Wave Celestial Intent

Here’s a post that is a little different from what I usually write. I needed somewhere to share my thoughts, and I think this is the perfect place.

After a conversation with my friend @igiulss, I wanted to share my analysis and perspective on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey here. I’m going to try to explain how I understood the movie, what I took away from it, and the message that, in my opinion, Nolan was trying to convey through his reinterpretation of Homer’s story.

Before I begin, just a few things to keep in mind.

First of all, this post will obviously contain a lot of spoilers. I’m going to talk openly about certain scenes, several major revelations, and the ending of the film. So if you haven’t seen it yet and don’t want to know anything, please don’t read any further!

Secondly, everything you are about to read is simply my personal analysis and my own reaction to the film. I am absolutely not claiming that mine is the only correct interpretation, or that my opinion is somehow more valid or legitimate than anyone else’s. You are completely free to share my interpretation, to have understood certain scenes differently, or to disagree with me.

If you feel like reacting, leaving a comment, or sharing your own perspective in a reblog, I would genuinely love to read it! I only ask that everyone remain kind and respectful. We can have very different interpretations of the same work without needing to fight over who is "right" 😉

I should also warn you that my ideas will probably be fairly raw and, at times, a little scattered. This post will be more like thoughts put down on paper than a proper academic essay, although I have still tried to keep some coherence throughout.

I didn’t want to spend weeks building a perfectly structured text for two reasons. The first is that English is not my native language: if I write a hundred-page essay in French, it will probably take me a million years to translate it afterwards. The second is that I know myself: if I spend too long thinking about the structure, the wording, and every tiny detail, I will probably keep postponing it forever.

One last note: I will use the name Ulysse rather than Odysseus, since that is the form traditionally used in French.

Like, you're born in Atlanta Georgia sometime in the 1880s. Your mother is a white English immigrant. Your father is an African American lawyer who has managed to become fairly wealthy off his practice.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle claims that your parents were married, but they almost certainly weren't or, if they were, they probably had to go elsewhere to get married and their marriage wouldn't have been recognised in Georgia. Realistically, they were facing huge amounts of prejudice that are only increased when you are born.

(Your mother openly says, in front of you when you're older, that it is a “great misfortune” that you were born with darker skin than even your father.)

Then disaster strikes. Your father dies. Your mother can't stand to stay in America without him and returns to England.

She does not take you with her. She says this is because of your health. It's just way healthier for you to stay where you are, as a parentless mixed race child in the Jim Crow era American South. Rather than going with your only living relative to England (which, while obviously still very racist, at least doesn't have any actual laws against people like you existing).

Your mother meets a new man. A merchant. He's white. She signs over all your father's money and investments to him when they marry. She doesn't tell him about you. She's worried he wouldn't understand. She later explains that this was a major ordeal for her. That she struggled in vain to resist the urge to send for you for three years, until it got too much to bear.

So now you live in England. In a cottage on the estate that was partly paid for by your father's money.

You're not allowed to leave the cottage, because if anyone sees you outside in the daylight then they might find out that you're black. While you're in the cottage, even (apparently) at nighttime, you are made to wear long gloves and a fucking mask, so that nobody can accidentally look through the window and find out that you're black.

Your mother visits you occasionally. She tells you that you're her “own girlie and mother's pet” whether you're “dark or fair”. When her husband comes to see what's going on, you and your nurse get shoved out the back door so he won't see you and find out that you're black.

Unfortunately, your stepfather has noticed that his wife keeps randomly going off in the middle of the night to visit a mysterious cottage where the only inhabitant seem to be a weirdly secretive servant woman and a strange masked figure, and has decided that something Fucked Up is going on.

So he goes to consult the Great Detective Sherlock Holmes. Normally, the Great Detective Sherlock Holmes can work this kind of shit out in his sleep, but unfortunately your family is so dysfunctional that you override his borderline magical deduction abilities, and the best theory he can come up with is either “secret affair” or “weirdly convoluted blackmail scheme”.

Fortunately however, this does lead to your stepfather eventually meeting you and finding out who you are. Including the fact that you're black.

Turns out he's fine with it.

