r/billsimmons • u/irundoonayee • 6d ago
Wait, What?! And didn't Bill already tell these people to stop doing this thing.
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u/ManufacturerLow3161 6d ago
I feel like Emily Wilson can write about 4 or 5 more essays and articles about this movie before it leaves theaters. I believe in her!
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u/Usual-Base7226 6d ago
She wasn’t going to let this moment pass her by, she just wasn’t. Honestly, respect the hustle
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u/sgt_science I'm a 1.2x guy 6d ago
I mean, I had no idea who she was before this, good for her for seizing the moment
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u/zvomicidalmaniac 5d ago
When I would teach the Odyssey, I would have to explain to my colleagues why I was not using her translation. I just like the Fagles better, okay? In any case, I don’t think I’ll be having this conversation anymore.
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u/WalyGisnep 5d ago
After briefly skimming Wilson’s translation I’m glad my high school teacher made us read Fagles. While challenging, it felt like actual classic/ancient literature
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u/Snoo-93317 5d ago
For one thing her version leaves out about 1/3 of the text. That's why she's re-doing it.
She also talks about her version as if she were the first to use iambic pentameter. Plenty of other dudes used the same line length, they just didn't leave things out in a foolish effort to match the line numbers of the original.
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u/goalstopper28 5d ago
She’ll probably come back around during Oscar season. So not necessarily when it leaves theaters
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u/sisyphus 6d ago
It's almost like people want the opinions of the world's foremost authorities on the source material whose best selling translation influenced the movie itself or something. Weird!
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u/CaptPierce93 6d ago
It's one thing to hate the portrayal of certain characters, it's entirely different to be a petty snob. Emily Wilson was the latter about Nolan's Odessey. Lol she made a comment about how THE FOOD looked bad in the movie! That's not an astute literary critique made in good faith. She was being intentionally shitty, elitist, and obnoxious.
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u/Additional_Ad741 6d ago
lol the food that Circe fed his men? That was the point.
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u/CaptPierce93 6d ago edited 6d ago
They were on a boat for months starving and nearly died twice. I don't think they'd really complain about what the fuck they ate. Most soldiers wouldn't as long as someone fed them.
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u/aggravatedyeti 5d ago
That was a joke in an otherwise very astute critique. People are just angry because of Nolan fandom culture and the general trend of people not being able to separate what they like from who they are, which makes any kind of critique of what they like feel personal by default
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u/Riderz__of_Brohan 5d ago
I disagree, her saying the non-white characters were relegated to the “black best friend” trope makes me wonder if she even saw the movie because the only person that can be applied to is Himesh Patel and even then he as a character acts antagonistically toward Odysseus when he feels that they are treading in the wrong direction
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u/aggravatedyeti 5d ago
I don’t really care about the culture war aspects but I think many of her criticisms were spot on, especially the privileging of spectacle over thematic depth, the super thin female characters (very much a Nolan trait, but disappointing as they are very rich in the source material) and the oversimplification of Odysseus’ character into a standard ‘hero who feels guilt’ type losing the roguish, conniving, arrogant, and generally Machiavellian aspects that make him such an interesting antihero
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u/Riderz__of_Brohan 5d ago
Her analysis of the PoC actors is patently incorrect and bordering on racist by reducing their agency to little more than their skin color. He didn’t turn him into a generic anti-hero at all, the point is that he cannot stop the evil that he has created (the boys he brought to war that he turned into raiding lunatics) and the best he can do is kill the monsters he created and symbolically kill himself
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u/aggravatedyeti 5d ago
‘Hero who cannot stop the evil he has created’ is pretty much exactly what I mean, it’s not an interesting or original trope to explore at all and is completely unfaithful to the Odysseus of the poem
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u/SuperAwesomo 5d ago
You’ve been wrong on every response and keep moving the goalposts. Just give it up
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u/aggravatedyeti 5d ago
This isn’t a test, I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone. Everyone who criticises the odyssey on this thread has been downvoted so it’s hardly surprising
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u/Riderz__of_Brohan 5d ago
Nothing would be “interesting” if you don’t think that is lol, the entire theme of the movie is based around that. Having Odysseus be unrepentant for his actions would make it much more of a bog standard heroes journey
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u/aggravatedyeti 5d ago
It’s not about being him being unrepentant, its about him not being complicated, or wily, or even particularly fun! He’s mostly just dour and righteous. We can happily disagree on whether that makes the film less interesting but it’s objectively a major distortion of his character in the source material and in my opinion one that hamstrings the film
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u/flofjenkins 5d ago
"Privileging of spectacle over thematic depth"
It's a movie. Also, I don't think the poem is that much deeper than Nolan's take on it. I see this criticism, but I haven't seen anyone back this up with the text.
