Asubtleremarc

@PastPaulitics Man, it is honestly such a relief to me to see someone who's knowledgeable in the subject matter speaking about this with this level of nuance. I complete agree with Adrian from what I've seen here.

Adrian Goldsworthy is one of the few classicists to actually review Nolan's film and admit that the casting choices completely ruin the immersion of the viewer in the film. There are many who insist otherwise but this is an obvious lie. No one who sees Lupita Nyong'o on screen playing Helen doesn't immediately recognize how jarring that is for the story. You either fake it and promote it because you agree with the sociopolitical agenda that is a part of or you are honest and admit that that casting choice makes no sense at all except as deliberate provocation. Goldsworthy acknowledges that this may be precisely what is going on - that the diverse casting choices not only capture attention but serve as a progressive shield over any criticism of the film. He also notes that diverse casting can be tolerated in a play, especially a school play, but not in a movie, and on this point he is entirely correct. He also notes that as a scholar of the Classical world he can't see a mixed race group of Odysseus' men, all supposedly from the same small Greek island and wrap his head around it. It makes no sense and anyone in anthropology, archaeology, ancient history, or the Classics would have to admit as much. However, countless leftist frauds posing as academics are saying otherwise, and they are ruining their reputations by so blatantly lying. No ancient society outside of sub-Saharan African ones would have had black African queens. No ancient kingdoms had racially diverse egalitarian societies like that depicted in this movie. That kind of demographics is only seen in modern cities, and that recency is incredibly recent. Even in the case of one of the most "diverse" ancient cities, Alexandria, there was almost apartheid level conditions at play and this was merely with Egyptians vs Greeks vs Jews, with a small sprinkling of black African slaves thrown in. Even then the city was renowned for its ethnic riots. The kind of multiracial society depicted in this movie reflects the modern audience it is pandering to, not the ancient society meant to be depicted or the ancient Greek society that told and retold this story for hundreds and thousands of years. And when you brag about how much effort you spent to get your film to look as authentic as possible you don't get to insist that the demographics of your cast shouldn't be included in that evaluation. Goldsworthy tries very hard to tread that fine line between admitting these facts and not offending his leftist colleagues and for the fact that he's willing to admit the obvious when so many of them refuse to do so, he must be commended. youtu.be/wYgTpqyPOc4?si…

@erikkain Still unsure what you're trying to say here, Erik, or about Walsh's comment. A modern political map of the Med reveals . . . what exactly?

@erikkain What about the "geography of the Mediterranean" do you apparently understand that he doesn't? I pray you're not going to do the "Dallas and Austin are closer than Greece and Africa" thing which totally ignores North African demography and the barrier that is the Sahara Desert.

Matt Walsh is too stupid to actually understand the geography of the Mediterranean. But worse than that, he is too much of a propagandist to care about art. For Matt, politics will always matter more than art, and that is deeply sad.

@OgYes45 Right next to Korea?

You guys are never gonna believe where Greece is located in the world

@clairlemon It's just the sort of navel-gazing thing that we do in the West where everything is about us (no mention of Sea Peoples attacking Ugarit or Egypt), everything is our fault, and our "enemies" have no agency. Not very conservative.

@clairlemon Blaming the Greeks entirely for a global breach of xenia (via the Trojan Horse trick) instead of the guy/people who "abducted" Helen from Menelaus' palace in Sparta in the first place is a presentism that can be extrapolated to the the modern left, if anyone.

The fact that conservatives are attacking the most conservative cultural artefact produced in decades has to be one of the dumbest things I have ever witnessed. Its honestly dumber than anything the Wokes ever did.

@clairlemon @akarlin Africa is not a racial monolith, and the Sahara was a significant barrier to travel. There are more Roman coins found in Sri Lanka than sub-Saharan Africa.

@akarlin Why? The Greeks colonised coastal areas Africa which were adjacent to the Mediterranean. At the very beginning of the Odyssey (the poem, not the movie) Poseidon visits Ethiopia--Zeus & the other gods were known to go feasting there.

The pettiness of people complaining that The Odyssey lacks 'realistic' casting. My dude, it has a one-eyed monster who sucks soldiers' heads like lollipops and a witch who strokes men's heads until they turn into pigs. Realism isn't the point.

@abndesigns This a poor comparison since Nolan's Odyssey is not a wholesale adaptation with a transported setting, like Kurosawa's Ran, Black Orpheus, The Warriors, or indeed Chi-Raq.

Remember when a major American filmmaker made an almost all black adaptation of a major Greek play and the chuds didn’t care because they don’t actual watch movies?