Like completely. Quite possibly more so than your own mother is. Turns out there was no need for the traumatic abandonment, the years of separation and then the even more traumatic being forced to live like The Man In The Iron Mask in a cottage in the middle of nowhere.

Nope. Turns out you could have been allowed to go outside in daylight this entire time. You all go back to the big house (that was paid for in part with your father's investments) together and we never find out what happens to you.

I mean… what. The. Fuck.

Like, I'm not expecting Sir Arthur CD to have written an entire child psychology textbook to go with what was meant to be a fun little short story about racial tolerance, but holy shit.

Admitedly, when I approached Lucy, I chose to do so by including her in a massive (500k) fusion of BBC Sherlock & Star Trek, Omegaverse, and she has a whole long story arc.

Pedestrian traffic lights

When I read Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey – where she made a point of keeping it the same length as the original text – I was shocked to realize that very little of it was about Odysseus’ famous journeys and adventures – the Cyclops, Scylla and Charybdis, the Lotus-Eaters, the Sirens, his men releasing the winds, Circe, and so forth. All of that is told in flashback, and all of that is 4 chapters out of 24. That’s right. They’re less than one-fifth of the text (in page count as well as chapter count). They take up a little less space that Telemachus’ journey to see Menelaus, which starts off the book and is not part of popular common knowledge of the Odyssey (when people talk about accuracy to the the text, the fact that this was included at all is probably one of the things they’re thinking of!)

The rest of the book – i.e. the majority of it – is the events that happen after Odysseys leaves Calypso. His meeting with the princess Nausicaa, getting help from her father, returning to Ithaca, everything with the suitors. Odysseus on Ithaca isn’t the conclusion (as it has been in most popular depictions and descriptions of The Odyssey that I’ve seen), it’s over half of the story!

You’re talking accuracy? You are never going to get an adaptation that distributes its time that way, and virtually everyone watching it would be disappointed if it did!

And the clincher, also the thing that made this translation really make an impression on me, is that Emily Wilson starts off Odysseus’ tale of his fantastical adventures, with:

Wily Odysseus, the lord of lies, answered:

This translation is implying that all the monsters and magic in his adventures could be Odysseus just making shit up. No adaptational divergences from the specifics of those adventures even comes close to the kind of earthquake that reading of the text is.

In terms of the history – other people with more knowledge have said this too, but it’s impossible to have a “historically accurate” adaptation of The Odyssey because the original wasn’t historically accurate! The most common estimates for when it was composed are around the 700s BC (though there’s certainly debate ). The original events that inspired it, if they occured at all (which is also debated) would most likely have been in the 1200s BC, and would have been far smaller scale in terms of number of ships, number of men, and length of time. Neither the logistics nor the technology nor the pooulation size of Mycenaean Greece would have been able to sustain a war of anything like the size of the one described in The Iliad. It’s transposing 700s BC-scale-wars (probably the scale of wars in the Middle East, like Assyria’s conquests; 700s BC Greece was only starting to have governments and writing again after the multi-century impact of the Late Bronze Age Collapse) into the 1200s BC.

So there’s no way to get historical accuracy. Put it in the Late Bronze Age, where it was set, and it’s out of step with the kind of war that could have existed at the time. Put it any time in the Iron Age, when that scale of warfare could exist, and it’s wildly discordant with actual historical events. It is fantasy. It’s kind of like the Arthurian mythos, whose faint historical roots are, if anywhere, in the early middle ages and whose knights-and-castles aesthetic is in the late middle ages.

Watching the Odyssey really supercharged listening to such. Especially coming at a moment where a work of fiction I've been working on for months comes to a break point so I can make progress on other things that don't require complete focus.

In no particular order,

Pillar of Garbage's, "The Odyssey: An Alphabet of Obsolescence"

Digs into (as you my expect) a, b, c's of the epic's history, how history has interacted with the epic, lore, context. Whether that's the wierd theory that the epic was set in Denmark, the scandal over the Pope translation, oral literature, neoplatonicism, Ulysses, etc.

Dig, "Was Homer a Historian? Archaeology, Troy, and the Trojan War"

Examines the ways that the epic has multiple viewpoints: the bronze age in which it's set, years of oral transmission, and the archaic period. Looks at the various sources outside of the epic to corrobrate or be in conversation with the epic.

