The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - Christmas Podcast ｜ The Odyssey for Modern Audiences

00:00:00.000 the odyssey for modern audiences because next year we'll be getting a new version of the odyssey

00:00:17.480 coming out from hollywood hello everyone yes this is bad news but the good news is that we are going

00:00:22.780 to be doing this great podcast and we are going to set the record straight and give you ammunition

00:00:29.220 because there is going to be a woke onslaught on the odyssey you know i'm not i'm not even sure it's

00:00:34.840 going to be woke all right i don't think it's going to be a woke onslaught i think what it is

00:00:38.200 going to be is typical hollywood incompetence actually okay uh there's going to be an

00:00:43.000 incompetent onslaught on the odyssey uh i i'm genuinely not too worried about it being woke

00:00:48.780 i just think it's i just think they're not going to do a good job because i think hollywood really

00:00:53.320 has a problem with its own ability to tell stories now and so it's just stuck in this perennial

00:00:58.660 position where everything it produces it's just kind of crap it's just i mean when was the last

00:01:04.540 truly great film they produced i mean yeah i can't give you an answer off the top of my head

00:01:11.220 right exactly but exactly what i think very very briefly is that um in the past especially 80s and

00:01:17.740 90s the average movie was far better than the movie now yeah now we have either very good movies or very

00:01:25.120 bad ones and most of them sadly are bad ones i mean it is for you young people watching it is

00:01:31.480 crazy how many absolute bangers there were all through the 80s and 90s and even the early 2000s

00:01:38.480 and even the sort of the late 2000s when movies are starting to become crap even the movies that 0.53

00:01:44.680 we thought were crap then have aged like fine wine yep and have become better just by comparison to

00:01:52.760 what is being produced now yep it honestly it's genuinely wild like there there are some like 0.82

00:01:58.440 there's a film called van helsing uh with uh hugh jackman that was panned absolutely panned if you

00:02:05.740 go back and watch it you realize this is not actually a terrible film it's just that by comparison to the

00:02:10.000 films that just preceded it uh another one is the league of extraordinary gentlemen yes sean connery

00:02:15.460 yeah yeah i i actually went back and watched that a few years ago and i was like oh this isn't bad

00:02:20.580 actually we just didn't know how good we had it yep and so this this is the lens through which i'm

00:02:27.400 approaching uh this discussion of the odyssey and and the the movie that's going to be coming out

00:02:33.080 so anyway let's let's talk about the odyssey so you know what to expect theoretically from the

00:02:39.760 story of the thing uh so of course the odyssey is an ancient greek epic poem presumably written by

00:02:46.760 homer although you know anything can be written by homer we can't be any sure can't be sure about

00:02:50.700 uh but it describes what happens after the sack of troy because the iliad actually doesn't talk about

00:02:56.800 that the iliad talks about the life of achilles uh and so when uh we you know there's a sort of time

00:03:04.500 jump in the narrative and you get to so it's the trojan horse is actually featured in the odyssey

00:03:11.260 it's not in the iliad uh and the story um takes off from the trojan horse the sack of troy and then

00:03:20.320 odysseus is wandering trying to get back to ithaca as you can see from the map troy and ithaca are

00:03:25.200 actually not terribly far away and just to be very very clear as well this is not necessarily correct

00:03:33.220 the locations in the odyssey are mythical right people try to map it to a map of the mediterranean

00:03:44.860 and there i mean this is just one map among many i mean i've been to eight to eight and i mean it did

00:03:52.140 seem like the land of the dead there i'm joking i'm joking well that's rough i'm joking i've been

00:03:58.360 to a few of these places too um you know who knows but uh but the point is uh the story is set about

00:04:05.160 3 000 years ago uh so they sack troy and they go to uh ismaris and then this is where they fight

00:04:14.420 allies of the trojans and then they get blown off course horrifically off course until the other 1.00

00:04:20.100 side of the mediterranean basically and so we'll go through the the story of the odyssey so it

00:04:25.740 begins with the telemarchy that's books one to four so while odysseus is stranded far from ithaca

00:04:31.420 we hear about telemarchus excuse me his son who is dealing with what happens when odysseus is absent

00:04:40.100 so odysseus is the king of ithaca yeah and his wife penelope the queen and so in his palace there are

00:04:47.640 dozens of arrogant suitors who think odysseus has died in the war he's not coming back and

00:04:53.280 penelope should remarry one of them instantly yes and also they are very they are basically abusing

00:04:59.540 his hospitality and they're abusing also the people of of odysseus's court and uh athena athena who i

00:05:09.500 think is she's the based goddess on this oh yeah very much she's always on the right side of history 0.69

00:05:16.160 she's very much yeah she's very much odysseus champion she says basically that they're so

00:05:21.480 horrible that tyranny is what it what they deserve that they are outrageous um and for some reason

00:05:31.340 penelope is just allowing them to live in the palace and uh telemarchus is quite a young man

00:05:37.960 he's a teenager something like that uh and so he doesn't he's not uh powerful enough to drive them

00:05:44.980 out or anything and so excuse me i told you i've caught the first like cough of the season it's

00:05:52.520 really doing me um i'll try and get the editors to edit that out um anyway so the arrogant suitors

00:06:03.880 are ruining everything for them and odysseus being the man of the house isn't there can't do anything

00:06:08.200 about it uh so telemarchus goes to visit nestor and pilus who the old man from the iliad

00:06:14.140 uh then menelaus and helen in sparta because of course menelaus got his wife back uh and he learns

00:06:21.440 about his father and he becomes more mature this is the process of growing into a man for him

00:06:26.300 is there anything i missed there um no i don't think so because uh what happened after the war in

00:06:32.800 troy was um was related was communicated in a series of epics that link the iliad and the odyssey

00:06:42.640 sadly there were many more that were lost it would be lovely if we had them and uh basically we know

00:06:52.020 about them from fragments but also from plays references to the reference for instance in

00:07:00.480 aeschylus's or a stya we've done with luca three chronicles episodes check them out we we hear about

00:07:08.840 the story of agamemnon going back to argos also in the odyssey there's a flashback a huge part of the

00:07:16.340 odyssey's a flashback that says about how menelaus took helen and uh they went back to they went back

00:07:26.620 to to sparta yeah and uh what happens is that odysseus was stranded we'll go on to the rest of the

00:07:34.640 narrative in a minute just as long as i wasn't missing any bit of the telemarchy by the way before we begin

00:07:39.180 if you want to know more about the odyssey in particular but ancient greek virtue ethics more

00:07:43.420 generally uh wasn't a lecture two is all about yes lecture two is um about ethics in the pre-philosophical

00:07:52.060 tradition and i do speak uh quite a bit about the odyssey especially towards the middle of the

00:07:58.080 sections so do check it out so if you want a more in-depth version of what we're going to be talking

00:08:02.720 about here and you want much more than that go sign up for that course anyway can i just briefly

00:08:09.560 interject yeah one thing is that aeschylus gives us the orestia which is about orestes and who is

00:08:16.980 avenging his father's death agamemnon and repeatedly in the odyssey everyone tells telemachus that you

00:08:26.240 need to walk orestes's path that's the path for you that's what you have to do to become a man yeah

00:08:32.760 but the the the point of it is to uh show the maturity of telemachus telemachus i don't know how to pronounce

00:08:41.180 um uh in his growth but anyway so odysseus is thrown massively off course to calypso's island

00:08:49.160 um where he's been detained for years by calypso now what is calypso right so she was a goddess

00:08:57.520 right so but not a deity some sort of goddess but not like a proper goddess i i think she was a

00:09:03.980 deity she was immortal right so i've seen her being described as like a nymph and things yeah she was 1.00

00:09:08.760 yes okay um so she's something divine but she's not like one of the olympians no she's not one of

00:09:14.920 the olympians but there were hundreds of gods and goddesses and deities generally speaking so she

00:09:21.900 was she was really into odysseus and she kept him there she tempted him all the time she seduced him

00:09:28.400 for years and she gave him yeah thanks calypso yes and she didn't want to part with him no even when

00:09:35.080 the gods told her to part with him to let him go and what is briefly mentioned in the odyssey but has

00:09:42.960 huge significance and people forget because it's uh just comes out of nowhere in a particular line

00:09:50.640 and then he moves on she gave him a great dilemma do you want to stay here be young immortal stay with

00:10:00.220 me and have an eternity of a life as a god away from home or do you want to just leave and try to

00:10:09.340 go home without knowing whether you are going to reach home and he picked the latter and this is a bit

00:10:15.720 heartbreaking for calypso but uh what can you do so he builds a raft and sails away and then he gets

00:10:21.120 shipwrecked by poseidon why does poseidon do that again why does poseidon do it yeah well poseidon is

00:10:28.300 very much angry angered we're frustrated with odysseus because odysseus and his crew blinded the cyclops

00:10:39.640 polyphemus polyphemus polyphemus is really close to the suitors in one huge respect both of them

00:10:49.220 contradict divine justice so according to the greek mindset the world is basically governed by divine

00:10:57.000 providence by zeus and that order can be momentarily disrupted but the forces of chaos will get their

00:11:06.780 just desserts and being a good person means that you are a sort of instrument for divine justice

00:11:12.160 and justice on its own as a term is very abstract one so the question is how do we flesh out

00:11:20.740 what is involved in it and one huge part of it was hospitality hospitality is basically goodwill

00:11:28.560 yeah you have to show goodwill to people and you have to particularly guess particularly but they also

00:11:35.180 have to respect yours so frequently right now especially in our days we hear about the odyssey

00:11:42.260 as being a respect guests at all costs this isn't what the odyssey is about it's respect the guests

00:11:49.380 but also the guests shouldn't abuse hospitality well this is the cardinal sin of the suitors and why it

00:11:55.380 is just for odysseus spoiler alert by the way for odysseus to come back and murder them all exactly so

00:12:00.800 polyphemus wasn't a good host he instantly oh he tries to start eating them sorry

00:12:08.100 we'll get to that we'll get to that so uh so anyway he washes ashore in sharia which is the home of the 0.99

00:12:16.320 facians am i pronouncing that right i think it's fiacians fiacians yeah okay um good people

00:12:23.340 just yeah yeah decent chaps and they show exemplary hospitality again the theme of hospitality is

00:12:29.380 pervasive through the odyssey uh odysseus tells them who he is and then starts telling his story

00:12:34.480 and this is where we get the flashback yeah of what actually has happened so in this map you can see

00:12:39.740 it's like one two you know so troy is ismaris the lotus eaters uh the cyclops aeolia you know

00:12:46.460 but actually we begin at number 12 and he recounts he relates the or actually we begin at number 11

00:12:53.840 with calypso uh but he properly starts to tell the actual odyssey at point 12 here uh where he gives

00:13:01.340 us the flashback to his great wanderings it's three weeks before he reaches ifaka yeah and so he tells

00:13:09.680 us about how after they left troy they went to sack the city of ismaris the sicione city uh and they

00:13:16.600 arrogant there yeah they uh the the sicionians were the allies of the trojans so of course they're on

00:13:24.720 the way home they're like oh right we're sailing past uh the sort of this in thrace that sort of area 0.80

00:13:30.180 and we're sailing past the sicionian city let's sack it and take some loot because apparently they 1.00

00:13:34.920 didn't have enough loot from troy yeah uh and the sicionians uh gather some allies from the north

00:13:40.520 they come back and route them with great losses 70 or so men die something like that uh and so they

00:13:46.600 have to flee and then they are blown wildly off course yeah why did that happen um are you talking

00:13:56.000 about uh five uh oh yeah or before before it was just an issue of weather i think yeah but was there

00:14:02.880 not some sort of uh divine providence in it i mean poseidon definitely has a beef with him yeah yeah

00:14:09.940 so like it seems that poseidon's the one who's like right okay you're going on a big trip

00:14:13.300 the anger of poseidon against odysseus is a pervasive theme in the odyssey and as far as

00:14:21.240 winds are concerned the number five is the most important one because he was given the bag of

00:14:29.740 okay anyway they're blown wildly off course but we have to talk about the loadseaters of course we

