more than more than
Speaker 1: Chris's version, but still notable that Chris going back to
Speaker 1: the rated R.
Speaker 3: Yes, and it makes sense because this is again even
Speaker 3: though a lot of the kind of odyssey Greek mythology
Speaker 3: movies that we've seen were more in the family range.
Speaker 3: The story is a very bloody and violent. We've seen
Speaker 3: from the trailer that this is a war story. It's
Speaker 3: a war movie, so not surprising.
Speaker 1: And Chris has said it's because he wanted to make
Speaker 1: it very violent, much more intense. He is quoted as
Speaker 1: telling Empire, we wanted to make the most intense version
Speaker 1: with the weapons of the time. They are more brutal. Okay,
Speaker 1: the budget Roco swords, Yeah, I love that. Of course
Speaker 1: this is going to be released in Christopher Nolans. I
Speaker 1: call it Christopher Nolans Imax.
Speaker 3: I mean you can call it that now because this
Speaker 3: is the first ever full Imax feature, right that.
Speaker 1: Will be soup to nuts only Imax, no no changing screens,
Speaker 1: no ratio changing.
Speaker 2: You are gonna watch.
Speaker 3: The whole fucking thing in Imax, So you bet go
Speaker 3: find the biggest Imax possible, Okay, and it's also going
Speaker 3: to be in seven emilim It's right, they're actually doing
Speaker 3: the press screening. You can choose between seven e milimeters
Speaker 3: or Imax, and of course they will have additional large
Speaker 3: threemium large formats like.
Speaker 2: Odyssey Vision or whatever they decide.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's so it's in Imax, it's in seventy,
Speaker 1: and then it's in Imax seventy, which is crazy Imax
Speaker 1: ratios in seventy and the same kind of like high definition,
Speaker 1: high resolution film that you're ready for, but in the
Speaker 1: seventy millimeter force. So it's just like emerging of the
Speaker 1: maximum formats as well.
Speaker 3: You guys cannot even begin to comprehend how large a
Speaker 3: reel of this film is in imaxuge and how long
Speaker 3: this movie is.
Speaker 2: I mean, I want to see a video of that.
Speaker 3: I love when they take the projectionists take the photos
Speaker 3: out of the screen, like the projectionist was doing for Sinners,
Speaker 3: which was so incredible.
Speaker 2: I would love to see them do something like.
Speaker 3: This where they show us how long it takes to
Speaker 3: like thread the reel and everything, because yeah, I have
Speaker 3: to say, well, the thing that sold me on this
Speaker 3: was Christopher Nolan talking about his love for Imax and
Speaker 3: Imax cameras and how when he was a kid he
Speaker 3: would go and watch Imax at.
Speaker 2: The Science Museum and stuff like.
Speaker 3: So he's a ad for this in the same way
Speaker 3: we are, and I think that is what excites me
Speaker 3: even more than just like the content or the tone
Speaker 3: of the movie.
Speaker 1: Really, here's a good way to think about it is,
Speaker 1: if you ever shot a film camera, you've probably shot
Speaker 1: thirty five millimeter film, which is you'd buy it whatever
Speaker 1: the drug store. So seventy is double. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: yeah good? Cool like that about this movie. You know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Nolan talked about at various interviews that he
Speaker 1: was originally supposed to direct Troy What the film Troy started?
Speaker 1: I missed this law this was pre Batman Begins. Now.
Speaker 1: The problem was that Wolfgang Peterson, oh wanted Troy bat
Speaker 1: He had like dropped it. I forget like how the
Speaker 1: business worked, but he had like he had like put
Speaker 1: it forward, and then he had dropped it and then
Speaker 1: he's like, no, actually now I want it now. No,
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 3: And the funniest thing about it was it was because
Speaker 3: he was supposed he was supposed to do Batman Versus Superman,
Speaker 3: and it was which I would by the way, Wolfgan
Speaker 3: Pisen made never ending story.
Speaker 2: So him doing fucking like.
Speaker 1: Batman Vsus Superman sounds insane to me.
Speaker 3: And then he wanted Troy back when that was dropped
Speaker 3: and then Nolan and then he he got Troy.
Speaker 2: But then what did Nolan get?
Speaker 1: So beginning Troy then began Yes, so then Nolan gets
Speaker 1: Batman begins as kind of a consolation prize, but it
Speaker 1: began Nolan's interest. I guess you would say curiosity about
Speaker 1: this period. It's very interesting because Troy is Troy is
Speaker 1: the Iliad, and the Odyssey is you know, the story
Speaker 1: that happens after the Iliad. The Iliad is basically about
Speaker 1: the the actual Trojan War, and then the Odyssey is like,
Speaker 1: this guy needs to get home after the Trojan War,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of shit happens.
Speaker 3: Dude, this matterfucker could not go home like it is
Speaker 3: like after hours or some shit like this man can
Speaker 3: just never get home.
Speaker 2: This man is gone for the cigarettes. He's never coming back.
Speaker 1: You know what's interesting to me about we'll talk about
Speaker 1: the script and the approach next. Regarding the horse, the
Speaker 1: Trojan horse, which figures prominently in the trailers, the pre
Speaker 1: trailers that were dropped, and it's just so suspenseful and magnumiseny.
Speaker 2: It looks amazing.
Speaker 1: The horse is like barely in the honesty and the Iliad,
Speaker 1: like it's and then the Iliad is the weirdest one
Speaker 1: because the Iliad is like about the war and it's
Speaker 1: not in there, which is a puzzling thing for scholars
Speaker 1: to try and figure out why that is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's really interesting, I think in this specific
Speaker 3: its ration where we've got someone like Nolan who is
Speaker 3: an auteur, it's going to be really interesting to see
Speaker 3: what he does and doesn't choose, right, because there is
Speaker 3: so much here, and like you said, so we're obviously
Speaker 3: the way it is posed in the trailer that we
Speaker 3: saw and the content I saw at Cinema Con was
Speaker 3: that it was essentially Telemachus being told a story by
Speaker 3: sexy John Bunthall, who plays I don't know, Eggaman and
Speaker 3: Non or something. But and it's kind of so in
Speaker 3: that way, that's how he can kind of get around it, right,
Speaker 3: It's going to be oral stories, storytelling, and I'm really
Speaker 3: interested to see how he kind of uses that meta
Speaker 3: level to bring in stuff that nobody of this time
Speaker 3: should know, because it's going to have to pull and
Speaker 3: pick from all different places well just to kind.
