InTheRightColumn

Same energy:

@BMcGrewvy @GiancarloSopo You mean odd like casting Diane Kruger to play Helen of Troy?

@GiancarloSopo On suspension of disbelief, isn't this apples and oranges? I would find it odd to watch an Arabian Nights in which Scheherazade was Swedish, because she's supposed to be y'know, ARABIAN.

The reason these accounts stay anonymous is to avoid accountability for the vile, illiterate nonsense they spew. This one was particularly special. Let me break it down for you. He says “suspension of disbelief is a crucial aspect of any period piece.” Suspension of disbelief is the mechanism by which audiences accept what isn’t real. A woman turning sailors into pigs, a one-eyed giant eating men alive, a sea god running a vendetta across the Mediterranean. He’ll swallow all of it, then arbitrarily draw the line at an actress’s skin tone. Make of that what you will. Then he wants “real characters that have a real race” faithful to “the historical record.” There is no historical record. These are demigods and monsters. Circe is a goddess, the Cyclops a son of Poseidon, Odysseus descends from Hermes, Helen is born from an egg after Zeus takes the form of a swan. He wants a “real race” from characters who were never real, in a “time that once was” that never was because this is a myth. Then you’re the 12-year-old if you don’t play along with their ridiculous fantasy. No standard in classical aesthetics demands racial fidelity. Aristotle, who stood far closer to Homer than these bozos, never argued that actors had to resemble their subjects. He ranked poetry above history because poetry renders the universal while history is chained to the particular record, the very standard this clown is demanding. For most of its life, the Odyssey was performed by a lone rhapsode voicing every part, one man playing Odysseus, Athena, the Cyclops, all of it. When Greeks staged these stories, it was men in masks playing every role, goddesses included. Mimesis was never a photocopy of surfaces. It meant the imitation of an action, the essence of what a person does and suffers, because truth in art lies in what it reveals about the human experience, not in matching skin tones. The conservative aesthetic tradition has nothing to do with this obsession with race that these losers are trying to sneak into it. That is their political project. It is not our vision of the beautiful or the sublime. They’re trying to slip through the cracks of a failed education system in the West that no longer teaches aesthetics, but I think most people intuitively sense that their arguments are garbage, even if they can’t fully articulate why, which is why their little boycott campaign is face-planting, including among the right. Good. Let that rank, illiterate Trojan Horse stay on the shore.

@MagicBuns69 @TheAmishDude @neoavatara The movie literally quotes Jesus and names it "Zeus' law".

@TheRightColumn @TheAmishDude @neoavatara That's not unique to Christian culture. You're free to draw whatever message you want from art (that's a real thing about art), but it's not objectively Christian and it does across like some sort of justification.

This...isn't right? What the film really was built on was JUDEOCHRISTIAN ETHICS. Which, I agree, was obviously not Homer's intent. But Nolan has created a JudeoChristian morality story based on Homer's original. You can argue that's bad or good, but its not really 'liberal'.

@bunburyoudoujp This is extra funny because in the images you shared, both Odyssey and the Cyclops are black dudes.

"You see, because the cyclops is a mythical creature, that means everything in the Odyssey is fictional. And because it's fictional that means literally anything goes. Rap music, viking long boats, plastic armor. Hell, we don't even need to include any Greek people in it and we can still call it a Greek myth. It's fiction, chud. If Odysseus wanted to beat the cyclops with an AK-47 while Travis Scott's FE!N plays in the background it would make total sense. Because fiction."

Nolan said it's a story about the importance of how we treat strangers, but his most evil example is foreign invaders destroying a civilization from within. Treating strangers kindly goes both ways in the film. Which makes sense, as the moral core of the movie is explicitly stated as the Christian Golden Rule.

@TheAmishDude @neoavatara That's what Nolan said, but a lot of "sophisticated" conservatives think the real message was some sort of subversive middle finger to Homer's religious beliefs in favour of "Judao-Christian".

The people made out to be the worst are those who come to another's home and abuse their hospitality or beliefs. This applies to both the suitors and the Greeks by way of the Trojan horse. It's definitely not a, "everyone should go where they like and ignore the laws and culture where they visit" allegory.

@neoavatara What I have heard is that he was trying to do an immigration allegory. But, at least as far as the original story is concerned, it's exactly the opposite. "Don't trust the stranger" is basically the theme of the Odyssey.

@pez1963 @Notabot1185810 @bendreyfuss In Oppenheimer? I didn't get that feel at all.

@Notabot1185810 @bendreyfuss every woman's a victim and real problem is toxic masculinity.....