00:14:36.920 do yeah and so they go to the island of the loadseaters and this is one of the few places

00:14:41.840 where they're not trying to be killed or you know taken advantage of and the loadseaters are basically

00:14:47.160 um i don't know it's it's hard to say because like it's only two paragraphs in the odyssey actually

00:14:53.300 describing the loadseaters and it just seems like they're just very nice placid people who are living

00:14:58.160 on an island where they eat this lotus and it makes them just want to stay there i think i tried

00:15:03.020 to think of the that place like glastonbury basically it's hippies constantly getting stoned

00:15:09.620 and stoning if you actually look at the uh actual text in the odyssey it doesn't say anything about

00:15:16.140 drugs or anything like that it's that the lotus just makes them not want to go home it makes them

00:15:21.980 forget their mission yeah and odysseus has to wake them up sort of forcefully reminding them their

00:15:29.080 mission and let's go yeah it's it's it's later interpretations that uh assume that there's some

00:15:36.280 sort of you know mind-altering drug in it but i think it's kind of uh i mean it's it's it's obviously

00:15:41.800 been interpreted many many ways over the centuries um but i i interpreted it the lotus as a kind of

00:15:48.160 paradigm shift uh as in you know you're in the frame of the trojans and the greeks sacking troy

00:15:57.460 and odysseus odysseus's mission uh but the lotuses are saying essentially saying well there is another

00:16:04.500 way of life that is possible uh that is here and if you just eat of the lotus then you'll realize how

00:16:10.100 nice this place is and you won't want to leave and i'm sure that the island of the lotuses was lovely

00:16:14.420 you know i mean it's described as being it was lovely but the main theme of the odyssey is homecoming

00:16:20.060 yeah and they were they forgot their home yeah and there's always this element of transgression in

00:16:26.940 greek myth myth and the odyssey is involves lots of cases of it where you just don't you have to find

00:16:35.720 your place in the universe and to the extent that you don't occupy your rightful place in the universe

00:16:41.820 you're sort of transgressing divine justice yes and that's 100 and and that's a great metaphor for

00:16:50.760 saying that sometimes you may think that where you are is really good and satisfactory and you're

00:16:58.480 having a great time but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is your rightful place correct so

00:17:04.320 anyway odysseus sends some men over to the lotus eaters they're like no this place is great actually i

00:17:07.920 don't want to leave and they have to send more men to physically drag them out uh which goes to show

00:17:12.500 you how nice the place must have been so anyway then uh they go over to uh the cyclops and get

00:17:18.200 captured by polyphemus polyphemus i don't know how it's pronounced uh polyphemus and uh they are stuck

00:17:26.340 in his cave yes odysseus has to use his wiles to get them out they blind polyphemus uh and odysseus has

00:17:33.680 his famous trick what's your name my name is nobody and so he goes out of his cave and yells

00:17:38.900 to the other cyclopses nobody has blinded me oh god clever odysseus so they're like what's the

00:17:44.100 problem then yeah uh and so nobody comes to help polyphemus and uh odysseus and his men uh sneak out

00:17:52.260 by hiding on the bellies of the sheep because polyphemus checks the sheep as they go out of the cave in the

00:17:57.920 morning and he feels the sheep he's like right okay there's no man there uh but they're on the

00:18:01.940 underside of the sheep these must have been gargantuan sheep yeah absolutely enormous yes

00:18:08.080 and uh what happens there is that um when while they were leaving odysseus had a moment of moral

00:18:16.820 failure and he screamed his name he did and uh polyphemus got it because he he cared about fame

00:18:23.840 at that moment polyphemus got it and told poseidon and poseidon had a a massive um

00:18:31.560 poseidon's like that guy again right yeah massive uh wrath against him yeah and uh the other gods

00:18:39.220 weren't keen on they just couldn't talk to him that's why they waited for the beginning for him

00:18:45.100 to go to ethiopia yeah to get some of the libations from the ethiopians yeah and that's where they

00:18:51.140 schemed there they they didn't have the nerve to tell him in at his face so anyway at uh aeolia he's

00:18:58.940 given the bag wins and this blows them wildly off course why why why does this happen it's been many

00:19:05.200 years since i've read the odyssey by the way i think that at the moment he had a tough time

00:19:13.200 enforcing discipline it was like captain bligh in the bounty yeah and the crew was against him and

00:19:19.920 there were lots of people just saying being insubordinate and they sort of had a democratic

00:19:27.400 vote about it and they couldn't come up to their minds yeah i mean you can kind of see the point

00:19:32.480 at this yeah i'm sort of blowing it out of proportions but that's exactly what they did

00:19:36.780 and you can see when they're not happy it's not like he's going in the right direction

00:19:39.580 yeah where are you going odysseus yeah and uh

00:19:44.440 that led them to go all over the place yeah uh the bag of winds blows them miles off course again

00:19:55.680 to the land of the last dragonians uh which we in modern english call italians uh giant cannibals

00:20:03.020 yeah they were cannibals yeah living in italy it's like terminus and the walking dead it is yeah 1.00

00:20:08.180 you don't want to be there yeah just they left instantly you know well yeah uh but uh and then

00:20:14.140 they lose a bunch of their ships there um but they they flee again and uh arrive at cersei's island

00:20:21.600 cersei being the famous sorceress who uh turns them all into pigs yep but eventually doesn't 0.96

00:20:29.300 odysseus charm her he seduces her i think so yes um but also it's not so much that odysseus does it

00:20:37.540 if i remember correctly it's more like uh divine intervention i think it was hermes yeah there's

00:20:43.820 always gods uh intervening yeah to be honest i think she did tempt odysseus and yeah i'm pretty

00:20:49.180 sure he charms her he wasn't exactly faithful to penelope but at least he felt bad no and doesn't

00:20:55.340 he stay with her for like two years at least he felt bad yeah he stays with her for like two years

00:20:59.680 or something um having his relationship with her uh but eventually he persuades her to turn the men back

00:21:06.880 and uh then he goes down to the underworld that's one of the best and saddest um parts of the epic

00:21:15.060 hold on you i'll allow you to tell it well so he sees almost uh everyone there from the iliad

00:21:23.560 all of the dead dead friends all of his dead friends and uh also his mother and there's a scene

00:21:29.440 where his mother is trying to hag him and he tries to hag his mother and he can't because she's an 0.99

00:21:34.720 apparition yeah and um achilles is also there and all the mythical creatures and that's where in the

00:21:42.920 epic we see great reference and also systematic reference to lots of the mythical creatures just

00:21:49.720 like we see in hesiod's theogony and uh achilles tells him basically that i'd rather be a serf and alive

00:21:59.760 to have a day on earth again than being the king of the underworld and here is where lots of people

00:22:05.840 are saying that this is where homer or the mythical tradition let's say in general is trying to say that

00:22:13.460 the life of achilles and the ideals of achilles are good but up to a point there is all this heroism

00:22:21.260 bravery courage and um you know fame and status but ultimately that's not what gets you home

00:22:29.540 you have to combine it with ingenuity it's also and and it's not a coincidence that in the very

00:22:35.560 beginning zeus is saying the very beginning of the odyssey zeus is saying that odysseus is the wisest

00:22:43.620 human being alive and odysseus is combining wisdom with force to go back home whereas achilles wasn't that

00:22:53.660 wise not even slightly yeah but he was powerful he was very powerful he was the the greatest of them

00:23:00.100 but it's it's quite a cutting critique of heroic morality actually i don't see i don't see it

00:23:06.200 necessarily as a critique as much as a sympathetic comment that this isn't ultimately what allows you

00:23:14.620 to find your place in the world that homecoming was reserved for odysseus not achilles for uh many

00:23:24.340 other things including that reason but i mean it's it's because for for achilles glory and heroism are

00:23:34.900 a monomaniacal obsession yep like he has nothing else and he is fated to either be an um a non-famous

00:23:44.460 person uh person and have a long life or to die young yeah heroically and he chooses to die young

00:23:52.420 heroically and this critique afterwards is a critique where uh odysseus meets him and like you say he says

00:24:00.660 well i'd rather be returned to a land as a serf yes and at least be alive yeah and that's it's quite

00:24:08.300 a body blow it is and it shows how in the 8th century the right before the beginning of the archaic

00:24:15.660 period or in the beginning during the beginning there was a sort of criticism of the heroic ideal

00:24:21.980 yeah but that's one view the other view says that the we can't extract a full morality from a war

00:24:28.340 epic which is the iliad because the iliad is basically talking about morality in war

00:24:34.420 not necessarily in all circumstances so there's always going to be debate about that there will

00:24:40.180 but achilles basically never exhibits any other kind of view yeah so you know it's it it it's not

00:24:48.180 to say that heroic morality is wrong or bad but what it says it's insufficient yes and that's it for a

00:24:55.080 man who becomes completely consumed by that he ends up in the underworld wishing that he could come

00:25:00.080 back for a day as a serf yes like that's and that's that's tragic that's not actually what you

00:25:04.560 want to hear from achilles right that's the opposite you know you want achilles to at least be resigned 1.00

00:25:10.020 to his fate yeah rather than lamenting it you know because i mean achilles no one had more glory in life

00:25:15.220 than achilles so you know you can be the very top but eventually it'll be so much worse for you at the

00:25:20.920 end um but anyway there there he learns uh prophecies while he's there and then he returns and on the

00:25:28.100 return uh they have to get past the sirens yep which is uh one of the most famous uh bits obviously

00:25:35.800 uh the sirens uh being um well appear as beautiful maidens singing a haunting song that is irresistible

00:25:45.060 and odysseus being odysseus is like i have to hear it yeah i have to hear it okay that's great

00:25:52.580 odysseus but you'll you'll drown you'll throw yourself overboard and drown trying to embrace these

00:25:57.900 sirens so he gets his men to plug up their ears with wax and tie him to the ship's mast yeah he 0.98

00:26:05.200 wants to have that uh that experience what a selfish twat yeah he wants to have that experience to hear 0.62

00:26:12.000 the most beautiful song but at least he had the cunning and the wisdom to tell his men to tie him

00:26:18.120 clever odysseus to tie him yeah so he denied them the pleasure so he could have it yeah but but i mean

00:26:25.980 at least you know at least we've got someone who is clever enough to get a first-hand account of it

00:26:30.060 that's how you can survive though yeah that's what it's all about it's not just an issue like i think

00:26:36.300 some of the critical theorists adorno i think was constantly lamenting yeah hating odysseus about it

00:26:42.080 it's more like you can every every human being is bombarded with temptation but you can survive it

00:26:50.560 only if you have wisdom yeah and the others lacked it and he didn't well he was smart enough to get

00:26:58.200 him to lash him to the the mast yeah you have to strap me to a tree yeah yeah you've got to literally

00:27:03.320 physically restrain me yeah from diving in but at least i got to hear it yeah um but he also needs

00:27:09.040 relatively good friends yeah you've got to have trustworthy men around you yeah but uh but yeah

00:27:15.520 they they go past the sirens then and uh then they go between scylla and charybdis which i've

00:27:22.060 never been entirely certain what this is actually meant to mean like there are two different beasts

00:27:27.820 yeah like and they're passing through them yeah and uh i think um i i understand that they're two

00:27:34.320 different beasts but like they they just apparently live at the straits between sicily and italy um

00:27:39.160 and what just attack ships as they go by like i guess yeah yeah i think and sailors yeah yeah just

00:27:44.760 why not go back the other way no no idea but of course they they lose more men or ships there

00:27:52.340 uh and then they arrive on uh the island of helios isn't it yes and uh there are loads of nice cows

00:28:00.580 there yep and here is nice cows look at these bloody cows stelios they're gorgeous cows wouldn't you 1.00

00:28:05.880 like a steak everyone loves a steak no you don't need these cows well they've been at sea for a long time

00:28:11.380 they're holy i appreciate that but they've been at sea for a long time in a steak in this in this house

00:28:18.220 these cows are sacred yeah but we've been at sea for a long time we've lost loads of men it's been

00:28:23.920 hard it's been harrowing and we're hungry yeah but you don't violate divine the divine order well what if

