Latest / Systematic Geekology / Turning Homer Tropical: A Playful Take on The Odyssey (and why the sea isn’t the enemy)

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Turning Homer Tropical: A Playful Take on The Odyssey (and why the sea isn’t the enemy) · Systematic Geekology

• 1:14
  The future happens no matter how much we scream.
• 1:18
  Welcome we are to another episode of All Reading Counts with systematic ecology.
• 1:24
  And tonight we are discussing Derek Walcott's the Odyssey, a stage version apropos of one of the summer's big films, Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey, and of course, the original Homer poem, and all kinds of other Odyssey adaptations that perhaps
• 1:39
  we will reference as we go along.
• 1:40
  And I am joined this evening.
• 1:42
  I'm Andy Walsh, and I'm joined this evening by Jill Elizabeth.
• 1:44
  How are you doing this evening?
• 1:46
  Hi.
• 1:46
  I'm doing so well.
• 1:47
  I don't think I'm ever going to get sick of talking about this epic work, the Odyssey.
• 1:53
  And this is such a fun twist.
• 1:55
  Excellent.
• 1:56
  Yeah.
• 1:56
  I mean, we're what, 3,000 years in, and Western civilization hasn't gotten tired of it, so clearly some lasting.
• 2:05
  What's one more conversation?
• 2:06
  Right.
• 2:07
  Were you familiar with this particular version before we read it for the podcast?
• 2:12
  No, I wasn't.
• 2:13
  I just had the idea of reading the play because our friend Kevin Schaefer shared that he played the Cyclops in a high school theater production of the Odyssey.
• 2:27
  So when you threw out the idea of let's do something different for all reading counts, and why not?
• 2:33
  The play sure makes a lot of sense.
• 2:36
  Yeah.
• 2:37
  And I similarly had not read this before.
• 2:40
  I don't even know that I was familiar with this particular adaptation prior to you bringing it up, so thank you for that.
• 2:47
  And, yeah, I mean, you know, obviously familiar with the most famous story or one of the most famous stories in literature.
• 2:56
  You know, saw the film over the summer, read Ulysses in college as part of an Irish literature class.
• 3:03
  But, yeah, had not.
• 3:05
  Had not encountered this one.
• 3:06
  So looking forward to discussing it.
• 3:10
  Um, and as part of our introduction, what.
• 3:13
  What was the last thing.
• 3:14
  What was the last kind of literature that you read?
• 3:18
  Oh, I have really been in my Greek mythology era, if you will.
• 3:24
  So I just finished Circe, which is an adaptation of just the character of Circe and the Odyssey.
• 3:32
  And it's brilliant.
• 3:33
  It was.
• 3:33
  It's such a good book.
• 3:34
  Very good.
• 3:35
  I believe my daughter has read that.
• 3:37
  I definitely.
• 3:38
  I know it was on her radar.
• 3:40
  And.
• 3:40
  Yeah, so that.
• 3:41
  That' sounds good.
• 3:43
  Most thing that I read would have been a murder.
• 3:49
  I'm halfway through a murder mystery novel.
• 3:52
  Something along the lines of everybody in my family has killed someone is the title.
• 3:57
  Okay.
• 3:59
  It's a very meta mystery novel that.
• 4:03
  The first page, before you even get into the prologue, is a list of 10 rules for fair play murder mysteries about that the narrator can't have died, he's narrating from the afterlife, and the detective can't hide clues from
• 4:23
  the reader that they know about things like that.
• 4:27
  And then the narrator discusses these rules as the book goes along and how he's following them or bending them a little bit and so forth.
• 4:37
  So very, very meta, very comical, but, you know, also a well done mystery.
• 4:42
  Is it an enjoyable read?
• 4:43
  Yeah, I've been enjoying it so far.
• 4:45
  I actually wound up reading it's the first book in several now by this author.
• 4:51
  I keep forgetting the author's name because the main character is Ernest Cunningham who presents himself as a murder mystery writer.
• 4:57
  And so I keep forgetting that that's not the name of the actual author.