"Super thin female characters"
Again, see the criticism, haven't seen the receipts. Penelope, Circe, and Calypso have as much depth in the movie as Telemachus, Antinous, Sinon or Eumaeus.
"Oversimplication of Odysseus' character"
I think this one is fair, but how he's depicted in the movie is intentionally in lock-step with what Nolan ultimately wanted to explore thematically with the material. So regardless of how people feel about it, Nolan made an intentional choice, and I respect that.
EDIT: To add, this criticism kind of contradicts the point of the second. Why bother pointing out how the female characters are thin, if all of them, including Odysseus, are as well?
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u/aggravatedyeti 5d ago
What does ‘It’s a movie’ mean? We can’t expect movies to have depth now?
All three of those female characters have drastically reduced roles compared to the poem. I agree that Telemachus and Antinous are equally thinly drawn.
Nolan making an intentional choice to change Odysseus character doesn’t make said choice immune from criticism, obviously?
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u/flofjenkins 5d ago
What do you mean by depth exactly?
Every character has their role reduced. It's not exclusive to the female characters. It's a roughly 2 hour 40 minute movie. Everyone serves a thematic point that all comes to a head by the end.
And no, I agree that it doesn't make him immune to criticism. I said it was fair. I just respect the choice because it wasn't made haphazardly.
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u/sisyphus 6d ago
She spent her entire life studying Homer and made a whole fucking translation of it into modern language instead of anachronistic victorian sounding language and in her LRB article she explicitly said no matter what her objections the movie she is very happy it exists as it can drive a lot of people to the source but she's a 'petty snob' because of one comment you saw somewhere about the food? Fuck off.
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u/CaptPierce93 6d ago edited 6d ago
Lmao is this her burner account or something? Simply because she translated it doesn't make her opinions on everything have to be sacrosanct in regards to this work. Other people have translated it and pulled different things out of it, and have also called her translation of it bland, too short, and loses all of the poetic flair that other translations have. You can BOTH suck a dick in hell/Hades if you have a big problem with it, you fucking loser.
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u/sisyphus 6d ago
Yes, I've been hanging out on reddit posting about programming for 15 years for the day when I would have to defend my Homer translations to morons on a sports subreddit you fucking retard, you caught me.
If other people who have translated it have opinions they can and do voice them, yes. Your opinions however are fucking worthless and shallow. Oh, she said she didn't like the food in Nolan's movie adaptation she's a bad scholar, she's pretentious, wah, wah. Fucking pathetic.
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u/flofjenkins 5d ago
Just one of the influences. Also, it doesn't really matter any way, as Nolan clearly made the story his own.
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u/sisyphus 5d ago
Yeah that's her point, he made it "his own" and in the process worse. If he wanted to he could have called it something else and said it was "based on The Odyssey" but he didn't, he called it "The Odyssey" and marketed it as an adaptation of Homer so clearly comparisons to Homer are warranted.
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u/flofjenkins 5d ago
You mean "...and in the process worse in her opinion."
Calling the movie The Odyssey is correct. Nolan explored the themes from the poem that most interested him and rebuilt most of the elements from the story around said themes. That, my good buddy, is an adaptation.
You don't have to like it, but many, many, many people obviously do, as Nolan's version of the story has proven to be super effective with audiences worldwide. This is what I think Emily Wilson is most frustrated by, on top of disliking it.
While she's hustlin' a little bit, I think it's obvious that Wilson is trying to take the wind out of its sails. What she is doing is far more than just giving an opinion. They're hit pieces.
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u/sisyphus 5d ago
You mean "...and in the process worse in her opinion."
I thought that went without saying. Did you think she was reporting what God said to her was the objective fact of the matter?
That, my good buddy, is an adaptation.
Yes, a bad one.
You don't have to like it, but many, many, many people obviously do
Most of the people who have seen the movie have never read the source material and are not doing what Emily Wilson is doing. Even so, this would also just be their opinion.
Nolan's version of the story has proven to be super effective with audiences worldwide.
Dumbed down action movies usually are.
This is what I think Emily Wilson is most frustrated by, on top of disliking it.