00:28:30.340 they do what they eat some of helios f-a-f-o that's the f-o so these these these cows were

00:28:38.640 these cows were the cows of the of helios who was the sun uh the god and um this is what was told

00:28:47.960 yeah like black angus yeah yeah they're probably wagyu cows yeah they had 12 oz burgers and they

00:28:55.600 told them to they told them this is to under no circumstances don't eat these cows and his crew

00:29:01.880 did it despite yeah he wanders off somewhere doesn't he he comes back in his crew eating the 1.00

00:29:05.740 cows he's just like oh yeah yeah you fucking idiots yeah and he was left alone yep uh and then zeus uh 0.99

00:29:13.240 destroys them basically and only odysseus survives and he ends up washing up in calypso's island 1.00

00:29:18.060 where we get back to the beginning of the story he was there for seven years yeah uh and so he

00:29:25.540 finishes telling the facians facians uh about how this happens and they return him home asleep on a

00:29:31.640 magical ship yep uh athena then disguises him as a beggar athena has been with odysseus this whole

00:29:37.420 time interceding in the story summarizing it uh he he gets to ithaca uh and he meets his loyal swine

00:29:46.260 herd um um eumaeus i think it's cool yeah uh and telemarcus returns they finally meet back up

00:29:53.500 uh doesn't his old dog not recognize him um the dog recognizes him he does recognize him yeah yeah

00:29:59.120 yeah good boy it's also i don't know it's a dog that lives for more than 60 years 20 years it must be

00:30:05.300 this is this is another thing right because like penelope is described as being insanely beautiful 1.00

00:30:09.920 throughout the whole thing it's like but she's got to be like 50 like she's got to be quite old

00:30:14.620 by this and i'm not saying she's kind of beautiful but like you know age and time is a very elastic

00:30:20.200 thing in the odyssey i mean yeah but it's a hero she she doesn't have to be obsolete i'm not saying

00:30:26.800 she's obsolete but just you know she's you know uh the the point being like the dog must be like 20

00:30:33.340 years old yeah he wasn't trying to find a woman searching for a sugar daddy or something but uh but

00:30:40.900 yeah like the the point is a gold digger asian time is quite elastic oh this dog's still there oh

00:30:45.860 oh is it yeah right okay it was also the uh i think evriclia how i don't know how it's romanized

00:30:54.160 and uh she also understood him while she was washing his feet yeah yes and he teamed up with telemachus

00:31:01.760 yep so he uh he goes into his palace and of course the suitors are like why is this beggar here 0.99

00:31:08.940 they're horrific to him uh but the loyal servants start some start recognizing him some betray him

00:31:14.300 uh penelope starts confiding in him not knowing that this is her husband uh and so she announces

00:31:21.440 the archery contest yeah uh and this is the famous contest using his bow now the bow is so great

00:31:30.100 it's so enormous only odysseus the hero can string it uh i don't know if anyone's ever strung a bow

00:31:36.740 but basically you have to use a lot of force to bend the bow in and then loop the uh string onto it

00:31:42.500 and he is battle hardened for 20 years he's fighting i mean yeah he does have seven years where

00:31:48.780 intermission with sure but temptation and uh there but uh the other just sitting there being

00:31:55.480 yeah i mean the suitors are just worthless yeah exactly i mean they're worthless men anyway

00:32:01.000 but all they do is carouse all day so uh odysseus uh and and it is they don't deserve their their status

00:32:07.740 no not at all but odysseus is also the hero i mean he's always described as being short and stocky

00:32:12.680 anyway so he's obviously you know broad-shouldered beard you know just like a hench guy um and yeah so

00:32:19.640 the bow is so powerful that only odysseus can string it and so this is how he reveals himself

00:32:24.640 kills all the suitors and then he has to restore his place to the king but penelope's like well hang 0.97

00:32:30.380 on a second how do i know you're really odysseus and he's like well i know the secret of our bed

00:32:34.400 weird the secret is that the the bed is actually made out of a living olive tree and so it can't be

00:32:41.420 moved and so penelope doesn't penelope say something like you know the bed's been moved he's like how

00:32:46.020 how could that have happened or something like that uh then he uh visits his father cause a final

00:32:51.160 uprising of the suitors families and athena therefore enforces the peace yep and that's

00:32:58.000 one of the great epics of western civilization which it is and it's a really um thrilling read

00:33:04.240 again it's been a while since i've read it but it was genuinely a thrilling read yes um and it's

00:33:09.520 it's just very romantic and but it's not like the iliad no the iliad is way more

00:33:15.740 tragic yeah it's the iliad is incredibly tragic this is more optimistic yeah absolutely it even

00:33:22.640 all of his crew die away yeah it's more optimistic as long as you're not part of his crew they should

00:33:28.000 have listened to it they should so you know just don't eat those cows don't eat the the cows yeah but

00:33:33.960 this is a bit more optimistic because its theme is about homecoming yeah and at the end of the day

00:33:42.860 it's odysseus who goes home not achilles yeah and it's it's and like the the iliad is a thrilling

00:33:48.800 war epic and when you read it you know the the turns and tides of the battles and the tragedies

00:33:55.220 death of patroclus and hector like on both sides they're genuinely tragic absolutely i think one of

00:34:02.480 the saddest scenes of the iliad is with the trojans oh yeah where um andromache hector's wife tells him

00:34:11.480 don't go and fight them don't go and fight achilles because if you do you're gonna lose you're gonna 0.73

00:34:16.600 die the city will fall and the women are gonna be abused the children are gonna die and he chose glory 0.99

00:34:24.920 yeah um and one of the interesting things here which you see uh that is all pervasive in mythology and

00:34:33.380 then in in philosophy it it's the major theme is that odysseus gets to go back home he gets his

00:34:43.000 homecoming because he's in in a crucial respect more like athena and zeus yeah then he is like other

00:34:51.920 gods yeah and by that it it's the combination of supreme might with wisdom yes odysseus and this

00:35:01.780 happens a lot through the odyssey through the iliad as well odysseus is often a restraining force

00:35:06.920 yeah uh where he makes uh more sensible decisions than some of the other greeks uh because he is 0.90

00:35:14.060 frankly cleverer than you know he's always clever odysseus you know uh that he's described as because

00:35:20.180 he's he's he's a wise and clever man and so he's the guy who ends up uh going through this but you

00:35:25.600 you are right like there's a distinct tone of optimism yes in the odyssey and it's also got this

00:35:33.260 kind of nice high adventure feel to it as well um where it's it's not this gruesome because i mean like

00:35:39.840 some of the descriptions of the iliad of people being slain in the battles are just yeah like

00:35:44.960 they're eye-opening where it's like it's like tarantino levels of gore yeah yeah yeah it's

00:35:48.840 horrific um whereas the odyssey is much more um enchanting you know it's much more of a sort of

00:35:56.680 almost like a disney story you know it is more enchanting yeah and um it's phil both of them are

00:36:03.320 philosophical what happens frequently is that people read one they say well it's the best then they read

00:36:09.060 the others and no that's better than the other they're different stories they're different stories

00:36:12.800 and um you can find all sorts of things in them lots of people read the iliad and they read it just

00:36:20.920 like a battle epic but it's incredibly philosophical and you can see his philosophy mostly in the

00:36:27.020 dilemmas yes that the heroes are faced with and achilles is faced with all sorts of dilemmas because

00:36:34.780 well i remember as well i mean the reason that the trojans end up uh sort of pushing the tide in

00:36:41.780 their favor and driving them back is because of agamemnon's horrific decision against achilles to

00:36:46.920 steal his slave girl and to humiliate him in public yeah and so you know suddenly the the trojans are at 0.98

00:36:52.400 the ships and they're running and so you made this happen agamemnon yes you know you literally

00:36:56.220 essentially like you know uh put your best fighter on the bench i want to mention once one really small

00:37:04.760 part from the iliad which i'm sure you're gonna like which uh says a lot about about uh the times

00:37:11.020 there's a scene where there's a greek and a trojan fighting and at some point they discover that they 0.93

00:37:17.140 have common uh friends or uh common ancestry i don't remember exactly what it is and they say right

00:37:25.020 okay let's go and fight others and if if it comes you and me at the end we're gonna we're gonna talk it

00:37:31.040 yeah we're gonna fight let's cross that bridge when we get there so uh so anyway that's that's

00:37:36.260 the odyssey and it's a genuinely um cherished part of western uh literature and for good reason for

00:37:44.460 it's it's not an accident or a coincidence or something like that that this is persisted

00:37:48.700 it's because it's brilliant so now let's get to uh christopher nolan who's decided to make his

00:37:53.540 um version of the odyssey now this is not terrible like the idea is not terrible

00:38:00.680 christopher nolan is a distinguished filmmaker he's made lots of epic big budget blockbuster and

00:38:09.020 well-regarded films over his time i mean like if you look at the list of films that you've got there

00:38:14.300 you've got um the the ones that i've seen the dark knight trilogy which is pretty legendary at this

00:38:19.700 point oh it's great and also the prestige was great yeah inception is great interstellar is great

00:38:25.000 i like dan kirk i never watched he lost me uh on with tenet right i never it was a bit you know

00:38:32.240 just a bit pretentious but that's but it's it's not that he's not the worst choice to make this kind

00:38:39.340 of film right there are no no he's not there are people who are way worse it's not michael bay for

00:38:43.680 christ's sake you know you know you're gonna have megatron coming out of it of the island of the

00:38:51.000 of calypso exactly and obviously he was you know very well received oppenheimer so it's not like he

00:38:58.120 can't produce good films like he's one of the few good filmmakers left at this point no i mean he he is

00:39:05.020 great yeah yeah he is an awesome director yeah i mean and you look at the other like you know older

00:39:09.560 directors now and you think oh god you know like ridley scott is one that springs to mind where it's

00:39:14.540 just like he's lost his way man um and so he's been talking about it because he's excited about it now

00:39:19.900 we're going to ignore that image that we'll get to later um but he he says uh there's a bit of

00:39:25.640 everything in it i mean truly it contains all stories uh having been originally hired to direct

00:39:30.340 troy been dreaming of this world for of this world for decades as a filmmaker you're looking for gaps in

00:39:36.080 cinematic culture things that haven't been done before and what i saw is that all this great

00:39:40.240 mythological cinematic work that i'd grown up with ray harry house movies and other things i've never seen

00:39:45.240 that done with the sort of weight and credibility of an a budget and big hollywood imax production

00:39:49.880 could do so okay that's not a that's not a bad philosophy to approach this way there's like

00:39:54.280 look you know i want to do something different i'll do something new um i i would i would like

00:39:58.560 it in the style of sort of ray harry house and movies because i mean who doesn't love them you

00:40:02.200 know they were excellent uh sunday afternoon watches um and so that's not a bad way of approaching

00:40:08.560 it he carries on and says we shot over two million feet of film which i assume is a lot i'm not a

00:40:13.080 filmmaker uh over the day of over a 91 day shoot much of it was out in the ocean uh where odysseus set sail

00:40:19.740 with his battle-hardened men it's pretty primal he laughs i've been out on it for the last four

00:40:24.840 months we got the cast uh who who played the crow of odysseus ship out there on real waves in real

00:40:31.040 places it's vast and terrifying and wonderful and benevolent as the conditions shift we really

00:40:36.160 wanted to capture how hard those journeys would have been for people and the leap of faith that

00:40:40.820 was being made as an unch in an unmapped uncharted world by embracing the physicality of the real

00:40:46.880 world in making the film you do inform the telling of the story in interesting ways because you're

00:40:52.120 confronted on date on a daily basis by the world pushing back at you and this is also very encouraging

00:40:57.760 to hear because what he's saying is this is not done by green screen yeah this is you know i made

00:41:03.620 them actually go out on the ocean and actually be you know exposed to the elements and actually have to

00:41:08.980 live through the thing that we're trying to portray that sounds promising right exactly it sounds

00:41:14.720 really really promising it's like okay that's that's a good approach to the thing you know it's

00:41:20.660 it's one of those things that modern filmmakers frankly have been completely spoiled by the ability