Another funny thing about “Woke-ODYSSEY-gate” is that OPPENHEIMER is a genuinely woke movie. THE ODYSSEY is not. It just has some black people in it.

@TallonXIV @AutismCapital If you read them all, you see that he can meet them by having women heads of a couple of departments and a few paid interns who are minorities. Zero reason to think it affected casting.

@TheRightColumn @AutismCapital That said, I can confirm this criteria at least exists, independent of Nolan's motivations to follow them or not. oscars.org/awards/represe…

The Odyssey makes complete sense when you realize that The Odyssey is simply an excuse for Christopher Nolan to produce his IMAX art. That's all he cares about. All of the diversity controversy: Elliot Page, Black Helen of Troy, etc., was all for Oscar eligibility given the new Oscar standards. All Nolan wanted to do was have his film be eligible for awards while being allowed to pursue what he really cared about: visual spectacle. The Odyssey was simply a muse for his visual art. He played whatever game he needed to so him and the team could win whatever awards. What he really cared about was his actual vision: ship boom explosion monster big wave huge screen wow! Full Oscar eligibility standards found here: oscars.org/awards/represe…

@ItsChuck66 @SpencerKlavan I agree Odysseus wouldn't be so overtly Christian as the movie makes him, but that's a good message for modern audiences.

@SpencerKlavan Attending to trivia while destroying the character.

So the scene where he strings the bow is particularly interesting in contrast to Pasolini’s The Return, in which he warms the bow over the fire to make it more pliable. That’s similar to the kind of trick that the *suitors* try in Homer, and in Nolan’s version. Pasolini makes it about Odysseus’s vaunted cleverness rather than physical strength. But Nolan’s version is actually closer to the original in that here it’s the suitors who try to game the system and Odysseus doesn’t outsmart them—he’s just stronger. I think it really demonstrates how brains *and* brawn are part of what it means for him to be a complete hero, a man in full. There’s also a musical cue in Nolan that’s taken right from the similes in Book 21, where stringing the bow is compared to stringing a musical instrument and its sound is like that of a swallow. It’s one of the places where I think you can see Nolan is really attending to the text, whatever you make of how well or badly he interprets it

@GPrime85 I get it now. You're a psyop trying to get conservatives to avoid art with right- wing themes. Complete false flag.

I say this with sadness, not anger: If you bought a ticket for the Odyssey this weekend, you have surrendered the right to complain about Hollywood ruining movies. Your words & actions are not in alignment. You cannot lead others, because you can’t even follow yourself.

@TallonXIV @AutismCapital It's a smokescreen. The film could still win awards with an all white cast, and there's no evidence Nolan cast anyone to meet some diversity standard.

@AutismCapital A true and passionate artist wouldn't allow his vision to be compromised by the eligibility requirements of an award. If that is the case, then this goes to reason that Nolan made this movie for awards, with this creative vision coming secondary only to his eligibility.

@CaptAJAB @plzbepatient Those are Batman movies.

@plzbepatient People already have, adjusted it debuts lower than The Dark Knight or The Dark Knight Rises.

They really need to inflation adjust this stuff

@Zorak30 @neoavatara The Odyssey is overtly Christian, and says that visitors who abuse the hospitality of others are cursed. It's not woke. It's not pro illegal immigration. What conservative beliefs do you think are being judged?

@neoavatara These people are fools. Woke content isn't the casting of a transgender individual or race swapped actress. It's using those characters and the story to judge conservative beliefs. Way too many on the right lost the plot.

I went to the 10 o'clock showing of The Odyssey last night. And the bulk of people there were twenty somethings or younger. Christopher Nolan has done the unthinkable...he made classical Western literature cool again. And apparently, lot of Right wingers are mad about that.

@megha_lilly @AdamBogle5 He doesn't apologize for existing. He apologized for breaking Christ's law.

@AdamBogle5 Making the plot about Odysseus apologizing for existing. Changing the crucial moment when Odysseus takes pride in defeating the cyclops thus triggering a series of events. Penelope's girlbossing. etc etc

Every detail of Nolan’s Odyssey film was designed to rage bait everyone who is interested in and loves the Odyssey story. And harness that negative energy for power. This is what makes the film evil, no matter what artistic merits the final product may have had or lacked.

@Tomberly530 @SpencerKlavan His guilt stems from violating Christ's law, which is quoted directly, but attributed to Zeus.