Speaker 1: Of drill into it. Which, so here are the theories why
Speaker 1: the horse is barely in it. Okay, the horse is
Speaker 1: kind of mentioned in the Odyssey, but like briefly, and
Speaker 1: it's not in the Iliad at all. Now, the Iliad
Speaker 1: is about the start of the war and it doesn't
Speaker 1: cover the end, So I guess that that would be
Speaker 1: one main reason is was just not it's not part
Speaker 1: of the content. It's how the war ended, it's not
Speaker 1: how it began. And the fact that it's only like
Speaker 1: briefly mentioned in the Honesty could mean that, like, it
Speaker 1: was such a widely known story that you barely needed
Speaker 1: to like get into it.
Speaker 3: Because people we are so so I like that reading
Speaker 3: the idea of the horse.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting, right that people would yeah, and
Speaker 1: just like have it in there.
Speaker 3: It's also really funny because it's arguably the most famous
Speaker 3: part of the law, so likely, right, That's why I
Speaker 3: think Nolan had to have this kind of big focus
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 2: So, Jason, what can you tell us about?
Speaker 3: This is a really interesting project because there is so
Speaker 3: much pre production production material and so much pre release interviewing.
Speaker 2: That you could kind of already have a book on it.
Speaker 3: So what do we kind of know about what Nolan
Speaker 3: has all already told us about how he wrote it.
Speaker 2: How he went about adapting.
Speaker 3: This, you know, piece of writing that is written by
Speaker 3: as far as we know, you know, so many people,
Speaker 3: and it's kind of all been put together. How did
Speaker 3: he go about turning that into, you know, a script
Speaker 3: for what he's hoping will be another billion dollar movie.
Speaker 1: I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure. He well, he apparently wrote
Speaker 1: it by himself. He wrote the script by himself in
Speaker 1: a what he describes as a nonlinear way, so I
Speaker 1: guess jumping from scene to scene. That would mean He
Speaker 1: has described it as very faithful to the text, which
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means, right, how do you
Speaker 1: do that? I guess maybe in the dialogue perhaps, but
Speaker 1: we will see. And other than some notable changes, he
Speaker 1: has mentioned that the role of Odysseus is very loyal
Speaker 1: and now very old by the time this story's taking place.
Speaker 1: Dog Argos has been expanded as huge part of the hotesty.
Speaker 3: I know, I like, I like expanded how I'm like,
Speaker 3: let's let's see, it's like they're old. I'm like, this
Speaker 3: is also really funny for me because as a kid.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you guys had a version of this,
Speaker 3: but in England there were these really popular stores called Argos,
Speaker 3: like named after this dog, and it was basically like
Speaker 3: a store where you could go in and you look
Speaker 3: through a catalog and then you put in a number
Speaker 3: and they send you your thing. It was very fun,
Speaker 3: very novel. But yeah, every time I see Argos, I
Speaker 3: just think of like the most random, like high street store.
Speaker 3: But yeah, he's a good boy, and I do wonder
Speaker 3: if there was a little wink wink, nudge nudge after
Speaker 3: the crypto of it all.
Speaker 2: I feel like dogs are very in right now.
Speaker 3: Dogs are very in right now. Oh yeah, so what
Speaker 3: what were some more things they added?
Speaker 1: They there's some more connective tissue between the relationship between
Speaker 1: Odysseus and his son Telemachus, who's mainly grown up in
Speaker 1: the absence of Odysseus. But listen, if there's one thing
Speaker 1: that no one does in every movie, is there is
Speaker 1: some sort of a parent child relationship that is the
Speaker 1: beating heart of it. Whether that's you know, it's literally
Speaker 1: and the mom will be dead. Yeah, it's literally crazing
Speaker 1: a movie, whether it's you know, Inception, Interstellar, what have you. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: it makes sense that he would beef this up. Telemachus
Speaker 1: in the you know, in the in the in the
Speaker 1: poetic version, is kind of watching these many many aggressive
Speaker 1: suitors to his mother, his dad's wife, whose husband is
Speaker 1: now absent for many years, have come to live at
Speaker 1: the house, and Telemachus is like, Jesus.
Speaker 2: Christ, yeah, this is like get He's like, why is it?
Speaker 3: Like my mom's just like fucking swiping ripe right on
Speaker 3: all these guys, like calms out, Okay, So I'm very
Speaker 3: interested in the fact that he has said that they've
Speaker 3: kind of expanded this like a humanized and then in
Speaker 3: quotes like unsettling yet sympathetic sessay, right, who's the witch?
Speaker 3: Jason tell us a little bit about her in the
Speaker 3: traditional version, and then I have a theory why this
Speaker 3: has been dull.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would love to hear this. So Circe is
Speaker 1: a goddess who uh you know, lives in these dense
Speaker 1: woods and is you know, surrounded by these like tamed
Speaker 1: animals and Odysseus's crew kind of like lands, and she
Speaker 1: turns the crew all into pigs. But she falls in
Speaker 1: love with Odysseus. Oh, and he basically has to like one.
Speaker 3: Thousand and one nights is how manipulate yeah, he has
Speaker 3: to be like, hey, you know, like manipulate her basically
Speaker 3: into like getting out of town with.
Speaker 2: And letting him free.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he's really babe. I swear to God, I'm
Speaker 1: just going to get some milk. I'll be right back.
Speaker 1: I just need my crew to turn into humans like
Speaker 1: that kind of thing I now tell uskay theory.
Speaker 3: So in twenty eighteen, and I don't know if you
Speaker 3: read this, Jason, but it was around It was a
Speaker 3: similar time to obviously Laura Olympus. There has been this
Speaker 3: kind of huge resurgence in Greek mythology retellings, and there
Speaker 3: is an incredible one called Circe by Madeline Miller that
Speaker 3: kind of retells the Odyssey through Circe's point of view.