00:41:25.680 to do everything via digital effects and just sit in a studio and do things by green screen that's one

00:41:30.660 of the reasons why i love the old star wars movies because it's 40 minutes tatooine 40 minutes

00:41:37.340 that weird forest and then 40 minutes the deaths are battle yeah they extract the richness from each

00:41:43.720 scene and each landscape whereas in the new ones which some of them are good some of them not so but

00:41:50.800 it's almost as if they say that we are going to presume that the audience lacks attention span

00:41:57.080 and they have to change it like a video clip the background every two minutes yeah and also you can

00:42:03.640 like the the the plinket reviews for the newest star wars the the the star wars prequels which

00:42:09.340 themselves again like fall perfectly into the category of things that were crap at the time but

00:42:14.960 have aged beautifully because of the decline of movie and storytelling um the the plinket reviews he

00:42:21.280 does do a good job of showing how is george lucas old and fat sat in a chair with like cameras and a

00:42:27.360 green screen and and it's like yeah okay like and then you compare that to the actual filming of the

00:42:31.980 original star wars film where they're in a desert and things are breaking and everything's difficult

00:42:36.500 they have to deal with reality and it's it's very much art from adversity whereas in the new uh things

00:42:43.220 they've just got too much of everything and it's too easy and so they're not having to make compromises

00:42:47.980 and innovate in certain ways and things like that um so the fact that he's doing it in the real world

00:42:52.800 that's a really good sign i think it's going to be immersive if he does so i hope so because that's

00:42:58.680 what that's what a movie should do yeah i hope so not just constantly change the background yeah

00:43:04.380 and uh so good stuff and then you have matt damon saying well look this is this is going to be i'm

00:43:09.920 trying to hide the picture i don't want to spoil it again uh this it should be epic it's exactly what

00:43:13.800 you want to have a summer movie it'll come out next summer obviously um it should be a massive

00:43:17.980 entertaining massively entertaining film it should feel epic it should feel mythic it's like okay great

00:43:23.280 right that's that's great i'm i'm actually reasonably well set up for it i'm actually quite optimistic

00:43:30.260 it's like i've you know i've no problem with christopher nolan as a director i've got no

00:43:35.660 problem with matt damon as an actor he's not the worst choice for odysseus no i don't think he is no

00:43:41.100 they could have chosen someone you know apart from that he's american but you know like i'm not honestly

00:43:46.520 i'm not woke i'm not thinking of it this way i'm not saying that just because it's a greek thing

00:43:51.200 no no what it is is americans should never appear in historical uh pieces because the american

00:43:58.380 accent is far too modern the american accent represents modernity and so this is why they

00:44:05.060 always use british actors in historical dramas and i will say this we we sound like we're old world

00:44:11.240 we will have to see how to hear how he sounds he'll sound like an american we'll have to see but

00:44:17.940 one thing i have to say is that i really uh i really liked armana sante the spanish actor

00:44:26.020 who was casted as odysseus i think 50 years ago something right right he was a he was a good

00:44:32.000 choice yeah i mean i'm not i'm not being um too particular about that that's fine you know

00:44:37.700 like he looks enough the part i suppose you know he's not terrible or anything and he looks about the

00:44:43.840 right age and stuff like that i'm sure we're gonna see more controversial casting choices well let's

00:44:49.800 have a look at the uh the first look yeah uh so we got to see some screens and we'll we'll we'll go

00:44:56.360 for odysseus first actually um so i don't know if i can make that bigger yeah i can't right so this

00:45:03.780 like matt damon himself reasonably looks like odysseus he's also been working out the gym so he's got

00:45:09.580 yeah he's a bit more muscular he's got his beard it's a bit gray but that's fine you know there's

00:45:15.080 no reason thing that odysseus couldn't have had a gray beard um he looks personally fine perfectly

00:45:21.240 fine casting for odysseus um we'll get into what he's wearing in a bit like the sword what is that

00:45:28.880 sword that's that's a weird handle for a sword yeah but okay fine right not not actually terrible

00:45:36.260 odysseus described a short stocky black hair beard not not awful no i don't like the sword to be

00:45:42.200 honest no it's because it's totally a historical yeah it's not it's not any kind of historical sword

00:45:47.520 let alone not even a bronze age sword um but then we get to penelope and penelope looks all right

00:45:53.360 actually the dress is actually quite a vibrant color um you know she's holding odysseus's bow

00:46:00.140 not sure what that signals she's not going to string it is she no but she don't know she is

00:46:06.400 going to give it to people uh maybe again also anne hathaway's a good choice yeah yeah yeah she's

00:46:13.020 fine she's also um contrary to what a friend of us has said in the past she's also not a mid 0.98

00:46:18.500 she's not a mid yeah i mean who says she's a mid you don't remember no what i don't remember

00:46:27.240 connor oh connor yeah he's wrong sorry connor oh right yeah no yeah they're definitely btfo connor

00:46:32.960 she's a fine fine looking woman and she looks appropriate i mean honestly i think she could 0.93

00:46:39.740 have done a bit more jewelry frankly but maybe maybe she's got enough um but she looks fine the

00:46:45.820 dress is nice you know she is wearing a necklace she didn't want to tempt them with jews and stuff 1.00

00:46:51.340 she wanted to fly under the radar stealth mode um she looks fine the question i have is why is her

00:46:57.600 house so dirty like look at the wall because the suitors are abusing the the staff there yeah but 0.59

00:47:04.880 look at the the walls and the ceilings and stuff like look at it it's it's look at like all at the

00:47:10.340 back there with like what like this is this is a perennial problem with hollywood

00:47:15.520 right and the it's a perennial problem with modernity generally is that we assume things

00:47:21.320 in the past were just dirty and miskempt unkempt because we see the ruins of these things and we

00:47:26.560 go oh well there we go then that's how they lived it's like no these things have not been taken care

00:47:31.360 of for thousands of years you know the fact they're still here is quite remarkable but that is a

00:47:35.580 disgustingly dirty house that she's living in she's got slaves make them clean it why wouldn't 1.00

00:47:41.060 she make them clean it like this is it's because the house is in disorder i'm not saying it's not

00:47:47.260 in disorder but it's the moral order of the house that's really the problem like it's it's not the

00:47:53.100 walls are grimy like again she has servants she's got one right behind her go clean something like 0.72

00:47:59.860 look at the pillar look at this what is this is this disgusting it's like why are they living like

00:48:06.720 that they wouldn't live like that they would have a clean house because this is what the suitors have 1.00

00:48:11.280 taken from them maybe maybe that's a generous interpretation um but uh but i'm i'm not necessarily

00:48:19.600 persuaded but overall she looks fine this is and this is this is fine um and then you get to

00:48:25.220 telemachus now telemachus uh again we'll talk about the armor in a minute because my god

00:48:31.280 uh but you know this is fine uh this is what is tom holland is it yeah yeah and he looks fine you

00:48:37.700 know that's reasonable sorry but the thing is he's holding look at the cup that he's holding

00:48:48.840 would you drink from that no it's also very dirty yes it's very dirty like it looks like it's just been

00:48:56.440 dug up out of an archaeological dig yep it literally looks like it's just been pulled from the ground

00:49:01.700 after being buried for thousands of years why is it a dirty cup why is the prince of ithaca drinking 0.99

00:49:08.640 from this goddamn dirty cup like look at the rim of it it's absolutely disgusting it's like sorry 0.99

00:49:14.300 what this is a this is a perennial problem with the liberal prejudice against history and this i like 0.99

00:49:21.660 how you see liberalism everywhere but this is liberalism right so this is the wig theory of

00:49:27.160 history being represented right here so this this cup it looks like it's literally come out of an

00:49:34.040 archaeological dig so it's been in the ground 3 000 years that's what they look like when they come

00:49:38.440 out of the ground after 3 000 years i know because i've been to enough museums of things that have been

00:49:43.060 dug out of the ground 3 000 after being there for 3 000 years that's not how a new cup looks

00:49:48.860 a new a cup that the royal family of ithaca would be using would at least be nice it would be you

00:49:55.320 know painted it wouldn't be covered in dirt it's still better than some cups of today i think it's

00:50:01.520 gross it looks like it just hasn't been washed i'm thinking of some stuff there are no way there's no

00:50:07.320 way i'm telling them live okay uh but i but this is this is the problem like again it's the same with

00:50:14.600 her house it's like oh it should be run down and dirty it's like no people were actually quite

00:50:18.700 fastidious about having clean things in the past like i mean you get this uh anywhere like in the

00:50:24.260 bible where are they they go on a long journey and then they wash their feet you know when was the

00:50:28.640 last time you washed your feet after going on a long journey stelios like you never think about it

00:50:32.980 because you just it's a totally different world because we have modern cleaning appliances but they

00:50:39.300 they would perform these sort of rituals and uh cleanliness rituals all the time because being

00:50:46.060 clean was important to people in the past whereas we think they must have all been just disgusting and

00:50:50.740 smelly and dirty that's not true it's just not how they were but this is a liberal prejudice because

00:50:56.200 it it plays into the idea that the past because we we have the opposite view of history that every

00:51:02.600 other people in every other time place have ever had about history we assume we are living in the best

00:51:07.660 time in history we think no one has ever had it as good as us whereas in every other pre-modern era

00:51:13.740 they always assumed they were the recipients of a fallen golden age and that they were living in

00:51:19.280 the age of bronze or iron or whatever it is right and so for them the world is constantly getting worse

00:51:24.760 and they're struggling to make it not worse for us the world is constantly getting better

00:51:29.380 and everyone back there obviously lived in dirt in filth in suffering in pain and in in a in a horrible

00:51:37.020 manner that you wouldn't bear to live under and in some respects that might be true when it comes to

00:51:42.160 medicine or technology but in other respects when it say comes to morals and sort of society itself

00:51:48.540 i don't think that is true and i think it is an unconscious liberal prejudice that we

00:51:52.840 find bleeding into representations like this where it's like oh well telemichus will just have this

00:51:58.420 dirty old cup no he wouldn't he'd have a beautiful cup that was made by an artisan made by literally

00:52:04.460 like that you get an artisan class that serves the aristocracy in this kind of society where they

00:52:10.920 they they spend their entire lives making beautiful things yeah that the aristocracy buys from them

00:52:16.140 with the loot that they bring back from their adventures and this this cup if ithaca was you

00:52:21.880 know uh looted would form part of the booty that they would take back to wherever whoever was looting

00:52:26.780 them so i i really i really despise this kind of reflexive like griminess that we put on everything

00:52:35.260 it's the same with like anything from the medieval era that the um that is that is made it's always

00:52:40.600 brown to be a bit charitable to nolan here is that he must show a house in disorder yeah so

00:52:50.100 if it's not impeccably clean or the stuff there aren't yeah very clean it's it kind of shows in detail as

00:53:00.300 well sure i mean that is but i'm not persuaded i i think i think that this is a natural response

00:53:09.300 from the moderns against the past to say well i mean you don't live like that do you um but maybe

00:53:16.400 you're right maybe you're right but anyway let's let's move on to uh odysseus's men and this is where

00:53:21.800 people have been really like okay what am i looking at here now there are again the modern interpretation

00:53:28.960 of the past is writ large here it's a perfect display of it what is the color palette that i'm

00:53:35.180 looking at it is brown it is dingy brown the cloaks are brown or browny green you know everything is

00:53:43.920 brown everything is dull these are dull men wearing dull things living a dull existence they're benighted 0.92

00:53:52.140 they're in the this is just all brown this is not how the past was right it like the past because we have 0.95

00:54:01.760 received it after such a long period of time has become quite misty for us in a lot of ways but actually

00:54:10.020 people in the past had no sense of taste and that meant everything was insanely garish everything

00:54:18.140 like every medieval epic that is made these days is always muted and dull they put the sepia wash over

00:54:24.140 it right no medieval knights looked like clowns like they were dressed in the most insanely bright

00:54:31.880 colors because they had like in ancient warfare for example there's no concern for camouflage

