fuck it we ball: another classicist reviews The Odyssey

(spoiler alert, obviously)

I saw The Odyssey last week, finally, and I have So Many Thoughts about it. The shortest version, though, is—this is a great movie and, simultaneously, an almost comically bad telling of the Odyssey myth. I’m not saying that because it’s unfaithful to Homer (or, more precisely, because I give a shit about it being unfaithful to Homer), but because the basic plot beats of the Odyssey just don’t match the story Nolan wants to tell. The movie that results is a gorgeous and thoughtful epic, except for the parts where characters do things that make no sense because somebody else with the same name did them in another thing called The Odyssey.

First the good bits. The Odyssey is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen in my life; Nolan composes a frame so beautifully, and so colorfully. I’ve seen people complain that the movie is drab and gray, but I think that really misunderstands how Nolan is using his palette—the Trojan War scenes are ugly,  because they’re flashbacks from a traumatized man looking back on the biggest mistake of his life. Similarly, Calypso’s refuge is a bland tidal flat because Odysseus feels nothing while he is there. This version of Calypso does not really offer pleasure; she offers oblivion, in a place that gives its inhabitants nothing to react to. In contrast, Nolan’s seascapes are vibrant and lush. You understand why these characters want to be on the water, or why the brilliant green pine forests and hills of the islands might seem like safe places to land. The palace at Ithaka is dark and sinister, with the soured-party energy it needs. The aesthetics of this movie are intentional, and gorgeous when they want to be.

Those composed vistas, however, are staging grounds for some of the most disorienting scenes I’ve ever seen in my life. That’s on purpose too. Nolan is an auteur of confusion, and his action scenes are emotionally coherent despite being impossible to follow. My favorite example of this was the battle with the Lastrygonians: a massacre/dream ballet in which Odysseus’ crew, having wandered into a world that makes no sense, is violently consumed by it. Sound mixing was hard to follow, in a story about characters suddenly unable to speak the language; the map is disorienting in a story of disorientation. Nolan’s Odyssey is a story of apex predators slowly realizing they have destroyed their own ecosystem, which is a theme Nolan returns to pretty often in his career but that fits the Trojan War like a glove. The Greeks broke the rules of their world to win, and now have to exist in the catastrophe they created.

are we the baddies?

I’m just not convinced this story fits Odysseus, or the Odyssey, all that well. Homer’s Odyssey is a love song to language, to a fast talker who can charm his way out of anything even if he can’t quite charm his way back into his own life. Nolan, by contrast, sucks at dialogue. Odysseus is clunky, graceless, and unpersuasive—Matt Damon plays him as a traumatized vet—and I cannot imagine him convincing anyone of anything. The movie is at its best when the characters talk least, which is not unheard of for a war story but is absolutely WILD in a bardic poem about The Schmoozer of Ithaka.

To be fair, Matt Damon’s Odysseus is more generally unimpressive. He sells the sadness well, but not really any other shades of feeling. In particular, his Odysseus has no twinkle in his eye at all; Emily Wilson made a big deal out of how no one fucks, but that’s really just an outgrowth of Damon being too glum to fuck and the movie following his lead. Similarly, while Odysseus’ greatest trick is the Trojan Horse, Nolan never shows Odysseus coming up with the idea or (more importantly) deriving any pleasure from it at any stage. For this kind of story to work, Odysseus really has to feel smug and proud of his brilliant deception and realize the consequences later. This Odysseus is never smug, and never proud, and never derives any joy from the fast ones he pulls.

don’t yum his yuck

The result feels odd and disconnected. A resonant story is happening around Odysseus—the treatment of Agamemnon and Menelaus is fantastic—but Odysseus’ own part in that story never makes a lick of sense. Odysseus is a sad and earnest man, doing things that a sad and earnest man wouldn’t ever really do. When Odysseus fools the Cyclops, there’s no attempt to integrate it with his broader character; when he fools his men, it’s just another argument between Matt Damon and his selfish crew. Even when he fools Ithaka in his beggar’s disguise, there is no sense of prank to it whatsoever. Nolan portrays the beggar’s rags as some kind of trauma response, I think? Odysseus has definitely seen some shit, and he’s earned the right to feel strange about returning to a palace, but there is no explanation for why someone consumed with guilt at tricking people would spend so much energy tricking his wife and child. In Homer’s version this is something Odysseus likes to do; Nolan’s Odysseus doesn’t like anything, except glowering and twanging a bow for some reason.

