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He Came, He Saw, He Bled Out on the Theatre of Pompey Floor Welcome to my blog. Oxford Uni Archaeology Grad History Teacher I follow from @honestlyjustamaddyfanpage

[wertfi-penguin]

Maybe the most damming thing about Nolans odyssey is i haven’t seen a single gifset from it

[geekyhistoriansunite]

[metis-metis]

Preparing for this upcoming solar eclipse has me really relating to Orpheus… like yeah, obviously I know that the worst thing I could possibly do is have a look, but have you considered that I might just do it anyway?

[metis-metis]

Turns out I’m no better than a man.

[metis-metis]

Preparing for this upcoming solar eclipse has me really relating to Orpheus… like yeah, obviously I know that the worst thing I could possibly do is have a look, but have you considered that I might just do it anyway?

[metis-metis]

One of the most fun things about academia is learning everyone’s interests and the hills they will die on. So, I was just talking to my dad and he was telling me about how he was watching a video about ancient warfare and the guy in the video kept banging on about building ditches. So I just turned to him and asked him if it was the guy who taught me at uni, and it was. Because all academics have their niche hill and you can see it from a mile away.

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

why are greek mythology adaptations always so gritty when there’s so many weird ridiculous antics to pull from. helen of troy not knowing how to cheer up telemachus so she just drugs him unconscious and calls it a night. athena divinely intervening to curl odysseus’ hair so he looks sexy enough to successfully beg for help. aphrodite trying help her kid on the battlefield and having to run away immediately because she gets beat up by a random mortal. achilles’ horse prophesying death to him and then never speaking again

[kaijufluffs]

She's being so big and brave.

[kaijufluffs]

The long awaited sequel.

[metis-metis]

I love being a graduate. No more essays, just using my Ancient Greek composition education to make memes to insult MAGA morons on the internet.

[agentofdeterioration]

The Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad is, to a modern audiences, what classicists have called “boring as hell,” but I can’t help but think that if you were watching Homer recite it it would have been more like when comedians go, “anybody here tonight from Chicago?” and the Chicagoans in the back start cheering

Homer’s like, “and there were forty black ships from… LOCRIS” and the Locrians in the crowd start going absolutely nuts

[ancient-rome-au]

new frontiers in horse girl [laudatory] [source]

[winterwatcherxx]

i can’t get over emily wilson’s review of the odyssey. anyways here are my favourite parts:

“Unlike some of Nolan’s other films, The Odyssey is not boring, thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely.”

“Nolan’s spectacle threatens to drown out his story just as the towering waves of the wine-dark sea – more grey than purple – threaten to overwhelm his hero’s ship.”

“But writing dialogue is not one of Nolan’s talents. The language is relentlessly expository, humourless and flat.”

“I was humbled to learn that Nolan has read at least the first line of my translation of The Odyssey into iambic pentameter. In at least one interview, he cited my version of the first line of the poem: ‘Tell me about a complicated man.’ But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.”

“It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.”

[avelera]

I’m a big fan of reenactment archaeology. I think there’s a lot to be said for recreating a scenario to better understand decisions made in generations past. Usually there’s an inherent logic to them.

Which is to say, that now that I have a baby of my own, I understand so much better the common cultural practice in which unmarried women wear their hair loose and uncovered, while married women have their hair covered and/or bound back.

I doubt it was just for modesty, oh no. No, my friends, I see now that the reason for this common practice of mothers binding back their hair is because there is nothing, I mean nothing, a baby love more than YANKING EVERY STRAND OF HAIR THAT COMES WITHIN GRABBING DISTANCE OF THEIR STICKY, SWEATY, AND IMPOSSIBLY STRONG LITTLE HANDS.

[bethanydelleman]

It is necessary for my postpartum depression study for the moms to have their hair down (due to our science hats) and the second they put their hair down YANK

[ilions-end]

as someone who is lowkey obsessed with how the odyssey is structured i find this diagram by james redfield very satisfying:

"[A pattern] based on strict alternation. Odysseus faces two kinds of dangers; he may be killed before he gets home, or he may be induced to stop on the way. He faces violence and temptation." (from Redfield's 'The Economic Man')

[decemberwinter]

[poetrylesbian]

[poetrylesbian]

[terpsikeraunos]

Women have consistently earned a larger share of humanities degrees than men, but the humanities constitute a diminishing proportion of the

Women currently earn the majority of advanced degrees in the humanities. This has been the case at the master’s degree level since 1970 and

sources for gender distribution of classics degrees

[metis-metis]

I had a day off so went to help my dad at his landscaping job. I’m glad to see I upheld my reputation as an autistic cunt with very limited interests.

