This kind of assessment creates a false dichotomy of the Smart Reaction of Scholars and the Stupid Reaction of Hoi Polloi, when there are plenty of classical scholars (hi) who also very much dislike what Nolan has done with this text. My thoughts on the film are more aligned with the people bewailing the Nobody episode. Now not all those people have the toolbox I have for criticizing the film, and certainly some of them are being a bit myopic and histrionic about XYZ pet peeve, but that doesn’t mean that they’re seeing problems that aren’t there. I’m one of Martin’s fellow classicists, and I seriously disliked what this film was doing as an adaptation. I’ve had conversations with several of my colleagues who’ve seen the film and had similar thoughts to me. So putting it this way is at best an oversimplification, at worst insufferably smug and elitist.
And frankly, I think in this the year of our lord 2026, we can raise the bar higher than “All publicity about Homer is good publicity.” For one, I think we should also ask whether engagement with Homer, or with any aspect of antiquity, is well thought out and well crafted, or at least has some interest in the original beyond the surface—which as I note in my review linked above, I don’t think this is. And trust me, I know that Classics is kinda desperate for engagement right now and some professors are probably trying not to piss in anyone’s cornflakes lest we lose potential students. But when guys like Christopher Nolan (not one of Martin’s fellow classicists, but one of his fellow old white men with cultural capital) just use antiquity to bemoan the broad decline of civilization, I think we should question that. The film’s political resonances are weird and, to my mind at least, parrot a lot of conservative rhetoric. Nolan’s changes to the text are key to that; they are not neutral and have narrative and political implications. Regardless of whether or not he meant it to come off that way, I think it’s worth talking about, especially given the ways that classical antiquity, as supposed paragon of ~Western Civilization~, is utilized on the political right.
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