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Episode 127: tHE oDYSSEY, THE MOVIE — AND mORE!

Note: this is mostly an automatic transcription, lightly edited and corrected. Punctuation and formatting are not perfect.

Marcie: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Endless Knot Podcast.

Aven: Where the more we know

Marcie: The more we want to find out

Aven: Tracing serendipitous connections through our lives

Marcie: And across disciplines

Aven: Hi, I'm Aven.

Marcie: And I'm Marcie.

Aven: And today we're talking about The Odyssey.

Marcie: I wonder why.

Aven: We're a month late at least, so- ... maybe you're ready for another round of discussion of The Odyssey out there. But in the fine tradition of never really quite riding the wave of popularity we are indeed getting to talk about The Odyssey, the movie.

Marcie: And some maybe not so unexpected connections.

Aven: So we'll get to that a little bit later, but we'll start with one, again, not particularly unexpected connection, which is this is the first of our sort of coming back to our podcast after our hiatus that we're doing just between the two of us to start off with.

And so [00:01:00] we've gone back to our traditional cocktail to accompany the recording.

Marcie: And as usual, we try and make our cocktail appropriate to the topic. So today's cocktail is called Odysseus's Wine-Dark Sea.

Aven: And it comes to us from a book we've talked about before on this show.

Marcie: Yep. It's Nectar of the Gods: From Hera's Hurricane to, the Appletini of Discord, 75 Mythical Cocktails to Drink Like a Deity by Liv Albert and Thea Engst. Illustrated by Sarah Richard. And you'll be hearing more about Liv Albert later in the episode.

Aven: So what is in this cocktail?

Marcie: All right. The recipe calls for dry red wine, four ounces three-quarter ounce lavender honey syrup, which you have to make and three-quarter ounce lemon juice, and ideally garnish with five sprigs of lavender.

Unfortunately, we do not have any-

Aven: Fresh lavender ...

Marcie: fresh lavender to garnish our cocktails, but, well, you'll just have to use your [00:02:00] imagination.

Aven: Which they're doing anyway because this is not a visual medium.

Marcie: Yeah. I

Aven: mean, we put a picture on our webpage, but I'm pretty sure most people don't see that.

Right. All right. Little sound effects there, a little foley.

Yeah. It's nice. It's a wine punch. It's like a sangria, but-

Marcie: Yep ...

Aven: with lavender. Very nice. Refreshing-

Marcie: Mm-hmm ...

Aven: on a summer's evening.

All right. So yes, we'll come back to Liv.

Marcie: Yep.

Aven: Later.

Marcie: Oh, and I should say, love this book.

Aven: Yes.

Marcie: One of my favorites. I love having cool, geeky cocktail books, and this is a great one.

so absolutely recommended.

Aven: And they're good recipes. They're not just- Yeah ... they're not just gimmicks. They're-

Marcie: Yeah ...

Aven: they're good recipes. All right. So let's turn to talking about Nolan's Odyssey. Now, a couple of disclaimers right up front. First of all, this is not gonna be spoiler-free, but given that this is coming out in August-

I feel like your time is [00:03:00] over- You have to choose. Yeah ... on that one. But be warned, if you'd like to watch the movie before listening to it, do so. Second, it is not going to be comprehensive. We are not doing a full review of the full movie, neither from a movie reviewer point of view, nor even just talking about everything that we could talk about with Homer.

First of all, there's just too much, and second, lots of people have had lots of things to say. we are, full disclosure, recording this soon after we saw it. We saw it on the Monday, this is the Thursday, but also soon after, there's been quite a lot of discourse recently about- Yeah ... some reviews, and we will refer to that a little bit, but we're not trying to wade into all of the contentious topics.

So while we'll touch on some of them, we aren't necessarily here to do a deep dive on everything. Yeah.

Marcie: We're mainly here to talk about the things that we just personally found interesting about the movie and worth noting. Mm-hmm. And, those mainly have to do with issues of reception,

Aven: yeah, for sure. That said, there are a couple things that I just want to acknowledge, 'cause we're not gonna get into them in [00:04:00] great detail, but they're hot button issues, and they're hot button issues for a reason, and there've been a lot of other people who've talked about them. We will touch on the treatment of women and some of the female characters in it, but I want to say right up front that we both did not appreciate the way Helen was treated, and we thought it was very gratuitous, the making her into a domestic violence-

Marcie: Yeah

Aven: victim. Just, it didn't do anything. There was no point

Marcie: for it. No, it's not like he, he was even gonna use it for some-

Aven: charac- ... dramatic purpose. So

He didn't use it for characterization. He didn't use it for plot. Yeah. It went nowhere. It was unnecessary, and it was upsetting.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: There is also a lot of talk about Greek actors and whether or not any, what the fact that there was nobody of Greek heritage in the cast.

I think you wanna talk a little bit about some of that.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: But we're not here to talk in great detail about it. Other people have done so about that. And the last thing that I didn't even know about until I saw other people reviewing is, issues around some of the filming that was done in the Western Sahara without permission of locals and indigenous people in an area that's under serious contention.

not great.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: That's basically, [00:05:00] that's my hot take on that. Yeah. I don't know all the details, and I don't, pretend to have be an authority on it, but I just want to acknowledge that there... And I'm also not saying those are the only problems with the movie Anyway, just wanted to say that those are things that we understand people are talking about.

But we're gonna focus on the stuff that leapt out to us on the night basically.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: We came home, we saw it with f- some of my colleagues and our kids. And we came home and we had a two-hour chat with our kids about it because we were all so interested in it. And just up front, I wanna say that, like, my big hot take of the movie was I enjoyed watching it, and then I really enjoyed talking about it for two hours afterwards.

And any movie that can do that, I think has succeeded on at least one level. So that's my first reaction.

Marcie: I think the first thing that needs to be said and acknowledged is this is a Hollywood movie, and so it's gonna do the things that Hollywood movies do. Now, that doesn't preclude other types of adaptations of the [00:06:00] material but given that it is a Hollywood movie done with a Hollywood budget it's gonna need Hollywood actors, right?

And it's, it's made by an American director. It's going to be made in the English language, and most likely using a lot of American actors, so they're gonna be doing, their natural accents. And I think that those are appropriate choices given the scope of this film. And I think we have to sort of realize that no movie is meant to replace the book or replace other adaptations of the material. This is one artistic response to that material. I would love to see other types of films made out of it, and I think that's, that would be totally legitimate and would add richness to this tradition.

But given the context of this movie, I think the choices made were appropriate.

Aven: Yeah, I think, there might have been room for putting some Greek actors into the cast. I agree, though, that you [00:07:00] can't ask a Hollywood movie not to cast Hollywood stars.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: That's straightforward. you can't spend a budget like this without big names. Not just Hollywood people, they have to be the biggest Hollywood names.

Marcie: Yeah.

And so, yeah, again, I want to preface this discussion by saying the movie is a separate work of art. It should never be thought of as a replacement for the poem. Because it's never gonna be, right?

The poem is this incredible thing. And we're not gonna throw out the poem now that we have it in movie version. So I think it's important to judge it for itself rather than just, you know, draw up a laundry list of all the things it doesn't do that the poem does do. Yeah. And because they are very different genres and very different mediums. And after all, you know, we're talking about myth here, right? There is no one true version. We have, by accident, historical accident, this one- standard version, but it's, that's the one that got written down. Yeah. There were generations of Odysseys- ... that were only existing in an oral tradition.

[00:08:00] Who knows? Maybe one of them was really great and we're-

Aven: Yeah.

Marcie: So I think for the most part Nolan focused on a particular major theme.

What he refers to as Zeus' law. what is in Greek, xenia.

And I think it, yeah, it was a good choice to try and focus on one or two themes.

Aven: Yeah. I think you have to simplify for

Marcie: a-

Aven: Yeah ... a, it's a blockbuster action movie. It is going to be comparatively simplistic.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: That's not a criticism. That's just an acknowledgement.

Marcie: Yeah. Now there are sort of a few other themes that kinda get suggested but don't get fully fleshed out, they felt is he gonna get back to this? So like memory is a big deal in the film.

Mm-hmm. I

Aven: mean, that's one of his longstanding interests- Yeah ... so it's not surprising.

Marcie: And also Odysseus' sort of lying and tricksiness comes up here and there. Not very much, but-

Aven: Yeah, it's not as developed as- Yeah ... as his character usually is. Yeah. Uh, he definitely is that, and there are s- a couple of moments where he's sort of- They

Marcie: talk about his [00:09:00] lying and, you know- And

Aven: well, and he does lie, and-

Marcie: He does lie, and he is criticized for that lying by one character in particular.

Yeah.

Aven: there are nods to it, but it's not what he's- There are nods to it ... it's not what he's focusing on.

So for, for my point, I'm I really am a little more impressionistic in with some of the things I wanna say. It's just, like, little thoughts that occurred to me. Mm-hmm. So I'll start with the biggest, I suppose, surprise to me in a way, which is that I came out of, and this is c- connected to the theme- Mm-hmm

that you're talking about and the theme of Xenia, of hospitality, of, of Zeus's law. I came out of the movie with a thought about The Odyssey I hadn't had before. Right. And I genuinely did not expect that. I'm not, not gonna lie. Mm-hmm. I was expecting to find it interesting and to find out what Nolan thought about it and whatever.

I didn't really think it would make me reevaluate my reading of the poem. this may be something that is commonly talked about in some scholarship and that I just haven't read. I'm not suggesting it's like Nolan was the first to think of it or anything. Mm-hmm. But it just hadn't really occurred to me in this context, which is that because he's interested...

So I would say the basic central thesis of the [00:10:00] movie is- Odysseus's use of the horse, which was a gift, was a breaking of Zeus's law by pretending to give a, a gift when it was not really a gift.

Marcie: Mm-hmm.

Aven: And breaking the rules of hospitality, that echoed out through the people, the Greeks who left Troy afterwards, all the Greeks who had participated in it, and then across the Mediterranean, and that it unbound the laws- Mm

of their civilization. And I use that word, and I will come back to it because I can't stand it. But anyway, of their culture, because it was such a fundamental-

Marcie: Cultural value ...

Aven: cultural value that the undoing of it had these immense consequences which will lead eventually to the complete dissolution of that cultural moment, of that cultural unity.

In order to do so, he makes the horse the first breaking of xenia. And what's weird to me is that I've never really seen the horse treated as a breaking of the guest of hospitality. leaving aside whether it's the first [00:11:00] one, it's definitely not the first one- Yeah ... in the s- cycle of the myth.

There's many more before it. But that idea that it is a gift that like, not a guest gift exactly, but it is part of the gift exchange that underlies xenia, because xenia is not just hospitality, it's very specifically a, an exchange of gifts that ties people together. And that that isn't exactly made clear in in Nolan's version of The Odyssey, but it's very clear in The Odyssey itself and in Greek culture that y- yes, you treat people well as hosts.

There's a whole set of rules about what you do when a guest arrives, but one of the things you do is you give them gifts, and that cements the bond between you. They give you gifts. This is how it works. And so that idea that the horse is a gift in that kind of a culture, in that kind of an exchange, but a trick r- a trick and therefore part of this ongoing bad hospitality, bad host, bad guest breaking of bonds, breaking of xenia, I just haven't seen that talked about.

People talk [00:12:00] about the horse as trickery, of course, and deceit, and that's a good thing or a bad thing, and whether it's a good thing or a bad thing depending on the cultural values. And they do definitely talk about it as potentially blaspheming because they pretend that it's a sacrifice, so they kind of bring the gods into the lie.

And so in that context, it's talked about as being like against the law of the gods. But that one is always a little hard to argue because they pretend, they bring Athena into it. Athena's totally on the Greek side. Loves Odysseus. She's not mad about it, and in fact, in the biggest story we have about in the Aeneid Poseidon also goes so far as to give them a false omen to, to convince the- Mm-hmm

the Trojans to bring it into the city by sending snakes to attack the priest who suggests that it might be a trap. So the gods are absolutely down for using this deceitful tactic in our sources. So calling it blasphemy is not really in your sources.

Like that's a, that's an us thing.

Marcie: I'm trying to remember how exactly it was framed in the movie, and I'm thinking in [00:13:00] the scene where Telemachus is talking to Menelaus, and Menelaus is talking about the war and the causes of the war. Is that kind of framed in a way as, abducting Helen is A violation of Zeus's law?

Aven: You know what? I, because of course we've only seen it once. Once. I can't remember. I don't feel like- Exactly how it was

Marcie: worded ...

Aven: I don't feel like he focuses on it anyway.

Marcie: No, I-

Aven: He certainly doesn't make a big deal c- I don't

Marcie: even- It's very quick. It's only mentioned

Aven: briefly. I, does he even say Paris?

Marcie: I don't know if he uses the name Paris- Yeah

itself, but he talks about Helen being taken.

Aven: Yeah, but

Marcie: I think that- And being mad about that or whatever ... but

Aven: yeah, but I think in order for it to be a betrayal of hospitality, you have to like name or identify or talk about the guy who did it- Yeah ... who was your guest, and I feel like he doesn't.

But if you're listening and have a different opinion, please let us know, and maybe at some point we'll watch it again and I'll be able to look for those sorts of things. Mm-hmm. He certainly focuses in that last scene in particular where he's talking to Penelope, where he's telling-

Marcie: Right ...

Aven: where he's having a sort of breakdown to pre- Yeah

Penelope. He- Certainly Odysseus does ... Odysseus feels that this- Yeah ... was the beginning, this was the beginning of the [00:14:00] end. Anyway, I'm not saying this is like some key to unlock the hidden meaning of The Odyssey or anything like that. I'm just saying that I hadn't really seen the horse as, and I think part of that is because the horse isn't in The Iliad, and it isn't really in The Odyssey.

It's in it, but in a fi- fairly minor role. And then the story that we have the most about it is the Aeneid, but by the time you're at the Aeneid, the themes of the Aeneid are, are compl- I mean, hospitality's there, but it's like a totally different set of themes, and they're the Roman view of Odysseus' and the Greeks' is very different.

So, when we as scholars are talking about this- Yeah ... back and forth of like breaking xenia, the horse doesn't really figure in it because it's not in the main stories, the main pieces of literature we're, we're talking about.

Mm-hmm. So in, in that sense, he's importing it in. But anyway, so just to say, I think like the focus on that particular central theme led him to give the horse an importance that it perhaps does not have in the Homer, but I'm intrigued to think about it having in the larger cultural [00:15:00] story of the, Trojan, cycle.