00:54:38.640 camouflage is a distinctly modern invention from the 20th century onwards i mean even the 19th century

00:54:43.860 you see the red coats lining up with the red coats and the french and the blue coats so this is not

00:54:47.380 about hiding this is about very clearly making yourself understood to the people around you

00:54:53.240 either the people on your side or the enemy so you know you're not attacking someone by accident

00:54:57.720 who's who's a who's a friend and you want to peacock your colors and so when you achieve some sort of

00:55:03.640 great martial feat people will see oh my gosh that's so and so you know either you know achilles or

00:55:09.660 odysseus or whatever in in this brilliant armor that was made to them by the gods or the heraldry of you

00:55:15.040 know uh a medieval knight you know william marshall whoever you know these people wore bright colors

00:55:20.900 all the time especially on the battlefield especially when they're off adventuring you know

00:55:25.860 they wanted people to they you know be overawed by the people that they are and so immediately the

00:55:31.100 first thing to notice is that this is gross this is a gross disgusting color palette and i'm i find it

00:55:38.520 wild i mean christopher nola must have some historical advisors on this film and they're just like yeah no brown 0.97

00:55:44.300 bro just go for just muted muddy greeny brown as if it's been they've been lying in a ditch the whole

00:55:50.740 time you know they come back from troy after lying in a ditch after not you know showing their their

00:55:56.660 great fanciful armaments and just they're just men from a ditch they probably smell bad it's also weird

00:56:03.260 armor i don't well we'll get to the armor in a minute just don't understand it it's actually in some

00:56:09.080 respects it seems quite vulgar oh yeah okay let's talk about the armor then um yeah this is not what

00:56:14.800 bronze age armor looked like at all and you wouldn't even know the armor was bronze so one of the things

00:56:21.880 that soldiers did and this is soldiers in all eras is polish their armor why do they polish their armor

00:56:30.520 stelios because they wanted to be seen as shiny they wanted to be seen they wanted to gain the glory

00:56:37.700 from uh the battles they fought they wanted people to see that i am wearing this look at me and i slayed

00:56:45.480 my enemy not just that though the the to have shiny armor uh shows that you are a professional soldier

00:56:53.940 it shows that you take care of your equipment it shows you know what you're doing and it shows that um

00:56:59.820 you have status right you're a person who um has i mean because you personally wouldn't have been

00:57:07.640 polishing it it would have been your servants right you would have had stewards or squires or something

00:57:12.060 like that and they they would have kept your armor in tip-top condition so it showed that you were a man

00:57:17.480 of means you're a man of status you were a man who whose sole profession was to be a warrior in fact

00:57:23.520 you know you have servants to do all the work for you right so i'm gonna be the voice of a position

00:57:28.680 here of of the well hang on so look and so this this armor being so dull and frankly weirdly

00:57:36.280 unappealing is just baffling why is why is their armor in such bad condition um but then you've got

00:57:43.260 the actual nature of the armor itself this is not historical armor at all from practically any time

00:57:48.800 period but you've you've got a strange mismatch of armor as well so the helmets they're wearing are

00:57:53.900 the helmets of basically roman centurions uh the but i mean they're not quite but they're very similar

00:58:00.600 to they point forward where instead of well left and right there would have been ones that did have

00:58:06.500 the the coxcomb pointing forward but like the the coxcomb on the helmet is what the commander wears

00:58:13.500 to mark him out as the commander so why are they all wearing helmets with the coxcomb on top 1.00

00:58:18.860 like they're his men they don't have the horsehair frill at the top of the helmet that's how to mark

00:58:24.600 out who the leader is yeah so it's like what are you doing that's ridiculous for a start but also

00:58:29.760 these are deeply anachronistic helmets these helmets were about about a thousand years later frankly you

00:58:36.160 know this is this is like uh literally doing um the the sort of uh battle of hastings and william the

00:58:43.820 conqueror has you know guns and planes this is the same sort of effect so anyway there's there's that

00:58:49.520 you've obviously got the muted sort of you know metal braces which i think in in the iliad and the

00:58:55.940 odyssey there is constant reference to bronze yes because bronze was the kind of gold of the time

00:59:01.980 well it was just the material that you used to make metal equipment yes so i don't know whether

00:59:07.960 they're trying to go with that and uh also what i will say you know the voice of opposition is that

00:59:14.180 when you're out on an op on an operation a long mission yeah standards sometimes tend to go down

00:59:22.560 sure for lack of resources so for instance i'll give you an example in some armies there's the

00:59:28.820 expectation that men shave yeah but that's not as much in the navy sure why because you don't have

00:59:35.400 as much access to water and i could accept it if i mean a lot of them have beards i can accept the

00:59:40.680 beards yeah i can accept that i i'm not in any way i'm trying to think i'm trying to think how to

00:59:45.620 defend it but the the armor that they're wearing like if if your bronze looks it's a weird arm it

00:59:50.460 doesn't look well bronze is the most beautiful metal in my opinion perhaps aside from gold but bronze

00:59:58.420 for of all the sort of utilitarian metals bronze is by far the most gorgeous you can polish bronze to make 0.80

01:00:04.920 it look just sublime this looks like bronze that has been dug out of the ground after 3 000 fucking 0.92

01:00:11.180 years like again it this is not what bronze actually looks like in fact let's have a look

01:00:17.260 this is like a if you if you see the chest yeah and on top it's like a life raft yeah yeah uh it's

01:00:25.780 it's designed to look slightly like a muscle cuirass but it doesn't really look like a muscle cuirass

01:00:31.260 i'm not even sure but um but in fact before we go on to that notice how there's uh two rather

01:00:37.280 strange inclusions on the right there one of them appears to be indian and one of them appears to be

01:00:42.260 korean yeah i mean there were korean battalions in in the iliad weren't they uh no actually there

01:00:50.240 weren't like this this guy's odyssey this guy's personal odyssey i mean that he's gone a long way

01:00:55.420 yeah the indian guy's gone far enough but that korean guy has really gone a long way yeah obviously 1.00

01:01:01.540 i mean the the ancient ancient greeks um are often described as having quite a wide color palette

01:01:09.340 for their skin tones and hair colors right and frequently dark eyes yeah but i mean achilles was

01:01:15.340 blonde hair and blue eyed yeah and also alexander i think yeah alexander was and so you know the the

01:01:20.920 the skin tone of the greeks has darkened over time it seems right um from then till now right 0.98

01:01:27.660 so it's you know i it's fine for them to be like looking more northwest european it's not the end of

01:01:35.080 the world it's you know it's it's not the sort of thing that immediately brings you out of it right

01:01:39.040 but having a korean and an indian there it's like okay that is a bit weird like the obviously 1.00

01:01:46.940 odysseus's men were greek like there were no koreans or indians but but even then okay whatever

01:01:55.580 it's modern hollywood i mean i don't know why you couldn't have just cast specifically for these

01:02:01.780 things but whatever it's modern hollywood i'm sure they're gonna have even more controversial picks

01:02:07.540 they could have been yeah there could have been more controversial picks so okay i guess i'll just

01:02:13.200 suck that up as well right but the armor is awful because we know what kinds of armor that they were

01:02:19.620 wearing because we found it now this is the dendro panoply and i don't know whether you've noticed but 0.90

01:02:25.480 that is a full suit of plate mail and as i said this has been in the ground for 3 000 years but look

01:02:31.620 at the tone the color tone is the fucking same like that is not what a new suit or a currently being 0.95

01:02:38.640 worn suit of bronze armor that color that is not the right color why is his armor look like it's 0.96

01:02:45.480 been in the ground for 3 000 years yeah it's awful i hate it it's such a small and easy thing to do

01:02:52.300 because i mean like there's reconstructions of the dendro panoply and in fact have we got no

01:02:56.960 right as you can see this is polished exactly it shines bronze is the most beautiful metal and it

01:03:05.600 could be shinier than that like there are more modern reconstructions where it's basically you

01:03:09.660 can polish it to a reflective mirror shine where is this from um oh i can't remember actually is it

01:03:15.600 museum is is it mongolian no no no no these are bronze age suits of armor reconstructions of them

01:03:23.880 the one on the left is i think the the most likely but i should have got there was i should have got

01:03:31.300 really great armor yeah no it's it's really good awesome i need to know where it's from is there a

01:03:36.040 reconstruction in this damn it's not oh funny but it's fine but these are these are reconstructions 0.55

01:03:42.620 of various kinds of bronze age armor that have been found right and so as you can see they're very 0.84

01:03:47.300 colorful they're very shiny they're gorgeous to look at and if you saw a dude wandering around in armor

01:03:54.780 like this you'd be like oh crap you know this guy's serious he means business and there are modern

01:04:01.640 reconstructions where it's just just beautiful shining armor and it's like right okay

01:04:05.940 the these guys you can see why it's like um you know this this would have been supremely protective

01:04:16.100 like what are we looking at here man like what are you doing this is the modern interpretation of what

01:04:21.600 crappy ancient armor was like but no these guys took their personal protection seriously and what

01:04:26.900 what's not displayed here are arm guards and greaves

01:04:29.360 so including with the shield they were basically completely covered in bronze to protect every part

01:04:37.560 of them and to make themselves look magnificent they wanted to look magnificent on the battlefield

01:04:43.680 so they were very impressive people because these were kings these were kings and lords and you know

01:04:50.340 supremely you know rich these are the aristocracy the upper class the highest class of society whereas 0.85

01:04:57.680 these guys look just like like crap and it's like man i don't you know don't get me wrong i can 0.94

01:05:05.480 understand if you're like well this is a little bit too fancy maybe we don't you know maybe it doesn't 0.99

01:05:10.480 like i don't know resonate or something it's like okay sure strip it down a little bit right i can

01:05:16.260 understand if you want to strip it down a little bit but you're still going to have it so it's it's

01:05:19.900 gorgeous polished yellow bronze rather than this dull brown bronze that looks like it's been found

01:05:26.200 in bog like you this is just not right anyway we got another look at other things here's again we have 1.00

01:05:31.620 lots of brown palette yeah again the the armor is just wrong the armor is completely wrong uh the

01:05:38.220 shields are probably wrong but okay well and again look how the shields they paint their shields

01:05:43.280 the shields were painted to show that this is my personal heraldry on the shield because i am an

01:05:50.380 important named warrior and you need to treat me with some respect but instead we've got the perennial

01:05:56.020 brown the browns it's just everything's brown and as arch pointed out this looks like a norse longship

01:06:02.720 like this this is actually not very similar to what the ships they actually had were um and again

01:06:09.460 it's brown they had paint they painted stuff and they painted stuff a lot like in the iliad we we

01:06:18.040 have the the ships which black painted black so they were terrifying and they were huge ships and so

01:06:24.900 hey the ship isn't big enough but we've got like reconstructions of the ships i'll find

01:06:28.860 close that i'll find a picture on this um uh blog post here yeah these are huge ships as you can see

01:06:38.720 like lots of paint exactly it like they made it look nice like so shiny yes exactly so not only was

01:06:47.860 it not like a battered old norse longship but the thing was enormous and gorgeous i think is there

01:06:55.860 another representation in this i can't yeah so you know they they paint uh lots of sort of ensigns and

01:07:04.120 uh devices on the thing because beauty matters to these people you know they don't just live in the 0.95

01:07:11.780 mud and do nothing so it's it's just it's actually kind of crazy it's kind of frustrating

01:07:19.020 anyway then we got the reveal of athena zendaya again yeah well i mean where's that just no

01:07:30.460 i mean okay so i'm not i'm not thrilled by the inclusion of zendaya but i don't hate her like

01:07:38.940 a lot of people do i just think she's a very middling actress and she's obviously just popular 1.00

01:07:44.500 in hollywood um she's annoying uh her characters are frequently annoying but yeah but also i mean it's 0.98

01:07:53.180 it's not that if you look at the statue of athena you understand yeah um athena is always portrayed

01:07:59.640 uh with a spear a shield and a helmet uh and she is a statuesque woman yep because she was a goddess 1.00

01:08:08.080 of war you know she and she is always uh presented with great finery and in beautiful flowing robes