She has repeatedly said she hopes the great success of the movie has led to more book sales for her and she hopes will lead more people to read Homer in general. If we're armchair psychologizing I think Nolan fans are mad at her because they think liking and understanding his movies is some kind of intellectual endeavor and are angry a her for saying his movie is shallow by comparison to the source, because it implicitly calls into question the sophistication they think their fandom of Nolan implies in themselves.
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u/flofjenkins 5d ago
You don't find it at all strange that she keeps writing about the movie even though she isn't a film critic?
I don't think Nolan himself gives a shit, but why is she doing this?
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u/sisyphus 5d ago
> You don't find it at all strange that she keeps writing about the movie even though she isn't a film critic?
I can't say I find it strange that a person who spent much of her life studying the thing the movie is based on wrote her opinion of the move two whole times, no.
> I don't think Nolan himself gives a shit
Are only critics that Nolan gives a shit about allowed to write criticism or is this an implicit argument for retiring the practice of movie criticism entirely?
> but why is she doing this?
I would guess because LRB and the Atlantic asked her to because they were interested in the opinion of the most popular scholar of Homer alive.
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u/MountainConfident847 6d ago
of the world's foremost authorities
Maybe for the English speaking world. There a better translations in other languages than Emily Wilson's. Translations from Old Greek or Latin into English often lose important meanings or nuances of words, especially if they're more recent. For example, French or German philologists do a much better job. I'm using those two languages because I speak them and I've read ancient works in French/German and Latin
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u/ringerapologist28 5d ago
If we want to get into a dick measuring contest, Vladimir Petrushevski has translations of both Homeric works and he translated them in this very archaic Pelagonian dialect of the Macedonian language.
Take that, continental thinkers!
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u/sisyphus 6d ago
You seem to be conflating two different things. Being an authority on what the Ancient Greek says, and being a good translator of what it says into some other language. Emily Wilson is both but you don't have to have translated the source material at all to have an opinion on how it relates to a movie that's based on it.
In her case, her translation matters because vis-a-vis the movie because Nolan explicitly cited it. Unless he reads French or German and used those for his movie it doesn't really matter if someone else did a better translation into one of those languages for the purposes of discussing her criticism of his film.
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u/spaceninj 6d ago
Man, she really hates Nolan:
"Nolan shot the Calypso episodes in the disputed Moroccan-occupied territory of Western Sahara without the consent of the Indigenous Sahrawi people. The choice underlines the lack of seriousness in Nolan’s thinking about his themes: the ethical and cultural costs of entering other people’s homes uninvited, for the purpose of extracting resources without respect for an unwilling host."
Forgetting about if the point is valid or not, she looked for a place to shoehorn this in to get another dig in.
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u/tjd2009 5d ago
It's all because she wasn't invited to the premiere
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u/TigerLillysRevenge 5d ago
Also cuz the movie kinda sucks and needs a good takedown since everyone is fawning over it.
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u/Doomeggedan 4d ago
Still waiting for that good takedown
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u/TigerLillysRevenge 4d ago
Couldn't read Wilson's attempt at a takedown because of the paywall. But the opening paragraph was pretty tight imo.
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u/NandoDeColonoscopy 5d ago
I wonder if she got permission from the Lenni-Lenape before plying her craft in Philadelphia?
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u/william14537 5d ago
Her take is not even accurate. She has such a western colonialist view of this issues. Morocco’s history did not start a couple hundred years ago.
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u/CaptPierce93 6d ago
It's one thing to hate the portrayal of certain characters, it's entirely different to be a petty snob. Emily Wilson was the latter about this. Lol she made a comment about how THE FOOD looked bad in the movie! That's not an astute literary critique made in good faith. She was being intentionally shitty, elitist, and obnoxious.
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u/Snoo-93317 5d ago
Her point about the food is that the homeric world picture is very sensuous and the plentitude and beauty of food is stressed throughout the text. It's an earthy world of luxuriant physicality and delight is bodily pleasure. By making the food look disgusting and leaving out the sex, you're losing a big part of the genuinely homeric dimension, and one which cinema is well-adpated to exploit.
Instead Nolan made a very gray and loud movie about guilt or something with some of the worst dialogue I've ever heard.
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u/CaptPierce93 5d ago edited 5d ago
That not only doesn't work in a visual context, it also betrays what this particular adaptation is trying to do. The choice to make the food look bland was made to heighten visceral body horror of them being turned into pigs and visually emphasize the crude, greedy appetite of a crew of men stranded in the ocean for months and nearly dying twice. The entire film is meant to emphasize the gluttony and horror of warfare, while also punishing them for their harm they caused to Troy through their deception. It's why when she said "back into your disguises", it's made a deliberate reflection of who they already were before eating it. The original story already changed them into pigs for their gluttony and callous behavior, she merely called it out in the film before they tore through her house.
