Homosexuality and Nolan’s Odyssey
I think I have made it crystal clear that I do not like this movie. At all. And one of my biggest gripes with it, is it’s refusal to even TRY to be historical accurate. With the armours looking like an edgy 13 year old’s definition of what counts as cool, the ship being from the viking era (nearly 2 millenia later), nearly everyone wearing pants despite in ancient greece pants being something only “barbarians” wore etc.
Like this movie was almost tailor made to piss me off specifically by getting nearly every historical fact about ancient Mycenaean and general greek culture wrong that you could possibly get wrong.
Except for one. Homosexuality.
Anyone who’s dabbled in greek history for more than 12 seconds has probably heard the joke “The Greeks invented sex. The Romans realised you could add women to it”, and while it is a bit exaggerated, it is based in truth. Homosexuality was pretty common in ancient greece BUT, it was also used as a way to assert dominance over other men, especially younger men and even boys.
So colour me amazed when, out of ALL the things from ancient greek history that Nolan did not manage to fuck up, it was the “weaponised homosexuality” as I’m gonna call it, by having Antinous (Robert Pattinson’s character) kinda flirt with Telemachus (Tom Holland’s character).
Now i have no idea how big the age difference is supposed to be between these characters in Nolan’s Odyssey specifically, but it is pretty obvious that Antinous is older and his pretty aggressive comments which many have interpreted as “flirting”, is him using homosexuality to assert dominance over Telemachus - which I repeat, is something that was common in ancient Greece, I am not denying that.
So what I am trying to essentially get at, is that Nolan ignored all of Greece’s actual history EXCEPT the one that portrays gay people as moral deviants (and like if you have read the Odyssey, you’d be well aware that there are many other reasons and ways you could have hammered home to the audience that Antinous and the suitors are bad people).
The best comparison I can think of to explain why this feels so weird to me is: imagine if Nolan made a movie about the mongol invasion and got nearly everything wrong about it that you could get wrong. Like he’d make the Mongol characters live in Tipis, ride genetically mutated goats, communicate exclusively via throat singing and wear denim jeans. But the ONE THING in regard to historical accuracy he’d kept in was the rampant sexual assaults women experienced at the hands of the Mongolian invaders.
No one would deny that it happened; it is a well documented and dark fact about history, yet you also get why it would feel weird to have THIS be the only accurate thing in the depiction of Mongolians. At the point it just feels kinda targeted and hateful.
tangentwithtanner
baratheonpilled
titsay
amandla
germansingergirl
snowghoul
gracieabrams