01:08:16.580 a helmet yeah with a helmet and shield and spear um um yeah but this this could be athena uh disguising

01:08:25.140 herself because yeah because she did manifest to people here or there yeah she she's um you know

01:08:31.840 she disguised herself to um manipulate or mentor people and things like that during it and so maybe 1.00

01:08:38.380 this isn't her and her panoply and her war gear uh which okay fair enough fair enough um

01:08:44.480 but put into context with what we've seen so she has a weird um expression in her face

01:08:51.260 she does there's lots of tension there and her forehead and i don't think that this is close

01:08:59.240 to a goddess i mean she's supposed to be incredibly cool and emotionless but but okay okay it's a movie

01:09:07.220 yeah yeah but but but also we don't know the context of the scene or anything yeah this could be a

01:09:11.680 this could be a photo between shots or something you know but so i you know there there are lots of

01:09:18.220 caveats and more information may well come out in the uh you know between when we record this when

01:09:24.100 we publish this uh so if it does you know feel free to caveat this but with what we've seen so far

01:09:33.140 am i optimistic that this is her in disguise maybe maybe not like she's wearing rags i mean again

01:09:41.040 she could be in disguise it could be entirely a plan i assume this is odysseus dressed as the old man

01:09:45.480 the beggar um yeah why is she dressed like a beggar i guess she's in disguise maybe maybe she's nafsica 0.96

01:09:54.740 in the island of the phoenix maybe because maybe i think nolan and the people in the movie are trying

01:10:02.240 to troll us with the with the picks maybe um because i think that they've gone with lupita nyongo

01:10:10.920 for athena maybe so maybe she's nafsica i don't know well i mean apparently uh again the announcement

01:10:18.960 on this one was this is her as athena uh so but they also said that tom holland was odysseus at some

01:10:26.300 point than everyone was that is true there's been a lot of misinformation about it um but i'm sure i've

01:10:31.880 read this information campaign i i have read somewhere else that she was athena so it's been

01:10:36.860 a consistent point but maybe maybe we're wrong but anyway so it's not you know it's not the end of

01:10:42.540 world if this is him as a beggar and she's in disguise okay fair enough um not not exactly persuaded

01:10:49.180 on zendaya as the choice for athena but what are you gonna do uh modern hollywood isn't it uh anyway

01:10:55.100 so he he talks about christopher nolan talked about the adaptation that he's using uh he said quote

01:11:00.900 i think it's the emily wilson translation that begins tell me about a complicated man

01:11:05.780 he added the genius of the character the cleverness the inventiveness of him that was a huge part that

01:11:10.360 interested me he's not just a soldier he's an amazing strategist a very wily person now a lot of

01:11:15.400 people like oh god he's just name checking he's just name checking emily wilson we're we're certain

01:11:21.860 that this is not his favorite one or the one that he's basing this on and my god let's hope it's not

01:11:27.560 so emily wilson i mean you can guess exactly the kind of classicist that she is yep i've heard

01:11:36.720 nothing but bad things about the translation i haven't read it myself but i just don't see the

01:11:44.520 constant need to project you know the last wave of feminism onto the epics well that's because 1.00

01:11:51.940 you're not a feminist who's dedicated her entire career to it if you were a feminist who dedicated 1.00

01:11:58.160 her entire career to it then you would see the need for that wouldn't you because you'd be looking

01:12:02.700 at structures of oppression and sexism and yeah and slaves and things like that and you'd be like

01:12:09.340 no i need to i need to bring out a modern interpretation of this yeah but that was

01:12:14.140 not how it was yes i know yeah it's just no sorry i mean i'm not gonna have i'm not having i'm not

01:12:22.080 having it well she has translated homer and uh in a review of her translation a lady called annalisa

01:12:29.020 quinn wrote and this is in praise of what she wrote wilson's project is basically a progressive

01:12:35.420 one okay i want to protect i i that's what i want a progressive interpretation of the odyssey

01:12:41.200 to scrape away all the centuries of verbal and ideological build-up the christianizing

01:12:45.640 the nostalgia the added sexism they're sexist enough as they are uh and the victorian new

01:12:51.320 sorry has she read it well has she read the yeah she's the lore she's reviewing emily wilson's

01:12:58.040 uh to reveal something fresh and clean in wilson's translation enslaved characters are often called

01:13:03.240 slaves rather than maids or servants which the translator notes explaining the word choices while

01:13:08.040 discussing the old translations well the thing is the word slave in modern english for example

01:13:15.500 has certain and definite connotations so the word slave in modern english means someone who is

01:13:23.920 forced to do backbreaking labor yeah against their will um but in the ancient world a slave did not

01:13:31.260 necessarily mean this uh what we actually have uh in fact the in the ancient world the the term

01:13:40.420 servant didn't mean a free man right it meant someone who is bonded to a household to be say a

01:13:48.540 household servant so you you do the domestic labor of a household you're actually not a free man but

01:13:54.140 you're not what we would think of as a slave no like in your daily life you don't have an overseer

01:13:59.420 with a whip cracking it to make you do things you just you you are basically an independent person

01:14:04.720 who has got to do you know you've got to run down to the market and pick up some flowers or something

01:14:08.980 or fruit or bread or whatever you know you've got to come home you've got to make sure that you know

01:14:13.280 other things have been done in the household you are you are quote unquote a slave but you have a

01:14:18.260 surprising amount of autonomy and you don't have someone watching all the time because you are bonded

01:14:23.220 into the household you are not like a plantation slave it was a sort of inferior status yeah but it

01:14:30.020 wasn't the kind of um very bad treatment of slaves that we have when with the connotations

01:14:37.900 you you refer to so to be a slave was to not be free basically and to be free meant that you're

01:14:44.960 not a slave yes and you just you didn't have a say over lots of things but it wasn't the kind of

01:14:51.260 there wasn't the there wasn't a kind any kind of context that said that the the master has a lie

01:14:58.840 a right of life or death on the slave in some respects that ended up being that way but for instance

01:15:06.140 in ancient athens there were laws with respect to what you couldn't do to slaves and yeah and just

01:15:12.280 just to give you a very quick example there's a dialogue called the euthyphro by plato it's one of

01:15:19.700 the most famous ones of his especially in early dialogue and euthyphro is persecuting his father

01:15:26.360 for maltreatment of a slave and he is appealing to legislation about the treatment of slaves yeah so

01:15:34.840 it's not like you know here are some people you can do anything you want with them they had inferior

01:15:39.700 status everyone wanted to be free yeah not be not have that inferior status but it's not

01:15:45.880 it's more complicated it's not cotton field slavery no it's more complicated than the modern mind can

01:15:51.780 understand um because i mean like there are examples of like um when cicero's killed his his

01:15:57.920 domestic servants his slaves are heartbroken over his death right because they they it's a relational

01:16:05.580 situation so you're bonded into a household you are not just a piece of property on a farm exactly and

01:16:13.800 many romans were trusting the education of the children to slaves epictetus one of the greatest

01:16:19.700 philosophers he was a slave well look at one point uh plutarch was a slave of the romans you know and

01:16:26.120 he was you know famous author again these these people had a lot more autonomy than we would expect

01:16:31.260 a slave to have because our conception of a slave is as a as a manual labor machine the issue of slavery

01:16:37.720 at the time mostly especially in let's say the roman republic because there's a a tradition that

01:16:44.280 understands roman liberty as non-domination or non-mastery it meant that you were a master

01:16:50.180 and yeah no if you were free yeah and the slave meant that you were you were under the arbitrary

01:16:58.160 whims of the master the master could be benevolent yeah he didn't have to be yeah but it was that

01:17:03.300 inferior status that is is way more complex than but it's frequently some people suggest it was it would

01:17:10.020 have been in most cases more akin to maids and servants butlers things like that rather than the way

01:17:17.800 that we perceive chattel slavery in like the american south yeah right it would have been far more

01:17:22.440 normal and humane in most cases uh and so to just say well no they were slaves it's like

01:17:28.920 that wasn't the kind that it's it's a very reductionist way of viewing relations it's like

01:17:37.100 very ideological very marxist in some respects because if you see in the audience for instance towards the

01:17:42.580 end it's it's uh the maid who raised him who understands him yeah yeah and his father and a

01:17:50.720 slave yeah she wasn't saying uh you know he is he's a yeah he was my master therefore i hate him 0.85

01:17:56.540 well then let him die this that wasn't the thing no the pre-modern understanding of uh bonds of loyalty

01:18:02.560 and servitude is completely different to the modern understanding of those bonds of loyalty i mean

01:18:07.960 look at his swineherd right when he gets you know his loyal swineherd so oh my master has returned

01:18:12.960 like it's it's it's the same with like sam and frodo in lord of the rings you know sam frodo is

01:18:19.360 sam's master in this domestic bonded way but at no point does sam come across like a chattel slave

01:18:26.680 right even though he's not really free he he's there to serve frodo you know that's how he thinks of it

01:18:31.120 and so like this this sort of hierarchy of relations that is bound together in the social stratum

01:18:37.040 is much more complicated for us it's much more yeah complicated and normal to these people and we

01:18:43.100 don't properly understand it uh and it's not appropriate to just call them slaves you know

01:18:49.000 that doesn't properly describe what is being uh actually represented there so when she's like well

01:18:54.920 it renders slavery invisible this is a very ideological approach to it what you've what you've done is

01:19:00.060 you've taken the sort of extreme liberal approach to freedom and uh relations and says well

01:19:07.020 if anyone isn't at the master level then we describe them as being at the bottom level

01:19:12.040 we describe them as being they had internalized whiteness and oppression and stuff just yeah yeah

01:19:17.740 it's and so this this is more this is what i hate about academia at the moment is you have

01:19:24.100 great people who don't go forward who do great work and you have people who do go forward who are

01:19:33.100 either activists or just um have made a name because due to novelty but novelty doesn't necessarily mean

01:19:42.460 that you're right yeah you you can constantly do the play this endlessly yeah doesn't mean you're

01:19:47.960 doing good work but the point is she's she's concerned about the victorian euphemisms uh but the

01:19:53.720 average victorian household would have looked a lot more like odysseus's household than a modern

01:19:58.840 household like for example in the victorian era you have these you know big victorian like

01:20:03.340 townhouses where you had uh you know the the master and the the mistress of the the lady of the house

01:20:09.040 and their family is essentially the top of the house but the house is a giant economic unit and so

01:20:13.700 you've got the cook the the cleaners the sweeps you know and all this sort of stuff and you've got

01:20:18.160 this sort of the boys and the girls who do like a lot of the dog work at the bottom but you know and

01:20:22.680 and so this arrangement is a lot more like slavery in the ancient world it's like yeah you're going to be

01:20:27.860 a part of this household and you're going to do these these this work but you'd get something in

01:20:32.900 return for this you're not just you know whipped on a field in the in the blazing sun all day and so

01:20:37.720 actually the victorian mindset would have been far closer and would have understood it better yeah

01:20:43.460 probably i mean i i get the the arguments and the the opposition to to that kind of social structure

01:20:51.780 it's just that just because you that social structure didn't mean necessary yeah obviously

01:20:57.480 that structure didn't mean necessarily that just because the slaves were dominated that's that they

01:21:06.560 were constantly being oppressed yes because it's one thing to say right you have inferior status in

01:21:13.540 this household and i'm calling the shots which meant that i can do bad things to you that's one thing

01:21:21.160 but doing bad things to you is quite another but also it's an inferior status to the master but

01:21:27.460 it's also a superior status to other people so if you've got like street urchins or something like 0.99

01:21:32.640 this if you're if you're a servant in a powerful house then actually in society when you've been

01:21:39.360 charged with something i've got to come and deliver a message or i have to come and receive a payment

01:21:44.280 or something like that no no you you are actually quite an important person with quite a lot of backing

01:21:48.200 behind you you know if some street urchins come along and rob you then your master is going to 0.98

01:21:52.700 go after them and send some you know some men after them to go get whatever is back or whatever

01:21:56.300 you know you are not just vulnerable in the world and you have access to resources like you're