Ironically, this movie does have a madcap charlatan. Robert Pattinson plays Antinoos as a silvertongue—charismatic, oratorical, and good enough in bed to dickmatize Mia Goth. Pattinson feels like Homer’s protagonist, not only because he’s having a blast but because he enjoys doing all the things that most of us know Odysseus for. In the theater, I felt like he Miranda Priestlied the whole thing; he’s so much more persuasive than Odysseus that you sort of root for him. Looking back, though, I wonder if there isn’t more intention here. Antinoos represents the Old Odysseus, the one he has to conquer in order to live with himself. This version makes sense, but has the drawback of being lame as hell—you just know that this Antinoos would have made Penelope very, very happy and she deserves it. Kill your son, girl! Get that fraudster dick!

Anne Hathaway, choosing the wrong one again

Overall, this review is probably making it sound like I hated this movie and I didn’t. Nolan’s Odyssey is fantastic, in all the ways that Nolan movies tend to be fantastic, with a vibrant mythic palette that’s new but that I never want him to leave. The ways this movie falls short are more interesting—and build more on my expertise—but on balance the movie is so, so good. Nolan just needed to find a slightly different Trojan War hero to write about. Can we give her an Oresteia already?

office space

A new school year is starting, and I always like to use this time to reflect on what’s working and what isn’t. Since kindergarten my life has followed the rhythms of an academic calendar, and I treat late August the way most people treat January—joining gyms, trying new work hacks, Fixing Everything. This year that process looks a little different, because one aspect is my work is really, really different. I have a Good Office now.

isn’t she lovely

I’d never thought much about workspaces until I saw a Good One. Specifically, a few years ago my friend Mariana showed me her home office and ruined my life. That office worked in ways that I didn’t know spaces could work; different corners were assigned to different projects or cognitive modes, ideas and evidence were attached to the walls in ways concretized Mariana’s trains of thought. There were fairy lights. It was perfect.

It felt like I was inside a genius’ brain, or more precisely that a genius’ brain had colonized a room and arranged it exactly to her convenience. I don’t know why I was surprised that a philosopher-dating-a-jazz-musician would have such a thoughtful setup, but I was briefly incapable of speech—to enter her office was to be submerged in her workflow. Thought had inscribed itself in space.

she knows Plato AND design

I didn’t know that kind of thing could happen, and I have not known peace since that day. Since I started teaching professionally I’ve always had an office (which is very good fortune), but I’ve never really decorated or organized those offices; it’s always just been a space with a computer and a kettle where I can write stuff. That was fine, and then it stopped being fine. Seeing a Good Office was like trying on expensive jeans for the first time, and realizing that it actually kind of is worth the effort. Alternately, I turned into Depressed Buffy from season 6: I had tasted paradise and was inconsolable.

how your e-mail found me in 2024

Anyhoo, I’ve moved offices this summer and took the opportunity to bring that same kind of intention to my new space. Some of that is simple fixes. I have more desk space, which can support a water feature that makes a nice sound and a lamp that I’m obsessed with. I’m also thinking less monolithically about workspace, and assembling different stations for the different kinds of work I do. If writing slides or taking meetings feels better at a traditional desk, I can do that and still have room for other modes of thinking and writing.

There is also an element of chutzpah. My work practices are weird, and I’m trying to be less apologetic about building a space around them—I read better when I’m walking or pacing, so I’M USING A TREADMILL DESK AND DON’T CARE HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT IT. I like my spaces to smell like an overpriced home goods store, so BAM! REED DIFFUSER.

I’ve been set up like this for a week or so now, and the main change I’m noticing is that I’m much less aware of work. I show up to the office, and can just do things; the space feels like it’s subtly steering me towards the different kinds of things I have to do, and the tools I need to do them are where I need them to be. I write at the standing desk, which means my bookshelves are a step away; I read on the treadmill, where I can take basic notes if needed and sit down when I’m done; I have a Stupid Little Wheelie Chair for when it’s needed. The sofa is coming next week!