Speaker 3: And I think that it was like it was such
Speaker 3: a huge success, and she did the Song of Achilles too,
Speaker 3: and then you know, we've had so many other kind
Speaker 3: of retellings of Greek mythology.
Speaker 2: I think that Nolan as kind.
Speaker 3: Of a student of storytelling and how storytelling kind of
Speaker 3: evolves and changes. I don't doubt that he probably understood
Speaker 3: that a lot of the previous versions of these stories
Speaker 3: had been kind of misrepresented. I mean, I might be
Speaker 3: getting my ancient law mixed up. But I think recently
Speaker 3: there was like a very famous female adaptation of the
Speaker 3: Odyssey for the first time or something right, and it
Speaker 3: was like a it was like a completely different reading.
Speaker 1: Emily Wilson, who is a classics professor at Penn in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, released a trans of the Odyssey. Christopher Nolan
Speaker 1: his name, checked it and said that it was part
Speaker 1: of the source material that he pulled on in order
Speaker 1: to create the movie. And her I talk about her
Speaker 1: in the omnibus coming up. But if she has like
Speaker 1: one kind of pioneering move, it's that she started from
Speaker 1: the place of this was the Odyssey. The poem itself
Speaker 1: was popular entertainment. There was nothing in there, like she
Speaker 1: points out in many interviews, like if you take Greek
Speaker 1: in college by your second year, you can read the
Speaker 1: Odyssey no problem. Like the blanguage very very plain and
Speaker 1: unfrilly and uses the same a set again and a
Speaker 1: guess for the masses. And so what she did was
Speaker 1: take the take the text, make it more clear and direct,
Speaker 1: and then change the rhythm. I forget what the rhythm
Speaker 1: of the original. Oh yeah, Greek poem was, but she
Speaker 1: then for English, she then transferred the rhythm into iambic
Speaker 1: pentaminon like Shakespeare, like Shakespeare the meters Wow English know that. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to read that Choices tales, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that you could really feel how it should have a rhythm.
Speaker 3: To it like a storytelling, like a play, like a
Speaker 3: live storytelling. And and it makes it much like you know,
Speaker 3: I've read, I've read several odysses.
Speaker 1: It is. It is very accessible and very enjoyable. I
Speaker 1: don't think you lose a single thing. I'm so excited.
Speaker 3: I'm definitely gonna read that because I I definitely came
Speaker 3: up more with Like Greek mythology was a huge deal
Speaker 3: in the UK when I was a kid. I think
Speaker 3: that's very millennial and also museums, colonialism, all that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff, But it was always like kids versions or
Speaker 3: comic book versions. I don't think I ever sat down
Speaker 3: and really and I read a lot of like kind
Speaker 3: of cheap of licensed classics, you know, your Charles Dickens
Speaker 3: and stuff, But I don't think I ever really sat
Speaker 3: down and like read a version of the Odyssey that
Speaker 3: like gripped me enough to keep reading it as a kid.
Speaker 3: So that's very exciting, and I love that Nolan is
Speaker 3: kind of he's even like quoted her, right, he's quote
Speaker 3: a translation.
Speaker 1: He's he has said in an interview quote. I think
Speaker 1: it's the Emily Wilson translation that begins tell me about
Speaker 1: a complicated man. The genius of the character, the cleverness,
Speaker 1: the inventiveness of him. That was a huge part of
Speaker 1: what interests me. Interested me. He's not just a soldier.
Speaker 1: He's an amazing strategist, a very wily person. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: really comes out in her translation, like and it might
Speaker 1: have been that, like this is the one I read
Speaker 1: as like a fully formed adult in the like you
Speaker 1: the other ones I read when I was like a
Speaker 1: younger person. But the thing that comes out, and it
Speaker 1: certainly comes out in the Circe relationship, is that he's
Speaker 1: a trickster. He's a liar. He's like lying all the time.
Speaker 1: He's lying to his men. He's lying to Circe. He's
Speaker 1: like realizes she's in love of them. He's trying to
Speaker 1: like use that get what he needs. He's and and
Speaker 1: it's you know again lying to his men all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get home we're gonna get It's like.
Speaker 3: That almost trauma, right, Like if she's making the argument
Speaker 3: that's the soap oper element, right, always deceiving, always telling stories,
Speaker 3: twists tons, It's like you need that to keep people engaged.
Speaker 1: And the and the horse in this framing was like his.
Speaker 1: It says a lot about him because he is this
Speaker 1: kind of trickster liar, a person who's can think on
Speaker 1: his feet and use his wits as much and honestly
Speaker 1: more than hell, he can use his his spears sword.
Speaker 3: That is actually such an incredible read, Jason, because something
Speaker 3: that I only found out through are incredible show notes
Speaker 3: put together by a sup producer Ian is that? So
Speaker 3: what I saw at the cinema, Colm was essentially part
Speaker 3: of the opening of the movie. That's how they have
Speaker 3: the horse in right. It's basically a prologue and it
Speaker 3: is menilaysk and he's telling Tellimachus like and he says
Speaker 3: to him, this was the part that got me excited.
Speaker 3: He goes, have you heard about the horse? And Telemachus
Speaker 3: nods and he goes, okay. He goes from the inside
Speaker 3: and smash cut and you're inside the horse, right.
Speaker 2: But I will say, as seeing that on a big screen.
Speaker 3: If that is your table setting for who Odysseus is,
Speaker 3: it's fucking crazy because it basically says this man is
Speaker 3: a deceiver. He will put his men at risk, and
Speaker 3: he will fucking slaughter one hundred people to get what
Speaker 3: he wants.
Speaker 2: Like it really sets him up. And I think that's quite.
Speaker 3: Important for Christopher Nolan's read because, as you'll see if
Speaker 3: you're on kind of you know, mythology Twitter or just
Speaker 3: movie Twitter, there's a lot of reads of Odysseus that
Speaker 3: he's just like stupid as fuck, and he's always getting lost,
Speaker 3: he's always getting distracted, he's always getting so I kind
Speaker 3: of like this.
Speaker 1: Players he but he hard. Yeah, he's like a Han
Speaker 1: solo kind of. You know.