Wine Dark Sea's, "Agamemnon, King of Men: The Glory and the Fall | A Tale from Greek Mythology".

Ah, yes, the Iliad's figure I most like to hate on. Ah, man of the cursed house of Atredes. Wait, no that's the other cursed house. Atreus. Video goes over the twists and turns of that cursed house. Well, the Aggamenon branch of it at least.

Captainmidnight's analysis of Nolan's Odyssey, "The Tragic Brilliance of Odysseus (The Odyssey)"

Really focusing on how Nolan's interpretation examines how when you/we live in a rules based society, how that society can break down when some people think rules don't apply to them.

Spectacles analysis of the role of Sinon in Nolan's Odyssey "The Odyssey isn't about Odysseus"

Trademovies Podcast "The Odyssey Is Woke. And It Rules."

Examines Nolan's Odyssey in the context of Nolan's evolving pov from Batman "Mass surveillance is fine as long as it's Batman" to "Nope, even when the hero does the thing, it's still breaking the world"

Ezra Klein "Christopher Nolan's Finest Trick | The Ezra Klein Show"

worf (has barely been on qo’nos): ”the targ is a beautiful and honorable animal.” end of interview. 0/10.

jadzia: in-depth and quite disgusting explanation about how the symbiont works, including the transplantation process. way too many medical details are included but molly seems to like it. 5/10.

garak: in-depth explanation about the different animals and plants on prime with a long detour into what types of poetry have been written about each one. he goes home and drinks himself to sleep afterwards. alcohol poisoning/10.

The governor’s office said it had to overhaul a system former Gov. Glenn Youngkin “gutted.”

Since taking office in January, Gov. Abigail Spanberger has restored the voting rights of more than 66,000 Virginians who lost them due to felony convictions, her office announced Friday.

“The right to vote is foundational to who we are as Americans,” Spanberger said in a statement accompanying the announcement.

Virginia is one of three states that automatically strip someone’s right to vote after they’re convicted of a felony. The governor has sole authority to give someone these rights back, either through the restoration process once they’ve completed their felony sentence or via a pardon.

Spanberger sharply criticized the process used by her predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin, who faced intense scrutiny over a case-by-case review system that led to significantly fewer restorations each year he was in office.

“I’m proud that — after contending with my predecessor's efforts to deny Virginians their fundamental rights — we have restored the rights of more than 66,000 Virginians who have served their time,” Spanberger said.

“These Virginians deserve the right to use their vote, make their voices heard, and be recognized as contributing citizens to our Commonwealth and country.”

Youngkin rolled back the automatic restoration process used by his three predecessors and reviewed each application on an individual basis. A massive dip in people who got their voting rights back followed.

According to annual reports the secretary of the commonwealth is required to share, Youngkin restored the voting rights of fewer than 10,000 Virginians during his entire tenure.

In a little over six months, Spanberger is at 66,085.

Spanberger’s administration says it has since reshaped the restoration process, reinstating practices to review applicants and to “proactively” find Virginians who have lost their right to vote.

This includes removing a Youngkin-era requirement for applicants to share if they have “paid all fines, fees and restitution.”

In its press release, the governor’s office says Youngkin “gutted” the system he inherited.

According to the governor’s office, Youngkin’s administration did not share records of denials with the incoming Spanberger administration. They said Youngkin also didn’t share the applications that weren’t reviewed when he left office and she took over.

“Over the past six months, our work has been guided by Governor Spanberger’s deep belief that Virginians who served their time deserve their civil rights,” said Secretary of the Commonwealth Candi Mundon King. “That is why our team reviews every individual who has their voting rights restored, working with our law enforcement partners to make sure we get it right.”

Most of Youngkin’s first-year rights restorations came under an expedited process started by former Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell and expanded by Democratic successors Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam.

McDonnell automatically restored voting rights to nonviolent offenders who completed their sentences and probation or parole, paid their court costs and finished all court-ordered conditions.

After the Virginia Supreme Court overturned McAuliffe’s blanket executive order that would have restored rights to 206,000 people, he used a streamlined process to individually restore them for more than 173,000 people.

