Homer vs. Nolan: The Odyssey in Carleton Classrooms vs. Your Neighborhood Theater

Social media has been teeming with discourse on Christopher Nolan’s recent $250M rendition of “The Odyssey.” Instagram is rife with memes and reels stemming from this 3000-year-old story. Having taken a singular introductory Classics class at Carleton with Chico Zimmerman (super cool prof), I believe I am the classical antiquity expert the present moment is calling for. In this paper, I will compare contemporary social media discourse on the Odyssey to what you would learn about it in a Carleton classroom. By doing so, I will investigate how technology changes the way we tell and interpret the stories that have shaped Western culture for millennia.

Lesson #1 from class: Homer wasn’t a guy who just came up with cool stories back in the day. The Odyssey, along with other classical compositions like the Iliad, are all part of canonical epic poetry. Allow me to copy-paste here from my own final exam paper: “The purpose of epic poetry was to serve as a cultural database that collected stories and dialects from many different peoples in the Bronze Age over time, and was recited publicly with distinct, repetitive meters. In the absence of written script, it was the primary way of commemorating soldiers who died in war and honoring those who emerged victorious.”

Nolan’s “Odyssey” begins with TRAVIS SCOTT (!!!) as the bard recounting Odysseus’ journey. Scott, one of our generation’s most popular rap-singers, is aptly cast as the bard: present-day rap-style singing, predominantly associated with AAVE, seems to be the most similar to oral poetry in its format, repetitive rhythms and cultural value. I do think that the movie could have used more bardic moments, as that is the formal foundation of the epic.

The movie is also 3 hours long; in an era where short-form videos reflect shrinking attention spans, Nolan’s 180-minute take is a nod to the origins of the Odyssey, where you would HAVE to sit through a bard just yapping on and on about a guy finding his way home. But also, why does getting home take him SO LONG!!?? Social media users are also surprised:

Think about it this way: The Song of Achilles is to the Iliad what Percy Jackson is to the Odyssey. They’re contemporary fanfictions. In class, it took me a couple of weeks to move on from these fanfictions to be able to appreciate these compositions in isolation. Aptly put by this social media user:

Social media is also not very happy with how Odysseus highkey cooked himself and his crew by messing with Polyphemus the Cyclops when the monster was lowkey just chilling:

To this end, I went back to Moodle (the platform where you will have all your courses and assignments) and looked up the class discussions we had about Polyphemus. This was in context of Theocritus’ Idylls, which are a later set of poems (kinda like fan-fiction but in ancient Greece) that depict Polyphemus courting a sea nymph called Galatea: while the Cyclops brings her flowers and cheese (what a sweet guy), she isn’t keen on reciprocating his love because, well, he is chudmaxxing with his singular eye. But God forbid someone ugly wants love???

If you were minding your own business, making cheese, hanging out with your sheep, and a bunch of ant-sized men showed up to vandalize your property, would you kill them? Alternatively, if you were a starving war veteran stranded at sea, would you help yourself to someone’s food because Zeus’ law mandates hospitality for everyone? These are questions that these stories can help you reflect on, especially because the movie makes a bigger deal of Zeus’ law than the oral compositions.

In class, we discussed how Odysseus has long been celebrated as the smartest guy during the Trojan War. If people are questioning his choices now, then Nolan has done a good job portraying his complicated, flawed human character. You know what else Nolan did an excellent job at? The costumes. Take, for example, Agamemnon’s very, very rad armor. Social media users are calling him “Aura-memnon.”

In the movie, when Agamemnon takes his armor off, he is not as muscular as one would expect. I think it’s a deliberate directive choice: under a helmet made out of a human spine is a man who has the least spine in the Trojan war. Amidst two ferocious armies fighting to death in the battlefield, we see Agamemnon just standing about. His power comes through only when he sacrifices his little daughter for favorable war conditions. I’m not sure if that’s very hero-like. But the costumes sure are.

I am grateful that I took Chico’s Classical Antiquity class to be able to think critically about the media we consume, and how it shapes the stories we interact with. If this interests you, check out our wonderful Classics Department! You can also take Greek to satisfy your language requirement, where every year, students read Homer in the original Greek! In fact, Chico will be teaching Greek Homer this upcoming fall term. Also check out the very cool study abroad programs Classics offers in Greece!

Zainab (she/her/hers) is a rising junior from Pakistan. A Physics major, she is the founder of Carleton’s Futures Thinking and Foresight Club, a member of Semaphore, and passionate about singing. When not in class, she can be found side questing in the arb, learning some new skill, or wandering across Downtown Northfield.

Zainab has a background in climate activism and journalism. With over thirty publications in Urdu and English, she serves as a Youth Advisor to Pakistan’s Prime Minister, represents Pakistan to the United Nations’ Youth Force, and has worked with UNICEF for grassroots climate organization.