Speaker 2: That's a cool read.
Speaker 1: I like that, is he a hero sort of? Is
Speaker 1: he a villain? Sort of? Like is he a trustworthy person?
Speaker 1: Sort of? But he's just a charmer. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of the thing that comes through in Emily Wilson's translation.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the cast. I was gonna say, let's
Speaker 1: bang for it because it's crazy. Matt Damon, Odysseus, King
Speaker 1: of Ithaca. There he is, there, he is Baby Anne
Speaker 1: Hathaway Penelope his you know, long pining wife who's home alone.
Speaker 3: From cigarettes to come back from the show, while all
Speaker 3: these like dudes from the local like Greek hinterlands are
Speaker 3: just like swarming around.
Speaker 1: Hi, I want to marry you. What's Yeah? Tom Holland
Speaker 1: is Telemachus the Son.
Speaker 3: Could this be his big breakout non Spider Man roll.
Speaker 3: He is yet to have it, and I'm hoping it
Speaker 3: could be it for him. They shd some fun training
Speaker 3: stuff today. It looks like he's gonna get to use
Speaker 3: his Billetic influence. I hope that he gets to have it. Jason,
Speaker 3: d you think he's got the Nolan juice?
Speaker 1: I do, because he'll want he can speak in his
Speaker 1: normal voice now. And two, it's not his movie. He
Speaker 1: can just exist in this movie.
Speaker 3: And I think that's that's how people like Robert Pattinson
Speaker 3: started off. Getting out of that space was like being
Speaker 3: weird character act as, side actors, little spaces.
Speaker 1: You don't always have to be the lead. Robert Pattinson
Speaker 1: as kind of like the foil Antoninus he is. I
Speaker 1: guess some would say the most most aggressive of Penelope's paramours,
Speaker 1: like the guy who's like really just pushing for it
Speaker 1: the most. He's the guest. Yes, the variety of gods
Speaker 1: in the film, Zendaia is athenish.
Speaker 2: That for them, I had no idea that she was playing, but.
Speaker 1: Correct Charlie thron Calypso the nymph Ogigea, I like Matt.
Speaker 3: The Morton as, Oh that's crazy and I cannot wait
Speaker 3: to see it.
Speaker 1: That is bang A casting uh Lupita Niango and the
Speaker 1: one that made all the fucking terrible Homer bros. Upset
Speaker 1: Helen of Troy one.
Speaker 2: Can we just say, Jason one.
Speaker 3: First of all, obviously the Pia Neongo looks like a
Speaker 3: fucking god as show. Shut the fuck up, you wish
Speaker 3: fucking you wish, you.
Speaker 1: Wish, you motherfuckers.
Speaker 3: Second of all, Jason, can you explain why it doesn't
Speaker 3: bow what hell itive Trey looks like?
Speaker 1: Because how is she born.
Speaker 3: Just fucking born out of a swan? Right, She's like
Speaker 3: a swan's egg or some silly shit like she's not
Speaker 3: a human being.
Speaker 2: Come on.
Speaker 1: And second of all, and this is really I don't
Speaker 1: want to get into this because we could do this
Speaker 1: for a long time. The eighth the classical world was
Speaker 1: much it. First of all, did not have these kind
Speaker 1: of like white black perceptions of race modern a more
Speaker 1: modern frame of racing.
Speaker 2: Didn't.
Speaker 1: We didn't. Those people didn't understand the world that way.
Speaker 1: And two, it was a lot more diverse than you realize.
Speaker 1: Robert Argers, are you listening anyway? Thank you?
Speaker 2: I guess and every day of my life.
Speaker 1: Okay, anyway? Who who are the supporting costs? Because it's
Speaker 1: also crazy? John Berenthal, Men, let me tell you about
Speaker 1: the horse. Let me tell you about the horse. The horse,
Speaker 1: telebog I'm gonna shoot.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna shoot, shoot that horse, shoot the horse inside
Speaker 4: the horse goods.
Speaker 1: Benny Safty. Agamemnon, king of Mycenia, is one of the
Speaker 1: major antagonists of the Troy movie and Alia. John Leguizamo
Speaker 1: getting back into his classical bag. I think for the
Speaker 1: first time since Romeo and Juliet the nineties.
Speaker 2: Romeo and Juliet was such an iconic role for him.
Speaker 2: Let's get him back, baby do it.
Speaker 1: As Eumaeus Odysseus's faithful friend. And if I'm not, if
Speaker 1: I'm not, by the way, if I'm not pronouncing this correctly,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, but it's a dead language and rarely said
Speaker 1: this said these I.
Speaker 3: Want to say, like I'm I want to see John Legozama. Look,
Speaker 3: we live in the time. It's twenty twenty six. We
Speaker 3: have times to complain about this any boy. But he's
Speaker 3: playing a blind guy. Do some funny blind act in
Speaker 3: if we're gonna get you doing it, just do it
Speaker 3: like just we can't complain about that anymore.
Speaker 2: Wait, I didn't know him.
Speaker 1: Ash was in this movie. Misha Patel is, you're a locus.
Speaker 1: You're a locus. Odysseus's like second in command, Mia goth Malanko,
Speaker 1: who is a maid in Penelope's household. There is there's
Speaker 1: I believe some maide murdering that goes.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, she's got summry why he's got
Speaker 3: them big eyes. I feel like she's probably gonna be
Speaker 3: a witch or some kind of adjacent to a murderer.
Speaker 2: Wouldn't be surprised about that at all.
Speaker 1: Bill Irwin as Polyphemus the Cyclops, Oh, yes, who we
Speaker 1: see I believe briefly in the tree.
Speaker 3: Briefly, briefly, briefly, And actually that was something I was
Speaker 3: going to ask you about as we go into these
Speaker 3: kind of god characters. They've Nolan's kind of talked about
Speaker 3: like he wants to show the gods through like the
Speaker 3: seasons and through the sunrise and through the weather. But
Speaker 3: we are definitely going to get at least a little
Speaker 3: bit of visualization of kind of some of these more
Speaker 3: mythological aspects that we really haven't seen brought to life
Speaker 3: outside of like Troy, outside of like Noah. Honestly was
Speaker 3: probably the last time, I mean, we haven't really gotten
Speaker 3: to see since the Harry Howsen era, these kind of huge,
Speaker 3: immense beast brought together in a way at least in
Speaker 3: a big blockbuster movie by a director you've heard of.