And I thought that was really neat. Yeah. I haven't seen people talk about it in that frame before, and that's kinda cool.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: So continuing on that I also think that yes, he doesn't use the word xenia anywhere in the movie.

I think that's not surprising because it would be really weird for them to use only one Greek word.

Marcie: Yeah, they didn't use any other Greek

Aven: words, so. Just for the record, for anybody who's feeling a little aggrieved about that, I understand because that is, but that is a word that we as scholars use to talk about it.

Yeah. And it's- It is a real Greek word ...

Marcie: it's really hard, and it's really hard to, there's no like exact equivalent,

Aven: no. Guest host friendship.

Marcie: Yeah. Like- In a way, I think probably it was the best solution to just say Zeus's law because

Aven: then it- Yeah, just give... Well, and I do wanna just like quickly flag, there's a number of what we could call pseudo-formu- formulaic phrases Right

in the movie, and that's one of them. That's one. Right? Yeah. Like repeated, they just use the same phrase over and over again. It's

Marcie: explained once.

Aven: Yeah.

Marcie: And then you,

Aven: you- And just used ... just know that every other time And like Telemachus saying, "You have wise eyes, Athena's eyes," he says that like four times.

And you know, so anyway, I just think that's kind of a [00:16:00] neat little- Yep ... nod. But, more to the point, the focus on the, horse as the sort of moment that leads to the destruction, I think it's, to me, an interesting point that people are talking about like Odysseus and his PTSD and his guilt.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Because it's a movie where he is definitely portrayed as somebody who feels very guilty.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: But I, I think it's important for me to notice, or at least the way I read the movie, was his guilt is not over the destruction of Troy, the violence of war, the suffering that war causes, the things we're used to seeing in sort of anti-war films.

or even anti-war narratives within a film that isn't very anti-war. I think his guilt is very specific 'cause he says it over and over again. Yeah. His guilt is he broke Zeus's law.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: That's the problem. The fall of Troy is a problem because of the way it was done, not because of what happened because of it.

Marcie: Yeah. there was a point in the film where I was starting to get the impression, oh, is this just gonna be saying that the whole story of his return home is just one big PTSD- [00:17:00] Mm-hmm ... episode. but then it, became clear that no, that's not exactly what he's saying.

he's not just reacting against the horrors of war, the horrors- No ... of what he saw at Troy. That it's, it's a little more nuanced than that.

Aven: Mm-hmm. And yes, violence is there and, you know, at no point does he really suggest that violence is bad. It's bad when it's in certain circumstances.

Yeah. Like the slaughter of the suitors, he acknowledges as bad, but not because he's killing people, because he's killing guests- Yeah ... with powerful families, and that's going to be taken amiss, and there's going to be consequences for that. He doesn't say killing is bad. And he doesn't really have that problem.

Marcie: Yeah, I think, I think for him there's a difference between legitimate applications of violence and-

Aven: And ones that break the rules ...

Marcie: rules. Yeah, ones that break the rules, yeah.

Aven: and in the same way his... So his g- guilt is over that, and then his guilt very clearly in the movie also is over the loss of his men.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: The fact that he was not able to save his men, that he, led them [00:18:00] poorly.

Marcie: And I think that is a thing that he's sort of struggling with, and, that's where maybe some character development happens is because he keeps sort of justifying it, saying-

Aven: They

Marcie: deserved it ... they had to. They had to.

Yeah. There was no... To save some of them, he had to make those choices. And he says that, something along those lines, a number of times, and yet I think he also does feel bad about it- Yeah ... and realize that he has to atone for that.

Aven: Yeah. So I think he is a man who is driven by guilt, and he, his trauma is the loss of his men.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Very specifically. I mean, yes, there's some trauma involved in the fall of Troy in that scene we get, but I think that the whole movie has led up to us understanding that through the lens of breaking xenia, not through the lens of, it's bad to kill people.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: On the record, I think it's bad to kill people. I'm talking about what Odysseus thinks, not ... and I'm not suggesting Nolan doesn't think it's bad to kill people. This is, my point is this is what Odysseus is being framed as. Which I just think is more interesting than it just being anti-war.

So the other [00:19:00] theme, though, that's tied to that, and I gestured at this already. breaking a primary cultural bond, and it's leading to the collapse of our Bronze Age.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Our Age of Bronze. So can we just talk about that?

Marcie: So my feeling about that is just it was... It's not a bad idea in and, in and of itself, but it was just handled so clumsily.

Aven: The idea of the Sea Peoples and of, the fact that the Trojan War is sort of on a cusp of a movement from one organizational structure- Yeah

to another, and, and that, that it's, it would feel like a moment of rupture, I don't think that's a bad idea.

The collapse of our Age of Bronze, it's-

Marcie: He's clearly picked up on these buzzwords ... Bronze

Aven: Age collapse.

Marcie: Yeah. Yeah. He's got, so he's got these bu- which is why it almost, it seems to me like it was sort of a, a first draft.

"Oh, I gotta put something in about this." It should have been then- And he never went back and ... been edited and made to sound a little more natural, not, "I plucked this out of a textbook somewhere."

Aven: Oh, [00:20:00] I, every time the word civilization was used I wanted to scream at the screen.

Marcie: mean, maybe he thought that the audience-

Aven: Just wouldn't

Marcie: understand it

d- they don't have the background, so unless he re- made it really obvious. He

Aven: had to be really, really blunt. So-

Marcie: Uh, maybe that's true. I don't know. But certainly for anyone who does know a little bit- Oh ... about these things- Clanged

Aven: so

Marcie: hard ... it just stands out so much.

Aven: Clanged so hard. And they were...

Yeah, it was too self-aware.

Marcie: Mm-hmm.

Aven: It was too... and the, the writing was just bad in those lines. Yeah. And I mean, the dialogue is not gonna win any, like, poetry awards it, in general, but I thought the dialogue elsewhere was perfectly fine. It was natural. Mm-hmm. It worked. Sometimes it was moving.

Like, I had no problem with most of it, but I swear to God, every time the word civilization was in a sentence, like the three sentences on either side of it were terrible. Yeah. And it was a terrible sentence. So yeah. I just have to point that out. I also think it really bought into and played up the Western civilization trope.

Right? Like, right at the beginning Penelope says something about the, when we live in the I don't think she actually says the most advanced civilization, but she damn near says the [00:21:00] most... She says something like, "We're in the p- most powerful civilization in the world," or something.

Hmm. The Greeks did not s- think of themselves as a single civilization. It just, it was just weird and wrong and it, it very much played into the, like, Western civilization exceptionalism and the, the Greeks are the root of all- Hmm ... that is civilized. And the rest of the movie didn't necessarily do that, but those sections really did.

And I did not like it.

Marcie: Though in the end he suggests that it, it isn't actually the sea people or some foreign people coming in No,

Aven: it's the Greeks are the sea

Marcie: people ... if they are, they are the sea people

Aven: Oh, yeah. No, I know.

Marcie: Right? It's, he- he's the sea people.

Aven: Yeah. He's absolutely trying to undercut that- Yeah

to a certain extent. But even so, the sea people are destroying our wonderful civilization, which is the best civilization that has li- ever lived. Nonetheless, he is sort of saying-

Marcie: He's saying, "Well, we're destroying our civ- Our own civilization ...

Aven: our own civilization." But he's still, but it, it's still being premised as being this great civilization.

Great civilization. And when he gives the whole speech about it will fall into a dark age, oh my God, it's so bad. Yeah,

Marcie: that's also a buzzkill.

Aven: W- we'll fall into a dark age, and then at [00:22:00] some point it will rise again. I mean, that's 100% again the like, the the shining light of civilization that the Percy Jackson movies talk about, the w- the, the flame that is kept alive from Greece to Rome- Mm-hmm

to England- Yeah ... to America. And, I don't like that. I don't like that premise. I don't like that idea. Plus, it was written really badly. So- Mm-hmm ... that's probably my biggest peeve with the movie as a whole, like as a theme and as a repeated problem in it. So yeah, I don't have a lot more to say about it than I just- Mm

needed to say. It was just... And like the really annoying thing is actually the Greeks did have a concept of a Bronze Age, at least later, because they have the Golden Age, the Silver Age- Yeah, that's true ... the the Bronze Age, the Hero's Age, and the Iron Age. But these guys don't live in the Bronze Age.

They live in the Hero's Age. The Hero's Age. Yeah. So you could have had him at least in some kind of sense be aware of the ages of man. Mm. Though it's a later concept really, but whatever. But the, but he wouldn't have called it the Bronze Age. He would've called it the [00:23:00] Heroic Age. And you coulda kinda done that, and then it wouldn't have clanged so much 'cause it feel, would've still made the same point.

And,

Marcie: And this is, this a question that I had and s- sort of leads into the, the next point that I wanted to talk about, is what sense of their own history or historicity-

Aven: Mm-hmm ...

Marcie: did the Greeks in any of these periods have? So he talks about them losing the ability to write.

Aven: Okay.

Right? Can we talk of just, can I just have a moment to vent about that last, I don't know if it's the actual last line of the movie- It's towards the end ... but it's very, very close to the last line- Towards the end, yeah ... of the movie where he says, what was it? " W- she says, "Why did you say they will si- only sing of us?"

And he says, " Well, they will only be able to sing of those of us who once knew how to write." stupid line, just like bad line

Marcie: It's awkward and not even entirely clear-

Aven: Not entirely clear ...

Marcie: if you think about it for a second

Aven: And one of the reasons it's not clear is no one in the entire movie has ever written anything down.

What is he talking about? If Nolan wants us to see this as a civilization defined by the fact that it could write, [00:24:00] which is lunacy if you're thinking about the Greeks, that whatever else they did, they did not define themselves as civilized because they could write.

Mm-hmm. Um, among other things, they were surrounded by people who could write, and they were well aware of that. The Egyptians could write. The Egyptians. The Hittites could write. Yeah. The Mesopotamians could write. Mm-hmm. Lots of people could write. they were well aware that people other than the Greeks could write, so that's a ludicrous thing to say. Second, if you're going to make that point, then have people writing in the movie. No one ever wrote a single thing down.

Marcie: So I, I-

Aven: Sorry, now that's

Marcie: my rant is done ... as I understand it, in the poem there is no mention of-

Aven: No

Marcie: writing.

Aven: There was one opaque mention of deadly signs being put on a tablet that indicate to somebody that they should kill the bearer.

In a, an inset myth.

Marcie: Right.

Aven: Or an inset story.

Marcie: So like-

Aven: But that, like, that could, that could well show awareness that there is writing in the world around them, that people in other- Right

places have writing because they have a way of conveying messages at a distance, 'cause they know that Egyptians do, whatever. But that [00:25:00] doesn't suggest necessarily that anyone who was involved in making the poem knew how to write themselves.

Marcie: And so that, my question then is, and this is probably impossible to answer, but to what extent did the Greeks, say, in the Dark Age- Iron Age, uh, yeah

to what extent were they aware that earlier Greeks did have writing?

Aven: but- As far as I know, we have absolutely no indication they ever knew that.

Marcie: Okay.

Aven: So what you're talking about is the Mycenaeans, uh, and the Minoans both- Mm-hmm ... had forms of writing.

the Mycenaeans it's, it's Linear B. Linear A and then Linear B. No, Linear B and then the My- Yeah ... Cre- Minoans it's Linear A. Crete, yeah. Linear B has been deciphered, Linear A has not. We know that because we have done archeological digs that have dug up tablets and other inscriptions, mostly tablets to my knowledge, fired tablets- that were accidentally preserved when the palaces burned. Right? Like, so they're clay tablets that happened to... They weren't baked intentionally to keep them, they just happened to be baked in fires and they were preserved. For the most part, that's what [00:26:00] we have I don't know. So there

Marcie: wouldn't be, you know-

Aven: There's not, there're not gonna be inscriptions on walls

inscriptions on buildings that they would've seen. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. There's not like writing on walls. It's not like Roman inscriptions where like sh- say in the Middle Ages you're in somewhere where they've lost the ability to write, you'd still be seeing all this writing. No. As far as I know, and I may well be wrong because this is not an area I'm a specialist in, I do not know myself of any indication that the Athenians or the, Iron Age or Classical Age Greeks were aware that previous

Marcie: versions had- So not even the later literate Greeks, they didn't realize there was another writing system before?

Aven: I have never heard anyone tell me of evidence that they had that. did Plato say that in the Myth of Atlantis or whatever? Maybe, but that, that's not the same.

Marcie: Hmm.

Aven: You know, the story of the Greek introduction of the alphabet from Phoenicia by Cadmus is pretty well told.

It's, it's indicated that there was no writing until there's the alphabet.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Um- And

Marcie: that's-

...

Marcie: That's relatively accurate 'cause that, that new writing

Aven: came- Yeah, writing came, did come from Phoenicia ...

Marcie: from the Phoenicians,

Aven: so yeah. So [00:27:00] I don't see any reason to think that the Greeks had any awareness of previous writing.

Would Homer have ever... Now, we said we weren't gonna nitpick about like just because it's Homer, right? Would Homer have known that? I don't think so. Does that matter? Is Nolan allowed to have his this, say that anyway? No, I, I don't think- He is.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: But he d- but he does it so badly that he's not allowed.

Yeah. That's my view.

Marcie: I don't think it matters, I'm just curious. Oh,

Aven: no, it's, it's- I mean, it just made me- I think it, it raises that point ... think about that, yeah And it's absolutely, like, it's worth talking about.

Marcie: Like, how much did the Greeks conceptualize their own history-

Aven: Mm-hmm.

Marcie: to some extent, as you say, they did have some notion of different ages and

Aven: different- Oh, absolutely

different ones, but- And they knew of the, like the Mycenaeans as heroes.

But the other really important thing I think is the idea of, of defining civilization as writing, as I said. Not only did everybody else do it, but also the Mycenaeans, as far as we can tell, and there's obviously gaps in our sources, huge gaps, so we might not be right about this, but as far as we can tell, the only use they made of writing was for inventories and catalogs and, like, storage [00:28:00] and administration and record keeping.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: We do not have any evidence that they ever used it for literary or historical purposes or even communicative p- purposes in the sense of, like, sending letters.

Marcie: Now, of course, the absence of evidence-

Aven: No, absolutely ... is not

Marcie: evidence of absence. No. So.

Aven: No,

Marcie: As you say, what survives is sort of by accident.