We’ll see how this lasts, and everything always feels great in August/January. But I’m finally starting to understand those people who, like, put things in their offices. It’s jarring, and exciting, and I’m trying to decide what my Fall Scent will be. Make suggestions!

Trust the experts, trust the science

A huge part of my job is thinking about expertise. My academic work is, essentially, writing about the concept of the ‘legal expert’ and how it got to be the way that it is. In presenting that research, I rely on my own credentials as an expert and use other methods (citation, journal placement, long words) to strengthen them. And then of course there’s teaching, which is just performing expertise for a room full or more-or-less eager, more-or-less-drunk children. In general, I am paid to be smart and to look smart.

As a result, I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes a person look ‘expert’ and how that changes in different settings. One of perks of being an Official Intellectual is that, at least in some contexts, I can help other people see themselves in that category; if I’m doing it, it’s a thing that a person can do and still be smart/serious. For example, Roman legal historians have recently started the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, and they find it fascinating.

smells like expert

This vision of expertise has real consequences, especially for how academic disciplines get to be, act, or look a certain way. One of the reasons why I was drawn to Latin as a teenager is that my Latin teacher was a funny gay guy. Wait, I’m a funny gay guy. Maybe this is a thing funny gay guys are good at?

As it turns out, Mr. Mason was something of an exception. When I got to college and started my Classics major, I encountered self-declared intellectuals who would sometimes tell me that I wasn’t taking my work seriously, because I didn’t act like I was taking it seriously. My performance didn’t really match that of a future expert, and given that none of us were doing anything interesting anyway the performance was all there was to go on. The only reason I ended up in grad school despite that was a particular Latinist at my university—Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer.

Shadi didn’t look or act like any expert I’d ever heard of; she drove fast cars and made jokes and never repeated the same outfit twice. She was fun, and thought Latin literature was fun, and didn’t take herself seriously at all. She is also one of the best Latinists of her generation. Those didn’t actually conflict, since her expertise was based on what she had to say more than on how she acted. I am not like Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer, since I am a historian who dresses poorly and can’t drive. But studying with her expanded my notion of how smart people could be in the world, and gave me the sense that I could be myself in the world and still be smart. I’m very grateful for that, and try to pay it forward.

i mean come ON

One of the ways I try to pay it forward is by also being a weird version of an expert. I am very loud for a Classicist, and relatively ethnic; I’m not the only Jew in the discipline, but I’m probably the only one who teaches undergrads that aedile rhymes with bubbele. I get to do that now, and because of my professional position I get to say that anything I do is, by definition, a thing that experts do. That can be a powerful thing for some people to hear.

This account of expertise isn’t new, obviously. Queer theorists have been talking about this expertise problem for basically as long as queer theory has been a thing. But it’s important, and arguably has a lot to do with The Way We Live Now. Our accounts of ‘what experts do’ have widened dramatically in recent years, in ways that make it hard for people to know what an expert is without doing a lot of work. My own version of expertise—how I decide who I trust, on various questions—is credentialist. I trust my doctor on health questions because she went to school and passed a test, I trust the guy who manages my Vanguard account because he works at Vanguard, I trust the things I read in peer-reviewed journals because they’re peer reviewed.

I’ve come up in these systems, and credentialism helps me—as a person with credentials, I would rather live in a world where credentials are valuable. But not everyone is deeply enmeshed in these systems, and people always rely on their scripts for ‘what trustworthy people are like’ in deciding whom to trust. As those scripts expand, the world gets more chaotic. I think you can make a decent case that some of the insane DEI backlash is rooted in a fight over scripts for expertise—I was brought up to think that smart people looked a certain way, and if these people can be smart too how am I supposed to know who to trust? In particular, this fight explains the idea that anyone non-white or non-male must be a ‘fraud.’