Speaker 1: James Remar, wonderful James Remar. I always think of the Warriors.
Speaker 1: I think when I think James James Remar as Terrissius,
Speaker 1: the Blind Prophet. Elliott Page mentioned what a legend Elliott
Speaker 1: Page sign on Greek soldier and Odysseusia's cousin Travis Scott
Speaker 1: plays a bard. Love that giving me hope.
Speaker 3: Honestly, that's the kind of casting I like, that's some
Speaker 3: kind of baslav but twist right.
Speaker 1: Now, I know, very bad.
Speaker 2: Christopher Nolan, but see what happens.
Speaker 1: Another another move. The Homer Bros. Did not like for
Speaker 1: some mysterious I.
Speaker 2: Wonder why these are the two things they had a problem.
Speaker 1: With Will Young Lee as a shipmate and Jimmy Gonzalez
Speaker 1: as if he is also a shipmate. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't even want to get into Nolan defending.
Speaker 2: I don't mean nothing about that.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about should we talk about Damon's beard.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, let's talk about the beard because
Speaker 3: this is so silly in my opinion, but you know what,
Speaker 3: let's just let's talk about it.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, story we like.
Speaker 1: Nolan decreed no fake beards.
Speaker 3: He was like, that's going to be laughing at I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna be laughing at me with a peeling off
Speaker 3: beard like that.
Speaker 1: Laugh about that like he wanted. And I think this
Speaker 1: might be I don't know, can Holland, Can Holland scrap
Speaker 1: up like that? I'm not I don't know.
Speaker 3: Actually, that's at the point he might We're gonna probably
Speaker 3: he probably has.
Speaker 1: No burnhal we know after one day looks like looks
Speaker 1: like a bear in the woods. But apparently Damon prepared
Speaker 1: for a full year growing the beard. I don't know
Speaker 1: how that worked with other roles. He must have just
Speaker 1: not been like.
Speaker 2: Supermad causing mad problems again.
Speaker 1: And he followed a strict diet apparently no gluten, dropped
Speaker 1: to one hundred and sixty seven pounds, which you know,
Speaker 1: there's no claim of not using glp ones. But I'm
Speaker 1: all right, I'm like, I'm always you know, these days,
Speaker 1: I'm suspicious, that said Damon said to Empire. Quote. I
Speaker 1: can say with that hyperbole that it was the best
Speaker 1: experience of my career getting in that he meant the
Speaker 1: shoot and getting into this kind of shape. And I
Speaker 1: guess growing a beard for a year.
Speaker 3: Okay, calm down, all right, I just I just want
Speaker 3: to say calm down, because I like it when we
Speaker 3: have a more realistic conversation, like when you know Kamel
Speaker 3: lost all that weight and then his life was like ruined,
Speaker 3: and that him and Dennis from It's Always I mean
Speaker 3: him a Mac from It's Always Sudden, he had a
Speaker 3: real conversation like, let's not pretend it's healthy to lose
Speaker 3: weight like this for a movie. But you know what,
Speaker 3: he's almost like, he's probably like in his fifties now.
Speaker 3: It probably feels great to look like he hasn't drunk
Speaker 3: water for a week.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back
Speaker 1: after this. Ye shall we talk about the I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk about the asking controversy, neither to you,
Speaker 1: because we know what that is. But let's talk about
Speaker 1: the historical accuracy that.
Speaker 3: I would love conversation that because this is a really
Speaker 3: funny conversation and a great way to really like kind
Speaker 3: of dive in.
Speaker 1: A bit more before we start in the omnibus.
Speaker 3: So let's talk Jason, when did you first notice that
Speaker 3: this became like a big talking point.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I knew in my mind that it
Speaker 1: was kind of unavoidable that people would be annoyed by this.
Speaker 1: My only question was like, what would be the volume
Speaker 1: of the complaints? So cast your mind back to the
Speaker 1: first images released from this movie. We saw damns Odysseus
Speaker 1: and the red plumed helmet with the kind of you know,
Speaker 1: the Corinthian styling, and the big feathers going over the top.
Speaker 1: That drew criticism from the historical accuracy.
Speaker 3: They didn't like the metal the back with the kind
Speaker 3: of like it looked like a spine.
Speaker 2: I thought it was pretty sick.
Speaker 1: Other criticisms revolved around the American accents rather than British
Speaker 1: for Greek? Why would why would British be better as
Speaker 1: the other.
Speaker 3: Because they that's just what people are used to because
Speaker 3: of colonialism. Oh guys, you don't have to do that,
Speaker 3: Like yeah, that's like just because that's what the voices
Speaker 3: used to be, like in Lawrence of Arabia or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's like that's not what No, Yeah, why would British
Speaker 1: be more accurate? Is very funny to me.
Speaker 3: Well, it's always about what they and what they really
Speaker 3: mean is like how can I make this more palatable?
Speaker 3: To me? It's never to do with the actual historical
Speaker 3: accuracy because none of the people would have looked like this,
Speaker 3: Like no one would be speaking a language you could understand.
Speaker 2: There's no cameras, Like, do you really want to get
Speaker 2: into it?
Speaker 1: Guys, it's going to get silly. There was criticism around
Speaker 1: Agamemnon's black armor, which was against seness not not historically accurate,
Speaker 1: which I think is again very silly, and some commentators
Speaker 1: have noted that the film is largely without Greek people.
Speaker 1: Where is the Greek representation is filmed?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I mean this is like the discourse
Speaker 3: cycle of the world is so wild, but it's also
Speaker 3: funny if you've ever been to like a museum, and obviously,
Speaker 3: as I grew up in London, which is the dark
Speaker 3: heart of colonialism, I've been to many museums, but that
Speaker 3: you actually see that there is not one version of
Speaker 3: what any of this stuff looks like like.
Speaker 1: When you go to these museums, you're blown away.