@SpencerKlavan Looking forward to seeing the movie this weekend. A question for you, Spencer: Is the guilt Nolan's Odysseus experiences specifically Christian? That is, would ancient or medieval Christians like Charlemagne or Alfred have experienced the same sort of guilt? Or is it elsewise?

It’s been fascinating and enjoyable watching the reactions to Nolan’s Odyssey now that people have actually seen it. As far as I can tell the pre-lash has proven almost entirely counterproductive—not only because it is predictably being used as evidence that “go woke, go broke” isn’t true now that the movie is such a hit, but more importantly because it has needlessly discredited the legitimate and interesting criticisms of the movie being made by people who have seen it. And there’s plenty of room for such criticism! Especially, as I said in my original review, on the count that Nolan introduces a central theme of guilt about the war—its trickeries and its essential offenses against morality—that’s just not there in Homer. To my mind the situation is less that Nolan’s “woke” or hostile than that he doesn’t fully realize how immersed he is in contemporary, and indeed in some cases Christian, moral assumptions. But then, rewriting Odysseus’s character from a non-Homeric, non-Greek, or indeed Christian and (in that limited sense) a hostile perspective, is also very much in keeping with the literary tradition! As I write today in the @ClaremontInst Substack, this is something people do all the time, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Doesn’t mean it’s good or you have to like it, though I certainly enjoyed the movie. Just means that what’s going on is something significantly more interesting than wokeness, and calling it that before anyone knew enough about the movie to make a pointed critique was a really, really great way to discredit those critiques in advance by lumping them in with the reflexive grousing of people determined to hate the material before they walked in the theater.

@MattWalshBlog Maybe they worked together in the past, Nolan likes her, and wanted to give her a part in a movie, especially after her best career fell apart. It's not that complicated.

I have not seen The Odyssey yet, so I can’t give my final verdict on it. All I will say is that these “actually the movie isn’t woke” takes from conservatives strike me as implausible. Casting a self-mutilated trans-identifying female as a male warrior is one of the wokest things any mainstream film director has ever done in a movie, by any objective measure. It’s hard to imagine any context that could somehow make that choice not woke.

@HjgTweet @BrianStewartOH The opening scenes of the Odyssey tell us the most important law for people to follow is to treat others the way you want to be treated. It's literally the Christian Golden Rule.

@BrianStewartOH That's not Christian, that's just completely off the wall and ignorant of the source, considering some of the gods had it in for him and didn't want him to come home. Including, get this, Poseidon, the god of the ocean.

In the poem, Odysseus is able to go home once the gods take pity on him, barter amongst themselves, & instruct Calypso to free him. Odysseus is a spectator to it; a plaything for the gods. In the movie, Odysseus is told that the gods will carry him home when he stops trying to control everything himself, trusts in the gods, and he then walks into the ocean in an act of faith. The movie is vastly more Christian than pagan in its worldview.

@revjeffvox @SurrealVeal I'm sorry you didn't get to see enough white people when you went to the movies.

@SurrealVeal My favorite parts were the clearly Asian "Greek" soldier jumping in the water and Odysseus' trusted Indian "Greek" soldier looked concerned about his torment.

In the beginning of the Odyssey, we are told that the most important law to follow is to treat others the way you want to be treated - literally the Golden Rule of Christianity. After Odysseus returns home, he says that civilization is destroyed when uninvited enemies take advantage of a welcoming people to attack from within. And this is the movie people are calling woke and in favor of unrestricted illegal immigration?

Real missed opportunity in the Odyssey when Robert Pattinson was demanding to know who hooded Matt Damon was, and not having Damon turn and say, "I'm vengeance!'

Yes, he repeated the wording of his own wish. All that shows is that he knew about it, not that she was influenced by it. Yes, he repeatedly wonders about the wish, and he repeatedly dismisses it. This is another example of that. By the time he calls the number, she's gone completely bonkers, and even then he only thinks about the one wish willow because it magically calls out to him.

@TheRightColumn @TheKingerdYT You’re acting like he said it in a vacuum, 1. That was the wording of the wish 2. You can tell from his body language and voice that he is apprehensive when asking 3. Later during the phone call Bear is 100% aware she’s under a wish. Hence me calling you dense, pay attention

for the first 30 minutes or so of Obsession I said “why’s everyone saying he’s a villain? he doesn’t even know it worked and she’s pretty convincing that the first freakout was a fluke, now she’s normal, they seem happy” then the very first time he gets confirmation she’s under a spell it jump cuts to him immediately pounding and I was like “oh, that’s why.” and he only got more selfish from there. great watch to make you hate a protagonist this much.