• 5:03
  So apologies to the actual author.
• 5:05
  But yeah, with that title and the character of Ernest Cunningham, you should be able to find the books.
• 5:12
  But I picked up from the library the second one, not knowing that it was the second in the series.
• 5:19
  It was something like Everybody on this Train is a Suspect.
• 5:23
  Which the title just kind of grabbed me as.
• 5:25
  Oh, that's an interesting take on the murder mystery genre and tropes.
• 5:31
  So I enjoyed that one.
• 5:32
  So I thought, oh, I should go back and read the first one.
• 5:34
  Oh, fun.
• 5:35
  Yeah, I have a book club of two with one of my co workers and he loves murder mysteries, so we always go that direction.
• 5:44
  I'll have to keep that book in mind.
• 5:45
  All right, well, maybe offline I will get to the actual author theme so it'll be a little easier to find.
• 5:50
  Excellent.
• 5:50
  All right, so we also want to remind folks who are listening to this that are watching it that you can please rate and review us wherever it is that you have found us.
• 6:03
  That always helps more folks find what we're talking about and we want to thank the folks who provide us with financial support.
• 6:11
  Tonight we're going to shout out Ethan Overcash.
• 6:13
  Thank you Ethan for your financial support to the podcast.
• 6:16
  And if you would like to be one of those lucky people that gets their name right out on an episode, probably multiple episodes because we kind of cycle through people, then you can go and find the link in
• 6:26
  the description, the show description, the video description.
• 6:29
  However you're catching up with this, follow the link there to our website and it will give you the instructions on how to sign up for a one time gift or an ongoing membership.
• 6:38
  And that will get you all kinds of bonus goodies, including answers to extra questions that we record separate from the episodes.
• 6:48
  We'll be doing one of those at the end of this episode so you can look forward to that, you can find all kinds of other bonus content.
• 6:55
  And while you're on the website, you might want to check out our merch, including our All Reading Counts merchandise, which I have a picture here of some of those things.
• 7:05
  I'm wearing my All Reading Counts T shirt.
• 7:08
  So if you would like to have something spiffy for yourself to wear or drink out of or write in, you can get one or more of those items on the website.
• 7:18
  And all the.
• 7:20
  If it's marked as All Reading Counts as a donation, or if you purchase the All Reading Counts merchandise, then that money is earmarked specifically to go to local libraries.
• 7:32
  So you're helping to support a library in one of our communities, or if you really feel like you need to have it, go to local library in your community.
• 7:40
  I bet if you reached out, we would do our best to accommodate that as well.
• 7:44
  So.
• 7:44
  Or feel free to just donate directly to your local library.
• 7:47
  That is also a good thing to do.
• 7:49
  So.
• 7:50
  Yeah.
• 7:50
  All right.
• 7:51
  So that is the business part of All Reading Counts and why we do All Reading Counts because we want to encourage people to read however they are most engaged with reading.
• 8:04
  There was just a couple days ago in the news, there were, there was news stories about a new research review on the benefits of reading for pleasure, the academic benefits that it provides to young people, the mental health
• 8:19
  benefits and the dementia delaying or deferring benefits that it provides to older folks.
• 8:25
  So, yeah, if you want to find something to read, you will find that it will bring lots of good things into your life, whether that's a novel or a play or an audiobook or however you want to read.
• 8:41
  Yeah.
• 8:41
  And do you have any other.
• 8:42
  Anything you want to chime in on with reading?
• 8:45
  Oh my gosh.
• 8:46
  Do it.
• 8:49
  I think our kids, my older kids, are about the same age as yours.
• 8:52
  I have college students, they're in their second year and they read all the time because they didn't have iPads growing up.
• 9:00
  And then I have, my youngest is 12, and it's such a different experience for her now.
• 9:07
  She does love comic books, she loves graphic novels, but I mean, I just never see her curled up with anything other than those books.
• 9:15
  And I, I feel sad that my big kids get so much pleasure out of reading novels and she just doesn't.