Speaker 3: By the craftsmanship and the diversity of looks and vibes
Speaker 3: and styles and weaponry and armor.
Speaker 2: So also the idea that any one person on the
Speaker 2: internet is like the soul.
Speaker 3: Soothsayer of what is or isn't historically accurate is also
Speaker 3: like completely wild. When Jason, you've been on a movie set, right,
Speaker 3: think about how many people it takes to make a movie.
Speaker 2: It's like a miracle, right.
Speaker 3: So it's like, I don't think any one guy on
Speaker 3: the internet is putting more thought into this than you know. However,
Speaker 3: many different people are thinking about how fucking cool this thing.
Speaker 1: Looks do we Okay, let me ask you, do you
Speaker 1: care about historical accuracy in a story like this. I
Speaker 1: think that there are certain stories that of course you
Speaker 1: would love it to be as accurate as possible, especially
Speaker 1: when you are depicting real life events. Now, there really
Speaker 1: was a Trojan war, but like how it happened, and this.
Speaker 2: Is high issue.
Speaker 1: It is clearly shrouded in mystery through the fog of time.
Speaker 1: Was there a horse?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I think many scholars really really doubt it. So the
Speaker 1: idea that you would need to be like down to
Speaker 1: the nails and the fag is really silly to.
Speaker 3: I think, specifically with this story or any story from
Speaker 3: Greek mythology that is like telling someone to be historically
Speaker 3: accurate about the x men. I'm sorry, guys, like that
Speaker 3: was just not a cyclops back then, Like that wasn't
Speaker 3: so Like it's just these are just no witches, no
Speaker 3: witches like I wish that were. And maybe I'm wrong,
Speaker 3: like fucking you know, smite me. But like this is
Speaker 3: a fantastical, allegorical story where they are setting the truths
Speaker 3: of the time against a story that entertained people, that
Speaker 3: kept people engaged, that made people have conversations, that was
Speaker 3: about you know, abandonment and family and love and life.
Speaker 3: It's like, this is not the kind of this is
Speaker 3: not a story where if you change how you perceive
Speaker 3: in your mind something that by the way is barely
Speaker 3: ever described.
Speaker 2: Like there are characters in these stories who.
Speaker 3: Like shape shift, there are characters in these stories who
Speaker 3: change beings.
Speaker 2: There's like, it's not a story.
Speaker 3: There's no historical accuracy that is important here other than
Speaker 3: something that people have like contemporarily put on top of it.
Speaker 2: That's the thing is.
Speaker 3: They they like to be like, well, I perceive it
Speaker 3: as like all blonde, white guys with helmets that look
Speaker 3: like this, because you saw Troy like you didn't read
Speaker 3: a book and know that.
Speaker 1: That's more.
Speaker 2: It's the same with the Viking thing.
Speaker 3: That's why we dragged and why we don't stop putting
Speaker 3: his name in our mouths, because like it is not
Speaker 3: representative of any kind of truth that like any part
Speaker 3: of London or any part of Viking, well, the Viking
Speaker 3: world or even this Grecian world would be all white.
Speaker 3: It just doesn't make any sense because of the way
Speaker 3: trade routes worked, because of the way that the fucking
Speaker 3: economy worked.
Speaker 2: It's just it's it's illogical.
Speaker 3: It's an excuse to make something look a certain way
Speaker 3: without having the bulls to say, hey, I just want
Speaker 3: to only cast these type of people. That's how I
Speaker 3: feel about it, and I actually was surprised that Nolan
Speaker 3: did not go that route, So I am not going
Speaker 3: to be angry at him secondarily.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of there's a lot of arguing about this from a
Speaker 1: scholarly angle. How much did contemporary Greek audiences like believe
Speaker 1: in witches and cyclopses and sea monsters as appear in
Speaker 1: the in the Odyssey, And you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of scholarship that goes both ways. They believe, they believe
Speaker 1: to a certain scent. I'll just say this, though the
Speaker 1: technology of you know, five hundred BCE was obviously much different,
Speaker 1: they were just as smart on a purely like biological level,
Speaker 1: brain power wise. Yeah, they were just as smart as us.
Speaker 1: Those people, And I think that there would have been
Speaker 1: a range of understanding about the magical, fantastical elements that
Speaker 1: appear in the story that probably vary from like kids
Speaker 1: and others who like totally believe that, you know, as
Speaker 1: Psyclops exists and there's a witch that can turn men
Speaker 1: into pigs, and others who understand as we understand when
Speaker 1: we go to see a sci fi movie or read
Speaker 1: a fantasy book, that these are entertaining elements that perhaps
Speaker 1: have a grain of truth, but are built up in
Speaker 1: order to wow the audience.
Speaker 2: And look, I'm gonna say as well as somebody who.
Speaker 3: Is you know, I will bring up one of my
Speaker 3: favorite stories here that I always bring up in these
Speaker 3: kind of things.
Speaker 2: But it's like I was very lucky to take a
Speaker 2: one day comic book.
Speaker 3: Writing class with Mike Carey years and years ago in London,
Speaker 3: and he said, you know, if somebody found every single
Speaker 3: issue of The X Men, like every single issue one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty years from now, they would think there
Speaker 3: was at least some truth to it, right, and they
Speaker 3: would probably believe that some people felt like these stories
Speaker 3: were true, even if we know that that's not how
Speaker 3: we read them. It's the same way that like religions
Speaker 3: could be looked at that way, right. There are different
Speaker 3: types of epic storytelling, and I think this is in
Speaker 3: that kind of tradition, whether you believe it to be
Speaker 3: fictional or relatively realistic or allegorical. And that's why I
Speaker 3: don't think it needs to be historically accurate as telling
Speaker 3: like a true story that was told one hundred years
Speaker 3: ago about a real person whose legacy could be erased
Speaker 3: if you didn't tell it properly.
Speaker 1: And I will add, as we will see in the
Speaker 1: Omnibus these this poem was meant to be performed live.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: Widely thought that each bard put their own personal, improvisational
Speaker 1: spin on the events, particularly when you know you're dealing
Speaker 1: with different audiences. Maybe certain things are resonating more or
Speaker 1: certain things are resonating less, and it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: widely thought that each bard would respond to those situations
Speaker 1: and build out certain parts of the story or pair
Speaker 1: back certain parts of the story that aren't weren't resonating
Speaker 1: as much. And so this was like a living, breathing story.