Yeah,

Aven: it it's, is by accident, so we don't have any particular reason. But nonetheless, therefore to posit that the Mycenaeans considered themselves civilized because they were able to keep good records of how many bushels of wheat they had- Yeah ... seems unlikely when they were in a Mediterranean and fully aware of people like the Egyptians, who had fully developed writing systems and had had for several- Mm-hmm thousand years by that point.

Anyway, all to say, I found that ludicrous. And I, I was like, I was enjoying the movie, and I even l- I know we wanna talk about the ending, but I, like, was even quite okay with the ending, and then that last little bit of line, and I was just like, "Are you kidding me? [00:29:00] Why did you leave me on that note?"

it was just badly written.

Okay. This is not a nitpicking what's not in this, but there were a couple of omissions from the Odyssey that I thought were interesting and I thought were perhaps well-chosen. But I could see the reasons for them anyway.

So the whole inset narrative of Phaëcia and I- and Aeolus was removed, right? Right. So they go to the island of Phaëcia, and that's where Odysseus tells all of the fantastical stories. That was removed. Instead, we still have an inset retelling narrative, and we still have an unreliable narrator- Yeah

which is a really important point of the Phaëcia. But in the Phaecian narrative, he might be lying because he's just telling this as a guest to a host, and he's trying to get something out of that host. Right. So he might be lying, and of course, that's in keeping with our lying Odysseus. That's been removed.

Instead, it's been replaced with him telling the story to Calypso.

Marcie: Recovering from-

Aven: And he's recovering memories. Yeah. From, he's recovering memories he's repressed because of trauma

Marcie: Yeah

Aven: And therefore they may be incorrect memories too.

Marcie: Right

Aven: It's not made a lot, a big deal of, but certainly [00:30:00] like there's an unreliability there. However, that's a very different characteristic than a deliberate lie.

So, you know, that's a change in the characterization.

I just wanna point that out because I think it's interesting. I think, you know, keeping the structure but changing the characterization that's created by it. I understand why they've cut Phaëcia out much as I mourn the loss of Nausicaa, whom I really love. But the story is long. The movie is long.

It becomes- You've gotta streamline ... you've gotta streamline it. Yeah I'm, I can understand that one

Marcie: It's unfortunate to lose it, but it, it did make sense to take it out

Aven: Yeah, I, I think so

Marcie: Now, a, a point that you made to me I think right after we saw it on this is that of course his time with the Phaëcians is a sort of model Yes

a good model example of Zeus's law of the guest host relationship.

Aven: Yeah

Marcie: And so I guess given the, what he was trying to do with that theme, he kinda had to leave a good example out.

Aven: Yeah. And I think sorry, I keep saying Aeolus. Aeolus isn't in [00:31:00] Phaëcia. Aeolus is separate. I've written them down here and that confused me.

Aeolus is the king of the winds.

Marcie: Yes. Yeah

Aven: And so yeah, that's why- To get- ... I wrote those down in my notes ... to get the winds Sorry, people. Yeah, and that's- That's a, that's a good way to put it ... and that's thank you for reminding me- Yeah ... because that's why I wrote him down, 'cause he's also an example of good hospitality.

Right. Yeah. He gives them- He also does everything right ... everything good. Yeah And everything is good. He gives a gift to Odysseus. It turns out to cause problems, but only because the, his men are foolish and, and don't treat it properly. Yeah And yeah, I think both of those had to be removed for a number of reasons, but I think one of the big reasons here is exactly that.

If the premise is the use of the horse has broken the law of Zeus and that has caused that law to be broken by everyone-

Marcie: Yeah ...

Aven: there cannot be any good examples Of good host guest relationships

Marcie: Going forward.

Aven: Going forward Yeah Except in the little remnants of, so we get that with Menelaus.

Menelaus is a good host.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: But it's a remnant 'cause he says, "I'm under threat."

"

Aven: We're under threat." So it's like Ithaca, you know, they're hanging on by their fingernails. Yeah. So I don't think- Well, and, and- ... in the [00:32:00] wider world it has to have already broken down

Marcie: And the, the, the people at Ithaca are trying to be good hosts, but they're- Mm

they have poor guests.

Aven: But they have poor guests. Yeah. So yeah, so I think, I think that's another reason for both of those to be omitted. And, like it or, or not, it, it's consistent with the theme.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: now a different kind of omission is the omission of Achilles, the most famous.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: And the fact that none of the Trojans are named, and I have seen this talked about as like a dehumanization of the Trojans.

And yes, like they are absolutely. Mm-hmm. The Trojans have no humanity. They are, are not people. They are just figures.

Marcie: The enemy force. Yeah.

Aven: They're just figures.

Marcie: And I think that was an intentional choice. Oh,

Aven: oh, a, 100%.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: I think there's a number of things it does. If my thesis is that- Violence is not the thing that he is guilty of.

The dehumanization is not a matter of, like, excusing his violence because he just is mindless against these people. Yeah. And so

Marcie: I think it doesn't matter who they are- Mm-hmm ... is the point. It's the, it's the-

Aven: He broke the

Marcie: law ...

it's the value that he broke. Yeah. Right? And so it shouldn't [00:33:00] matter who they are.

Aven: Because that's actually part of xenia is- Yeah ... it does not matter who the guest is. Yeah. You have to treat them the same way no matter what. Yeah, I think that's part of it. I think also, like, the absence of Achilles, that they name drop a couple of the other Greek heroes, but you don't see them.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Like mention Ajax and- They mention Ajax ... I think maybe he might be the only one, other one they mention. Patroclus I think gets mentioned at some point. I really feel like that mostly is just to keep the focus really tight-

Marcie: Yeah ...

Aven: on Odysseus.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Because it gets too, it balloons too fast. Yeah. As soon as you have any of the other characters- And he is- This is not Achilles'

Marcie: story

arguably a more famous hero, right?

Aven: Odysseus or Achilles?

Marcie: Achilles.

Aven: Yeah, exactly. So that would take attention away from- He, he's gonna draw focus. He's gon- He's gonna draw focus, yeah ... the minute he exists, you can't have him just walk on, walk off. Which is all he does in The Odyssey. He walks on- Yeah

and walks off. Yeah. But, they've replaced him with Sinon- Yeah ... as the one guy who talks- Fills that

Marcie: role. He the guy he talks to in the underworld,

Aven: yeah ... in the underworld who, who takes that role on. Yeah. And I, liked that. Like, I thought that was fun.

Marcie: Yeah, it was a good sort of streamlining of things-

one more point about leaving [00:34:00] out Achilles is of course it means that he steers completely away from the theme of fame versus long life.

Aven: Yeah.

Marcie: which is arguably more important to the Iliad, but it's there. It's, I mean-

Aven: Well,

Marcie: it's important to- Actually, it's very important to the Odyssey

Aven: It's,

it's extremely important to the Odyssey. It's very important to the Odyssey. Absolutely. Yeah. It's very important to the Odyssey

Marcie: as well. 'Cause he keeps saying, "Oh, I could just stay in one of these islands and-" Yeah

be happy,

Aven: but then- It's the whole point of the, the problem- ... my story won't go on ... with Calypso. Yeah. Like he says it explicitly in Calypso. And Achilles telling him, "I'd rather be alive and a peasant than a king in the underworld" is actually like a really important growth moment for him where he realizes that what he said to Calypso, which is that like, "I can't stand to to wither away in-

Happy anonymity", is wrong.

Like he learns that from Achilles. He has the chance to learn that, and that's why he's willing to go home to Ithaca as a beggar and like take- Mm-hmm ... his time and not worry so much about honor. I mean, he never completely gives up on glory, but he's much more willing to be strategic and try to survive.

Yeah. And stop yelling his name at Cyclops.

Marcie: [00:35:00] Yeah.

Aven: And stuff like that, right? So he actually has to make that journey. So I think that's very important to The Odyssey. But- But

Marcie: again, you c-

Aven: He's, it's, it's, it's- Can't include everything ... it's one of the themes he drops. and in that same way he overall drops the idea of honor, the idea of glory.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: He doesn't talk about, when he talks about the reasons they're going to war and the reason he has to go to war, when he's talking to Penelope, like, "I have to go."

He uses these arguments like, " He's my king, but also, if I don't go they'll harm Ithaca.

You know, they'll- Yeah ... they'll punish the Ithacans." He never says, "I swore an oath."

Marcie: No.

Aven: Which is the real reason in the myth- Yeah ... is he swore an oath, and he's-

Marcie: Again, then he'd have to explain that whole backstory

Aven: Well, he'd have to explain that backstory and also it would turn it into a story about maintaining his honor- His honor

as honor as a man. Yeah. It would become a man versus, it would become one of these cliched stories where you have a woman saying, "I don't understand. You should just like-" "I don't care about your honor. I want you." "... I want you, I don't care about your honor. I just care about you." Right? Yeah. Which is a line we've seen how many millions of times.

Yeah. And, I'm not saying that the movie is free of cliches, don't get me wrong. But it didn't lean on that [00:36:00] one.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: they don't have that conversation, and I think, Now, again I think they're very deliberately in the same way that they don't talk about Paris stealing Helen in any great detail, doesn't wanna backdate the causes of the destruction- Yeah

and of the disintegration of the society too far back- Yeah ... 'cause he Nolan wants to make it Odysseus's fault. And I think that's part of it. it's interesting, like I, I see the things he's taken out. He put lots in, he took lots out, and I can see the reasons for them.

Yeah. And I, that's all I want is to know why- ... like that you've chosen, that you've chosen to leave things out, not just randomly put some stuff in and not, or just didn't know it existed.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Like, I don't think there's anything Nolan didn't know existed.

Marcie: Yeah. And I think it, I think it is pretty clear at least insofar as the themes, the use of the themes, why he left some things out and why he kept some things in.

Aven: Exactly.

Marcie: Yeah. Most of the changes were to kind of streamline the story and the themes so that it could- do justice to the themes that he did include.

And I, I do think that was a good move.

So one [00:37:00] of the things that he left out, or let me start from the other direction. What he kept in were the monsters.

Aven: Yes.

Marcie: was the supernatural elements, right? Yes. And so that's, to make a comparison something that was taken out of the movie Troy, right? Yes. That it, it rationalizes everything, it takes out the supernatural stuff.

Nolan wants to include those, and you could do it, I suppose, do a version of The Odyssey without the magic, but that would be weird.

Aven: Well, and just no fun. No fun. Like, I, the movie is not... I'll grant this, and I know it's one of the criticisms. The movie's not exactly fun.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: But it does have the fun of the stories- Of seeing these-

we all know- Yeah ... and these, like, over the top stories. And- Yeah ... turning them into just pure realism would be I'd have been grumpy.

Marcie: Yeah. So you see monsters, you see magic. What you don't see, with possibly one exception, and it's not clear, is the gods themselves.

Aven: Correct.

Marcie: [00:38:00] Now, there is a character, I, and I don't...

Do they ever actually refer to her as Athena?

Aven: Yeah. They do? Well, Eurylochus says, You're always talk- How many times have I seen you praying to Athena, talking to Athena?" Right.

Marcie: Well, we assume that that, that's who, what he means.

Aven: It's the only person- I guess ... he talks to, who you're talking to. Yeah. I, I-

Marcie: I guess ...

Aven: I, I- I think it would take real special pleading to suggest that it's not meant to be Athena. Sorry the role that she's playing is Athena.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Whatever that, whether it's really Athena or not.

Or not. Like, it is Athena. To him, it's Athena.

Marcie: And so it's, film does I think intentionally, make it unclear as to whether she is actually there or that she's, A

Aven: figment of his

Marcie: imagination ...

Aven: a

Marcie: figment,

Aven: figment or a different- Or a piece of his PTSD or- Yeah ... his weird memory issues.

Yeah.

Marcie: And there is this one scene where he has a flashback to Troy, and they're about to cut the head off a Trojan woman, and it's her, it's that woman played by Zendaya, and as soon as the sword comes down, it quickly switches to them cutting the head off a statue- Of Athena ...

Aven: of Athena.

Marcie: Yeah.

Yeah.

Aven: The sort of options are [00:39:00] either we're meant to see that Athena takes that shape on when she comes to him- Mm-hmm ... because he was so scarred by it, or he saw that and it became the face of his guilt.

Yeah. And that, and then therefore... 'Cause Athena-

Marcie: Or I suppose that she, she was Athena come to Earth in disguise.

Aven: Yeah, I guess. '

Marcie: Cause they keep saying-

Aven: God, it might be

Marcie: a god in disguise ... we don't know, it might be a god in disguise. Yeah. So I think it's meant to be ambiguous as to- Yeah ... exactly what she is. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. So. But that it, it is interesting that you then only get maybe that one.

Aven: Yeah. You don't get the, the gods walking among us that we, the absolute you get- Yeah ... in the Odyssey. Yeah. But at the same time, the gods do punish people for things, things, supernatural things happen supernatural understanding is granted to certain people.

Yep. everyone in the movie except Odysseus appears to believe in gods-

Marcie: Yeah

Aven: and their effects.

Marcie: And he does, obviously to some extent he does because he's talking to people- Yeah ... in the underworld, right?

Aven: Yeah.

He believes in the supernatural.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: He says, "Your gods" at one [00:40:00] point to Eurylochus, and Eurylochus at one point sort of says, you know, "Why won't you pray?

Why won't you pray?"

Marcie: Doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't believe in them, though. No, it's just he won't pray to them. It means that he's mad at them. He won't pray to them because he's angry at the gods. And yeah, I mean, like clearly when he's talking to Circe, he, you know, he says, "Do the gods give you insight?"

Or whatever. Yeah, yeah. So he, I think he does acknowledge their influence. Yeah. But yeah, you don't see them in their person, even though they're... I mean, they obviously are very heavily suggested to exist. We've got, the Cyclops, who is the son of Poseidon.

Aven: Yeah.

Marcie: And, uh, and so forth. So like, and there's an underworld so that implies the existence of a god of the underworld.

but you never actually see them. And, you know, I whenever the film adaptations try to put the gods in, it- It's- ... kind of comes out silly.

Aven: It's rough. It's rough, yeah.

Marcie: I've seen very few examples that, that make it-

Aven: Okay ...

Marcie: plausible.

Aven: Well, and, and I think you have to have, like the whole thing has to be sort of at a certain kind of pitch-

Marcie: Yeah

Aven: and a certain kind of approach. Like, [00:41:00] yeah, it's, the, the movie as a whole can't be that realistic if you're gonna have gods too.

Marcie: Mm-hmm.

Aven: I would like to see gods more involved, more embodied literally- Mm-hmm ... in, in these adaptations, but I have not come up with a good way to- To do it

do it. so I can't fault directors who also couldn't fi- figure it out.

