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Wilson’s review, though, for me highlights one of the biggest challenges of the Internet age. We’ve made experts of amateurs. Scott Galloway, for example, was a marketing guru, turned prof, turned lifestyle guru. In raising sons, he is no different than anyone else, but he expounds with great aplomb so people listen. Similarly, Wilson’s review of the movie is largely a literary review. She is extremely qualified to critique text, with degrees in Renaissance and Classical literature. But this is a movie.

To use her own language, ‘But there is no restraint’ in Wilson’s review. Her comments are a grab bag of complaints about the language, personal feelings, and snippets of history. She had two biases she barely acknowledges. She doesn’t like Nolan’s films: ‘Unlike some of Nolan’s other films, The Odyssey is not boring thanks to the source material.’ She goes on to say, ‘It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle.’ She shows herself to be biased against film and broad-audience material within the first paragraph of her review.

We all have biases. I picked up Wilson’s Odyssey because she’s a woman. I’m definitely biased toward women.

But Wilson’s biggest bias is one she didn’t acknowledge. She’s biased towards text. Given her field, she’s likely always gravitated to language. She also likely sees this as a strength. But this is a film review, not literary criticism. Her review barely mentioned visuals, and when she did, she couldn't identify what was missing. For example, she says, ‘I gazed at the shipwrecks and bloodbaths without any agony of emotion.’ What was missing in the visuals? How in the language of film could this have been performed better?

Overall, her critique framed her as the elite. Her essay included a dig at Nolan’s college (UCL being less prestigious than her Oxford degree). She also notes that her teenagers enjoyed it, implying that learned adults like her are above that. Her list of wonderful adaptations of the classics is largely books and plays.

From this rarified perch, though, she missed noticing how little her review discusses the film's visuals. For example, any viewer would see the ways in which bloodbath was implied, in fairly common visual shorthand for war movies—a couple of dead guys standing in for the many slain…

She had valid points about how Nolan handled the female characters. (I’ve written a critique of his handling of them as well.) She could have focused her argument on what was missing textually, as a literature specialist, without the extraneous snark. Why didn’t she acknowledge that her expertise doesn’t extend to film criticism? As I’ve mentioned before, academia is prone to overestimating its ability to translate its skills beyond its field. She’s replicating existing elitist tropes about dumbing down language for the masses and the primacy of visuals. Movies are for the hoi polloi, but text is for the learned…

I hope her article helps people see that broad humanities education is essential. Learning to critique text does not make you inherently capable of being able to critique visuals based on that text. I’m a voracious reader, often reading three books a week. While I’ve taken literary criticism courses, textual criticism is not my field. I can like or dislike books, but my points will be personal, not based on the work of literary criticism.

That’s actually what Wilson wrote: a personal take on a film she didn’t like. She’s allowed to dislike films, as is everyone. But she didn’t acknowledge how her bias toward language and dislike of Nolan biased her review. Even worse, she modeled for all the online bros that their equally personal reviews could stand in as the be-all and end-all of critical thought.

As I’ve written before, we’ve democratized thought to the point where the worst and best coexist in a milieu of confusion. When academics employ their norms in the broader sphere without acknowledging their biases, they do not make the culture of public thought better. They often just replicate problematic norms and validate a general dislike of academia. They also give fodder for the worst of mansplainers to continue to ply their dumb trade.”

So if you have epilepsy or any sensory issues regarding strobing lights, be wary.

Me when I contact IT and tell them yes I restarted and followed any instructions I could but computer still angry and IT says they are escalating this because it is an actual issue: I am getting a good grade in service desk ticket. Something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve.

This conversation would not exist if it was a bi flag or a pan flag or an ace flag

Aight here’s a trans woman who’s narrative is thematically linked with her transness in a way that enriches both her story, her characterization, and the story around her who doesn’t ever mention that she’s trans (but y’know she has a trans flag in her room in the background subtly like you asked)

the soviet union wasn’t some radical departure from the russian empire. it was simply the same empire in a new uniform. red flags and marxist rhetoric instead orthodox crosses or symbols of tasrdom. the core goal always stayed the same: control the non-russian peoples by any means necessary.

on paper, the ussr was a “friendship of nations,” a voluntary union of 15 republics. in reality, it was a centralized empire run out of moscow. the republics had no real say in foreign policy, trade, or even their own leadership. step out of line? you’d face censorship, arrests, or worse. this is well documented and it's gross that people try to downplay this because it challenges the theory they've consumed.

the soviet regime cracked down on local languages, histories, and identities. flags were banned. historians and artists were persecuted. even alphabets were changed with non-russian scripts rewritten in cyrillic to sever cultural memory. it was pure russification.

ethnic cleansing was policy. in the 1940s, stalin deported entire nationalities: chechens, crimean tatars, kalmyks, and others. shoved into cattle cars, sent to siberia or central asia and many never made it. half of the deported crimean tatars died. scholars now call these acts what they were: crimes against humanity, even genocide. ukraine’s holodomor (1932–33) was another brutal example. millions died of famine caused by soviet grain policies, right as the regime was wiping out ukrainian culture and religious life.

the baltics suffered too. in 1941 and 1949, tens of thousands of estonians, latvians, and lithuanians were deported, targeting everyone from political leaders to schoolteachers. all while moscow insisted it was promoting “friendship.” and after wwii, the ussr exported this "model "friendship" to central eastern europe. poland, hungary, czechoslovakia, east germany, and others swapped nazi rule for soviet occupation. local revolts were crushed (hungary in ’56, czechoslovakia in ’68). sovereignty was tolerated only when it served moscow.

even economically, the ussr followed the imperial playbook. resources flowed to the center; local populations got pollution and poverty. ukraine powered soviet industry with coal and grain but saw little investment or infrastructural support. the baltic states were productive yet politically silenced.

kazakhstan? used for 456 nuclear tests without consent, leaving over a million exposed to radiation. uzbekistan and turkmenistan were turned into cotton monocultures, poisoning land and water for moscow’s benefit. sound familiar? it’s the same exploitative dynamic seen in british india or the congo.

and the legacy lives on. russia’s invasions of georgia (2008), crimea (2014), and ukraine (2022) aren’t accidents. they’re rooted in an old imperial belief that former soviet republics can’t exist without moscow’s blessing. the kremlin still pushes “russkiy mir”, this insane idea that russia has the right to “protect” russian speakers wherever they are. but this protection has meant war, occupation, and death, especially for russian-speaking ukrainians.

ukraine’s refusal to bow to this narrative is exactly why it’s under attack. the empire might’ve changed flags, but its logic never died. and the fight for true decolonization is far from over.

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Then maybe...

Maybe...