Speaker 1: And I think that Nolan is just doing the same
Speaker 1: thing that the Bards did back in the day, which
Speaker 1: is putting his taking the essential parts telling that story,
Speaker 1: but also putting his own spin on it, like you know,
Speaker 1: here's what happened inside the horse, like that's yeah, we're
Speaker 1: exactly nowhere in the Odyssey. And by the way, it's
Speaker 1: very interesting to me, that's not anything anybody complains about
Speaker 1: that is.
Speaker 3: That funny that you mentioned that like at the top
Speaker 3: that it's no one can changes and not a single person.
Speaker 3: I mean, no one complains about the fact that literally,
Speaker 3: like I've seen the scene.
Speaker 1: It's black people's bang ha, it's black people cast in
Speaker 1: the movie. That's all they care about. Others, you know,
Speaker 1: like other Oh the helmets still look like that, but
Speaker 1: nobody cares that. Like this entire sequence doesn't exist in
Speaker 1: the original poem, but now it's.
Speaker 2: It's to life visually.
Speaker 3: And I say this as a compliment, but it's like
Speaker 3: fucking John Wick, like it is not historically accurate.
Speaker 1: Guys, I've seen it.
Speaker 3: It's stunning and it made me want to watch the
Speaker 3: movie in a way I had not before. But it's
Speaker 3: also like so far from any kind of historical accuracy.
Speaker 2: But anyway, let's go to a break, and when we're back.
Speaker 3: Jason will be bringing you an unbelievable fumnibus about the Odyssey.
Speaker 2: Yeah, am I back.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another edition of the Omnibus where Laura analysis
Speaker 1: is an understanding come together. Today we're talking about the Odyssey.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing about Homer is he didn't exist.
Speaker 1: We're not sure he may have existed, but he probably didn't.
Speaker 1: And I mean that in a very unsettling and kind
Speaker 1: of like deep way. There may have been no Homer,
Speaker 1: there may have been ten Homers. The name that we've built,
Speaker 1: and that is the kind of bedrock of this Nolan
Speaker 1: blockbuster that is about to come out might be less
Speaker 1: a person than a placeholder for a group of people,
Speaker 1: a hook we hang three thousand years of history on,
Speaker 1: because the real answer is like a much more diffuse, unsatisfying,
Speaker 1: an organic answer that gets to the heart of what
Speaker 1: story is about, no matter what medium they appear. Scholars
Speaker 1: call it the Homeric question, and it's really a kind
Speaker 1: of like an entire nesting doll of questions. Who was home?
Speaker 1: Did he? And most of the scholars think that these
Speaker 1: bards were men for various reasons. There are also objections
Speaker 1: to that. But did he write these poems? Did he
Speaker 1: write either of Did he write the Iliad and the
Speaker 1: Honesty one or the other? Or both? And if he
Speaker 1: wrote one, did the same person write the other? When?
Speaker 1: Did he do this? How? And the reason these questions
Speaker 1: won't die is because we just we don't have a
Speaker 1: good answer. When you actually break down the text, and
Speaker 1: this is how scholars have arrived at some sort of
Speaker 1: an answer, you find that the poem is built on
Speaker 1: a lot of repetition. You get the same phrases over
Speaker 1: and over, locked into the same kind of rhythmic slots.
Speaker 1: Dawn is always rosy fingered dawn. The sea is always
Speaker 1: the one dark sea, always, not like for a lot
Speaker 1: of the time, not when it's convenient, like always. And
Speaker 1: this is because rosy finger dawn wind dark sea in
Speaker 1: the original Greek fill a precise metrical space, like a
Speaker 1: lego brick. It snaps specifically into the spot that the
Speaker 1: bard wanted to place it in, and it allows the
Speaker 1: teller to be able to assemble these like little prefabricated lines,
Speaker 1: and always be able to go back to like this rhythm.
Speaker 1: Scholars call these formulas, and the formulas tell us a
Speaker 1: lot about the way the Odyssey was meant to be
Speaker 1: taken in by its audience. And this is the real breakthrough.
Speaker 1: It belongs to an American classicist named Milman Perry. Milman Perry,
Speaker 1: and what Perry understood was that the formulas were the
Speaker 1: essential building blocks their technology the story. They're the tools
Speaker 1: that let an oral poet performing live with no notes,
Speaker 1: no text, compose the poem in the act of speaking
Speaker 1: it right. You need a hero's name that fills up
Speaker 1: the end of the line. Here's the ready made lego
Speaker 1: brick you need to get the sun up rosy fingered.
Speaker 1: You're ready with it, and it allows you to catch
Speaker 1: your breath and get ready for the next line. Move on.
Speaker 1: The formulas are like the scaffolding of this improvised story,
Speaker 1: a toolkit that allows the bard to build castles outlied
Speaker 1: in real time in front of a crowd and never
Speaker 1: drop a beat. That's the other thing made these performances
Speaker 1: so incredible is they must have been extemporaneous. It felt
Speaker 1: like just coming out of the person without any hitches
Speaker 1: in them. That's what made these people worth listening to.
Speaker 1: Milman Perry traveled to Yugoslavia was then called Yugoslavia, into
Speaker 1: the Balkans, the mountains of the Balkans, where at that
Speaker 1: time there were still singers performing enormous heroic epics strictly
Speaker 1: from memory, you know, the kind of last living in
Speaker 1: the West, cousins of Homer's art, and Perry recorded them
Speaker 1: hundreds of hours of these things. He found a singer
Speaker 1: named Avdo Mededovich who performed a song that ran about
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand lines over five days, so roughly the length
Speaker 1: of the Odyssey itself, which, as we said earlier in
Speaker 1: the episode, is a multi day performance. Parry wrote that
Speaker 1: listening to him, one has quote the overwhelming sense that
Speaker 1: in some way he is hearing Homer. Perry ended up
Speaker 1: dying under mysterious circumstances. He apparently shot himself while cleaning
Speaker 1: his gun in a Los Angeles hotel room. He was
Speaker 1: thirty five. There's a lot of conjecture about that, but
Speaker 1: that's what appears to have happened. Excuse me, he's thirty three.
