What Is Lost When We Make 'The Odyssey' Modern

The Odyssey is everywhere right now. Christopher Nolan’s film is conquering the box office, spawning online memes, and dominating online discourse. If you rip your eyes away from your feeds, and turn your attention to another book or film, you might find Homer’s epic dwelling there, too. As the author and translator Daniel Mendelsohn has observed, the story of “the hero, separated from home and loved ones, who wanders among strange peoples and fantastical places during a difficult journey home” is The Wizard of Oz, Finding Nemo, Dante’s Inferno, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Huckleberry Finn, and even Nolan’s own films Inception and Interstellar. The hero who uses disguise to test the loyalty of those around him has been recycled in Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. The poem’s fascination with alien creatures—like Scylla, Charybdis, and the Cyclops Polyphemus—could even be seen as a kind of ancient recipe for Star Trek.

But in an equally true way, Homer’s Odyssey is not everywhere. It is nowhere. This is an alien story about alien values from an alien world. It is a 2,500-year-old poem about a 3,000-year-old story from a Bronze Age that is as dead and buried as the heights of Troy. The values of The Iliad and The Odyssey are blessedly passé, including their bloody warrior culture and their fixation with an antiquated vision of glory through brute strength, which was often purchased through the spilling of blood and the keeping of slaves.

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For the last few weeks, there has been a ferocious debate about whether Christopher Nolan’s movie properly honors the original text. Is it okay that Helen of Troy is portrayed by a Black actress? Is it okay that Matt Damon’s Odysseus seems traumatized by the sacking of Troy, in a way that feels like he’d qualify for PTSD treatment from Veterans Affairs? The most int…