WHAT IF IT WAS PUUURRRPLEE

that is a fucking insane amount of donuts, theres like 6 people in this room

happy new year -------------_--------------------

The question remains:

The poem frames "him" as subordinate in several ways, not just to the narrator ("i fuck him on the floor": not that getting fucked is inherently subordinating, but the narrator has all the agency in the phrase, "he" doesn't decide what happens or where) but also to "his wife". She has filled the house with chintz, meaning it wasn't his decision or his actions. "Filled" is also a choice of words that suggests that there is no space for him in the home: the only place left for him, not already filled, is the floor. To me this framing invokes the trope of the henpecked husband, whose wife has taken dominion over the home and who has ceded its control to her because it, as the domestic space, is "supposed" to be hers.

This trope, of course, is misogynist in its normative rendition: it reinforces gender essentialism, it erases the significant material benefits such "henpecked" men derive from the domestic labor of their spouses, and it dismisses women's expressions of suffering and attempts at negotiating terms for their relationships as "nagging." In the narrator's dismissal of the wife's possessions as "chintz" (frivolous, feminine, contrasted with what is "real") we can see this same misogyny at play.

The narrator's misogyny, and the central fact of the poem which is that the husband is getting fucked by someone other than the wife, quite possibly flip the power dynamics of the poem on their heads. The wife is now subordinated: both by her social marginalization based on gender (a marginalization which drives her into the home and confines her there, like OP so cogently points out! As "he" has run out of room in the home and can only get fucked on the floor, so has she run out of room socially; the only place she can control and make decisions like filling it with chintz is the home), and by the narrator who is fucking her husband in her home.

There's an additional dynamic in reading the narrator as male, which most readers seem to have done: it invokes the particular, bitter misogyny that men-loving-men sometimes direct at women expressing femininity. There's an envy to it, of course--straight and straight-passing women get to (are forced to) express desire for men, have sex with men, marry men, love and be loved by men. His wife gets to be his wife: the narrator gets to fuck him, in their home. Straight and straight-passing women also get to (are forced to) perform femininity: they can buy chintz and decorate with it, without being devastatingly punished for it like people presumed to be men are from the time they're babies. The envy mixes with misogyny to produce disdain, disgust, dismissal. We can read the narrator fucking him on the floor of their home as an expression of power and dominance (again, not that the fucking has to mean the narrator is topping, or that topping is inherently dominant, but the phrasing is stark: "i fuck him", the narrator acts upon him as an object/recipient), not just over him but over the wife in absentia as well.

Noting that "to keep it real" is AAVE, we can also introduce race as a potential lens; is the narrator, despite their dominant language, subordinated based on race in this dynamic? Is the narrator not just claiming a dominant role, but perhaps also stereotyped and limited into it as a Black person? Is the disdain of the chintz also an expression of class difference, of a rejection of the display of white wealth on the part of the wife? This is pretty speculative, of course: the use of AAVE could also be appropriative, which would suggest another tactic by the narrator to lay claim to masculinity and toughness, since non-Black people often use AAVE to try to invoke racist stereotypes of strength, violence and resilience.

I think one of the things that makes the poem so compelling for being so short is the struggle at the heart of it, this complicated jostling for power between three people and their actions over time (the wife "has filled" the house, in the past: the narrator fucks him in the present, perhaps in the habitual). Who controls the house? Who controls "him"?

1) calling it inaccurate to the myth is an UNDERSTATEMENT dear anon.

2) Nolan FUNDAMENTALLY misunderstands what the Odyssey is about and why it is such a significant text to greek and western culture as a whole. The slogan of the movie is: One man who defies the gods. THAT IS THE POLAR OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE ODYSSEY IS ABOUT!!!!! THE ODYSSEY AND GREEK MYTHOLOGY AS A WHOLE ARE LESSONS ON WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER DEFY THE GODS! The whole fucking reason why Odysseus is lost for a decade at sea is because he BROKE THE LAWS OF XENIA, the laws of the Zeus. The reason why Telemachus cannot simply throw out the suitors? XENIA! The Odyssey is there to teach the readers about Xenia.

3) no greek actors in sight anywhere. Imagine if Nolan made an adaptation of journey to the west and hired only white actors from the east coast.

4) The movie was filmed in the illegally occupied western Sahara, thus supporting settlements and colonialism

5) the movie looks like ASS. No colours, no interesting settings and everything is drowned in lights. And the costumes look like they are bought from the dollar store and spray painted. The entire movie looks like a 13 year old edgelord’s definition of “coolness”

6) the same way Nolan fundamentally misunderstands the point of the Odyssey, he also fundamentally misunderstands greek culture and history. WHY IS TELEMACHUS WEARING PANTS?!? WHY IS ANYONE WEARING PANTS?! Why does Odysseus’ boat look like a viking ship? Why does the suit of armour look roman???? WHERE IS THE BRONZE?! The COLOUR?! And this is not a “whoops we were off by a few hundred years in some artistic styles”. This is a “WE WERE OFF CENTURIES! Mycenean greece and the Roman Republic are 1200 years apart. 1200 YEARS!! At that point you might as well give Odysseus a jetpack. It’s like if i made a movie adaptation of Frankenstein, still set in the 1800s, and made Victor wear jeans and sneakers. It is THAT level of inaccurate. Pretty much the only historical accurate part in this movie is one of the suitors gay flirting with Telemachus as a way to assert dominance. Which yeah, is something the greeks did, using homosexuality as a way to dominate other men.

7) WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO LET AGAMEMNON AURA FARM? Agamemnon! AGA-FUCKING-MEMNON!!!! AURA FARMING?????????

8) Nolan is so preoccupied with being a pretentious fuckass that he lets this get in the way of his own art’s quality.

9) bro took out the whole “nobody blinded me” scene. You know… the story that just so HAPPENS TO BE THE CATACLYSM FOR THE WHOLE STORY!

10) it just fully gets rid of the gods. Poseidon? Never appears. Zeus? Never appears. Again Nolan is a pretentious asshole who tries to turn the Odyssey, again a book about the laws of the gods and why you need to respect them, into an atheist redditors wet dream. And i am saying this as a staunch cold hard atheist myself. Imagine if someone made a movie based on the new testament and just COMPLETELY left out God, the angels, the immaculate conception or that Jesus is the messiah.

11) After Nolan was done shooting the movie, instead of safely getting rid of all the equipment and stage props, HE JUST DUMPED IT ALL INTO THE OCEAN!

12) Zendaya (and I think some of the other actors but I’m not sure) wore ancient bronze discs that were stolen from an archeological dig and turned into Earrings to the premier of this movie. This whole movie LITERALLY supports art theft and the theft of ancient cultural artefacts by doing this. And as an archeologist specialised in ancient roman and greek history: I AM PISSED!!!!!!!!