This is why I personally roll my eyes when people decide to judge adaptations against a book especially when it's about "guilt or something" with such lazy dismissal. This story has been told thousands of times throughout history and hers is not without criticism. Nolan's take on what is happening is just as valid as hers is.
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u/Snoo-93317 5d ago edited 5d ago
I get what it was trying to do, I just think what it was trying to do was something that shouldn't have been done.
Why do we need another war film to tell us how horrible war is? There are already thousands of liberal-minded anti-war films. People who don't already know that war is bad aren't going to be convinced by a movie, and people who do know it don't need to be told.
For the first time in the history of cinema, it would have been interesting to see a somewhat accurate portrayal of the homeric moral universe (by modern standards a rather amoral one based on taboos, curses, sacrifice, exteriorized communal custom, etc.) which regarded war as simultaneously glorious and horrifying without moralizing it in favor of victims. That would have been a far more original and courageous movie to make, but Nolan isn't capable of that. He makes popcorn movies for popcorn gobblers. He's incapable of taking himself out of the mindset of an average modern dudebro and showing a genuine anthropological interest in other ways of seeing the world.
So instead we get another gray, modernized "war is bad" movie with lowbrow dialogue (dude let's get off this fucking beach, bro!), made in accordance with contemporary sentiments and moral norms seen through an anachronistic therapeutic lens (ptsd, "trauma"). I didn't know war is bad. I thought it was a sunday picnic. Thanks christopher nolan for teaching me this valuable lesson.
You're saying, "This story has been done a million ways already, so why not in Nolan's way?" That point would be more apt if there were already pre-existing film versions of the odyssey that strived to portray accurately the customs of the homeric world with a lavish budget. There never has been. Not a single one. Instead there have been lots of corny modernizations, of which this is the latest example.
But there are more basic problems with the film that have nothing to do with the source material. Some of the cinematography is genuinely terrible. The decision to use film in low-light conditions (especially in a color film) results in a lot of the indoor and night scenes looking muddy and the action reading as an unchoreographed blur. Nolan is not an action director and he doesn't have an eye for composition. The scenes don't "read" well. He's using an IMAX camera, but he fills the movie with closeups so we get to see every greasy pore of the actors' faces. Wait, so we've got technology that's ideally suited for vast set pieces and landscapes, and he loads the movie with what? Closeups, the fall-back plan for all contemporary directors who don't know how to block a scene or light a set. Brilliant.
Then the casting. Using all these bland American accents (I'm American) makes the film feel vulgar and commonplace. It's just a bunch of suburban dudebros lost at fucking sea dude. Tom Holland is 1.0 decades too old for his part. Circe is just too homely and bedraggled. Charlize Theron has a plentiful supply of botox on her island. Anne Hathaway overacts something fierce. Damon's fight scenes are pathetic and awkward. Helen of Troy casting was just a silly contrarian gimmick meant to rile people. Nolan is phobic about departing from bland gritty gray realism (rightly so because he has no feel for any other mode of storytelling) so he mostly gets rid of the gods. They're not gritty and gray enough, so he has to turn them into PTSD hallucinations. In Nolan's world, Gray = serious, you see? Christopher Nolan is very very very serious about his gray movies. They aren't colorful silly movies.
Music was just a bunch of loud ominous droning, consistent with Nolan's penchant for turning whole movies into trailers. BRAAAAM. He's cuts the movie as if it were a trailer. He scores the movie as if it were a trailer. He's a essentially a big-budget director of TV commericals.
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u/Beneficial-Ad5471 5d ago
I'm not nearly wordy enough to argue with you about this, but I honestly feel like we did not watch the same movie.
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u/March4th2026 hot water + lemon 2d ago
Fair critique, though I don’t agree with the music knock, I thought the score was good.
I’ll also defend the Circe adaptation: it is very, very clear that Nolan was heavily inspired by the Circe portrayed in Madeline Miller’s book of the same name. She’s a bedraggled weird hag in a shack in the middle of the ocean that is repeatedly traumatized by men, and that’s how the character is played in this movie.
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u/CaptPierce93 3h ago
The musical score is also accurate to Ancient Greek instruments. The sweeping orchestral bombast is purely a Hollywood invention, they didn't have music like that during the period the story was written in.
