Homer's vs. Nolan's Odyssey

Giovanni Battista Castello, Odysseus and companions fight the suitors
Villa Pallavicino delle Peschiere, Genoa (c. 1560)

It's a brutal world in which Homer's Odyssey takes place. When Odysseus recounts his adventures at the court of the king of the Phaeacians, he starts by describing how he and his men, at the beginning of their return from Troy, invaded a city of the Cicones, killed the men, abducted the women and plundered the city, only to lose their spoils when they were attacked by Cicones from the hinterland during the following night and had to flee in haste. Odysseus tells this story matter-of-factly, and neither he nor his listeners indicate in any way that they consider his actions morally wrong. As Bernard Knox, in his introduction to Robert Fagles's translation, explains, piracy was a way of life at the time in the Aegean Sea and no moral stigma was attached to it. At the end of the epic, Odysseus' loyal servants, the swineherd Eumaeus and the cowherd Philoetius, punish the disloyal goatherd by cutting his nose and ears off, then rip out his genitals, hack off his hands and feet and leave him in the yard, presumably to bleed to death. The maids who slept with the suitors are also put to a painful death.

Loyalty indeed is one of the precepts that hold the social fabric of this brutal world together, the obligation of mutual support between family members and between master and servants. The other precept is hospitality. In a world without what we would call an infrastructure for tourism, travelers have to rely on the willingness of the strangers they encounter to provide food and shelter when they need them. Homer describes, in several episodes, the elaborate customs associated with this obligation, which also includes reciprocal rules for the proper conduct of guests (which Penelope's suitors so egregiously ignore).

Nolan is not only not interested in this world, he has to deliberately suppress it because, and this became more and more clear to me as I was watching the movie, he wants to make an action movie with a super-hero.(1) This super-hero always has to be the good guy who rids the world of the bad guys. For this, Nolan has to completely change the moral make-up of his hero. Homer's Odysseus is not a nice guy, to put it mildly, and is famous in his world for his exploits at Troy, especially the trick with the wooden horse that causes the downfall and complete destruction of the city. He is proud of this and is congratulated for this achievement wherever he goes. In a complete reversal, Nolan’s Odysseus rues what he did at Troy—it's a subtext that permeates the entire movie—and there are strong hints that he considers his subsequent trials as punishment for what he has done

A super-hero also fights his last battle typically alone, ideally against a much more numerous opposition. Nolan's Odysseus accomplishes this, in contrast to Homer's, who does not fight alone, but together with the three loyal followers he could find, Eumaeus, Philoetiushis and his son Telemachus, and needs divine intervention by the goddess Athena at critical moments. Needless to say, Nolan completely eliminates the cruel punishments meted out to the disloyal servants at the end.

Along the way, Nolan turns Telemachus, who holds his own in the fight with the suitors in the original, into a wimp who is too short and too soft to be of any help to his father. Conversely, he upgrades the leading suitor, who in Homer is not more than the greatest lout in a bunch of louts and the first to be killed by Odysseus, into a truly evil schemer who dodges Odysseus' call to arms because he sees his chance to get his paws on Penelope and the kingdom of Ithaca should Odysseus not return. In true action-movie fashion, he is the last to be killed in a final showdown with the hero.

Now, don't get me wrong: I do not chide Nolan for not being faithful to his source—there is no obligation for an artist who piggybacks upon another artist's work to be faithful to that work. I have tried to show that Nolan's adaptation is consistent and makes sense on its own terms, and I can well imagine that especially viewers who have not read the Odyssey will find it exciting. But for me personally, it's ultimately too conventional to be as interesting as its source.

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(1) Elon Musk's claim that the movie is historically incorrect is, in fact, true: Homer's story takes place in a real historical context, bronze-age Greece, while Nolan's happens in a fantasyland not far removed from the Marvel Universe. But I doubt that this is what Musk had in mind. In any case, as criticism of a work of art (as opposed to a documentary), it remains of course totally irrelevant.

Seilschaft vs. Deep State

Seilschaft is my current Word of the Month. It's a hidden network of people with a shared outlook and common background who work together and support each other inside an institution. Readers may wonder if a Seilschaft is the same as a "deep state", a term used by the Trump administration in its claim that there exists a clandestine network across the intelligence community that aims at undermining the president through leaks.

The notion of a deep state

"comes from the Turkish derin devlet, a clandestine network, including military and intelligence officers, along with civilian allies, whose mission was to protect the secular order established, in 1923, by the father figure of post-Ottoman Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It was behind at least four coups, and it surveilled and murdered reporters, dissidents, Communists, Kurds, and Islamists." (David Remnick, "There is no Deep State", The New Yorker, March 20, 2017)

Clearly, a Seilschaft and a deep state have things in common: They are secret networks and established deliberately. But there are also significant differences. A Seilschaft tends to be smaller and restricted to a group within a single institution. Its purpose is, first of all, to provide fellow comrades with cushy jobs—someone gets in and then tries to help others to fill positions that open up. There may be a political side effect because the members of a Seilschaft have a shared world view, which may influence their decisions. There may even be Seilschaften (that's the plural) whose explicit goal is to advance a political agenda. But that is not a necessary condition for something to be called a Seilschaft. A deep state, on the other hand, tends to be large and spread over various institutions, and its members do pursue a common political goal. They spring into action when they see an opportunity to advance it or see it threatened by political enemies.