Marcie: I know. And like, I feel if I were direct- directed- I just wish...

Aven: I

Marcie: hope

Aven: somebody does

Marcie: someday ... I would be so afraid of it-

Aven: Looking silly ...

Marcie: not coming off right- Yeah ... and my film being ridiculed that I would say, "You know what? I'm not gonna try 'cause I don't know that I can pull it off."

Aven: I'd love for somebody to figure it out someday, because I'd love to see it done well. Yeah. It's too bad it wasn't this one, but-

Marcie: Yeah ...

Aven: oh, well.

On another, on another bit of, like, what's omitted, what's changed one of the other things that I think was changed and it kind of ties into the monsters a bit, is there was a very clear effort, it seems to me, to to avoid Those aspects of Odysseus and then Telemachus to some extent, that to a modern audience would just do the opposite of save the cat.

Would kick- Right ... the dog-

Marcie: Yeah ...

Aven: as it were. [00:42:00] so in other words, some changes were made so that Odysseus would not commit... he does bad things- Mm-hmm ... but they're a very particular set of bad things, so as to not have him do other bad things- Yeah ... that we as an audience don't like.

Couldn't accept, yeah. Now would I care about it? N- who knows? But am I Nolan's audience? No. Yeah. I'm, he's not writing for me. So the ones I'm thinking of are, make Polyphemus much more monstrous than he is in the story.

I mean, he eats people in the story, too. That's pretty monstrous. But he's like a big human who eats people-

Marcie: Now,

Aven: can you think

Marcie: of other-

in film depictions of-

yeah, Polyphemus i- are kind of monstrous, too

Aven: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. He's not the only one who's done that. Yeah. But it just, it was a choice he made to make him- Yeah ... so monstrous that he only barely speaks and only at the end.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: And grotesque, not just in having one eye, but in, in other ways. Mm-hmm. So th- that makes it more obvious that he has to be fought.

There's no real ambiguity about whether Odysseus did anything wrong. Yeah, he came in and he, like, ate a bit of his cheese, but he said, "Let's wait and see if he'll offer it to us."

He, in the movie, he doesn't [00:43:00] steal it. and then the guy just immediately eats him, and he's a monster. So- Yeah ... what is he supposed to do? That's it. And then the other big one is, Calypso giving him the lotus flower, so they move the lotus flowers to, to her which it wasn't normally, so that he has plausible deniability about spending eight years or seven years or whatever- Yeah

it was sleeping with her, which is definitely implied as to having gone on, but he didn't know- Yeah ... he was doing it. And so that's- Modern audiences would not accept an

Marcie: adulterer

Aven: Don't like cheating guys. Yeah.

Marcie: Whereas in the Greek world, it

Aven: would not even- Irrelevant ... it would be irrelevant. It was so unimportant.

Yeah. So yeah, and, uh, they can't accept an adulterer who would have to co- who would be coming home and stressing about his wife's faithfulness.

Marcie: Yes.

Aven: Right? Like, that, that hypocrisy, it's just- We couldn't accept ... is too much. And, while those of us who are steeped in the morality of the ancient world understand how that works and would like to see a Calypso who is not drugging her companion.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: I get

Marcie: it. And then they give her a good reason to do it. They

Aven: give her a reason, but they still, it's still like a-

Marcie: But they do sort of downplay [00:44:00] her own desire for him. I mean, she- Yeah ... they show her, loving him and-

Aven: Yeah, but they don't,

Marcie: they- ... wanting him, but they don't make her, you know-

Aven: They don't make her creepy ...

Marcie: trying to hold onto

Aven: Now she's in the Odyssey, she's a wonderful character and, and again, we lo- we, you know, we lose something. We lose something in all of these places- Yeah ... in general. Th- I'm not arguing we don't, but also we can't have everything.

Marcie: Yes.

Aven: Um, n- and do we lose more of our women than we m- lose of our men?

Maybe not, because Odysseus loses an awful lot of characterization too but yes, we lose a lot of the what makes the women in The Odyssey interesting. Mm-hmm. I'm not gonna argue that we don't. So but like it's very clear why that choice was made.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Um, similarly his refusal to let Telemachus take part in the slaughter-

Marcie: Right

Aven: which is exactly the opposite of what In The Odyssey it's very much about like that's his great coming of age moment, is he gets to take part in a battle-

Marcie: Yeah ...

Aven: and he gets to be like his father.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: And it's really important that he gets to do that.

Marcie: in a way for me, th- there's a bit of a plot hole there because what's different that [00:45:00] Telemachus can then become king after that's all taken care of than him- Well, I-

being able, being able to become king before Odysseus comes home? Like, how is he pro- he doesn't have a chance to prove himself- No, he

Aven: doesn't

prove himself ... as a strong- yeah ...

Marcie: king who, who can lead on his

Aven: own. Though there was something, they say something about, oh, when he comes back from seeing Menelaus, he's a different man.

He's not the cub he was. But, you know, like- Right ... 'cause if he's learned, which he's supposed to learn, and he does learn from- Yeah ... going away. I think one of the big things is he doesn't have a bunch of rivals 'cause they're all dead.

Marcie: Yeah. Well, that's, that's true.

Aven: So I think, I think that's a big part of it.

Marcie: But he's still-

Aven: And Odysseus- ...

Marcie: potentially a weak king. Yeah. He's gotta stand up against other- The

Aven: Sea Peoples or whatever ... the Sea Peoples,

Marcie: other-

Aven: Yeah ...

Marcie: other kingdoms or whatever.

Aven: But now that, but now that Odysseus knows that the Sea Peoples were us all along-

Marcie: Yeah ...

Aven: maybe that'll help. Yeah, no, it is a bit of a plot hole but- The real Sea People were the- Sea People were the friends we made along the way

Greeks all along. Literally. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so

but yes, but th- that removal is so that he only kills one man and, and- Yeah ... like he does prove himself by killing that one man. I guess. but he's a slave. Yeah. not that he's called that because we don't use that word. Yeah. But anyway, that I'm not gonna get back into that. Anyway, it just, it's interesting.

Like it- Yeah ... I think it's, it's, it's not [00:46:00] surprising but it...

And also Telemachus not hanging the maids is obviously a thing that is left out because it would make Telemachus a monster. So just another piece of sanitization.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: So, just to acknowledge that that is left out does not surprise me. I had been, made a bet with my colleagues beforehand- Mm-hmm

that that would not be included- Would not be in there ... because there was no way to include that- How could you include that? Yeah ... and keep us any sympathy for Telemachus whatsoever, or Odysseus for that matter.

and same with Circe, right? He doesn't sleep with Sl- Circe. Yeah. There's no seduction there. same deal, just so that we can have,

Marcie: you know- Y- I guess it differentiates her from Calypso in a way. Yeah. 'Cause Circe and Calypso in the poem are kinda doublets.

I-

Aven: in some ways, yeah, yeah.

Marcie: and I think that works okay in an epic poem. Oh, you can have d- It would be very repetitive- You can have thoughts of doublets if you want. Yeah ... in a movie.

Aven: Yeah.

Marcie: So, I'm... It's maybe not such a bad choice to- Gives them,

Aven: gives them two different characters.

Marcie: Yeah ... to do different things with them.

Aven: Yeah. Or it's, or it's at least an understandable choice. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Marcie: No, I mean, I think that, you know, in spite of the fact that the word hero comes from Greek, w- the word hero means- We do not mean the same thing ... something very different to us than it [00:47:00] means, meant

Aven: to them. No, and we need, we need our heroes- Yeah

even if we just by that mean protagonist. Because I'm not arguing that Nolan is giving us an Odysseus who is flawless-

Marcie: Yeah ...

Aven: or who is, a good guy.

Marcie: No, and he's someone who has to go through a character arc.

Aven: Well, and, and, and he, he does bad things. He does bad things. I don't... And even, but bad things that aren't particularly excused.

Yeah. Like, he doesn't lead his guys well.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: And that's never-

Marcie: But he re- he r- he finally comes to realize that, I think.

Aven: No, he knows that but it doesn't... Like, you said something about atoning. He doesn't atone for it. The only a- the atonement is- Well, he's

Marcie: told,

Aven: he's told to atone for them ... he's, the atonement is, yeah, going and, and like- Going to the west. that's an atonement that in a sense makes sense in a Greek context but isn't a moral atonement- Right ... for us.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: For us- No, not for us ... as an audience. Yeah. Right? It's, It makes sense within the frame of the movie, but it's not really an atonement in a moral Christian sense or whatever- Right

like for us.

Marcie: In particular I wanna sort of focus on some kinda double acts that, you know, some I think work better than others. so I think the [00:48:00] the interplay between Odysseus and Telemachus at the end of the movie- Yeah

obviously, was quite good.

Aven: Yeah, I liked it.

Marcie: I liked it.

Aven: I liked Telemachus. I liked Holland as Telemachus. I thought he was- Mm-hmm ... he was, endearing.

Marcie: And I thought the interplay between Telemachus and Penelope was quite good.

Aven: Yep.

Marcie: I think o- outside of Penelope reacting to Telemachus, she wasn't developed enough.

Aven: Yes. Yes.

Marcie: So her best moments were when she was arguing with Telemachus and saying, "You, you cub with, you know-" Yeah ... "peach fuzz on your face," whatever, "I s- held this throne for 20 years." Yeah. Those were good moments and there weren't enough of them. I think there could've been more of that kind of development of-- Just because I think the character Penelope is fantastic, and one of my favorite-

Aven: Yes, absolutely

Marcie: based on The Odyssey is Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad, and so I really, you know- Yes ... there's, it's such a good character. It's a shame that she couldn't be developed more, but again, can't include everything, so he made his choice.

Aven: Well, and he, I think [00:49:00] he may be internalizing that he can't write women at this point.

He's probably like- Oh, my God. That's right ... "Everybody tells me I can't write women well, so maybe I just won't."

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Just won't give them any words.

Marcie: So there were some flashes of good moments there as I say, with Penelope and Telemachus, but I would've wished there be a little more of that. Another double act that we get is Odysseus and Eurylochus.

Mm-hmm. And I thought that was quite touching relationship.

Aven: Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I've-- we need Odysseus to care about his men-

Marcie: Yeah ...

Aven: in a way more than just, "They're my responsibility." Yeah. We need him to, like, care about them. Like them, yeah. And so Eurylochus steps in for the others-

Marcie: He was just sort of the stand-in for that

Aven: too, yeah.

Marcie: And I thought Eurylochus was very well played by Himesh Patel. Mm-hmm. I think he's a good actor that I've seen in a few things, and always liked what he's done, so- Mm-hmm ... it's good to see him in this film. Again, I would have loved more of him 'cause I thought he was good. Yeah. But, I think there was enough.

There's three hours. There was enough of him. Yeah. I'm not gonna talk about what people have said about Elliot Page as Sinon or Sinon. I think they pronounce it Sinon in the movie. I

Aven: think they say Sinon in the movie,

Marcie: yeah. Yeah. I just wanna [00:50:00] say I thought he did a great job.

Aven: Oh, yeah. No, he was, he was very much an emotional center- Yeah

of the movie. A very important role, and I thought he did it well.

Marcie: And I think given the way that Nolan decided to use him as the person that he talks to in the underworld as, as well as not just the person who is part of the ploy, but the person who's used as a kind of a pawn-

...

Marcie: In, in in the, horse ploy made it a really interesting character.

And yeah, the, in particular that scene, the underworld scene- Yeah ... is really good.

Aven: Yeah. Also, just shout-out to using the Aeneid.

Marcie: Yeah. Sure. Yeah, he's a- aware of the whole-

Aven: The whole thing ...

Marcie: context of material, so yeah. '

Aven: Cause it wasn't just, it wasn't just he put in the horse stuff that's not in the Odyssey. He used the Aeneid.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Absolutely. So that was good. I liked it.

Marcie: I've already talked a bit about Athena and ambiguity of, of the way she's used. And maybe that is, as I say, the point of it. But it is a different sort of characterization and relationship to Odysseus, right?

Aven: Oh,

yeah. No, it's-

Marcie: Like she's not you know, [00:51:00] saying, "Oh, Odysseus, you're- we're- we're two of a kind."

Aven: "You're so cool. I like

Marcie: you." "I like you 'cause- "'cause you're like me. You're

Aven: tricky and-

Marcie: No,

Aven: she's- ...

Marcie: smart and..."

Aven: Uh, i- in that sense, I think she's not Athena.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: that's actually what leans me the hardest towards saying she's just a manifestation of his-

Marcie: Mm-hmm ...

Aven: of his c- self because she's not the Athena who's there to say, "Hey, you're great.

You're doing all the right things." Mm-hmm. "I'm happy for you. Let me help fix things." She doesn't do any of those things, and that's what Athena does.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: So

Marcie: I kinda like what they did with Circe, to be honest.

I think it was a good choice to differentiate her from Calypso, and they did a new interesting thing with her.

Aven: I found it a little hard to work out what the overall, like, point was- Well,

Marcie: I guess it's, it ties in very closely to the theme of Zeus' law, right?

Aven: Oh, no,

Marcie: that part... Yeah. Her problem is too many people come-

Aven: Have broken it ...

Marcie: and, have broken, and so she's, her, she [00:52:00] now-

Aven: She's now preemptively breaking

Marcie: it

preemptively stopping them. Yeah.

Aven: Well, she's preemptively breaking it- Or breaking it- ... because they've broken it ... before they get a chance to. Yeah ... which is definitely that idea of ripples- Yeah ... of, ripples of consequence. You break it- Yeah ... and everybody else starts breaking it, too. That, um, when one side doesn't hold up the bargain, the other side won't either.

So in that sense, it makes sense. Yeah.

Marcie: And she's not an evil person, right? No,

Aven: no,

Marcie: but- She and Odysseus kind of work out-

Aven: Yeah ...

Marcie: work it out, and it, it ends

Aven: well. The, the whole thing about

Marcie: her sister- And she gives, she gives him some aid. She gives him advice. Oh, yeah And

Aven: so- The whole thing about her sister was bizarre, though.

Marcie: Yeah. That is weird. Why would they put that in and not use it?

Aven: It's not there in the story. It has nothing to do with anything, and it just kind of makes her... It is, that bit is evil, right? Like, that doesn't seem to- Well- Or not evil, but, like, it doesn't, it-

Marcie: Like, maybe

Aven: there's a good reason ... it's not justified.