• 9:22
  So I encourage everybody to read, read, read.
• 9:24
  But as you said, all reading counts.
• 9:25
  So it's great that she's getting those graphic novels into.
• 9:27
  Yeah, yeah, it is very interesting.
• 9:31
  We did not have those battles when they were young over screen time.
• 9:35
  And so Forth because there just weren't as many screen options.
• 9:38
  It wasn't as prevalent.
• 9:40
  There was no social pressure for them to have an iPad or a phone or whatever at the age of five because it just wasn't a thing.
• 9:46
  So, yeah, we read lots of books.
• 9:48
  I was reminded the other day, our son, when he was like three or four, when we were still reading to him, he knew enough to know that the title page had more than two words on it.
• 9:59
  And so you could not advance through.
• 10:01
  You had to read all the words.
• 10:03
  And I think there was the copy.
• 10:06
  You had to at least acknowledge that there was the copyright and all that, because he could tell that there were words there.
• 10:10
  He didn't know what they all said, but he's like, I know that there are more than the two words that you read for this page.
• 10:15
  You're going to go back and finish.
• 10:17
  Yes.
• 10:19
  So, yeah, good stuff.
• 10:21
  Get them in early.
• 10:22
  But also, what is it?
• 10:25
  The first best time to start reading was when you were four.
• 10:28
  The next best time is to start today.
• 10:30
  Yeah.
• 10:31
  Is now.
• 10:31
  Yeah.
• 10:32
  Whenever, whatever.
• 10:34
  Yeah.
• 10:35
  So today we're going to be talking, as we said, reading the Odyssey, particularly the stage version as adapted by Derek Walcott.
• 10:44
  And thank you to the folks who voted on the Discord server to have that be our choice among several options.
• 10:53
  Thank you to Jill for the suggestion of the top of the thing to put in the poll.
• 10:56
  And thank you to those who voted.
• 10:58
  I will also let you know that the vote, if you're not a member and you didn't see the Discord poll, the vote was pretty close.
• 11:04
  If you had gotten in there, you could have perhaps changed the outcome.
• 11:08
  This is definitely a situation where there's no question that everybody's vote matters.
• 11:13
  And so, yeah, if you want to become a member, that's another incentive that you can have a real impact on what kinds of things we read and talk about on these all Reading Cons episodes.
• 11:24
  I've been rambling a lot.
• 11:25
  Jill, would you like to give us a little bit of a summary of the play and maybe also a summary of how you know the choices that were made in the adaptation?
• 11:35
  Since folks are probably broadly familiar with.
• 11:37
  The plot, I'm happy to do that.
• 11:39
  There won't be spoilers because as you said, We've had 3,000 years to get to know this work.
• 11:44
  So this play adaptation takes place in the Caribbean and it's written from a Caribbean perspective, which I think is just really awesome.
• 11:52
  We'll get into all of the why about that, but it is a retelling of Homer's the Odyssey, we are following Telemachus in Ithaca as he is trying to discover where his father is.
• 12:07
  He has not returned from the Battle of Troy.
• 12:09
  His father, of course, is Odysseus.
• 12:12
  And then, you know, so the play goes in between getting to see Telemachus and his journey and also Odysseus and his journey to get home.
• 12:22
  And we have all of the.
• 12:25
  The parts of the story that we know, like the Cyclops and Circe and the Sirens, like I said, just told through a little bit different lens because of the Caribbean piece.
• 12:36
  And instead of Homer being the narrator, we get Billy Blind, who I can just picture, like, there were so many moments in this reading.
• 12:45
  There you go.
• 12:46
  It's a good picture of him, maybe, we think, who gives us the telling of the story in this really cool Caribbean rhythm.
• 12:56
  And it's like the story is just begged to be read aloud.
• 13:01
  Right.
• 13:01
  I had a very hard time just reading it without picturing and hearing it in my head.
• 13:08
  Do you want to add anything, Andy?
• 13:10
  Yeah.
• 13:10
  I mean, you bring that up, and that was definitely something that I was struggling with.