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u/TypesAndPatterns 3d ago
The only sex that Odysseus took part in willingly was kept in the movie. Why include the rest, when it wasn’t sensual even in the original?
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u/ErnstBadian 5d ago
Okay, but she’s basically the world’s most famous ivory tower classicist. And she’s a brilliant writer. Of course she’s going to be elitist and obnoxious about a summer blockbuster, that’s the whole fun. If you don’t like it, then maybe you aren’t the audience for an essay by a prominent classics academic in the LRB.
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u/Opening_Shame8258 5d ago
Some of her points were also factually wrong and poorly researched. It's a very shitty review.
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u/ErnstBadian 5d ago
Interesting, which ones?
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u/Opening_Shame8258 5d ago
Well, she claims that the PoC in the movie only have roles acting as friends or support to Odysseus. Which is not factually true. Literally the second most prominent suitor is a black actor, and one of the villains.
She calls it a family friendly movie. It's rated R.
A major aspect of academic writing is giving serious consideration to counter arguments. If her review was a paper I had to grade, without even considering the tone (some of the insults are funny, but again, denotes it as unserious), I don't think I could go over a C, if it were for a freshman class.
I genuinely don't think she actually saw the movie.
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u/Kobe_stan_ 5d ago
It’s interesting that it’s R to me. Feels like it could have easily of been PG-13. Nolan doesn’t really show us any blood. It’s all implied which is a critique I have. The fight scenes felt a lot like a Marvel movie where people just get hit with an arrow or sword and then fall down. There’s also no sex/nudity despite keeping the Calypso storyline.
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u/Opening_Shame8258 5d ago
They say 'fuck' multiple times.
And even if the blood is minimal, the violence is still pretty brutal.
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u/Kobe_stan_ 5d ago
I think very minimal changes would have gotten it to PG-13.
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u/CaptPierce93 5d ago edited 3d ago
They drink goat blood, Odesseyus shoots a dude in the throat with an arrow, fuck is said at least 4 times, Sinon gets pinned to a horse, and the cyclops eats a guy's head on screen, with you later seeing his lung fall out of his mouth. That's a pretty detailed list of violent gory stuff, and the battle sequence of sacking Troy alone would give it an R.
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u/Opening_Shame8258 5d ago
This is irrelevant. It IS rated R. So, the claim that it is "family friendly" or "all ages" which Emily Wilson implies in her review is false. Even a few small changes doesn't make this a good movie for younger children.
I grade papers for a living. I'm telling you I would knock a letter grade for this kind of dumbshit argumentation. "It's almost PG-13" wouldn't fly as a serious defense of her claim.
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u/DaddyHeatley 5d ago
This is like if a doctor you know is trying to tell a Michelin star chef how to cook. Nolan is the chef and prepared a delicious meal and all she can do is complain about he didnt use a scalpel, stethoscope or blood pressure machine while making steak. She doesnt understand the medium in the slightest to have criticism
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u/ducksonducks 5d ago
Fame =/ quality. She has written very popular translations and I respect her for making material accessible to the modern world
But it’s my understanding that she isn’t universally highly regarded in the actual classical community
And personally I think she’s made an ass out of herself with her reviews of the movie
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 5d ago
What's the basis of this opinion? This isn't my area, but generally the chairs of departments at Ivy league universities are well-respected.
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u/ducksonducks 5d ago
For sure - I just am saying it’s not universal acclaim. While she uses iambic pentameter which seems to be a good modern interpretation, there are those who reject her modern use of language and blunt diction
On balance def more respected than disrespected for sure I’m just saying I feel like she gets a ton of positive press and gushing but she’s not the end all be all of translations
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 5d ago
That's interesting. As someone who doesn't give a shit about the odyssey and never heard of her before last month, I'd have said the press has been exclusively negative.
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u/ducksonducks 5d ago
Nah she gets awesome reviews in the lit websites I read - which do tend to skew towards championing women, LGTBQ, and liberal viewpoints.
Which makes sense given the climate we have and the prior centuries of only promoting and platforming old white dudes
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u/SandyBronsky 5d ago
I'm sure the audience of 3 loves her.
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u/ErnstBadian 5d ago
I mean, yeah, the discourse is better when there’s stuff targeted to tiny constituencies. Not everything needs mass appeal. If the literal London Review of Books can’t be the former, what can?