But we're not told what it is. But we're not told. We're not told. I know. It's sort

Marcie: of implied

Aven: that there's something there, but- She, she just says, "We get along better this way."

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: And it's... No, there's no suggestion that her sister broke xenia or whatever. Yeah. So, like, it, it doesn't

Marcie: seem- But he doesn't want her...

She doesn't want her destroyed- No ... obviously, [00:53:00] but yeah. So- So I don't- I don't know why they

Aven: did

Marcie: that ... I don't know why they did it. It served no purpose. No. I think Calypso is the character that I'm m-

Aven: Saddest to lose? ...

Marcie: least happy with.

Aven: Yeah.

Marcie: She's just so nothing.

Aven: She and, and Helen.

Marcie: She's a plot device. We already talked, we talked,

Aven: we

Marcie: already talked about- She's an exposition device. Yeah. She's there for-

Aven: Yeah ...

Marcie: odysseus to, to- To talk to ... narrate to, to do exposition to.

Aven: And she has, she has a much more interesting role- Yeah ... and speeches in The Odyssey.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Her and Helen. And Helen.

And also, Helen, Helen is great in The Odyssey, and she's not here.

Marcie: Yeah. She's the-

Aven: And the actress- ... barely appears ... is wasted.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: And that's annoying.

Marcie: I get the feeling, and this probably is true, that he wanted to cast an actor with a big name just because having a long list of stars- Well, how do you, you have to cast...

Aven: Well, and you has to cast-- Your Helen has to be someone.

Marcie: Someone.

Aven: You know? She, she has to be.

Marcie: But he didn't particularly want to use the character for anything, and so she's really just there to be a name on the marquee.

Aven: Which is a bad position to put her in. Yeah, unfortunately. Especially given the kind of reaction- Mm-hmm

that was inevitable when he [00:54:00] cast her, and then to make her scarred and to make her it just I don't like it. I don't like what he did. Yeah. I'm fine with him casting her. That w- I thought it was a great casting choice. Now that I've seen what he did with her, I don't think it's a great casting choice.

Marcie: Yeah. In a sense, why even include the character at all? Doesn't really serve any purpose.

Aven: No. Not The Iliad, you don't even need it, except that- Yeah ... we have, except he wanted to put the, the Menelaus part of the story does make, like, does work- The, the Odysseus- ... and does do a thing ... does have to go to Menelaus

and if you're gonna go to Menelaus, then not having, but blah, blah, blah.

Marcie: Where is she? She could've just been some unspeaking character s- Yeah ... sitting at the table, I suppose. But, um, yeah.

Aven: Anyway I'm sure he could've found a different way of doing it.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Okay. [00:55:00] I got what the point of the Hades So that's what they focused on. I just, I thought it was really... I just loved the way it was portrayed, so that was one of my favorite things. But other Easter eggs where, we were talking about this when we came home, like all those towers falling down in Troy-

...

Aven: That are obviously playing up that second line of the famous Helen, the face that launched a thou- thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium.

Every time a to- tower fell down, I was like, "That's one of the topless towers of Ilium." "It's burning." In an otherwise very grim scene, obviously. But [00:56:00] anyway, it just made me laugh. So I appreciated that there were a few of those little, like, I'm not gonna make a big deal out of them but you're gonna feel not even clever 'cause they weren't very subtle really, but just that they were kind of fun.

Oh, also another one of those Easter eggs was the use of Crete as the backstory. When they go to the temple of Pylos, Mentor says to him- Or our cover story ... "Let's, w- our cover story is just tell people we're-" Traders ... "we're travel, we're merchants from Crete." Every time Odysseus lies about where he's from, he says he's from Crete, and he tells a different story, but it's always from Crete.

Crete. And so the fact that they said, "We're from, merchants from Crete," was just, mwah. Loved it. Loved it. So, you know, I realize that these are, like, minor, tiny details, but they made me laugh. So yeah. And then you wanted to talk a bit about the ending, I think.

Marcie: Yeah. Yeah, I think I found the ending somewhat unsatisfying because it was too satisfying.

It wraps everything up in a nice, neat little bow.

And

To me that's sort of in a way, not that [00:57:00] this is epic in a sense, right? It's a movie. Yeah. But it goes against what epics often do, which is have a kind of not perfect ending.

Aven: Yeah. Though The Odyssey is unusual in that it actually does wrap everything up.

Marcie: Well, it wraps everything up, but you're not necessarily feeling like it's not a happy, happily ever after sort of ending really.

Aven: Well, it kind of is. Y-

Marcie: But we know he's gonna have to go out again, right?

Aven: Yeah, but he's just gonna take like a little trip and then come back. Mm-hmm. It's not ... Well, I mean, if we know the myths, we know it's all gonna go terribly wrong again, but that's neither here nor there.

Marcie: There's a whole other epic that deals with

Aven: Yeah, but the, yeah.

But the- That doesn't try, but ... but the, but The Odyssey ends with the, a resolution to the revenge, to the problem of revenge because the suitors' families do try to attack him-

Marcie: Mm-hmm ...

Aven: and are told not to by Athena. Now, I totally understand why that part's not in it because if you're not gonna have an Athena who actually interferes, then there's no way to get around that.

The exile thing is I think the exile thing is a weak ending, but I also think he wrote himself into a corner on that one by emphasizing that there's no [00:58:00] justific- there's no cultural justification for murdering the suitors, which is not entirely true in The Odyssey. I think in The Odyssey there's much more cultural justification for it.

By emphasizing there isn't any cultural justification for it, there has to be punishment for it, but also not having a god who can come down and dispense that-

Marcie: Yeah ...

Aven: like-

Marcie: Since the gods ...

Aven: judgment.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: He wrote, he had to do something. Had to do something. And so what he does is they have exile, and he gives us a romantic ending.

It's a

Marcie: romantic ending.

Aven: Now Odysseus and Penelope end up happily ever after to- together- Yeah ... in The Odyssey. True.

Marcie: Fair

Aven: point. You know?

Marcie: Fair point.

Aven: With the assumption that Telemachus will take over, though not the actual-

Marcie: Him becoming king.

Aven: Yeah ... him But no, I, I understand what you mean. for a, a movie that's quite sort of grim in many ways- Mm-hmm

it's, it's a s- it's an unexpectedly happy ending.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: Yeah.

Marcie: And it's very, the tone of that scene- It suddenly changes ... is suddenly very light and-

Aven: Bright. Yeah.

Marcie: Yeah. so yeah. I don't know. It didn't, it didn't really s-

Aven: Didn't fully work for you ...

Marcie: didn't work for me, but-

Aven: I was feeling okay

Marcie: with it ... it probably works for a general audience.

Aven: Yeah. I [00:59:00] was feeling okay with it until that stupid line about writing. And then I- Well,

Marcie: I think that right... Does it come right there at the

Aven: end? It's on the boat. On the very last scene? They're on the boat. Yeah. When she's, it's be- it's before the, like, actual sailing into the sunset, but they're standing on the boat sailing into the distance and she says, "Hey, why did you say they would only sing about us?"

Marcie: The, the last thing that I want us to just sort of briefly touch on is people are obviously gonna start making comparisons.

Aven: Start?

Marcie: Start with this film. making comparisons to both other film adaptations of The Odyssey and other epic Greek movies.

The obvious one is Troy, right? Right. People are gonna compare this to the 2004 Troy starring,

Brad Pitt, yes.

Aven: I just meant not going to. They have been doing so for- Yeah, they

Marcie: have been doing so ... months,

Aven: even before the movie came

Marcie: out. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, but of course, the other possible comparisons there's a 1954 movie called Ulysses s- starring Kirk Douglas.

[01:00:00] And there is a 1997 TV miniseries called The Odyssey starring Armand Assante.

Aven: And with also, Isabella Rossellini and- As Athena ... Irene Papas.

So it does have Greeks.

Marcie: It does, yeah. And of course the other comparison would be to O Brother, Where Art Thou? Which is kind of my favorite Odyssey movie

Aven: Oh, most, I think most classicists will say is their favorite Odyssey adaptation.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: That's, or at least that's the truism, yeah.

Marcie: So do we have anything to say about these?

Aven: I don't think I have anything clever that anybody else hasn't said. I mean, there's some obvious ones like about the role of the gods. I think it's a

Marcie: better movie than Troy.

Aven: Oh, dear Lord, of- it's definitely a better movie than Troy.

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: That is not a high bar to clear.

Marcie: No.

Aven: Troy is fun. Troy is more fun.

Marcie: I guess so.

Aven: Troy is more fun in that it is so sort of silly in some places that you can kinda just find it silly. Troy doesn't have the grotesque, it doesn't have the horror, it doesn't have the pain-

Marcie: Yeah

Aven: in it. It has, like, Brad Pitt sulking. [01:01:00]

Marcie: Yeah.

Aven: And then it has a bunch of-

Marcie: Achilles is such a whiny-

Aven: Oh, I know, but I mean, but it's- ... jerk. ... it's, it's, it's not gonna, like, up- it's not gonna make you sad or scared or anything. So in that sense it's more of a, like, a fun- That

Marcie: was, it just sort of makes you irritated.

Like,

Aven: pull yourself together But it's not, but it's not a particularly... I enjoy it in certain ways, but it's not a great movie. I think this is a better movie.

Marcie: Like, I think I would rather, if it came to a choice-

Aven: You'd rather watch this ...

Marcie: I would, I would and in terms of showing it to students- Right

Aven: right? Oh, no, for a student, for-

Marcie: I would use this over Troy.

Aven: Yeah, for sure. There's much more to talk about. Yeah. Well, uh, I think it comes back, to me it comes back to intentional choices. I don't feel like the choices in Troy were intentional. I feel like they were like, "At any given moment, what should we do next?

I don't know, let's do this. Ooh, I've heard of this name, let's put that in." Like, I don't think there was an overall thought process. In Nolan, agree or disagree, I think the, all the choices were intentional.

And so I find l- in terms of talking to students, that's way more interesting- Yeah

because you can say, like, "Why did he choose to do this, and would you have chosen to do that yourself?" Whereas [01:02:00] with Troy, you're just like, "I don't know. They put a llama in. I don't know."

Marcie: I don't remember that.

Aven: There's a llama in the market scene in Troy.

Marcie: Okay.

Aven: That was not an intentional choice. Oh, I'm trying to suggest that the Mediterranean had a strong- Llama ... intensive trading network with Peru. Yeah. No, it was just, "Let's be exotic. Llama."

Marcie: I don't even remember that.

Aven: No, the... it... Sorry, it's a, been sort of a famous oopsie in the movie.

In terms of the older, the Kirk Douglas movie- I mean, I think that movie made deliberate choices too.

Marcie: Yeah, it did. Uh- One of the interestings i- in that is the same actress plays, who plays Penelope plays- Circe. Circe. Circe and, and Calypso- No ... are sort of merged in that

Aven: movie. Yeah. But it's Circe there.

Marcie: And it's, I guess she's called Circe, yeah.

Aven: No, she's definitely is Circe- Okay ... 'cause it's definitely, yeah,

Marcie: which was an interesting choice.

Aven: I think that movie is, also a good movie.

Marcie: Yeah.

The Cyclops scene is played much more for humor.

Aven: Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. And obvi- and its effects just aren't as good. Obviously. And and it's not as epic.

It doesn't go on as long. It cuts a lot out. Cuts a lot out. So much [01:03:00] out. But I think it's an, a it's a valiant attempt too, and it does some interesting things. I don't think it has as strong a thematic core.

But then maybe it's more interesting for not being so sort of single-mindedly explicit about its theme.

You get to sort of think about it and insert your own interpretation into it a little bit more. The miniseries is, is... I really like the miniseries.

Marcie: It's good. But narratively, in a way I think it's further from Homer's Odyssey in that it's a linear narrative.

Aven: Yes. It, they- It doesn't have the, it doesn't have the flashbacks

it doesn't have the flashback. It doesn't have the inset storytelling. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's telling the story of Odysseus. It's not telling The Odyssey-

...

Aven: In that sense.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Marcie: But it is enjoyable and,

Aven: And it's got good actors doing the, doing... And it's got a

Marcie: very- The, the, again, special effects are not great.

Aven: No.

Marcie: It's

Aven: doing a, it's doing a different thing with Odysseus too, he's a quite a attractive, endearing-

Marcie: Yeah ...

Aven: or a compelling- Mm-hmm ... compelling character I would say. And I think the women are [01:04:00] given much more space.

Marcie: Yes, for

Aven: sure. Penelope is given a much- Penelope is good

more role. She's, she's

Marcie: much better. Yeah.

Aven: And you get Odysseus's mother

Marcie: Yeah ...

Aven: for a while.

Marcie: Yeah.

think in the final analysis, like I will wanna watch Nolan's movie again. But I don't think it's gonna become, regular watching over and over again for me. No. No. In the way that O Brother, Where Art Thou?, I would always be happy to watch that again.

Aven: Yeah, no, for sure.

Marcie: So that pretty much covers what we wanted to say about the movie.

I think the high level summary is we enjoyed it, it brought up lots of things to talk about, and it's great that so many people are interested in the poem and the ancient world because of it.

Aven: Right. So now we want to turn to some related things. First, some books, and then a song that Marcie wrote about Odysseus.

We'll play that at the end after we talk about the books, which were released this spring and summer to coincide with the movie by three of our podcasting friends.

Marcie: First, [01:05:00] there's The Odyssey: An Illustrated Guide, and an accompanying Odyssey coloring book by Doug Metzger, host of the fantastic podcast, Literature & History. Doug has been super busy this summer, but to quote from his website, The Odyssey: An Illustrated Guide is a character-by-character guide to 40 of the most famous figures in the epic.

This covers The Odyssey's cast and plot in a lot of detail, offering extensive background not only on major characters and iconic seafaring scenes, but also minor characters and scenes that are often overlooked.

The Odyssey Coloring Book is a shorter version in which kids and other colorers can follow the story of The Odyssey along with short captions as they make the story their own.

Aven: Doug is an amazing storyteller, But he also has a deep scholarly and literary understanding of the Homeric texts and their cultural and historical context, and we recommend his books and his [01:06:00] podcast to everyone. Next, a fellow Ottawan, Jeff Wright, has put out a book based on his very popular show, Trojan War the Podcast, called The Full Disclosure Iliad, which is a retelling of the entire story of the Trojan War,, and not just the few weeks covered by The Iliad.

It also has notes after every chapter, pointing out which bits came from which sources, and where Jeff chose between conflicting versions or added things to the ancient story

Marcie: We had a chance to chat with Jeff alongside our podcasting friends Alison Innes and Darren Sundstrom of Myth Take.

