A Hellish and Perverse Addiction to the Abnormal.

I especially hope that people take the time to digest her penultimate paragraph:

The most troubling ethical problem with Nolan’s Odyssey concerns the decision to film part of the movie in the occupied territory of Western Sahara, thus normalising the ongoing violence against the indigenous Sahrawi people. It is particularly galling that Nolan used this land simply as a visually striking backdrop for a film that centres, aggrandises and redeems the hero of a territorial war on account of his belated and partial acknowledgment of his own guilt.

— An Uncomplicated Man by Emily Wilson (London Review of Books)

The simple act of holding a camera in my homeland of Western Sahara can be a crime. When Sahrawi film-makers and journalists attempt to document everyday life under Moroccan occupation, they can often end up in prison cells. For the Moroccan regime, a camera in the hands of a Sahrawi threatens its official narrative that Western Sahara is part of Morocco.

In contrast, when celebrated international names in the film industry wish to capture an ideal picture for an epic journey, and decide that our land is exotic enough to shoot the desired scenes, they are welcomed, escorted and granted access by the same authorities that usually deny us that right.

This is the bitter and paradoxical reality in Western Sahara, an occupied territory with many material and immaterial riches. While foreign extractors of all kinds freely plunder Western Sahara’s phosphate minerals, sand, fish, and tomatoes, and commodify our winds, sunlight and picturesque desert landscapes, we the Indigenous Sahrawis are becoming a minority in our own homeland, systematically marginalised, silenced and denied access to the land we roamed as nomads for centuries.

The latest episode of this colonial drama stars the Christopher Nolan blockbuster using parts of our occupied territory as a film set. Sahrawis are aghast that scenes from The Odyssey – an adaptation of Homer’s poem immersed in themes of displacement, family separation, betrayal, and the agonising, decades-long struggle to return home – were shot on our lands. The irony would be comical were it not so tragic: we, the Sahrawi people whose land was used to film parts of the Odyssey, have been living our own brutal odyssey for more than 50 years.

— Mohamed Sleiman Labat

Despite the MAGA overreaction to the bold casting choices in what was bound to be a relatively conservative film, it was Donald Trump that made this colonial backdrop possible:

The Odyssey is the first major Hollywood production to shoot scenes in Western Sahara. This would have been unthinkable prior to 2020, when President Donald Trump broke with decades of US foreign policy and recognized Morocco’s illegally established sovereignty over the territory. The decision was part of a quid pro quo in exchange for Morocco’s normalization of ties with Israel. Now Nolan and crew’s four-day shoot in Dakhla illustrates how quickly Hollywood studios have moved to exploit the opportunities created by Trump’s transactional diplomacy. This subsidized occupation cinema is yet another symptom of the breakdown of whatever remained of a rules-based liberal order.

For Moroccan officials, the presence of The Odyssey crew was a propaganda coup. They have made it clear they see it as just the beginning of Dakhla’s development as a base for international film productions. This is despite the fact that the wider Western Sahara remains the site of an ongoing armed conflict between the country’s military and the Sahrawi pro-independence movement, the Polisario Front. Last month, three Polisario fighters were killed in a Moroccan drone attack close to the 2,700-kilometer sand berm that separates Moroccan-controlled territory from the desert areas held by Polisario.

That's it?

All those beautiful words to validly tear apart everything else, including how she understands what the Black Best Friend is as a trope, and you weren't willing to say anything else about just how bad Black people were/are treated during production as well as on screen? Potentially on purpose, for attention? As another one of Nolan's critiqueable decisions in this creation process? You recognize the presence of racism in all of this, but weren't willing to even say the word? Just "inevitably deplored". Girl. Understatement.

If you're not going to actually address HOW the antiblackness had an effect on Nolan's casting choice (how he had to have known they'd have mistreated Lupita's announcement, with ZERO protection for her throughout the advertising because it brought attention, and then mistreated her as a Black woman WITHIN this version of the story) then don't bother bringing it up at all.

Like, yes it is. The love between Heathcliff and Cathy is there. It is a tragic story about their selfish, destructive, unconsummated love for each other.

The classist, racist society around them made their love for each other impossible, not because of any one character alone but simply because of who they are in the world they live in. Society is a villain. It begets the abuse, the anger, the cycle of violence and revenge.

The constraints of societal expectations and norms, internalized by Cathy in particular, are what ultimately deprive them of their love for one other.

Cathy is allowed to run wild as a child and is more or less unrestricted by the typical societal expectations of someone of her position. In her youth, she doesn’t see this wild and carefree part of herself as something to be ashamed of until she meets the Lintons.

After meeting Edgar and Isabella, Cathy becomes ashamed of herself and ultimately ashamed of Heathcliff, as a reflection of the most personal, intimate and unencumbered parts of herself. The parts that society thus asks to be exchanged for acceptance.

But unlike Cathy, Heathcliff doesn’t have the luxury of just deciding one day to fit in. His otherness is insurmountable and therefore the choice has to be made. Join society, be respected, secure yourself or give in to love.

Cathy is SO young in this story. She is incredibly sheltered and naive which makes her spoiled, entitled, crass and cruel. She never stops being that way because she never stops rejecting the expectations of society. She cannot let go of that part of herself that loves Heathcliff and loved being free as a child.

She is literally driven mad by having to participate in the role society expects of her (childbirth leading to infection) and ultimately she dies a young girl, heartbroken and longing to be free.

Healthcliff and Cathy’s love is so interlaced into who they are, she haunts his every thought even after she’s died.