• 13:15
  I can't say that I've read a ton of plays, but I have read some.
• 13:18
  And there's definitely.
• 13:20
  They vary in terms of how much you get from just the page.
• 13:25
  And this one definitely felt like that I would have appreciated seeing an actual performance, both for seeing how people interpreted the characters, but also the staging.
• 13:36
  There were definitely some moments where, you know, just kind of reading the stage directions or stage suggestions that, like, oh, you know, I'm curious how they would have actually pulled that off.
• 13:46
  You know, the one that most stands out is the Scylla and Charybdis sequence where it says something about, like, the.
• 13:53
  You know, that people come together and sort of become the tentacles of the monster and what have you.
• 13:58
  And it's like, oh, you know, that it seems like it could be very interesting to see.
• 14:01
  Yes, I would much rather see that than just kind of read about it.
• 14:04
  As not the most visual person in terms of being able to picture things in my head, I would definitely have appreciated that.
• 14:11
  So, yeah, I'm not sure I fully got everything that is good about this play just from having read it.
• 14:20
  Not that I didn't like it.
• 14:21
  Not that I didn't appreciate what I was reading.
• 14:23
  There's definitely skill to just the words on the page, but it also felt like it wasn't getting the full experience.
• 14:32
  Whereas some other things, like Agatha Christie, it's a murder mystery.
• 14:37
  I feel like you get a lot of the gist of the story.
• 14:42
  You're there for the plot, and so you're getting the plot, even if you're not seeing all of the antics on stage.
• 14:48
  But this really felt like there were colors and textures that would have benefited from.
• 14:53
  From adding.
• 14:54
  Yeah.
• 14:54
  I mean, you're absolutely forced to make it up yourself in your mind.
• 14:59
  And I think one of the reasons I didn't struggle with the reading of it in that way is I was a theater kid, and then I was the mom to two theater kids.
• 15:08
  I have read so many scripts and kind of enjoy that, you know, intuiting what's going to happen through the stage direction and then later getting to see it on stage.
• 15:19
  And I think I just sort of was imagining how this would come together as I was reading it.
• 17:11
  Yeah, that makes sense.
• 17:12
  I've never, you know, I have been in a couple of shows, but, you know, back in high school and so forth, I don't think I could quite call myself a theater kid because our school wasn't big enough to
• 17:20
  really have theater kids.
• 17:23
  But, you know, I was never so involved in it to the point that, like, I was really thinking about, oh, how are we going to put this together?
• 17:29
  It's more like I learned my lines and I showed up and I, you know, I did my lines and that was my job and it was somebody else's job to figure out what the staging would look like.
• 17:39
  I'm glad that you were able to bring that experience to it.
• 17:43
  Something else that I thought of.
• 17:46
  You mentioned that it was set in the Caribbean, but you also talked about Ithaca and Troy and so forth.
• 17:53
  It was interesting and I gather, deliberately ambiguous about the fact that it is both sort of elements, retaining elements of the Greek setting and Greek character.
• 18:06
  You know, all the character names and all the Greek gods are there.
• 18:13
  And yet also.
• 18:13
  Yes, it is.
• 18:15
  At times there are indications that it's meant to be set in the Caribbean.
• 18:18
  There are indications in the way that the use of language and so forth and some of the other cultural elements.
• 18:25
  Yes.
• 18:25
  Yeah.
• 18:26
  What was your take on that or how did that.
• 18:30
  Yeah, I mean, I loved it because I think these epic poems like Odyssey and Gilgamesh are meant to be retold and retold and retold, and they should change a little bit because of the cultural context.
• 18:49
  And I think especially the Caribbean with their, you know, they were so many of those islands were colonies of England for so long and have this.
• 19:00
  Their education was a, like, traditional British education.
• 19:04
  And they were taught there's, like, a correct way it's very colonial.
• 19:08
  And I.
• 19:09
  I think by taking this, like, ancient epic poem and making it Caribbean, it sort of, like, begs us to ask the question, who does art really belong to?
• 19:19
  And the.