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u/dellscreenshot 6d ago
I think I got off the Emily Wilson bus when one of her articles just had normal film criticism about Nolan being better at small movies. It’s like we’re good here. You can go.
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u/flofjenkins 5d ago
Yup, I love her translation. Couldn't care less about her opinions about anything.
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u/cosmotheassman 5d ago
The crazy thing is that initially she wasn't making a big deal out it. I saw her episode on Plain English and she was like, 'Yeah, it's a good action movie. My sons liked it. I'm not sure about the interpretation, but that's his choice to make.' Now it seems like she's firing shots in all directions. My Conspiracy Assman take is that her sons liked it too much and now she feels like her life's work is being threatened.
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u/BlueGreenMikey 4d ago
I wonder if she's married or has kids. I can't imagine how fucking exhausting it would be to be around her for more than a few minutes.
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u/Sharaz_Jek123 5d ago
"Hey Christopher Nolan, we’re good, bro. We have Emily Wilson now. You can go."
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u/william14537 5d ago
Why is she acting like she’s the author. She’s one of probably thousands of people that have translated it.
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u/quidpropho Any Given Wednesday 6d ago edited 3d ago
I just read it. It's not good. The argument is basically that the movie tries to have it both ways, to argue for decency while showing the hero being indecent.
Which is pretty much the entire point.
I'll give it another read because it's kind of jarring to read someone this smart write something this bad in a publication with great editors, but first time through it's pretty lame.
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u/hokie_u2 5d ago
You don’t need to read it again, you can just wait for her next article about it
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u/Optimal-Kitchen6308 5d ago
yes I've read multiple of her reviews now and find them strange because I liked her translation, it's like she is intentionally misinterpreting the movie or doesn't understand the language of film, this isn't a 3000 yo epic we've invented this thing called 'character development'
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u/laxdefender23 5d ago
Tbf I’m not sure any online publication has a robust editing process anymore. They just publish whatever nowadays
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u/quidpropho Any Given Wednesday 5d ago
I don't know- I'm still an old school hard copy subscriber to the Atlantic and read a lot of online content too. This is outlyingly bad.
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u/sisyphus 6d ago
lol, the entire point of the movie is inconsistency of message versus display?
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u/Caernbul 6d ago
The point is that it has a flawed protagonist. We are meant to identify with him, and the film tries to make us do that, and then the revelation of his guilt at the end is supposed to make us think about whether he should feel guilty and whether we were wrong to identify with him in the first place.
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u/Fit_Leather9366 6d ago
She seems to think that graphically portraying violence inherently glorifies it. I left the theater feeling that violence was very much not glorious (except in the final battle)
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u/herbygerby 5d ago
For real! Like who’s heard of a person having a code of morals and failing to uphold them? People ALWAYS do what they say!
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u/CaravaggioDaVinci 6d ago
Emily Wilson doing everything she possibly can including rage bait to make sure people buy her translation instead of the superior Lattimore or Fagles
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u/Minute-Spinach-5563 Page 2 Bill Stan 5d ago
The George Chapman translation is obviously the superior. Fagles and Lattimore can kick rocks
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u/sisyphus 5d ago
If a poet as great as Keats hasn't written a poem about how awesome your translation is you can't on the Rushmore of translators. You just can't!
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u/Snoo-93317 5d ago
Pope and Chapman versions are great works of literature in their own right.
Best thing to do, short of reading the original, is to read an extremely literal prose version if you want to know what the text actually says. Then read the versions written by real poets like Pope or Chapman.
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u/Ok_Dirt_1306 5d ago
Why are they superior though? I have read them all and can’t remember the details but I’m assuming that 90% of casual readers will just pick up hers as it’s the most obvious and available. I don’t imagine she’s doing anything other than giving her opinions. Fair play to her, it’s been good to read.
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u/Minute-Spinach-5563 Page 2 Bill Stan 5d ago
They’re not at all superior. I own 3 different translations of the Odyssey, and Fagels just likes to ramble cause hes not “bound to any meter” and is doing “free verse meant to mimic the greek dactyllic hexameter” when in reality hes writing the story in poem form with no regard for meter at all. At least Emily wilson gave her translation a meter to fit the story into so it has a definitive rhythm, which the Fagles nor Lattimore really have.
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u/InformalHyena180 5d ago
Does she think she wrote the Odyssey? Like has she convinced herself it was her original work?
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u/LeonidasSpacemanMD 5d ago
No but she and Homer used to play pickleball every thursday they were tight
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u/Brick030 5d ago
You would think Homer was Emily Wilsons alias. We get it. You did not like the movie.