"Without a tub of wax for my ears – which Himesh Patel’s ever anxious Eurylochus, Odysseus’s doomed right-hand man, uses to sail safely past the Sirens – I was exposed to the full din of thumping sticks, staffs, swords and clashing armour, thunderbolts, crashing waves, grunts, screams, toppling palaces and burning temples. But unlike Matt Damon, the wax-free Odysseus who is tied to the mast as he is conveyed past the Sirens (naked ladies reclining on some uncomfortable-looking rocks), I gazed at the shipwrecks and bloodbaths without any agony of emotion."

and

"There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material. But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the characterisations in the poem."

Well, that tracks for a Nolan film -

"The couple have no chemistry and nothing in common. Throughout his wanderings, the uxorious Odysseus clings to a little doll figure, intended to represent his wife (like the spinning top clutched by Leonardo di Caprio in Inception); the real woman is barely more interesting."

Yikes -

"If you’re not going to compose a script in Homeric Greek, or even in metrical English verse, you might as well use something like conversational American English. But writing dialogue is not one of Nolan’s talents. The language is relentlessly expository, humourless and flat."

The lines she calls out in this section will probably make a least a couple of my friends laugh incredulously -

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

....oh my GOD, EMILY -

"The most troubling ethical problem with Nolan’s Odyssey concerns the decision to film part of the movie in the occupied territory of Western Sahara, thus normalising the ongoing violence against the indigenous Sahrawi people. It is particularly galling that Nolan used this land simply as a visually striking backdrop for a film that centres, aggrandises and redeems the hero of a territorial war on account of his belated and partial acknowledgment of his own guilt."

in anaïs mitchell's own words, hadestown was conceived in the wake of the economic and climate devastation brought on by hurricane katrina. i don't think i need to belabour the concept of hades building a wall to keep the enemy out—explicitly and repeatedly named as poverty. nor do i feel the need to dumb down the environmental message. by hoarding capital for the sake of it, hades destroys the environment for the working class who he requires as fodder for (in the words of william blake) his "dark, satantic mills."

this message isn't particularly subtle, and it shouldn't be.

the vision orpheus presents with his song is not only one of ecological restoration with the seasons, but also community and egalitarian collectivization "if no one takes too much, there will always be enough."

in finishing his song, orpheus succeeds where eurydice cannot: not only setting the seasons right, but returning humanity to the anonymized workers by unionizing them.

i think that, as is the case with a lot of theatre, it's easy to anonymize the chorus. they're extra voices to round out a song or bodies used for the dance break. in hadestown, this anonymity is purposeful. whether above ground or below it, the chorus have been so thoroughly ground under hades' boot that they do not even have the luxury of individuality. their identity is reduced simply to workers.

the workers keep their heads and voices down because it is the only way they can survive, wretched as this existence is. they are not allowed to hold onto their old identities because voices that are too loud can be raised in protest and music. see field hollers, work songs, sea shanties—or chanties; it's no coincidence that two of the songs most explicitly about the toll this backbreaking labour takes on the body are called chants.

moreover, the work that they do—building a wall that will never be finished, extracting resources—isn't merely productive in the sense that it's furthering hades' capital. this form of labour is specifically punitive in a way that is meant to break their spirits. the workers "dig [their] own graves for a living." penal labour is destructive rather than productive. workers are given monotonous and repetitive tasks meant to punish them for a perceived wrongdoing. tasks like moving stones from one pile to another, turning crank machines, or walking on treadmills. the repetitive nature of these tasks was meant to break both body and spirit with no focus on rehabilitation because you are never getting out of prison. we see examples of this hard labour in victorian england, in chattel slavery, and around the world today.

it's easy to get swept up in the romance and forget that orpheus is responsible not only for bringing eurydice out of hell, but the workers as well. when threatened with a strike, hades (encouraged by the fates) breaks up the union. orpheus is separated from eurydice, yes, but also from his fellow workers. his impossible task is meant to break up his community, because community is harder to quell than individual rebels.

Who tf is this? This doesn't look like any kind of Erik.

Granted it's set in modern day but....

Is that really all we're doing? Creepy eyes and a scar? Ok...

Yes, you can make very valid arguments for pirating textbooks, medical texts or other books that are necessary for your survival or the betterment of your life. But as everyones derogatory comments in the notes already show, we all know Booktok books don't fall in that category. If you think you have a right to read because reading will make you more intelligent or empathetic, you still must admit that some books have no such effect. They're just entertainment, and thats fine, but it's also a luxury! It is not something you NEED, let alone something you have some unalienable right to. And honestly I don't even care that much if you pirate a book (some people really cant afford to buy it or have no other way to access it), but to act as if you deserve to read everything you want for free even though you could afford to buy it, is pure entitlement.

You are not entitled to perpetual "rent" from every person who encounters your work. It is unreasonable to demand payment from people who have no ability to pay. A right to be compensated for creating a work is not the same as a right to extract payment from every possible reader forever.

Once your books leave the publisher's printers, they become physical objects circulating in the world. You no longer have the authority to dictate every use of those objects. People may lend them to friends, donate them to libraries, resell them to used bookstores, or give them away. None of these actions requires additional payment to you because your compensation was tied to the creation and publication of the work, not to every subsequent transfer or use.

The same principle applies to digital copies. If someone uploads your book to the internet and it reaches people who would never have purchased it in the first place, that does not necessarily deprive you of income. Your payment came from the publishing agreement that enabled your work to be printed, distributed, and sold. The existence of a digital copy does not automatically create a new obligation for every recipient to pay you, particularly when they lack the means to do so.

The value created by your labor is the book that enters circulation through publication. That is the tangible product of your work and the basis on which you are compensated. Digital copies shared among people who cannot afford to buy the book do not generate additional value from which further payment can reasonably be demanded.