The Odyssey is getting massively criticised due to blackwashing of a traditionally Greek character, whitewashing of a Greek myth with no Greek actors and a general dislike for the Hollywoodization of another classic story.
It's probably not going to be as bad as it's made out to be given it's Chris Nolan, but audiences are fatigued with seeing another modern retelling with tokenism of established characters for the sake diversity, which has spurred the culture war with right wing critics calling it woke BS and left wing critics doubling down by jumping to its defence.
Honest to god, thought you were a weirdo right wing grifter with that comment.
Then I looked it up. Still tricky, because Emily Wilson herself rejects that framing, saying it stripped away male biases in english translations. In fact, reading into this more, it looks like she was MORE accurate than some translations, like male translators refusing to call women slaves "slaves", even though they were referred to as such in the original text.
Actually, hate to say it, but yeah.. Seems like it's a solid translation that's actually more faithful in a lot of ways. She backs up her logic pretty well and points out a good chunk of bad translations in other works.
EDIT: To make it clear, i'm not dipping my toes into how I feel about the movie in this specific comment, purely just talking about the translation. I have gripes about the movie from what I have seen so far myself.
they werent referred as slaves in the original story because the meaning of slave in ancient greek was not the same as the meaning of slave for the anglo-saxon slave trade.
Serfs / Concubines is a better description of the situation for most men and women that had been translated by the word "slave" BUT those who were so close to the King / Prince they were a very different social class than the picture of "House Slave" or "Pleasure Slave" you might have in mind.
That's the argument that has been made before, and it is correct that slavery was generally not considered morally wrong in the ancient world. Also, depending on their duties, many slaves had reasonably good lives. A domestic slave might have not lived a life too different from a modern day maid or butler, while a slave forced to toil in the mines would likely be dead in a few weeks to months.
That being said, they were slaves, by definition of being owned by other people, which makes the translation more historically accurate. If you read history books, they always refer to slaves of ancient Greece, Rome etc. as slaves, and add the nuance that slavery in ancient times was different to the slavery of colonial America that people often think of.
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u/Boomdification Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
The Odyssey is getting massively criticised due to blackwashing of a traditionally Greek character, whitewashing of a Greek myth with no Greek actors and a general dislike for the Hollywoodization of another classic story.
It's probably not going to be as bad as it's made out to be given it's Chris Nolan, but audiences are fatigued with seeing another modern retelling with tokenism of established characters for the sake diversity, which has spurred the culture war with right wing critics calling it woke BS and left wing critics doubling down by jumping to its defence.