Some of those arguments are in bad faith, obviously, but some people really have internalized the idea that experts look and act a certain way and base their evaluation on that look/performance. It’s toxic, but it’s real, and it raises the stakes of Being Smart In Public. I want my students to know that they can be kind of ditzy, and very faggy, and still taken seriously if they produce work that warrants it. That’s real meritocracy, and when I listen to Midnight Sun in my office I am Doing My Part To Democratize The Academy.

What now

I was awarded tenure this summer, and am now an Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado-Boulder (appreciate the congrats).

I have a lot of thoughts on this process, mostly warm/fuzzy, but I’m also acutely aware of my privilege—academia is collapsing and TT jobs, let alone tenured positions at schools that take tenure protections seriously, are hard to come by. In these times, then, it’s more important than ever to think about what tenure is for. I have a nice situation and don’t want to waste it. So, what am I supposed to be doing now and why?

One answer, or one of the things that tenure is good for, is that tenured faculty can speak their minds on issues that matter to them. This kind of autonomy is core to the historical notion of the position, and reflects an idea of the academic as a sort of public voice that can speak hard truths.

it me?

Ideally, professors are hard to intimidate because they don’t rely on public approval. It doesn’t matter if my provost hates me, or my governor thinks I’m insane, I get health insurance and a steady paycheck anyway. That allows me to say what I think is right, and to fulfill a slightly different role in public discourse than other kinds of talkers (like politicians or pundits) who operate on a shorter leash.

In practice, things don’t work this way and there are a few reasons for that. First of all, the process of earning tenure—i.e., of doing original research—makes it hard to shoot from the hip. I know what it takes to be speak with confidence about something, because I got to the point where I could speak with confidence about Roman legal history, and I’d have to do all that over again before I felt okay having strong opinions in public. Second, while I’m fine having controversial opinions, I’d rather not be seen as an asshole (note: this does not apply to everyone at Associate level and above, but you knew that already).

Finally, I am—I cannot emphasize this enough—a Roman legal historian. I have very specific expertise that almost never comes in handy, and while I can claim some knowledge of ‘how power justifies itself’ vel sim. based on the more ideological aspects of my work, it’s still all about dead people. I’ve earned the right to speak on a subject most people don’t care about, by developing epistemic habits that make it harder to speak on subjects about which they do.

To be clear, this isn’t a universal problem. I have friends who work primarily on Roman law, who nevertheless fight for what’s right in public; it’s certainly doable. But I’m not temperamentally suited for that version of the academic role, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that American academia selects for people like me.

a better man than i

So then, what am I supposed to be doing? Even if I’m never going to be The Voice of Reason America Needs Right Now, there are things I can say and do now that I couldn’t last year. In particular, I don’t feel the same pressure to be an intellectual that I used to; I’ve earned my stripes and can express myself differently. Because I have written history for specialists, I can write for the public if I want and I can hold myself out as a representative of my discipline with a little less shame. That’s something I’d like to get into, eventually—some of the questions I care about (what does it mean to have an emperor? What does law mean in the real world?) matter to people outside of the academy, and they deserve good books.

The trouble is that they also deserve well-written books. I pride myself on my writing, but everything I’ve written in the last decade has been for academics. For example, I’d be very surprised if anyone without a college degree reads my first monograph. Being a good writer means, among other things, knowing your audience and writing for their needs—I’ve cultivated a certain kind of audience in order to get this position, and it’s not the public.

NOT FOR YOU

It would be thoughtless—disrespectful, kind of shitty—to just assume that I can write in a different register without trying, or that academic prose is ‘harder’ and that I can just adjust a dial to write the easier version. That sells the work short, because public writing is difficult and takes practice. I want to practice it.

This blog is how. I’ll talk about things that matter to me—like academic politics, or The Traitors—because I want to acculturate myself to writing that is less defensive, looser, and more pleasant to read. I will say things on here that I couldn’t have said pretenure, and think through problems I might have been more circumspect about in the past, but I also want to practice different kinds of voice. The public classicists I respect the most—Sarah Bond and Mary Beard are my two big examples, and the people I send friends to for readable work on the ancient world—are blogging queens. They did something right, I assume, so I’ll try the same.

Also recipes. I have these nice, pretty bowls and a photogenic counter: might as well use them.