So we're going to play a short clip from that conversation now to introduce you to the book. The first voice you'll hear is Alison's

Alison: So welcome Jeff, welcome Aven, welcome Marcie. It's great to have you all on board. So I thought just to start us off, Jeff, if you could tell us a little bit about the book and how it came to be, and kind of like the process of going from podcast to book.

Jeff: [01:07:00] Well, it took 10 years. No. Oh, sorry, that's a different story.

But yeah, there were monsters- ... there were temptations. there was one journey to the underworld, like the moment of deepest hell and despair. Yeah, it, it was a hero's journey in book form. Basically, the whole thing started back in COVID when I got an email from a fan of Trojan War: The Podcast, who happened to be the owner of a UK small boutique publishing company, and he had just finished reading or listening to Trojan War: The Podcast and said, "I wanna turn this into a book.

It's August now, I think we can have it done by Christmas." He just failed to stipulate which Christmas year. Um, so I had no idea about this, but I was, needless to say, flattered, so I wrote back and said, "Well, what do you think I have to do?" And he said, "Well, just get a professional to create a transcript, a word-for-word transcript of your entire 24-hour podcast, and get it turned into a Word document, and then just go through it.

It'll likely take you a week or so. clean up the spelling and the grammar, a- any content things you want to modify, send it off to me, and [01:08:00] well, we'll take care of the rest." Yeah. Um, so-

Aven: That was the siren. Is that it? That was the siren song?

Jeff: That was the siren song, exactly. Um-

Aven: Yeah.

Jeff: so naively, I did it.

I hired somebody. This is before AI, so I had to actually pay somebody to make the word-for-word transcript. It was expensive. Mm-hmm. And I failed to stipulate get rid of the ums. Mm-hmm. Um, so when the manuscript came back, it was about 210,000 words, which is a little larger, I discovered, than what most publishers want in a book.

Mm. By, yeah, by about 100,000 words. Um, most of those words are, were um and it was also a shocking, humiliating experience to realize, or a bit of a baffling experience that people tend to respond positively to the podcast, and the, the notes we get from podcast listeners are, "We really like the easy conversational sense of [01:09:00] we know you," and I first, I spent about a day trying to clean it up and edit it, and I was only still in like chapter one. It, it, it was impossible, and I realized, you know, there's a fundamental difference between oral performance and written performance, and they're just completely different beasts.

Very quickly I realized, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna have to... It's gonna be more efficient to actually use the structure of the podcast, like the content of each of the chapters, but just start over from scratch. The editing was impossible. I took a crack at it. It took me about three months to get a rough thing, sent it off, and I'd got it down from 200,000 words to about 175,000 words, mainly by removing um.

And sent it off to the publisher and said, "Is this what you're thinking of?" And he said, "I need about 80,000 words at most." Mm-hmm. And I, uh, okay, and I thought, okay. He said s- I said, "Could we do it in two parts, two books?" And he said, "Nope, that doesn't work as a economic model. Like, people will buy one book.

They won't buy part one [01:10:00] and then buy part two." Uh- Mm ... w- I realized it wasn't gonna work. He said, "Can't you just streamline the story down, you know?" And that's when I thought, "Well, why am I doing this?" so we parted ways, but I was hooked, so I went to work on doing the writing. And the writing process to go from oral on stage, which is where I learned how to tell this story in front of high school students and then in front of adult audiences, and after I'd been doing it there for about seven years, starting really small in little classrooms where I had 20 kids and I could control the pace by, well, proximity control, the high school teacher standard.

You just walk up and down the row and you stand by the kid that's not paying attention till he realizes that you're standing by him. but to go from there, I'd already had to move when my classroom shows got more popular onto the high school stage so they could bring all the grade nines down at once.

So then I had to learn how to use a microphone. I couldn't use proximity c- control anymore because there was an orchestra pit between the stage and [01:11:00] the students, so I had to start using other techniques. That's when I started, getting frustrated with having to cut content, because the longest live shows I did were four and a half hours long, and I'd do them over two days.

Hmm. So I'd go in and I'd do- Wow ... a two-hour show in the afternoon, get to the halfway point in either the Trojan War epic or in The Odyssey, which I did for the grade 10s, and then I'd come back the following morning and pick it up, and we'd be done by noon. So I had to get it down to four hours, and I was leaving so much material on the cutting room floor that's when I decided, "What about a podcast?"

Mm-hmm. And the inspiration there was Dickens. Oh, he sent all of... He sent his chapters of his novels out across the Atlantic by the chapter. And, and if you read Dickens, I mean, there's a guy that didn't mind, you know, taking 10 words and turning them into 40. So I thought, "That's my kind of a guy."

I could then in the podcast include every episode. I didn't have to streamline it.

And the podcast then came out. That was learning how to imagine the audience. I could not have done that With whatever [01:12:00] success I had if I was imagining a fictional audience, but I had eight years of imagining audiences in front of me.

So I knew where they'd be leaning in. I knew where they'd get a little bit confused. I knew where the laugh lines were, and I could wait in the podcast for them to land. That sort of thing. So I used the basic structure of the podcast when I started to write the book, and that's where I ran into the fundamental problem of I had just lost the thing that I use to create meaning and timing and pacing, which is voice, or on stage, voice plus body.

Aven: Mm-hmm.

Jeff: On stage, it's really easy. If I want to be, if I wanna be Zeus, I just get myself... I know we're recording this, but I get, I make myself big and thunderbolty- ... on stage and people see Zeus. . But i- I could get that then into the podcast because I knew the voice even, and when I was recording, I'd actually, you know, I'd be that body.

Suddenly I'm trying to write a book, and I've lost my voice and I've lost my body, and all I'm left with [01:13:00] is like freaking words-

on a written page and trying to convey... , i was trying to get the feel of telling it live but on paper, and that's a really, really tough thing to do, and the book took five full rewrites through. I did the first three of them on my own and used my wife and my mother-in-law, who was to try to clean things up.

But it took a long time to actually try to find a voice that worked. And then it went to a copy editor and, who didn't know any Homer, and the copy editor went through the whole thing, and their comment when she got back with it is she said, " I don't know what you do for a living, but this is a very... I feel like you're talking out loud and telling the story."

And I wasn't sure if she meant it as a compliment or criticism, but it was both.

She said, "You're... it's not working here. It's not landing. Obviously this might have worked on..." But so then it was back to trying to get the timing and the pacing and everything inside a written form. It was hellishly difficult and very, very humbling because words are hard on [01:14:00] paper.

Mm-hmm. Really hard.

Alison: Yeah.

Marcie: Yeah. And, and I think that, does really bring up the observation that I had and, and the particular interest that I have, which is in orality and, you know, the oral-formulaic theory which was developed by looking at Homer. And the way that you've kind of followed the same progress that, the poem originally did.

It, it grew up in an oral tradition being performed, from memory with no written component. and then it became a sort of set text where the, the rhapsodes performed it word for word the exact same performance, not the sort of changeable original oral context that it was in.

And then finally it gets written down, and that's the form that we have it now. And you've kind of gone through those same stages. Did you think about that, that sort of prog- process when you were working on it?

Jeff: All of the time. Um, particularly when I [01:15:00] got to the sections of my book where I was inside of Homer's Iliad.

So just the structure of my book for folks listening I always describe The Full Disclosure Iliad as the soft, sticky sweet treat filling of the bookended Oreo cookie. And so I, I really believe that to tell a story in book form or on stage or in a podcast, you have to actually have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

And I know that the scholars always say that the Iliad is self-contained, and intellectually I understand that now. But for my audience, , the people I call the classically curious, they need the context. They need the world-building. They need to know why this war started. They need to know all the lead-up before we get to Homer sing muse and everything like that.

So, To get back to your question, Marcie, when I was trying to figure how do I get this right and what's the history and the tradition, when I got to Homer's Iliad, which is about halfway through my Full Disclosure Iliad, where I'm suddenly into the Homeric [01:16:00] text as opposed to the backstories- I felt a great deal of anxiety because in the backstories my job was grabbing all the myriad stories from the Trojan War epic cycle and the other traditions, grabbing stories written well after Homer that, you know, are prequels and that sort of thing. I felt a lot more comfort in my storytelling technique because there- There were contradictory versions.

There, you could do what you wanted, and that strikes me as what likely a performer does on stage. A, a live performer. I still don't think that somebody telling these stories in the oral tradition, and I don't know how they tell the same story every night. I've never stood on the stage. I've told The Iliad and The Odyssey and the whole epic cycle.

I've done thousands of performances if we go to, the tiniest little ones to the biggest ones, and it never comes out quite the same way. Yeah. The skeletal structure is there, but the beats, the things you emphasize, the things you pause, that's all reading the room. and when I got to Homer then, writing the book, suddenly I had the reverse problem. Instead of going, "Oh, well, I'll just, I felt I've [01:17:00] gotta do homage to this. So with Homer, the real challenge was trying to be true to my voice and continue the same tone I had used in all the pre-Homeric stories leading up to The Iliad, which meant having to essentially, uh, try to get the bones of Homer's story and the critical moments, but not try to do everything Homer does, because that would've taken another 100,000 words, because I would've had The Iliad. And that was a problem I faced all the time is trying to figure am I being fair to Homer in the written words, or am I being fair to what my imagination is of the oral tradition that Homer then managed to capsulate in writing?

the stuff that was the most liberating was the connective tissue that I had to invent.

And that's why the Jeff's Notes were useful, because I've had so many people over the years with my podcast they send me notes and they'll say, "I just finished reading The Song of Achilles," or, "I just finished reading The Silence of the Girls," or, "I just went and saw the movie Troy.

Is this true? Is this what really happened?" And I mean, when you decode the [01:18:00] question, I mean, they're not stupid. They realize, they're not saying, "Did this historically happen?" They're saying, " Has this author been reasonably faithful to the primary sources in their portrayal?" And I think that's what they're asking.

And I mean, I remember watching the miniseries The Crown- Mm-hmm ... and after every episode frantically typing into search engines, "Did this really happen this way?"

Aven: Yeah.

Jeff: And, and there it was history and it was interpretation. So what I was trying to do in the Jeff's Notes was- When I did have to create connective tissue or, or linking threads in the tapestry what I wanted to do was be honest with the readers and say, "Okay, this scene I invented.

Here's why I had to invent it." There's this strange gap. They're there... Well, the classic one is they're there for 10 years with no explanation of what they've been doing or why they've been sitting on the beaches of Troy for a decade, and then suddenly, how did that happen? And I couldn't find anything in the primary sources that really clearly explained the 10-year siege with nobody going home, because Agamemnon says very [01:19:00] clearly at the start of the Iliad, "For 10 years we've been on the beach pining for our loved ones."

Well, your loved ones are less than about a five-day sail away. Like, you know- ... why pine, you know? Uh, Trojans aren't coming outside their walls. Like, go home, take a holiday. so I had to create plausible narrative glue, or how does Paris end up... Why does Paris end up in Sparta? All the stories have Paris in Sparta, but why would Priam send Paris to Sparta?

He's singularly not very qualified, at least but you have to create narrative glue or, And that was fun because then I could invent a character or a scene And it allowed me then to have a little bit of fun. So I had two characters in the book, the two ministers, Polyamis and Antenor, who I borrowed from Homer, and he uses them the same way.

They, they're expository characters- Mm-hmm ... minor characters that move the plot along in little ways. I just leaned into it heavily. So whenever I had a problem trying to explain something why are Paris and Menelaus fighting now a duel that should've happened 10 years earlier, I could [01:20:00] create a plausible geopolitical veneer by creating a conversation between the backroom ministers navigating what was going to happen.

I think it's really important when you do that to my contract with my readers is to try to tell them when I've done that- Mm-hmm ... so that they don't embarrass themself at a cocktail party of classicists and say, "Oh yeah, that, that, that scene that, you know, where Polyamis, did this and decided we're gonna re-image Paris as the people's prince and send him to Sparta as a diplomatic snub.

Yes, I love that bit in Homer." And I didn't want my audience to do that. So that's where I try to be honest,

That's a sloppy answer. I'm all over the map on it. But does that help a bit?

Marcie: Well, I think, that's what makes it really exciting and fascinating, you know, what you've done is it, you know, you've gone through that process so it is a sort of living thing that you've engaged with.

Aven: So that's just an excerpt from the discussion, which will be posted as a standalone episode on the Myth Take feed in the next little while if you'd like to hear more.

Marcie: And now, finally, [01:21:00] Liv Albert, host of the fabulous Let's Talk About Myth, Baby!

podcast, has released The Odyssey: A Retelling, and we talked to her about it.

here's that conversation

Aven: Hey, Liv. Great to have you here with us.

Liv: Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited

Marcie: Welcome to the podcast.

Aven: So you're here because of what everybody is talking about this summer- ... but also importantly because you have a new book out. So tell us all about your book.

Liv: I am the only person to be interacting with The Odyssey this year, clearly. It's not me and, like, everyone I know.

Aven: Very

niche, very niche of you.

Liv: so niche. No, so I have published a children's version of The Odyssey. It's called The Odyssey: A Modern Retelling. It's aimed at children 9 to 12, but I proudly say that aside from being appropriate for children 9 and up and being illustrated for them, it is otherwise [01:22:00] just a condensed version of The Odyssey in its mostly Homeric-ish form, is the best way I describe it.

Marcie: It's like Lego. It's good for, from age nine to 99.

Liv: Exactly. No, I was really just obsessed with putting down the most to Homer version that at least I could come up with

Marcie: Now, of course, the Odyssey contains a lot of that is, shall we say, not kid-friendly. So how did approach those parts?

Liv: I like to say that the only scene I did intentionally, knowingly cut out is simply the story within a story of the time that Aphrodite and Ares got caught having sex by Hephaestus.

So that is the

bit that was intentionally removed mostly for word count, if I'm honest. I think that if I had been given a [01:23:00] higher word count, I would've found a way to make that a fun thing that the kids could have also still read, because it's delightful and bizarre. But no, the other than that, we really just, I won't even say sanitized the violence, it just was not put into detail, but also not excluded.

That was the thing that I was really

Aven: Mm-hmm.

Liv: about when I signed on. The book is published by DK, and thankfully they were really open to just publishing the book that I wanted to write. So aside from just making things a bit more appropriate and, you know there's no overt sexual scenes, but at the same time I did manage to get in a, an illustration of Odysseus and Circe cuddling up.