[doloneia]

ok ive seen nolans odyssey and what the fuck was that actually

[doloneia]

Parts that made me tweak in a dim-lit movie theater:

1. Every time we meet a woman or enslaved individual that, y’know, had some semblance of agency in the text, Nolan has just… removed that? Circe’s commanding presence & how she genuinely overpowers Odysseus? Gone. Helen actually stealing the show in Book 4 where she walks down into the room and controls the conversation re: Odysseus & Troy? Gone. Utterly Gone. Lupita Nyong’o gets 0 chance to speak on her own terms and its actually so depressing. Also I’m genuinely unsure here but it seemed like Circe & Calypso’s divine status was… nonexistent?? They’re both goddesses but apparently not to Christopher Nolan 🫤

And this treatment extends to Odysseus’ slaves, specifically Eumaeus & Eurycleia (eurynome & philoetius not appearing in this goddamn film ifg). Almost every action taken by Eurycleia in the Odyssey is attributed to someone else in Nolan’s adaptation, she gets 0.2 seconds of screentime, its actually absurd. I think she has two lines in the whole movie. Eurycleia. Odysseus and Telemachus’ nurse. The woman who canonically organizes the doors to be locked during the suitor’s slaughter? Who canonically helps secure Telemachus’ provisions for Pylos? fuckin. Not There. And Eumaeus (who literally perfectly models xenia to a disguised Odysseys while living in extreme poverty) notably Does Not Get To Do That in Nolan’s odyssey, instead he’s like. injured I guess? I’m so fuckin confused as to why that happened, it just made the plot more convoluted. Medon is also just not there at all. Medon who is actually the fuckin best?? My underestimated king??? Where Is He.

2. oh my god everything abt the scene with Polyphemus makes me want to claw my eyes out (except maybe his eye? that looked kinda cool idfk). yknow how polyphemus appears, speaks to the crew, and they let their guard down? how the polyphemus episode represents the world outside of greek customs like xenia? how he fucking talks to them? he talks to them and his neighbors? yeah. in Nolan’s odyssey, there are no neighbors. there is no existential mirror/cyclopean foil to ithacan society. there are no other cyclopes. He doesnt even fucking talk 😭😭 <- i mean he gets one line but the audios so distorted that without captions i had no idea what he said

3. Anticleia reunion scene? Nonexistent. Laertes? Nonexistent. Allegedly still around. Sir Not-Appearing In-This-Film. Book 15 reunion between Telemachus and Odysseus? Nonexistent. Reunion between Odysseus, Eumaeus, and Philoetius? Not there. The fucking marriage bed scene? The goddamn marriage bed? NOT THERE. screams into a bag

4. ODYSSEUS “DIDNT WANT TO RETURN HOME” 😭 they keep fucking saying this over and over again too and. No he very much did. No home means no guaranteed kleos guys. his sons life is in jeopardy but Ok christopher shitlan do whatever the fuck you want, i guess

5. every time i heard them say “our civilization is collapsing” or “they say the peoples from the sea are attacking” or “our age of bronze is ending” not only did i feel my soul die a little more inside but i also kept thinking “man, this sounds a lot like the white supremacist belief in ‘western civilization’ just superimposed onto a falsified image of the late bronze age” and thats because It Is.

strange decisions:

1. boar scar apparently occurred when odysseus was an adult???

2. elliot page’s sinon gets one helluva backstory which i guess was kinda cool if you ignore elliot page getting brutally slaughtered in the first 30 seconds of the movie? not sure how to feel about that

3. travis scott kept showing up randomly which was like. fine i guess? genuinely im not sure what the difference between him & phemius was supposed to be. i didnt even see phemius. tbf i was taking notes this whole time so maybe i missed him? but travis scott shouldve just been phemius idfk why he wasnt

4. The Phaecians are just not there guys and i have no idea why. odysseus’ wanderings are being narrated to calypso?

5. the crew mutinies at scylla instead? odysseus tries to sail towards charybdis??? this was a bizarre sequence

6. no nestor or peisistratus. somehow telemachus sails to the 100% inland palace of menelaus. who needs a chariot when you’ve got a Boat i guess

7. half of my notes just say “what happened to show, don’t tell” because the amount of exposition made me want to slam my head into the wall

highlights:

1. anne hathaway and tom holland had a very good dynamic, i feel like they really captured some of the tension between penelope & telemachus, ie penelope running the house for 20 years and still assuming some of that authority vs. telemachus trying to grow up/assume control of the household/establish his own kleos. loved that dynamic tbh. one of the better parts of the telemachy sections

2. lupita nyong’o was great in the uh. 30 seconds she had on screen. im so serious helen was fucking robbed in this movie

3. himesh patel fucking carried every scene he was in on his Back

4. rare cicones appearance

maybe the real sea peoples was the troy we sacked along the way

[metis-metis]

You’re telling me that in this entire press tour, nobody thought to add lil suns on their cheeks? Also the Dior Palladio dress hasn’t made an appearance?