• 19:21
  Like, the.
• 19:22
  The retelling and the twist while remaining, like, faithful to Homer's characters, but using this Caribbean language and rhythm and humor.
• 19:31
  I just think it's a really cool play on history, if you will.
• 19:35
  Yeah, yeah, I agree that, you know, that the power of these stories is being able to retell them and retell them in ways that is meaningful.
• 19:45
  I think, you know, when I first kind of encountered the premise or the.
• 19:51
  What made this adaptation unique, I think I expected to be a little bit more explicit or exclusively Caribbean.
• 19:58
  Yeah.
• 19:58
  Maybe not quite a brother.
• 20:00
  We're out, though.
• 20:01
  Like, you know, complete reimagining, but a little bit, you know, more.
• 20:06
  More local character names, more local locations and so forth.
• 20:11
  But it was, you know, it was.
• 20:13
  It was not that.
• 20:14
  And, you know, with purpose.
• 20:17
  And so that was kind of stretched my thinking a little bit more of, like, okay, so what are we doing here?
• 20:22
  Because it's not what I was expecting it to be doing.
• 20:25
  So then I had to think a little bit more, engage a little bit more on, okay, so what are we doing?
• 20:29
  What does that say?
• 20:30
  Yeah, you know what it reminds me of?
• 20:32
  And I didn't think of it until this exact moment.
• 20:35
  Have you.
• 20:35
  I don't know why you would, but have you ever had the chance to see Langston Hughes, a black Nativity?
• 20:41
  I don't believe I have had the opportunity, no.
• 20:43
  So cool.
• 20:44
  It goes on live production, I'm sure, all over the world, but all over the country, for sure.
• 20:50
  Every, like, Christmas season.
• 20:51
  And it is a retelling of the Nativity story, but from an African American perspective, sort of.
• 20:57
  It's still, like, very, very traditional.
• 21:00
  Like, it's Bethlehem.
• 21:02
  It's Jesus being born to Mary.
• 21:03
  It's like the travel back to your home country, but it's so, like, distinctly African American.
• 21:12
  There's one part, it always makes me laugh.
• 21:14
  I've seen the play probably seven times.
• 21:16
  Make my children go with me all the time, where they are saying, yes.
• 21:21
  And the first family had to travel back to Bethlehem because they needed to pay taxes.
• 21:25
  And all the ensemble goes, ugh, taxes.
• 21:30
  And it just like.
• 21:31
  It.
• 21:32
  It is the story, but there's, like, a cultural context in there that makes it really cool.
• 21:38
  And it's the same thing.
• 21:39
  It doesn't.
• 21:40
  It's, like, not completely different, but just a little bit different.
• 21:43
  And I get the same thing.
• 21:44
  Of this, like, Caribbean twist.
• 21:46
  It doesn't ever feel gimmicky when I was reading the play, but it's just a little bit culturally different.
• 21:51
  Yeah, no, if anything, the version in my head might have been more gimmicky and so it's all the better for not having done the most obvious things.
• 21:59
  Yeah.
• 22:00
  There's no Harry Belafonte coming out singing, playing the bongos.
• 22:07
  Right, yeah, yeah, sorry.
• 22:08
  Now I just got thinking of Beetlejuice and something along those lines and, yeah, that definitely doesn't mesh.
• 22:16
  Yeah.
• 22:17
  So do you think that changes which themes from the original Odyssey sort of came through or were sort of reinforced?
• 22:26
  Which ones?
• 22:26
  Do you think he was saying something different or maybe even the opposite of what.
• 22:29
  What Homer was trying to get across because of the new context.
• 22:32
  I think really the theme of the sea is.
• 22:35
  Is different.
• 22:36
  Right.
• 22:36
  Like in Homer's Odyssey, the sea is this huge obstacle that is preventing Bodiscius from getting home.
• 22:44
  And I think just in Caribbean culture anyway, and I found out the author is from St.
• 22:49
  Lucia.
• 22:50
  The sea is never like your adversary, like it's part of your life.