01:22:02.440 guaranteed food you're guaranteed shelter you're guaranteed protection these are all things in the

01:22:06.480 ancient world are much more important and proximal to a person's real concerns than liberal views of

01:22:13.220 you know but you're not ultimately free there you have someone that you owe loyalty to and that

01:22:18.620 society will enforce if you try and break this yeah okay but i'm being fed tonight i'm kept safe i'm

01:22:24.300 wearing nice clean clothes i'm wearing new clothes and i get you know to to relax after a day's worth

01:22:30.200 of work and also it's always advantages to it and also there's always the interpersonal relationships

01:22:35.780 between particular individuals yes that flies under the radar of this kind of reading yes and so

01:22:40.880 they've heard me like no these are just all slaves what that does in the minds of the modern reader

01:22:45.020 is not only pollute this kind of deep thick relational environment where everyone has a place

01:22:50.960 and some people genuinely love where they are and they get benefits out of it as well as have

01:22:55.840 obligations to it but it just distorts what it is that is actually there is a complete misreading

01:23:03.420 of the way that these people live their lives so i mean like slaves could save up money

01:23:08.920 and buy their own freedom this is a phenomenally common thing a chattel slave can't do that

01:23:16.140 a chattel slave doesn't have free time to like knit things and sell them and save up some pennies and 0.99

01:23:21.880 then buy their own fit that like you we just to call them slaves doesn't explain what they are and

01:23:26.800 that's the attitude with which emily wilson has approached this i mean very modern attitude i will

01:23:31.480 have to check out if there's a footnote or something or an end note where she talks about it but

01:23:36.440 i do get the idea the impression that it's more leftist than it should be oh it's completely

01:23:42.180 leftist um another review uh of this uh says wilson avoids the two traps that most translations of the

01:23:48.700 iliad fall into this talk about our iliad translation and navigates the inevitable gaps between ancient

01:23:53.000 greek and english uh an unwarranted glorification of violence on one hand and tedium on the other

01:23:58.280 unwarranted glorification of violence in the iliad

01:24:02.520 it's what the iliad is like that's that's like huge swathes of the iliad are just them fighting

01:24:10.420 yeah i mean and so emily's like yeah well i don't i'm not interested in that i'm just going to downplay

01:24:15.000 that in the iliad so you can see this is this has been approached with an agenda if the if that's the

01:24:20.740 epic and you're translating the epic you're not translating your own sentimentality or sentiments

01:24:27.580 on it i mean you are there to translate the text and also i don't think that there wasn't a

01:24:34.220 necessity for a translation well if you ask me i think that well this is the point isn't it she is

01:24:40.160 a modern liberal feminist and so she's like oh god all of this what they're describing through my

01:24:45.840 ideological lens is uh patriarchy hierarchy uh sexism racism uh slavery all of these things that i have

01:24:55.440 a yes or no answer to yeah right and that's that's the thing what she is doing is compressing 0.93

01:25:01.040 everything down into actually a very thin band of yes or no uh and so she is the the purpose of emily

01:25:08.600 wilson's work is to reinterpret it through this modern lens even though that actually doesn't properly

01:25:14.660 represent what the person speaking what homer was trying to actually describe to us and so this is why

01:25:20.120 uh i'm very much against her translation so uh we've got in fact you know articles talking about

01:25:25.260 how she translated the odyssey and i thought i'd go through them um so uh the interviewer says in your

01:25:31.600 recent review of barry powell's translation of the poems of hesiod you critique the translator's gender

01:25:36.880 bias what does it mean to have a gender bias when translating literature and how do you avoid it in

01:25:41.600 your own translation work why would we not expect homer to have a gender bias when describing

01:25:47.820 odysseus's journey home there are no women on the bloody on the bloody ships like why would we have 1.00

01:25:54.240 a gender unbiased interpretation of this but she says i critiqued his unexamined gender bias

01:26:01.300 oh thank you emily thank you it's 2014 all over again uh i don't think anyone could avoid having

01:26:06.500 biases preferences histories interests identities thoughts judgments and preferences well there we go

01:26:10.660 then what was the problem with a male man in ancient greek telling the story of a man

01:26:16.820 that was then translated by a man later on and it sounds like like she could write her own book

01:26:22.700 about things not translate another book well her job is as a translator so that's what her career has

01:26:29.500 been my point isn't that translators could or should be objective if that means that there is

01:26:34.580 just one way come on no no no right and the thing is though this this is why she kind of eats

01:26:42.240 herself at the end here uh it means there's just if that means that there's just one way to do things

01:26:47.840 that counts as the right way i'm suspicious of that idea it tends to bolster the idea of the

01:26:51.880 objectively right way is the way the elite have always done it oh the elite she is part of the

01:26:56.860 elite by the way obviously um and so okay i i agree with that to be honest let's let's critique the

01:27:05.380 unexamined gender bias i think that a story about men told by a man and then translated by a man should

01:27:12.000 have a bias towards men in it because you are telling the story of men you're not telling the

01:27:18.080 story of women in this uh the story of women is is peripheral to how they interact with odysseus

01:27:25.400 right odysseus is the main part of the story he's the character of the story and so they're not

01:27:31.920 separate to odysseus right we don't need to tell it from i mean you could rewrite it from penelope's

01:27:38.220 point of view if you like but that's not what the odyssey is you'd be doing something else and that's

01:27:41.920 fine do something else if you want to um but she says i tried to think as much as i could about how

01:27:47.340 my own identities and histories might affect my interestedness in the poem as a woman as a gender

01:27:52.900 aware feminist and as an immigrant a mother a writer poet she's an english immigrant to america so

01:27:59.160 you know immigrant is in heavy inverted commas i thought and wrote a lot on the side about the

01:28:05.280 many ways i felt the odyssey mapping onto elements of my own life that's great but why would i want

01:28:11.200 to read it i don't exactly i wouldn't want to it's a shame because they have a good cover yeah yeah it's

01:28:17.820 a lovely cover but that's not done by her uh and so why do we need a new translation and she says

01:28:23.540 the first driving reason for me was that none of the most read contemporary english versions are in a

01:28:28.320 regular meter so she's um translated it into a particular rhyming form because the original is

01:28:36.860 regular metrical and beautifully musical and it felt to me an enormous loss to read the odyssey in a

01:28:41.640 non-metrical free verse which has become entirely the norm which in and of itself is actually a good

01:28:49.220 idea but then why do we have to add the feminist critique on top of it because that's what she wants 1.00

01:28:55.120 to do because that's what she wants to do uh and so we've got uh an example of the translations

01:29:01.460 actually uh and as you can see man she's stripped a lot out of it this this is a problem with modernity 1.00

01:29:06.880 anyway uh because modernity i i genuinely hate the kind of flatness of modern language uh it's fine to

01:29:14.660 use richer language so if we go for the robert fitzgerald uh one which is from under 200 years ago or

01:29:20.520 something uh sing in me muse and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of

01:29:26.420 contending the wanderer harried for years on end after he plundered the stronghold on the proud

01:29:32.060 height of troy he saw the towns and learned the minds of many distant men and weathered many bitter

01:29:37.340 nights and days in his deep heart at sea while he fought only to save his life and bring his shipmates

01:29:43.260 home but not by will nor by valor could he save them for their own recklessness destroyed them all 0.82

01:29:49.080 children and fools they killed and feasted on the cattle of lord helios the son and he who moves 0.94

01:29:54.540 all day through the heaven took from their eyes and the dawn of their return of these adventures news 0.98

01:30:00.540 daughter of zeus tell us in our time i mean that is a beautiful piece of prose absolutely beautiful

01:30:08.060 again it's just phenomenally rich like suddenly you realize you're dealing with something that is

01:30:14.440 timeless this is something you know have deep time that has resonated and it it brings you into a sort

01:30:21.360 of forward motion out of it you know when you're reading you want to read it powerfully yeah um

01:30:27.100 right so i want to i want i want to pick up on something so if you see robert fitzgerald t lawrence

01:30:37.080 robert fagels they say sing in me news and through me tell the story of that man divine poesy goddess

01:30:45.700 daughter of zeus sustain for me this song robert fagels sing to me of the man news the man of twists

01:30:54.680 etc it's i am the vehicle for the muses and it's the muses that are going to use me as an instrument

01:31:03.080 for the narration of it this is precisely how hesiod starts also the theogony yes the muses find him

01:31:11.280 they shame him and they tell him to sing the song and he claims divine inspiration whereas in the in

01:31:17.700 emily wilson it says tell me about a complicated man news tell me how he wandered it's more like

01:31:24.480 i'm a passive recipient i'm a or no no it's it's not so much that it's just news you do it yeah

01:31:32.900 tell me whereas in the others is i'm going to be your instrument it's i'm claiming divine inspiration

01:31:39.960 yes and but this but this is and that's what they did because there wasn't the issue of novelty back

01:31:45.040 then there wasn't the issue of i have to be original to stand out it's more like i have to do a good job in

01:31:51.680 telling you what has happened but this is the way that the ancient greeks viewed this when you when

01:31:56.720 you had that spark of inspiration and you're you know you're writing or you're singing and you don't

01:32:02.080 and and every creative person has felt it where it's suddenly just oh right no i've i'm in the flow

01:32:08.120 you know and i'm just doing the thing and so this is the way that the ancient people thought about this

01:32:13.900 as if the the muse the goddess had had you know taken control of them to bring this forth from them

01:32:21.160 and the language was very flowery he had lots of adjectives yeah whereas in the other bit is more

01:32:27.340 like you know like reading a manual tell me about a complicated man well yeah exactly tell me how he

01:32:32.180 wandered and was lost when he had wrecked the holy town of troy and where he went and who he met

01:32:36.760 exactly the pain he suffered in the storms at sea and how he worked it's more like it's very abrupt

01:32:41.960 it's like all of the magic is lost yeah exactly it's disenchanted yeah it no no it's exactly that

01:32:48.340 this is exactly what adorno and hawkheimer are talking about and their rights to bring this up

01:32:54.040 no they're really right and this is this is like the result of um the sort of dehumanization the

01:32:59.520 scienceization of our language right so t lawrence writing the beginning of the 20th century has got a

01:33:03.980 very similar one to robert fitzgerald which is very rich uh very um human centric right uh sustained

01:33:12.720 for me the song of the various minded man who after he had plundered the innermost citadel of

01:33:17.100 hallowed troy was made to stray grievously about the coasts of men and the sports of their customs

01:33:21.740 good or bad while his heart through all the seafaring ached in agony to redeem himself and bring

01:33:26.200 his company safe home vain hope for them for his fellows he strove in vain for their own 0.66

01:33:32.680 witnessness cast them away the fools to destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted sun

01:33:36.840 wherefore the sun god blotted out the day of their return i i actually prefer the fitzgerald one yeah

01:33:42.780 i think he's it's it's just better but you it's still a very human uh exciting way of telling it

01:33:50.220 in the in that tradition the poets were claiming divine inspiration they weren't claiming any kind

01:33:57.200 of originality yes and the language is meant to show a kind of ebullience of nature it's it is a

01:34:05.180 magical thing yes it is a magical thing and the language must portray it the language i read in

01:34:10.940 emily wilson's translation there the beginning let's not get to emily wilson's one in a second

01:34:16.080 let's get to it in a second because i want to talk about it in depth um but the the rob the robert

01:34:20.780 fagel's one again more recent you can see the dropping off of the descriptive nature of what

01:34:27.680 we're being told so what what what we begin with in robert fitzgerald's is the feel of the thing

01:34:35.640 right the that that's the sort of first that's how it's supposed to be yeah you know of course

01:34:41.680 but there's a kind of first personalism in it so you're getting the feeling and the emotion of it

01:34:50.520 in tts lawrence t lawrence vain hope for them you know this this um you know how you feel about

01:34:58.980 going through this right is it's not just a description of events is a description of the

01:35:05.060 state of mind and of the the the feeling in your breast about going through this thing and this is

01:35:11.640 the deep human connection there you can see that's dropping off in robert fagel's and then we get to

01:35:16.140 emily wilson this is basically a kind of chat gbc interpretation of it it is this is like a first