So I still got to make sort of the

of what's

there. So it was really just things like that, but otherwise shortening it and therefore pulling out some of the excessive violence, but the acts are still maintained in there. Like, even the killing of the enslaved women [01:24:00] at the end, which is of course horrifying, but I felt was very

that it is conveyed because, the story of The Odyssey is not about one man doing all the right things and getting home like a good boy.

the story of The Odyssey is is about Odysseus who is real, he's good and he's bad, he's complicated, and he does a lot of terrible stuff and still gets home in the end and has a happy ending, and that's just what I wanted to convey because I think it's... it's real, but also, I mean, I think it's just helpful for kids to learn a story like that is just like a representation of sure, mythic history, but also about how just humans are complicated generally and that doesn't mean they're o- one thing either way, you know?

It's not about him being good or

just about what he does to get home

Aven: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think if you're going to say that you're retelling Homer, then I do think, y- you know, you don't have an obligation to put every [01:25:00] single thing that he put in because then you'd just read Homer. But it does need to, or it is best if it can reflect the breadth of what's in there, and it's not just an inspired by or the story of Odysseus, which is different than The Odyssey.

Liv: and that's why I wanted to

and we have a whole... You know there's five or six pages at the opening at the beginning that lay out some historical context and background and a map and just some general information about the Homeric world, the ancient world, the Bronze Age and also just, like, how those things intertwine.

Obviously it's quite surface

but it's in there, which I was really excited about too. And the nice thing about DK as a kids' book publisher is that they're really focused on education, and so one of the things that they wanted to work into the book, and which I was very happy to, is these little, like...

We have these little boxes throughout that are these sort of asides, like these little extra facts

Aven: Mm-hmm. Marginalia. Mm-hmm.

Liv: and [01:26:00] it ended up being, you know, that way I could convey some of the more complex ideas about the ancient world or even just point out, that some things might seem to be, pretty wild to us today but, here is why, the ancients believed it or what have you.

So it was just, like, all these different

could convey these little bits of facts. I'm just an enormous nerd for all the different contexts, so I was like, "Okay, great. All of these opportunities to, like, jam in as much nerdy context as humanly possible."

Aven: Very cool.

so it's, Got some background, it's got some information. It's a retelling in a, and I'm going to just go out on a limb, accessible and friendly and kind of fun way for kids. Obviously, prose and not poetry and all those things, right?

Yeah.

Liv: But I will say one of the other things that I was excited about, just 'cause I'm an enormous nerd for Homer and I think... on the surface level the thing I was most excited about was to simply tell the story of The Odyssey in the same chronological [01:27:00] format as Homer, which to

Aven: Right.

Yeah.

Liv: a story within a story.

That's the whole point to me, like that's... what makes it fun and interesting is the fact that like all

and outrageous stuff is just like, "Believe me, I swear this is what happened." You know? And,

for some reason that seems to be the thing that most adaptations, especially for children, leave out, and I don't know whether it's just

they thought it was too complicated or just, I think that in a modern world we often expect stories to just be more straightforward or like that we need to make them more straightforward for children, and I just thought

Like this is how the story is told, and isn't it more interesting to present it to kids like that and say, " you make up your mind about what you believe about this story." Like I just think it's so much more fun to have it... 'Cause especially 'cause the way Odysseus opens up his story to the Phaeacians [01:28:00] and I'm paraphrasing and somebody's yelled at me before, but I maintain this is a comfortable paraphrase, he opens up the story by saying, you know, "My name is Odysseus.

I'm famous for my clever tricks and lies." And he, you know, the word deception is

Aven: tell me, yeah

Liv: like, "I'm really famous for deceiving everybody and for lying. Now here's what I say happened, and it just happens that the 700 men I set out with are all dead, so you have to believe me." Like to me that's just

entertaining to in your mind when you're hearing this story, and it just has always felt so to me that is not used in so many of these adaptations.

Even like, and I'm not here to say anything really about the movie, but like even that I wished it was a little bit more playing around with that idea of like who and what do you believe? I mean, Obviously it did

Aven: I think that is one of the things about the movie that on the one hand, it does give a frame narrative, and I'm glad because I agree with you. I think the point you're [01:29:00] making is that too often it removes the frame narrative.

And like, yeah, the movie doesn't quite make the deceitful trick, which, which is what you're pointing on.

Liv: but

use

Aven: it, trades on memory instead, so it... rather than deceit, which is a definitely a different framing, and not one that is as, as true to Homer. Like, whatever else you, whatever else you feel like.

Yeah, yeah

Liv: then goes on to tell some truly outrageous stories that we know are

So I just think it's so fascinating to think of it that it's... That sort of always flattened into just this is what Odysseus did after he left Troy.

Like bop, you know?

Aven: Mm-hmm.

Liv: I- the thing I was just most nerdy about is that the framing is the same as in Homer. We even

instead of calling them chapters, we call them episodes. It's obviously more Greek and makes a little bit more sense to a modern reader than book. But we have 24, you know. We almost

I was like if we're gonna hit 25, we have to shorten [01:30:00] it so that it hits 24." Like it's one thing if we have 27, 28, but if it's 25, absolutely not. We're cutting one and making it 24. nobody was telling me to do this.

It was just purely because I was... The publisher was like, "We would like you, this podcaster, to write 'The Odyssey' for kids," and I was like, "Great, I'm gonna make it Homer as much as humanly possible

just

Yeah

it's ended up being a really fun way that I get to talk about it because regardless of how you feel about the movie, if you want to be able to pick up an easy-to-read short version that does keep in at least

Aven: the

bits. Yeah

Liv: like here it is. is it made for 9 to 12-year-olds? Sure. But really it's just a very readable version of The Odyssey that, yeah, at least in my opinion, is pretty darn true to Homer while also, you know, cutting out something like 100,000 words.

Aven: Right.

Liv: Details,

Aven: one in 100,000 words of Homer, yeah. Yeah, not, not quite that much, but yeah. like, let's bill it as a fun summer read, you know? I mean, it, [01:31:00] it... Version of The Odyssey, and then if you... No, 'cause I do think, like, obviously not everyone has the space in their heart, brain, or day to sit down and read The Odyssey.

Like, it's a commitment. I haven't reread it in its entirety in quite a long time, I'm not gonna lie. But if you are intrigued, either have always wanted to know it or are intrigued by the movie to, just do the thing of, okay, what's missing or, or what else is there or what's the depth of it, or any of those questions what I'm hearing from you is this is like a literary Coles Notes.

That is, it's not, like it's lit- Coles Notes about literature, I mean like it's a new literary retelling, but it gives you that, like, here's all the beats that you need to know, 'cause if you want to know what Homer did,

Liv: Yeah.

Aven: in here. Yeah.

Liv: exactly. Except for the net, sadly. But it is - it does make for a fun

when I'm talking about the book, is that I get to say that's the

Aven: add one little thing that's left out

Liv: only thing I knowingly cut out. Did I maybe miss a handful of other things? Very possible. I also was primarily working off of Emily Wilson's [01:32:00] translation, which is of course, like, fairly shorter because she went with iambic pentameter and all those things.

But yeah, I did als-

Aven: she didn't drop any episodes. Like, there's no, there's no loss that anything like that. Yeah, no

Liv: I have read it very recently in many different formats, and I've noticed...

Aven: have.

Liv: Emily Wilson's is my, like, go-to, so it's the one I read

a couple times before writing the book, and then I was referring to other translations a lot.

But I've recently been reading Ian Johnston's public domain translation which is delightful and reading - doing that for the show, and I've just noticed oh, right, a lot of it is quite a bit, like, wordier than Emily

Aven: Yeah. The descriptions go on a little longer and there's more, yeah, there's more sort of, yeah, there.

Liv: But otherwise,

For me it was just, yeah, truly, like I'm just a nerd who would really like to present The Odyssey for children, and it turned into one of the, like truly one of the most fun things I've gotten to do, which is very nice. And admittedly, it only came about [01:33:00] because of this movie, so no complaints here.

Aven: Yeah. I mean, surely we all, all of us in the classics related world are glad there's a bunch of people out there reading, talking about, arguing about, thinking about seeing The Odyssey.

Liv: Absolutely.

Aven: any other disagreements anybody has on any of the other points, like... And if we can ride that wave to get more people interested in other ways and thinking about it, I, I want every tie-in.

I want everybody- Mm-hmm ... to tie into this because-

Marcie: And, and given how, you know, complex and rich The Odyssey is- Yeah ... it's great to have lots of different approaches to that material. Yeah. So they don't, they're not mutually exclusive. They're good to have all of these different, you know, responses to or adaptations of or retellings of or whatever.

Liv: No, exactly. I mean, you know, we've like off mic, but obviously it'll be in this episode too, we've talked about [01:34:00] how you guys know a couple people who have been able to publish Odyssey books or related books because of this movie, and I can name another two friends of mine who have been able to do the same, and so

been a delightful year for us as people in this realm because, yeah, I mean, what a, an exciting way... Like, yeah, for all whatever about the movie itself, but what a thrill to have so many people suddenly interested in The Odyssey. I I've gotten a lot of new listeners who have found my show

thankfully over the years I've gone through The Odyssey in so many different ways, and so people have been able to

But certainly, yeah, zero complaints here. I'm getting a lot of book sales from this movie and so... And I got to... I went on CBC Radio and CBC

It's just been a real thrill for this Canadian gal

Aven: Yeah.

Liv: And CTV.

Aven: Oh,

Liv: Thank you,

Aven: CBC and

CTV, those are the only [01:35:00] things that exist.

Liv: Canada, and I went on both

Aven: Yeah. You did, you did both. plug your friends' books. What are the other books?

Liv: wrote, ooh,

Matters. Is that what it's called? Shit.

Aven: I think so.

Liv: lines.

Joel writes I'm happy w- I've got to

Aven: in case it's not quite right. I'll put a link in the footnotes

Liv: Erika Stevenson. She wrote The Odyssey Effect, which is

breaks down a lot of, like, reception of The Odyssey and all these different things, and she

Aven: see that referred to somewhere, yeah

Liv: MoAN Inc., Modern Ancients Inc.

Aven: Yes.

Liv: delightful, also slightly Canadian. And so yeah, she has that one as well, which I am very excited about. It just, yeah, it's been so nice to see how many people have gotten

To be in this realm and just have everyone oh, just more Homer in the world, and we're all excited.

Aven: Exactly. Exactly. Okay, also illustrated. Let's talk about that the illustrator and what you chose and all that.

Liv: The,[01:36:00]

is Hazem Asif, and he did a wonderful job. I will say, when it comes to a big publisher like DK, they picked the illustrator, and they worked with him directly. He and I have been in touch since the book came out, and so we've been

and stuff, and he's super chill. He... But he you know, we did primarily go through the editors and things, but he was able to put together, like, the color. That was the other thing I was joking about even before the movie came out. I was like, "There is one appropriately colorful version of The Odyssey coming out this year," and it's

not the movie, which is fine.

Choices are made. But

Aven: no, that I will grant you that for sure. Like, it wasn't as drab as it could have been. There was more color than it could have been.

Liv: I would say. I was, there was more color than I

but still I was like

Aven: it was definitely both in, like, tonal range, it was brown and gray and dark, but unsurprisingly, 'cause that was its mood, so fair. But also, like, in particular that one scene, which I won't necessarily dwell on, but that we see [01:37:00] that they didn't have painted their...

They didn't paint their statues, and I was like, "God damn it."

Liv: there was so many moments like

Aven: here?

Liv: color? Where's The color and the

Are the things I think

not the most dis- disappointed about, but I did think also, where... I miss whimsy. I miss, like, that's

Aven: no whimsy, or very little whimsy in that movie. I did not expect a Nolan movie to have whimsy, so that, I didn't, that, like, it met my expectations on that one.

But, has

you that whimsy, whimsy is lovely, and it is good that there is... I'm sure there, your, book is whim-

Whimsitastical? No, that's not gonna work.

Liv: I'm- I like it. No,

there's so much whimsy. No,

that was the thing too is, I love the color of the ancient Med as people in this realm, we all do and reminding people about how colorful everything was. And

I also am, again, a nerd, and so, you know, we weren't... I wanted to make sure I wasn't being, like, super nitpicky about [01:38:00] anachronistic stuff to a degree and all of

it's mythology. And so one of the things I decided in my head, and it w- came across in sort of all of the different references I provided and things, was just locking in, I went with kind of my favorite time period or broad time period of just saying, "Okay, as long as it's something that looks vaguely from the Bronze Age to the Classical period, like, we're okay."

that's myth, it was like, as long as it

Aven: specifically, Homer specifically is, is all of it. Yeah, yeah

Liv: so it was very much about that and just getting- making sure that there was the right vibe overall. But there are a few things that were very fun for me as a mega nerd. So there's a ton of very accurate pottery in

yes.

V- I loved the pottery and I was perhaps a little bit annoying about it, but it turned out for the best and I'm not sad. So

regret nothing

There was a lot of me being like, "Okay, [01:39:00] here are the different shapes that they can drink from, and it- here..." And I was... You know, I was like, "Okay, here are, like, five to work with.

I'm not gonna go crazy." But there are-

Aven: like I'm prescriptive. You have choices between three things.

Liv: And you know, so there's those moments and then there's Helen and Menelaus are they have a little profile photos. Each certain characters have these little profiles where we got to do, you know, some more detail on the characters, and theirs is one of my favorites because I wanted to really convey the wealth that they come back to Sparta with because

part of the story and I couldn't get it into the text so I was like, "Okay, really convey this wealth." so there's a lot of things in that image There's Bronze Age pottery that's like straight out of a museum as well as a ton of different gold various things from Mycenae or from

Aven: and earrings and things and yeah, yeah

Liv: pretty specific to,

actual artifacts.

Aven: Yeah, yeah, yeah[01:40:00]

Liv: those little things are so fun there was a quite a strict word limit.

It was I think 28,000 words that I had to jam, maybe less, the whole Odyssey into. So it was fun to be able to use some illustrations to like I said, Circe and Odysseus are like real close and

Aven: Fill in the details. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah

Liv: spell out but we can convey I just wanted to be able to teach as much as possible too just 'cause it's so fun and interesting and so

I even got in the competition that happens with the Phaeacians and I got to teach the kids about how the ancient athletic competitions worked. And so, you know, there's

little aside box that talks about how the Olympics were performed naked and oiled up and these things that I'm like, "Kids should know this.