Northam then removed a requirement that people must complete parole before they can get their rights back. He restored rights to more than 126,000 Virginians during his time in office.

In her statement, Spanberger encouraged people to support a constitutional amendment on Virginia’s Nov. 3 ballot that would take it out of the governor's hands and make the voter restoration process automatic for people who finish their felony sentences.

The governor called the disenfranchisement policy “a shameful relic of our Jim Crow past.”

Virginia’s constitutional disenfranchisement rule was partly struck down earlier this year in a landmark federal court ruling that narrows the disqualifying convictions to a list of certain crimes.

However, the implementation of that process has sparked concerns that people who shouldn’t have ever lost their voting rights for their conviction have been left in registration limbo.

I'm hurt that you think I would make this up. I take Bill Clinton's inhuman rizz very seriously.

Editing to add the picture itself, since huh, I spent an hour making a thing you can't really see.

Art work melded together form Waterhouse's Circe Invidiosa, Borialis, and Caravagio's Medusa. I considered using one of the twenty million photos of myself cosplaying Medusa, but generally I'm smiling and having a good time turing other people to statues. Oddly enough the icon I was using was something I drew rather than image mashup.

That reflects a bigger part of Darcy's character that I've not seen pointed out much. He's rich and handsome. All the ladies want to marry him because he's rich. He's a Hot Commodity. Problem is, he doesn't want to be a Hot Commodity. He wants to be Liked for his own sake.

Just as he doesn't want to marry a girl who needs him for his wealth, he doesn't want to dance with a girl just because she needs a partner. He wants someone to care for him personally.

Then here comes Lizzy who basically says "I don't care how rich and handsome you are, I want someone who respects me and who I can honestly admire, and even when you dance with me I'd rather psychoanalyze you than engage in pointless flirtation, because I want to know your real self."

and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men

Translation: I'm not doing charity work right now

This is what he thinks of the assembly: Darcy, on the contrary, had seen a collection of people in whom there was little beauty and no fashion, for none of whom he had felt the smallest interest

Also, Elizabeth at the Netherfield ball is trying to figure out if he screwed over Wickham, she's not trying to know his "real self" in a romantic way, she's trying to find out if he's the worst example of a human being she's ever met and she already dislikes him. She has a massive crush on Wickham himself at the time.

The quote you want is here:

“My beauty you had early withstood, and as for my manners—my behaviour to you was at least always bordering on the uncivil, and I never spoke to you without rather wishing to give you pain than not. Now, be sincere; did you admire me for my impertinence?” “For the liveliness of your mind I did.” “You may as well call it impertinence at once. It was very little less. The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking, and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused and interested you, because I was so unlike them. Had you not been really amiable you would have hated me for it: but in spite of the pains you took to disguise yourself, your feelings were always noble and just; and in your heart you thoroughly despised the persons who so assiduously courted you. There—I have saved you the trouble of accounting for it; and really, all things considered, I begin to think it perfectly reasonable. To be sure you know no actual good of me—but nobody thinks of that when they fall in love.”

But Elizabeth didn't do this on purpose, she actually disliked Darcy. And he liked her way before she understood him.

And it feels so bad to be one of the Unattached. You have to sit there and watch other people having a lot of fun, while knowing that you were Not Selected and wondering if it's really just happenstance and a numbers game or if there's something about you that makes you a bad dance partner. (If you're prone to emotional dysregulation it's worse, but I suspect it's still pretty uncomfortable in general.)

With the types of dances happening in Jane Austen - country dances, cotillons, reels, quadrilles, etc. - you are either doing it with a partner or you're sitting on the sidelines. There is no "well, I'll muster up my courage and join in on my own" or "I can dance with a bunch of single friends in a group." They're also not particularly intimate forms of dance, where it's reasonable to be picky — you're hardly touching each other. It's just a social activity that's required to be done in pairs.

Being weird about who you'll dance with, whether it's "I'll only dance with my fiance" or "I'll only dance with people who are attractive enough," is antisocial behavior in this context. It doubles when you consider that Regency women had to wait to be asked to dance by men rather than taking the initiative, and that it was generally frowned upon to form same-gender dance couples.