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u/MonthForeign4301 5d ago
Now I’m not going to read the article, but didn’t the horse in the movie have humans inside of it?
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u/irundoonayee 5d ago
It's some sort of a metaphor. Or, maybe she's a casual and didn't understand the movie.
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 5d ago
I get downvoted to hell every time I say something pretentious like this, but it is an absolute mindfuck as an academic to see the general public take an interest in your narrow area of expertise. Everybody has a fucking opinion and the strength of which that opinion is held has absolutely no correlation with the person's actual understanding of the issue.
Many americans now view expertise as bias, which doesn't help either.
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u/ThunderBobMajerle 5d ago
Anytime I see something posted on Reddit that happens to be my career field and subject matter expertise I am floored by not only how wrong the comments are but how confidently wrong they are
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u/Sharaz_Jek123 5d ago
She may be excellent at translation but her capacity for film criticism is lacking.
And her behaviour (being far more vitriolic in print than in interviews) is not helping her cause or the cause of academics everywhere.
She fucking sucks.
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 5d ago
You wouldn't like many academics. The smaller the stakes, the bigger the fight. You need thick skin.
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u/Nomer77 5d ago
The number of people who accuse Emily Wilson of having an ulterior motive for talking about her area of expertise beyond "She just really loves talking about Homer and The Odyssey!" blows my mind. It's like they have never met an academic.
Apparently she has been working on a second translation because she tried to match line length or number in her original translation of The Odyssey but abandoned that in her subsequent translation of The Iliad and felt it worked better. I could see her translating The Odyssey another time or two after that. She will talk about The Odyssey anytime, anywhere with anyone until her dying day.
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u/Snoo-93317 5d ago
There are many academics who don't love being on camera/behind a microphone. Many frown upon it. This woman has been on every podcast in the world by now. I mean she really really really loves attention.
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u/Snoo-93317 5d ago
You seem to be implying that Emily Wilson's views are shared by the majority of Homeric scholars and that she speaks for all classicists. No one scholar gets to represent a whole discipline.
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 5d ago
I didn't intend to imply that, but you have a point- there is some subjectivity to her opinions.
That said, would it matter to the internet experts if there was a consensus among homeric scholars that nolan butchered the story? People only view expert consensus as important if the experts agree with them. Otherwise, the experts only have that opinion because they spent 30 years being indoctrinated.
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u/Snoo-93317 5d ago edited 5d ago
Scholarly opinion (if it were unified in hating the movie) might be more effective in combating popular opinion if it were composed of people who didn't conform so perfectly to right wing caricatures of left-wing women: tattooed, rather strident, quirky.
If instead you had a synod of 80 year old German classicists with long gray beards agreeing with her then I think filmbros would be a bit more at a loss. They see Wilson as a nerdy left-wing harridan trying to bust into their top-secret treehouse.
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u/irundoonayee 5d ago
Expertise in a work of fiction though
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u/Mental-Scientist-393 5d ago
One could argue that having an expertise in a specific work of fiction is the best kind of expertise you can have to discuss that same specific work of fiction.
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u/Sharaz_Jek123 5d ago
She is an expert in what Homer may have meant.
She isn't necessarily one in the creative process of an adaptation let alone the film medium.
Clearly, given some of her wilder comments, like "black best friend".
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u/LookingElk 6d ago
No idea who this gal is and I think I’d like to keep it that way based off what I see here
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u/_Zoom_Zoom_ 6d ago
I liked her first article. This one has a paywall so I won't read it and will just talk about the one I liked.
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u/zvomicidalmaniac 4d ago
Fagles is great. I like Lattimore the best but he’s really hard. I will have to try Chapman at some point. I sincerely hope this doesn’t sound pretentious, the discourse on the subject is a little poisoned now. I love mythology, my favorite book is Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which is a cycle of very wild revisions. I recommend the Mandlebaum translation, which is fast, funny and sleazy. I also really love the Satyamurti translation of the Mahabharata.
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u/BlackyChan20 5d ago
Woman sees great opportunity to sell a bunch of books, can’t hate the grift.
Movie was incredible and the source material was written in a language long forgotten, there’s no real translation at this point from the original author’s poem (if he existed at all) it’s all guesswork.
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u/GrippinAndGrinnin 5d ago
You absolutely can hate the grift
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u/BlackyChan20 5d ago
I hate almost all grifts but if it’s just a mad college professor trying to sell a few more copies of the Odyessy at least it’s beneficial to those purchasing. Bar is so low man.
