Have We Advanced Since Homer?

Homer knew war was traumatic. The cartoonish version of war in which killing is easy and surviving is simple is a creation of modern propaganda and movies.

By David Swanson, Special to Progressive Hub

I have no opinion on the casting or the acting or the straying from the original in the new Hollywood Odyssey. Here come some spoilers on what I do have an opinion on.

Christopher Nolan and whoever else had a role in this production obviously tried to improve on ancient morality in a particular way and not in another.

That is, Nolan de-glorified war. In this movie, we’re told that the Greeks were lied into the Trojan War for economic reasons. The warriors were forced into the war through threats to their families and towns. The war was boring and wasteful. Then it was horrific, evil, and traumatizing. Then it tore down the rule of law and spread fear and insecurity across the world. Odysseus, in this film, took so long getting home because he was recovering from the moral guilt, horror, trauma, and grief of war. He met dead people who upbraided him for having lied to them and abandoned them. He brought the horror of raping and pillaging wherever he brought his men. There was not one decent thing about the whole filthy enterprise, apart from the misdirected bravery.

Having de-glorified war and inserted some reality of veterans’ issues into an ancient epic, and having practically stripped it of the mythology of the gods, and having transformed Odysseus into a sad and tragic, older and wiser, trusting soul ready to turn the page and begin a new and different life, Nolan quit. He just stopped. He gave up and went with the original ending based around the supreme value in Hollywood morality: revenge. Rather than ending with Odysseus reuniting with his beloved wife and son, Nolan gave us gratuitous mass murder with pride and satisfaction, pseudo-justice even, in the butchery.

Odysseus, as you know from the original, trapped dozens of people in a room and slaughtered them. He could have sent them into exile. He could have sought their accountability and restitution. He could have scared them away. Indeed, he had to lock the doors to keep them from running away. But all thoughtfulness fell before the king of the gods: revenge. There was no more consideration of moral development whatsoever.

Have we advanced since antiquity?

Homer knew war was traumatic. The cartoonish version of war in which killing is easy and surviving is simple is a creation of modern propaganda and movies.

Homer celebrated revenge. And the movie industry does not question it today. Neither do corporate media outlets. While revenge is not a legal or moral or practical justification for wars, it was the media’s accepted basis for the war on Afghanistan for years, and for every war once the war has been going for a little while. Once some of the troops labeled as yours are killed, you can ignore who started the war and promote it with revenge.

When the U.S. public resisted a war on Syria, a few videos of beheadings were enough to create enthusiasm for the war with such passion and blindness that I’m not sure anyone ever noticed that the U.S. jumped in on the opposite side of the war that it had wanted to join up until then. The unpopularity of the wars on Venezuela and Iran right now would be undone if only you could tell a story about those nations having begun those wars (and is undone in the minds of that minority of people who do fantasize such stories).

So, my recommendation is this. If you’re watching the Odyssey, and you see Odysseus reunite with Penelope, get up and leave. You’ll have already been there for ages. Get up and leave right then, and go home imagining that Western culture has advanced a little over these thousands of years.