• 22:55
  You, like, find your peace, find your harmony, reintegrate yourself by getting into the sea.
• 23:00
  And I think it just has a little bit different note in this play.
• 23:05
  And the island hopping that Odysseus does doesn't feel as like, violent or punishing the way it does in the traditional Odyssey.
• 23:15
  Does that make sense?
• 23:16
  Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 23:17
  You know, there's not a lot of time spent on the water.
• 23:21
  And so, yeah, you don't have that same sense.
• 23:24
  Like there was, for example, in the, in the film version over the summer of, you know, the days and weeks at sea of just kind of like, you know, either hoping for wind at all or, you know, desperate
• 23:36
  for anything other than the storms and the wind.
• 23:39
  Right.
• 23:39
  Like those soldiers crap beat out of them on sea.
• 23:42
  Right.
• 23:42
  Yeah, yeah, just.
• 23:43
  Just by the water itself.
• 23:45
  Yeah.
• 23:45
  Whereas here, all of the.
• 23:46
  All the incident is on land.
• 23:50
  And yeah, I almost.
• 23:51
  I think it may just be simply the edited nature of cutting it down to a play that could be put on in an hour and a half, two hours, something.
• 24:01
  I'm guessing that there was not a strong sense of that 20 year passage of time.
• 24:10
  There was almost a feeling that Odysseus had just been kind of out there for 10 years and then finally went, oh, yeah, maybe I should get home.
• 24:16
  And then a few things happened to him on the way home as opposed to.
• 24:20
  Yeah, that sense of like, oh, you know, the.
• 24:22
  The sea has been fighting me for 10 years to keep me from.
• 24:24
  From getting home.
• 24:25
  Yep.
• 24:26
  And I think you felt that way as well.
• 24:27
  Context.
• 24:28
  I did, absolutely.
• 24:29
  And I think that is.
• 24:29
  The Caribbean context is like, yeah, the ocean's not our enemy.
• 24:33
  That's not an obstacle.
• 24:34
  That's like the thing that we use to carry us from place to place.
• 24:37
  It is what it is.
• 24:39
  I also really, like.
• 24:40
  I loved the language in this play.
• 24:42
  You get some very, like, high culture language during most of it, and then whenever the servants speak, it's like this Caribbean dialect that.
• 24:53
  That play with it, I think is really.
• 24:55
  I think it's cool, but I think it.
• 24:57
  It, like, challenges the idea a little bit about what.
• 25:00
  What deserves to be taken serious, what's.
• 25:04
  What's appropriate, what's proper.
• 25:06
  I think we even got a little bit of that with Christopher Nolan's Odyssey and the conversations around it, around the language.
• 25:12
  And I kind of like just sitting in that play of it.
• 25:14
  Yeah, there's.
• 25:15
  There was definitely a playfulness to the language at times, and, yeah, definitely a sense of Odysseus doesn't need to totally be taken seriously, that, you know, that some of these characters around him are not.
• 25:26
  Not taking him seriously.
• 25:27
  Particularly, like I said, the characters who are on the.
• 25:31
  On the margins of the story or, you know, that are more in a servant role, they're kind of like, we're living our own lives.
• 25:37
  And with this guy, I don't know what his.
• 25:39
  What his nonsense is all about, but we've got our own stuff to deal with, and that's much more important.
• 25:44
  I love that.
• 25:46
  Yes.
• 25:46
  And that, you know, and those were.
• 25:48
  Those are also some of the moments.
• 25:49
  It's like, man, I could see somebody really making a meal out of.
• 25:53
  Out of some of these fairly small roles on the.
• 25:56
  You know, in terms of number of lines on the page.
• 25:59
  But definitely, I could see getting big audience reaction.
• 26:04
  Yeah.
• 26:04
  And, like, plenty of room for humor, which we don't see, I think, in.
• 26:09
  The original work, certainly not as we receive it in the present day.
• 26:16
  I think it's hard to know how it would have been heard or read in its context, but.
• 26:21
  Yeah, when it's one of the things that you have to read in high school as very serious, important, foundational literature that doesn't really invite that kind of response.