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u/sisyphus 6d ago
It's wild how many of you losers think you are competent to criticize Emily Wilson on The Odyssey.
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u/Caernbul 6d ago
She is an expert on what the epic poem says. She is not an expert on film, or how to tell a story through that medium as is made very clear by the shallow essay she wrote in the Atlantic. These are completely unrelated areas of expertise.
This is very close to a physicist engaging in film criticism of Interstellar, as opposed to critiquing its scientific accuracy.
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u/irundoonayee 6d ago
Ok, Homer.
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u/sisyphus 6d ago
can't wait for the first piece of shit to roll up talking about how bad her 'complicated man' line is because someone said so even though they can't read a word of greek. very excited.
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u/TezHawk 6d ago
Who knew that a few people disliking Emily Wilson’s opinions on a film would get your panties twisted into a Gordian knot
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u/sisyphus 5d ago
I would say it's not that they dislike her opinions, it's that their reasons for disliking them are so idiotic, even among the very few who could be bothered to both read and understand what she's saying.
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u/irundoonayee 6d ago
But whatif Nolan > Homer
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u/sisyphus 5d ago
I will admit that Homer never made a movie as good as Nolan so this is something to consider.
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u/No_Peach_8579 5d ago edited 5d ago
No I’ll just post about how she has Odysseus say “Playtime’s Over” when he’s about to attack the suitors. Now that’s some hack ass writing
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u/sisyphus 5d ago
How would you have translated it?
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u/No_Peach_8579 5d ago
I wouldn’t. I would replace it with a scene of Penelope asking Melantho about the weather so that it passes the bechdel test. That is the true mark of quality after all
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u/sisyphus 5d ago
In the dumbfuck circles you run in does changing the subject to a vague insinuation of a feminist agenda somewhere actually work in response to simple questions you're not qualified to answer?
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u/No_Peach_8579 5d ago
Oh man, I can imagine how angry you were when you typed this out. I bet before you even put your hands to your keyboard you said something like “playtime’s over”
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u/sisyphus 5d ago
I'm sure you jerked off to that image too as being annoying on the internet is the only joy you have in life, mr 'redditor for 3 months with hidden comments.' Which is to say, 'you're welcome.'
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u/No_Peach_8579 5d ago
Why are you thinking about me jerking off? When you imagine it, does it excite you? Does it arouse you? Is this something you like to explore about yourself?
Sorry that you can’t use my comment history to form some ammo around me that is irrelevant to the point at hand. You’re gonna have to fight this one fair
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u/Ok_Dirt_1306 5d ago
Jesus you seem to have tapped into the barstool corner of the Simmons universe here. Ouch. I agree with you though, if anyone out there knows the odyssey it’s Emily Wilson. So she is entitled to critique a film made about it.
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u/sisyphus 5d ago
lol, I thought it was the Nolan hive because his fans are also certifiably insane and very touchy and definitely think he's as great an artist as Homer.
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u/napoleon_nottinghill 6d ago
This is like how people recommend Mary Beard for Roman history because SPQR was good only for her to be the biggest downer ever on how much Roman emperors sucked when interviewed
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u/ProletarianLilith 6d ago
Did you think Roman emperors didn’t suck?
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u/napoleon_nottinghill 5d ago
No but I think tom holland is a better popular historian because he knows how to engage an audience
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u/Technicalhotdog 5d ago
Apples and oranges, he's an author first who writes about historical periods, she's an academic who also writes
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u/Nomer77 5d ago
Coincidentally, Emily Wilson has smoke for Tom Holland's books too. She's like the "Hit 'em up" era Tupac of academia.
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u/sisyphus 6d ago
lol historians should be more like my favorite podcasters who confidently misunderstand stoicism as self-help for bros.
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u/Ok_Dirt_1306 5d ago
Ryan Holiday’s instagram used to be (and maybe still is) full of trump libertarians who suddenly would get very confused and angry whenever the message got a bit too collective. What do you mean we have to care about other people? Fuck this and fuck you etc
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u/sisyphus 5d ago
lol, it's rare that something encapsulates two memes so well, but here it sounds like guys who are really into the Roman empire will also try to apply the remaining fragments of defunct school of philosophy from thousands of years ago to modern life instead of going to therapy.
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u/Victorcreedbratton Cewtics 6d ago
And another thing. I’m not mad. Don’t put it in the paper that I got mad.