01:35:23.280 year undergraduate who's told to write with uh precision yes but and take all the emotion out of

01:35:30.940 it exactly this is supposed to be a thing that uh speaks to human emotions yes um i mean you would

01:35:38.660 think so but i mean like for example um uh the robert fagel's one is where it starts to really

01:35:46.700 fall apart sing to me of the man muse the man of twists and turns again notice how it's not through

01:35:51.420 him now it's you know i mean if you just read the original there are so many adjectives it's sometimes

01:35:57.400 tiring but there are so many adjectives precisely to to do this in the in the original lynch in greek

01:36:03.040 from robert sing in me or sustain for me now it's sing to me now i'm i'm i'm the audience of the

01:36:11.600 muse who is now my beck and call and it's like no you were at the muse's beck and call and the muse

01:36:16.620 uses her divine power to flow through you this vast and voluminous story of human experience the

01:36:25.600 difficulties the trials the tribulations and the lesson that you learn at the end is also presented

01:36:31.000 to you at the beginning follow the will of the gods if the gods say these are the divine cows 0.96

01:36:34.920 and you don't eat them you're not fucking eat those cows man you know like you all lessons are 0.98

01:36:40.680 to be learned uh but robert's like yeah so uh the man of twists and turns driven time and again 0.98

01:36:46.100 off course once he had plundered the hallowed hideous troy many cities and men he saw and learned

01:36:50.780 in them and learned their minds many pains he suffered heart sick on the open sea fighting to save

01:36:55.380 his life and bring his comrades home but he could not save them from disaster hard as he strove the 0.98

01:36:59.560 recklessness of their own ways destroyed them all the blind fools they devoured the cattle of the sun 0.97

01:37:03.680 and the sun god wiped them from the sight wiped them from the sight of the day of their return so 0.97

01:37:08.500 again this is kind of just telling me the list of events excuse me she said that she did it because of

01:37:16.380 the meter yes if you if you show if you show these four paragraphs and ask people which doesn't

01:37:25.780 resemble a poem they'll pick emily wilson's yes they will um this is more like someone keeping notes

01:37:34.040 yeah but the the thing is we can already see the the um change from the latter 20th century one 0.69

01:37:40.920 of robert fagel's where he's he is describing that they're blind fools and things like that

01:37:46.080 but there's a kind of i don't know how to describe it like compression in it

01:37:51.880 like he's not bringing you through odysseus he's just telling you about odysseus yeah and the i think

01:38:00.700 you're completely correct and there is a sort of change from robert fagel's onwards so in the

01:38:06.800 mythical paradigm there are all sorts of deities that represent conditions so for instance you have

01:38:13.780 you have uh vengeance the the furies yes people who seek vengeance were frequently portrayed as

01:38:21.640 people who were sort of haunted by the no haunted but consumed by the furies the furies were acting

01:38:28.520 through them and that was something that they were sort of possessed by the furies

01:38:33.860 and this happened to all of to all other add to all other conditions because in the mythical mindsets

01:38:42.260 everything is almost everything is personalized yes and every condition is tied to a person yes and a

01:38:49.700 deity so when they when they sing and they are in that condition where they are inspired they're

01:38:56.420 going to say i'm possessed by the muses the same way that they would say i'm possessed by the furies when

01:39:01.960 people people who seek ventures are possessed by the spirit of the furies i've been possessed by phobos

01:39:07.360 when i'm afraid in battle so you can't do a translation of an epic well entrenched in the mythical

01:39:14.620 tradition without paying attention to myth yes and while disrespecting myth and you have to show

01:39:23.400 precisely that and you do see this this distance with the fagels but especially with wilson but also

01:39:31.700 it's present in lawrence's as well like so look at him um they they the most they ain't the oxen the

01:39:38.120 oxen of most exalted sun wherefore the sun god blotted out the day of their return which sun god

01:39:42.760 which one it's just oh this and everyone is the sun god did this and then you know the sun god's

01:39:48.660 cattle it's like no no no no no it's not the sun god that's a category of god right what you've done

01:39:55.000 now is established a category of sun god and then whichever like i'm not stipulating the god right

01:40:01.580 it's just a god that is a sun god there could be loads of sun gods like there are loads of different

01:40:05.900 sun gods all over the world you know like it's just the sun god so there's just a category of sun god

01:40:11.140 whoever falls into that category has done this for whatever reason but no if you look at robert's

01:40:15.660 one no they feasted on the cattle of lord helios this is a named determined denoted stipulated character

01:40:23.540 lord helios as in he has particular attributes he exists in a particular time in a place there are ways

01:40:30.340 of triangulating who lord helios is through various bits of descriptions of him he's not just a category

01:40:36.900 he is a character he is lord helios the sun who's busy moving the sun through the heavens all day

01:40:43.020 every day and these are his cows don't touch them you know it's not just oh the sun god well i mean

01:40:49.000 which sun god why why is he upset i don't know no no specification no lord helios is stipulated and

01:40:54.720 that's the mythical thing that you were talking about the proper mythical description is name the sun

01:41:00.200 yeah name him he has a name i think the reason they don't name him in later ones is because i think

01:41:06.520 they think that people just won't know who helios is what helios means you know those like the sun

01:41:11.360 yeah but i mean you just say lord helios the sun you know you can do that and that perfectly

01:41:16.140 encapsulates the nature of how the people singing the song originally thought of it like this is this

01:41:23.880 is there is only one lord helios and it also explains to the reader oh i'm dealing with the sun right

01:41:30.800 that's the god so anyway you've got the same problem in robert fagel's but let me get to emily

01:41:34.740 wilson's one and this is just it's so flat right tell me about a complicated man so okay assist

01:41:42.040 gendered individual yeah i mean that that in itself it doesn't describe anything about odysseus right

01:41:50.600 so if you go back to robert's he's skilled in all ways of contending the wonder who harried for

01:41:57.460 years on end he plundered the stronghold okay okay yeah that is a complicated person but it could

01:42:07.740 also be that he was machiavellian and had a deep network of spies or something that'd be a complicated

01:42:13.940 man too or it could be like agamemnon who had all sorts of uh vassals that he had to manage she is 1.00

01:42:20.960 like it doesn't tell us anything she's commenting she's not translating it's not even that it's it

01:42:26.720 she's she's removing information about odysseus from us right she's denying us information about 0.94

01:42:33.760 odysseus a complicated man does not mean a man skilled in all ways of contending right that that

01:42:39.440 is that is a specific like that's a clever warrior is what he's telling us this is a clever warrior you

01:42:45.620 know this is not just you know big like ajax this is not just divinely ordained like achilles no no

01:42:51.080 no this is a man who is who's great through his his skills but she's denied us this information so we

01:42:57.660 don't know i mean this a complicated man who doesn't that describe yeah like that describes everyone

01:43:04.440 in the iliad basically you know that describes literally everyone so we have to go on muse tell me

01:43:10.920 how he wandered and was lost again we've got the very passive well just just just give it to me muse

01:43:15.100 you know just just just lay out you know i'm i'm listening uh give it to me in bullet points

01:43:20.600 yeah exactly give it to me in bullet points right yeah tell me how he wandered and was lost when he

01:43:25.080 had wrecked the holy town of troy well again wrecked siri tell me tell me about a complicated man how

01:43:31.680 he wandered and was lost yeah but like wrecked is a word that doesn't necessarily have the same moral

01:43:38.220 intonation as plundered like wrecked i mean you know my my son yesterday actually wrecked one of my

01:43:44.520 bowls by dropping it on the floor he didn't mean to you know he just dropped it it broke you know

01:43:49.160 oh don't worry son it's just an accident uh you don't accidentally plunder holy ilium you know you

01:43:55.460 don't accident like the the there is an intentionality in the word plundered that she has removed in the 0.97

01:44:01.660 word wrecked you can accidentally wreck something easily accidentally wreck something no this was an

01:44:07.520 intentional 10 year siege where they finally break in and steal and kill everyone in there so it was

01:44:13.580 like the nature of the language she's using is deceptive it is hiding something from it and it's

01:44:20.740 also thinning out like there are there are more intonations on the word plundered than there are

01:44:25.280 and they tell you more about what's actually happened and she's denied that to you so anyway and she

01:44:30.560 carries on and where he went and who he met and pain he suffered in the storms at sea and how he

01:44:35.600 worked to save his life and bring his men home well it's just a list of bullet points like that

01:44:40.820 doesn't tell me the bitter nights and days in his heart deep at sea like how did he how did he go who

01:44:48.140 did he meet well maybe he met people he liked who knows maybe he met people who were just you know

01:44:53.380 friendly and normal the pain he suffered at the storm of sea maybe maybe it wasn't very bad and how he

01:44:58.740 worked to save his life and bring his men home he had the toothache yeah maybe he had a toothache

01:45:02.920 yeah exactly it like you know it's not the bitter days and nights in his deep heart at sea like that

01:45:08.520 tells you oh he suffered this was a long project of suffering that Odysseus went through she's not 0.92

01:45:13.900 telling us this this is deceptive he failed to keep them safe poor fools well it wasn't really his fault 0.99

01:45:20.280 there was it you know for their own recklessness destroyed them all children and fools they killed 0.99

01:45:25.240 and feasted on the capital lord Helios well that's not him failing to keep himself he told them not to 0.98

01:45:30.680 eat the bloody stuff and then you've got her saying well they ate the sun god's cattle again who 0.94

01:45:35.020 which sun god uh and the god kept them from home okay but did he do it on purpose now goddess child

01:45:41.720 of Zeus tell the story for our modern times like this is terrible this is a terrible interpretation

01:45:48.380 that this is this is what C.S. Lewis is talking about when he talks about Gaius and Titus rewriting

01:45:54.340 the language in order to make it so you can't actually make a judgment of whether you approve

01:46:00.500 of this or not because what Robert has done is given us actually the moral intonation the feel

01:46:05.820 of what's happening no Odysseus is suffering it was the recklessness of his men that killed them all

01:46:11.180 and this is the story of his adventures you know already no no there is a there is an intentionality

01:46:18.000 in the Odyssey no you're right there's a complete intentionality but what Emily is doing is stripping

01:46:22.580 that away this I I did on my philosophy degree I did linguistics and aesthetics and this is the

01:46:28.600 kind of thing basically I've been preparing for right because I was I was basically autistic about

01:46:32.220 I was like no this is there is something genuinely important in this and I think this is a great

01:46:36.660 example of how Emily shows to us that by making it a less interesting story and a smaller a shorter

01:46:44.120 story she has immiserated it she has taken something from her own audience whereas Robert Fitzgerald

01:46:50.260 is not only writing correctly in the mythic style but he is already I mean I just want to read more of

01:46:57.260 Robert Fitzgerald's translation I don't want to stop there so I know go on tell me you know bring this out

01:47:02.320 make this magnificent and show me the true human connection that actually is within the Odyssey

01:47:09.440 you know bring me through the sadness bring me through the hardship and bring me to the glory at the end

01:47:14.580 when he's killing all the suitors I'm I'm ready for that but Emily's just like well here's a list of

01:47:20.060 bullet points this happened this happened this happened this happened and you know they all live

01:47:26.680 happily ever after yeah it's like sorry Emily this is this is a terrible translation and you do not

01:47:31.240 understand what you're doing with the translation right you do not understand why people are not

01:47:36.120 impressed with your translation and only the kind of people have been polluted with your kind of 0.99

01:47:40.400 modern education uh think that you're doing a good thing you the only people who like what you're

01:47:45.620 doing are the people who are political allies of yours because what this is is part of a political

01:47:49.680 project like you said to disenchant the world around us and I am opposed to that I'm completely

01:47:55.840 opposed to this project of disenchantment now I want rich personified writings I want us to feel

01:48:02.060 as if the world around us can merit our approval or not and I think we should be the judges of that

01:48:07.680 if you would like to watch the full uncut version that is also uncensored head on over to lotusseaters.com

01:48:14.560 to find out more

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - December 28, 2025

Christmas Podcast ｜ The Odyssey for Modern Audiences

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