It's amazing." I didn't get to talk to them about business that they

you know,

Aven: yeah, the string is, the string is mature content only. Yeah. And on- if only just for that you really do not want anyone trying this at home. Yeah. You really, really do [01:41:00] not want any boys being like, "I'll be a Greek athlete." Like, that is a lawsuit even in Canada you don't wanna have to face.

Liv: no good, yeah. So there was like

Aven: for those of you who don't know what we're talking about, just, just, just Google string ancient Olympics and see what happens.

Liv: That's just one of the, my favorite things that I've ever had a guest on the podcast teach me about. That was Alexandra Sills. We have an incredible episode

to me about that and it was one of the most joyous conversations I've ever had. but no, like there are so many things that I've learned over the years doing my show that I was just like, these are such

weird facts and I think that is along with the whimsy, like that's the thing that gets often lost in favor of this,

Aven: Mm-hmm.

Liv: and their Western civilization.

I was just wanted to

the nitty gritty...

Aven: Yeah

Liv: just so silly at so many times for the nerd in me too, there was lots of like similes from Homer that I was able to jam in and

[01:42:00] favorite moment that I got in at at the end I was able to 'cause you know the very end has Hermes leading the dead suitors into the underworld and there's this simile that says that they were squeaking like bats in a cave and I was able to get that in there and one with these little like aside facts and just these little things that I think to, those of us who are so like entrenched in this stuff it's, it, these are

that make it feel really real and really Homeric and even if like

child notices it or doesn't I don't...

Like I'm just so excited to have gotten all these little bits in

Aven: Yeah. realistically, children of this age are super interested in mythology historically- Yeah ... and super nerdy about the details of it, and absorb, and I say this as one who did myself, absorb what they're exposed to. So if what they're exposed to is the 1970s cartoon about Hercules, they will spend the rest of their life thinking Daedalus is the bad guy.

There's j- it, it doesn't matter how much you learn. [01:43:00] I have learned, I did a PhD in it. I am fully aware who Daedalus really is, but in my heart, in my heart of hearts, he's the bad guy because he's the bad guy in that cartoon.

Liv: know he was ever a bad guy

Aven: oh, he's the b- he's the bad guy in the, in the Hercules, hero song and story.

Hercules, winner of ancient glory. Look it up.

I

Liv: it.

Aven: you links. You're doomed now.

Liv: I'm so here

Aven: it's, and he's... I don't know why. Maybe they were like, 'cause he can, like, create things, and he has little bad guy- Yeah, he has sort of schemes ... he has schemes, and so they were just like, "I don't know, clever guy, and his name sounds like dad.

Sounds good enough to me."

Liv: it's

Aven: like, I read all of Greek Myths one and two basically because of that show when I was seven, waiting for the big reveal of Daedalus being the bad guy. A- and he, he, he's not. Spoiler. Totally not the bad guy. more sinned against Than sinning, for sure.

And anyway, I obviously know he's not, have known that for 40 years now, [01:44:00] but in my heart of hearts, he still is because these early exposures matter, and people, and the kids absorb these details. So I mean, 1000% yes, give them the details. Don't give them a version they have to unlearn 'cause I learned, I did that, right?

I, like, and not just... I mean, this one was never trying to teach me stuff, but I also read other things, and I've seen, I know lots of other people who've read stuff when they were young that was meant to teach them, but it taught them a version they had to unlearn. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Liv: And I mean, that's what I why I wanted to do even just the chronology, like to

because

Aven: yeah

Liv: so many things that you take in that way, and I just don't understand why we tend to... We have this habit of like telling kids like a explicitly wrong version that's meant to

be like kid-friendly, but if it's wrong, is that kid-friendly?

Like, there's a difference between making something appropriate and completely like fundamentally changing it, and that has always just been odd to me, so I was like, "Okay, that's the thing that I don't [01:45:00] wanna do." And I've only

event with kids for the book, and the kids that were there, oh my God, it was so much fun. They knew... The

they knew about mythology, there was this one kid and he was like, I don't even know. He was like sitting at the back with the adults, he was like maybe 10, and he was asking me questions where like he was pulling out stuff where I was like, "You are pulling out like really deep sources, dude, with this stuff that you're asking me about." And it

was so joyful to see how much kids take in and then to just know "Okay, cool, I'm giving you, I'm giving you a Homeric version of this. Like, you

Aven: yeah. Right

Liv: now take this in and you don't have to think 'Oh," like you know, "all of this is absolutely quote-unquote true of what happened.'"

Or just these different elements that I think get like just washed away or... Yeah. I mean, there's just, there's so much fun stuff in The Odyssey. I

to the underworld scene was obviously so

and I made sure like the women are still mentioned, not in as much detail as I'd like, but they're there. [01:46:00] And,

I managed to get like an Achilles and Patroclus reference 'cause obviously Achilles is there, and I talk about how Patroclus is just his beloved, like hanging out beside him. Like, there's just these little things that I got to just imply in there that I think get really, at best ignored or at worst intentionally whitewashed over or turned into something else, and it was just... It was really fun, really.

Aven: Yeah, I think, There are other adaptations, there are other things you can do.

Do whatever you want, but when it's, when it's sort of explicitly telling kids, "You're getting Homer's story," then it should be Homer's story. Yeah. they are totally there for it, I think. Mm-hmm

Liv: I mean, I think kids are so ready and it is so, on its face, fun for children that I- that's all I wanted to do is just say w- I know for a fact that like Homer's Odyssey is fun for kids. It just has to be formed in a way that conveys that.

But it's funny 'cause mine is [01:47:00] called a retelling, but in my intention with it, I was like this

is an abridged almost version. Like it really is, I tried to make

Homeric as possible and of course, you know, the title wasn't up to me either, which is just fine.

It's still called The Odyssey. But it was very like it was fun for me having gone through so many years, and not even just for kids, like there are so many myth books

so much at best incorrect things, like things that are just not in any of the sources.

there's one Greek myth book that I picked up years and years ago, before I'd really gotten deep in the podcast and so I didn't really know what I was looking for and it just presented itself as Greek

and it was by a professional and I picked it up and I've looked at it more recently and like so often, things get rewritten in a way that like completely ruins the actual characters in some cases and I mean I'm walking around it, but like in the case of this one book it's they've just infused all this like fresh misogyny into it [01:48:00] I've picked up so many things like that purport to tell you the myths period and then

to make Greek myths more misogynistic and you're like they actually, they do that fine on their own.

Like you,

Aven: really don't need help on that one.

Liv: help. I've seen so much of that over so many years that I was like I'm just really excited to be able to do not that. And obviously The Odyssey was also a piece that is not as problematic. Like it's easier to make

Aven: to do that there than in most, yeah. Yeah. Like, the Iliad is harder, not impossible, but harder.

Liv: too

Aven: y- you're going to?

Liv: It's not, you know, official visual, but

like, yeah,

Aven: that's awesome. that's, like, good. I'm glad. I, think a full companion of Greek myth, I get it. Like, there's stuff in there that's just like if you take out the parts that you really don't wanna tell a kid, there's not much left in some of the stories.

especially the stories That exist just as myth rather than as a, a piece of literature around that myth. Mm-hmm. Because if it's a piece [01:49:00] of literature around it, then it's gonna have a whole bunch of stuff. But if it's just one of the ones that's just, just the story and the story is, you know, Procne and Philomela or something, you're like, "No, can't do it.

Can't do that one.

Liv: Yeah,

Aven: No kids are going to be able to listen to this one, sorry." You know, so- Yeah ... but the Odyssey's not like that at all, yeah

Liv: kind of way to get in with that idea, and I will say this is... It's, it is contracted, so it will eventually happen and I can talk about it, but I don't know when it'll happen, but I am

going to get to write...

'Cause originally I had gotten a different book deal actually with DK, and then they announced the movie, and so they were like, "Do you wanna do this?" And I was like, "What? Yeah, absolutely. yes, yes. Yes, Yes, I do."

earlier book that ended up getting canceled in favor of The Odyssey was one that I was like, "This'll be fun.

Like, it'll be good. I just wanna get another book under my name." And then they switched to The Odyssey and I was like, "Oh, you've just made every dream I've ever had come true." Like, the ongoing joke in my head too is, like, my first book is dedicated in jest to Odysseus as my first love. it's [01:50:00] not just like The Odyssey is just any myth to me.

It's like the thing that

love, and so it was

But the other book that I will get to eventually is for a slightly younger audience, and it's called, or going to be called something along the lines of, this is temporary, but The Little Book of Bad Myths. Because really what I just get to do is write a very young kids book about all of the goriest, nastiest myths. And

Aven: 'Cause you can do the violence.

Liv: All the kid

Aven: if you do that right for kids, you can do it right, you can do violence, yeah

Liv: want it to be... I mean, I hope that they let me do more than one so that I can make the first book just the Tantalids. literally just a book of like, all the times that family, like,

their children and fed them to somebody else.

It's just perfect for kids, like, that's the type of myth And similar with The Odyssey, like, these are just these things that are so made for children and yet we so often make them, like completely rewrite them for kids when we could just be like,

Aven: be like the Victorians. People think the Victorians [01:51:00] bowdlerized. They bowdlerized sex, but they did not bowdlerize violence. Mm-hmm. They, in fact, increased the violence in kids' stories- they understood the kids They're bloodthirsty because they don't know the consequences, right?

Like, that's the important thing and, and that's why you actually want the kind of violence that's over the top in some ways

petty, cruel violence is actually really scary. But, like, eating kids

Liv: This and

Aven: happen, so it's fine.

Liv: exactly. Like, you know, there are really horrifying stories if you wanna get into an

of that myth, but like for kids, I just - I mean, my favorite, I love the Tantalus story so much just 'cause there's so

Aven: they are great. Yeah.

Liv: eating.

Aven: in the Lycaon story and then you're good.

Liv: good.

Erysichthon maybe.

Aven: Yeah. Ooh, now that is one that you could make a whole M. Night Shyamalan kind of, I can't say his name properly, but anyway kind of horror movie around, but also you could make a really funny kids, kids story out of it.

Yeah. Yeah

Liv: like those were the things that were fun in The Odyssey too is like, you know, the Polyphemus [01:52:00] I have him being very... He's very cute with his sheep even as he eats people because how Homer wrote him and I love that.

Aven: This will be one... Okay. We're Is there anything else that you wanna sort of point out

Liv: so. I've rambled so

Aven: it?

Liv: I was writing this, and it was just so much fun, so

Aven: If our audience is not the right audience to tell that you are nerdy about Greek- Yeah ... the ancient world, I don't know what audience is. So

Liv: just that's why this is the right place for me to say, like, this is all of the nerdiest stuff that I jammed in there, whether or not kids are ever gonna know. But I hope... My goal is to like, have a kid who picks it up and that's one of their first, you know,

to Greek myth, and then 10 years later, even if I never know this fact, but, like, I want a child to have read that and then 10 years later to know to read The Odyssey or whenever it is and to just think "Wow, actually, you know, I- nothing about that was fundamentally different than the children's book

And, like, that just alone is like, that's all I need. That's what I want [01:53:00] anyone to take away from my version is just that it's not fundamentally different from Homer's version.

Aven: It's a small thing. a small thing.

Liv: it's - I think I can safely say it's one of the few children's books available that does not fundamentally change the story that Homer told.

Aven: I think that's a huge selling point. So awesome. Well, thank you very much for talking to us about it, and we will put all the links and all the stuff in all the places, but one more time, it is called

Liv: Odyssey A Modern Retelling

Aven: There you go.

Thanks, Liv.

Liv: Thank you

Aven: okay. Those are the three books that we wanted to bring to your attention, and we recommend them all. But before we sign off on our thoughts about The Odyssey in general, if not the movie, there's one more thing we wanted to talk about.

Mar you wrote a song about Odysseus a little while ago. Why don't you tell us about it and what its inspiration was?

Marcie: I did. and the [01:54:00] initial idea came from this often, mentioned idea that the Greeks can't see the color blue, which of course is kind of nonsense. but the claim came from the fact that nowhere in a Homeric text do you see things referred to as blue.

And in fact, they refer to the water, the ocean, as Wine dark The

Aven: color of wine ...

Marcie: the color of wine, in which, someone now would say, "Well, that's not blue. How is that like the ocean?" so the song is called I Can't See No Blue. It's a blues song, so it's written in, in the style of a blues song, and it's about Odysseus, and it's also about the pandemic.

Aven: Mm-hmm.

Marcie: And the responses to the pandemic, in particular, the sort of toxic masculinity in the kind of reaction to the pandemic and all the rules and the lockdown and, and how there was a lot of rather harmful behavior, surrounding that.

Aven: [01:55:00] Like not masking and things like that.

Marcie: Like not wanting to mask and then not wanting to,

Aven: Get vaccinated

Marcie: get vaccinated and, you know, not wanting to change your life at all.

Aven: Mm-hmm.

Marcie: and so I drew some parallels between that and the behavior of Odysseus- Mm-hmm ... in The Odyssey.

Aven: And you wrote this during the pandemic.

Marcie: I wrote it during lockdown, and in fact- Yeah ... the idea came to me while we were doing an online video chat social because- Mm-hmm

that was the only way people could have any kind of social interaction in these days. And so this group of classicists, formed to do these weekly at the time, classic social hours. and it was in the middle of that conversation that this idea came to me, and, I just sort of dashed it out really quickly.

it just sort of wrote itself. Mm-hmm. And so I, I did a recording of it, and I played all the instruments, uh, guitar, bass, drums, piano, and sang the vocals. which is a project that I did also during the pandemic. I started doing recording with me doing all the instruments because you can't [01:56:00] get together with other musicians-

to, to play. so it was this kind of project that I took on.

Aven: Great. Well, we'll play that song now, and thanks to everyone for listening to this epically long episode. We appreciate your patience. Bye.

Marcie: Bye-bye.

Speaker 3: From you all this time[01:57:00]

Nothing but [01:58:00] [01:59:00] [02:00:00] conspiracy

Aven: for more information on this podcast, check out our website, www.alliterative.net, where you can find links to the videos, blog posts, sources, and credits, and all our contact info.

Marcie: And please check out our Patreon, where you can pledge to support this show and our video project. You can go directly to the [02:01:00] videos at youtube.com/alliterative.

Aven: Our email is on the website, but the easiest way to get in touch with us is Twitter. I'm @AvenSarah, A-V-E-N-S-A-R-A-H.

Marcie: And I'm @Alliterative. To keep up with the podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcast app or to the feed on the

Aven: website. And if you've enjoyed it, consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.

It helps us a lot. We'll be back soon with more musings about the connections around us. Thanks for listening. Bye.