@wwarrior_1 aw fuck you're gonna make me bharv again

yes this scene is peak "virgin incel chud coded" lmfao

@Fame_0007 @zainenn "I don't know why people are complaining, the Honda Accord may only be on screen for a few seconds."

@zainenn Good, do why is it a big deal with The Odyssey now? We don't even know how much screen time these "miscast" people have.

If you praised Troy but are now attacking The Odyssey because it doesn't have Greek lead or supporting actors, you're a hypocrite. Troy, the very film many hold up as the gold standard, didn't cast Greek actors in its major roles either. Yet there were no boycotts, no outrage, no lectures about authenticity. Stop pretending this is about principle. It's just pure hypocrisy.

@MizzyCW @ChristinaTasty "I survived fighting in the Blood War for years, but what really gets me going is scratching the bellies of heckin' puppers."

@ChristinaTasty he's a lot better than someone like Karlach, which is unironically the bigger offender of "modern gaming, millennial writing and reddit approved character" he's a genuine asshole and a terrible person, i'll give Larian that.

Just shank him, then.

@ShaunDucky "You can just magically know when to avoid the bad writing and curate your experience as you play the game for the first time."

This was an optional side quest that in no way would have stopped you playing the main story. You idiots just dont like options. Simpletons.

@FurbySmith @erikkain They are in line with his usual style and sensibilities inasmuch as matte-black Batman armor and trousers fit very well in Batman and Dunkirk respectively, but do not fit well in the Bronze Age/Iron Age Aegean milieu. Tenet is narratively out-there, not aesthetically out-there.

@Gabeedami @erikkain Well that’s my point. His movies have a *feeling* of verisimilitude and grittiness but they rarely have a rigorous devotion to literal realism or accuracy. Everything we’ve seen of the Odyssey is completely in line with his usual style and sensibilities

It's wild to me that suddenly THE ODYSSEY is this big Greek culture thing, as if modern Greece and the ancient Greek texts that serve as foundational works for all of Western Culture are one and the same. All these anti-Nolan folks are really pushing identitarian politics to a whole new level.

@erikkain @FurbySmith Come on. The Nolan Batman movies are infamously embarrassed about being comic book movies and heavily grounding the aesthetic and story compared to previous (and later) Batman works. Nolan isn't Eggers but he has a reputation for verisimilitude.

@FurbySmith @Gabeedami That's for damn sure.

@erikkain What is with these strawmen, Erik? No one says when they watch Ran that Akira Kurosawa should have cast white people because it's based off of King Lear. Bringing a story into a new setting/milieu is perfectly legitimate. But Nolan's Odyssey is in the ancient Mediterranean.

The Coen Brothers should be ashamed. The Odyssey wasn't set in Mississippi in 1937. The Cyclops only had ONE eye, and John Goodman clearly has TWO! There were no black guitar players in the Odyssey! And all that woke antiracism stuff at the end, just Hollywood something something

@GrampsToolshed GURPS Mass Combat.

Best Mass Combat rules in a TTRPG?

@VanLathan Literally fell asleep in the theater for a few minutes during OBAA.

Curious. Did you think OBAA was boring at all?

@lmacvittie @WizardGoesBoom Early editions were full of embryonic "realism-simulationism" conceits. One doesn't include dozens of polearm variations for "gamism" reasons.

I wish I’d had this nugget in my pocket when Gary and I argued over whether opera was appropriate for one of the districts in The City of Yggsburg. His first objection was that it wasn’t “time period accurate” which seems to lean toward a more realism-based design. When I showed him evidence it was, he just said “No opera!” and that was the end of that. So maybe that was just a handy excuse? I never did learn why he didn’t like opera. ::shrug::

Gary Gygax mentioned that D&D is not meant to be a simulation, but a game. So while some things are obviously not realistic, the point is fun, not realism.

@J0hnADouglas Certainly ME1's ending had more promise than what ME2 or ME3 fulfilled, with their various retcons and drama-first storytelling.

This isn’t even my hottest take on Mass Effect. I believe Mass Effect 1 is not only the best game, but arguably it works best as a stand alone story. Ashley is the unsung hero of Mass Effect. She knew the aliens would put themselves over humanity’s interest and the counsel proved her right. Oh, and the Mako was great. It gave you the sense of exploring an alien world and shouldn’t have been scrapped in the sequels. It’s my favorite game of all time and I’ve played through it multiple times. Anyone that says I haven’t played the games can find the nearest iron stick and fornicate yourself with it