Speaker 1: His student, Albert Lord, picked up the work and spent
Speaker 1: the next several decades basically building out what Perry had established,
Speaker 1: and he writes a book called The Singer of Tales
Speaker 1: that puts all these ideas into print. This was published
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty and Lord's crucial edition is A singer
Speaker 1: in an oral culture doesn't memorize a fixed text. There's
Speaker 1: no fixed text. This is what we were talking about
Speaker 1: earlier in our discussion. Every performance is essentially a new composition.
Speaker 1: The bard reshapes the story every single time they tell it,
Speaker 1: tightening here, expanding here, making this part more resonant. Again,
Speaker 1: If the audience is really loving the pig stuff. Maybe
Speaker 1: we should build out the pig stuff, which means the
Speaker 1: Homer air quotes, Homer, who gave us the Odyssey, wasn't
Speaker 1: transcribing some original antique text. He was doing what every
Speaker 1: singer before him did them did, borrowing the inheritance and
Speaker 1: making it their own. If the poem was sung and
Speaker 1: resung and reshaped across generations before anyone wrote any of
Speaker 1: it down, then behind the name Homer stands, you know,
Speaker 1: an unknown crowd of storytellers, an entire lineage of singers.
Speaker 1: The Greeks called these people aodo i. I can't say
Speaker 1: it ao idi is how it's spelled. And these are
Speaker 1: the bards that whose lineage stretches, you know, into the dark,
Speaker 1: dark centuries before Greek literacy, each one inheriting the story
Speaker 1: and adding to it, etc. Etc. Again, we mostly assume
Speaker 1: that these are men. The scholars do anyway, though Emily
Speaker 1: Wilson would want to flag that they don't actually know that,
Speaker 1: and that's correct. We should add that the poets who
Speaker 1: actually built the Odyssey, who invented the cyclops and shape
Speaker 1: Penelope and found the line about her face melting like snow,
Speaker 1: are gone. But Homer is the name that we kind
Speaker 1: of calm. So that's what Homer is. It's not an author,
Speaker 1: it's it's a memorial to an forgotten group of storytellers
Speaker 1: who we will never know. Could there have been one
Speaker 1: Homer right who wrote both of these and you know,
Speaker 1: like an original three thousand years ago, George Lucas who
Speaker 1: created like a Star Wars type story and that everybody
Speaker 1: and it inspired these other bards to like memorize it,
Speaker 1: and they loved us so much. Maybe it's it's it's possible.
Speaker 1: Most classicists today think that the poems depend on generation's
Speaker 1: old oral tradition, which were the collective inheritance of many many,
Speaker 1: many singer poets that got standardized and refined out like
Speaker 1: the older were boring, less fun material got filtered out
Speaker 1: over time, and this probably started around the eighth century BC.
Speaker 1: So maybe Homer is like the last If there is
Speaker 1: such a person, like the last great Bard who inherited
Speaker 1: these stories and made them more entertaining than the others,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the romantic version, I guess. But I
Speaker 1: think the way I think about it is there was
Speaker 1: not one person. There was many, many, many people in
Speaker 1: this this this unfolded over many decades now, for almost
Speaker 1: the entire history of the Odyssey in English, some sixty translations,
Speaker 1: four hundred years of translations Chapman, Pope, Latimore, Fagels, Lombario,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Every single one of these in English was
Speaker 1: done by a man until in twenty seventeen Emily Wilson,
Speaker 1: classicist at Pen, released the first complete English translation of
Speaker 1: the Odyssey by a woman. Now, Wilson kept Homer's exact
Speaker 1: line count twelve and ten lines matched in line for line,
Speaker 1: which is a crazy, crazy discipline. But as we mentioned before,
Speaker 1: she threw out the Greek dicitic dysilic hexameter wild cyclic hexameter,
Speaker 1: which doesn't you know just saying it is weird, and
Speaker 1: rebuilt the whole thing, as we discussed in Iambic pentamona
Speaker 1: of the meter of Shakespeare are built in in keats
Speaker 1: the natural music of English verse, so that it really
Speaker 1: really moves. When Wilson's translation of the Odyssey appeared in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, the Homer rows, we, of course angry about
Speaker 1: the way she changed it, and probably angry that you
Speaker 1: know that she was a woman, although they wouldn't say that.
Speaker 1: Here is what Wilson said in a recent Q and
Speaker 1: a with Vulture, which I urge you to read, and
Speaker 1: just fantastic. She's so freaking cool. Yeah, she was asked
Speaker 1: about this kind of uproar about her version quote. It's
Speaker 1: a stand in for a whole lot of made up
Speaker 1: of culture war things. The people who are getting angry
Speaker 1: haven't spent years studying Homeric Greek. There are people who
Speaker 1: have conspiratorial ideas about how professionals don't know anything. Here's
Speaker 1: this Ivy League professor. She's obviously she obviously doesn't know
Speaker 1: as much as me and I did my own research.
Speaker 1: That's one element of the culture war. There's a a
Speaker 1: lot of anxiety about gender, recent whiteness tied to the
Speaker 1: discourse about greatness. I don't think any of that has
Speaker 1: anything to do with me, but somehow people have latched
Speaker 1: on to this. It's a great interview and her two
Speaker 1: translations are awesome. The Obviously comes out July sixteenth. On
Speaker 1: the next episode of xtra Vision, we're diving into news
Speaker 1: and more, House of the Dragon and X y ninety seven.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: Whoo.
Speaker 1: X ray Vision is hosted by Jasoncepcion and Rosie Knight
Speaker 1: and is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 3: Our executive producers are Joel Monique and Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Abuzafar.
Speaker 3: Our producers are Common, Laurent Dean Jonathan and Fay Wax.
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Brian Vasquez, with alternate theme
Speaker 1: songs by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 3: Special thanks to Soul Rubin, Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman
Speaker 2: And Heidi Our discord moderate Thom