• 27:32
  Mm.
• 27:33
  I think even that idea of, like, something has to be serious, has to be played straight for it to be important.
• 27:40
  I think even that is at play in this play.
• 27:42
  It's weird.
• 27:43
  I feel like I keep using that word.
• 27:44
  Well, you know, it is what we're talking about, but yeah.
• 27:47
  Yes.
• 27:48
  Yeah.
• 27:49
  You know, the Nausicaa sequence kind of stood out to me as, you know, very playful teasing, kind of like, you know, what is, what are you up to and why is it so important you get home and, you
• 28:02
  know, you're really making, making a mountain out of a molehill here.
• 28:05
  Yeah.
• 28:06
  And on both ends.
• 28:07
  Because that's also when Odysseus is like, oh, you're just like, so young and so pretty.
• 28:11
  You know, he seems, Odysseus seems very human in this play.
• 28:14
  Yes.
• 28:15
  And not quite as heroic as Red in other versions, in my opinion.
• 28:20
  Yeah, I mean, there's really little, little opportunity for him to, to seem heroic.
• 28:26
  Not much is made of the war in Troy or the Trojan Horse.
• 28:32
  They're mentioned as context, but it's largely assumed rather than spelled out.
• 28:36
  There's nobody blind.
• 28:38
  Billy doesn't come out and go, now I'm going to give you the litany of all of his heroic deeds and why everybody thinks that he's so great.
• 28:47
  And yeah, in the various incidents, the ones that get picked of the things that happened to him on his, on his way home are not the by and large, the moments of high adventure in action and heroism and
• 29:03
  bravery.
• 29:03
  They're more the, you know, Odysseus got kind of tricked or just sort of sidetracked or distracted or.
• 29:11
  Yeah, yeah.
• 29:12
  What did the kids say?
• 29:13
  Side quest.
• 29:15
  Constant side quest.
• 29:17
  Right, exactly.
• 29:19
  So, like, finally getting home.
• 29:20
  Absolutely.
• 29:21
  I did want to ask you a question about what you think, how the gods are depicted, not just in this version, but just overall.
• 29:31
  Like, do they have moral authority, do you think, or do you think they're just like, powerful?
• 29:37
  Right.
• 29:37
  I mean, the sense that I got from this version was very much that, you know, that they do not really have a whole lot of moral authority that and perhaps even their powerfulness is questioned.
• 29:50
  There is ways in which some of them overlap with some of the other characters.
• 29:55
  It seems like they're intended for the same actor to play multiple roles.
• 30:01
  And so there's some contrast there as to how divine are they versus how human are they.
• 30:07
  Are they really just sort of magnified versions of human, powerful figures or human leaders?
• 30:14
  And yeah, I mean, Odysseus certainly doesn't seem to have a whole lot of reverence.
• 30:21
  And I'm not sure, you know, I don't remember any character in particular having.
• 30:24
  Having a ton of reverence for the gods.
• 30:26
  Athena seems to be the most positively depicted.
• 30:30
  But there seems to be a lot of question about, you know, was that Athena Was that not Athena?
• 30:35
  Do we need to listen to Athena?
• 30:36
  Do we not need to listen to Athena?
• 30:37
  Yeah, yep.
• 30:39
  Yeah.
• 30:40
  You know, trying to think.
• 30:42
  I mean, you know, the Nolan film really didn't engage much at all.
• 30:46
  You know, the only element was seeing Athena a few times speaking very cryptically.
• 30:52
  And then I don't want to totally spoil the film, but, you know, there is a revelation about why Athena takes on the form that she does in the film that is very powerful.
• 31:06
  But also, I think, again, kind of calls into question to what extent is Athena a real separate entity or deity versus to what extent is Athena kind of a personification of the ideals that Odysseus is trying to live
• 31:24
  up to or the morals that he's trying to navigate towards?
• 31:30
  Right.
• 31:30
  And.
• 31:31
  And the shame that he feels because of what happened at Troy?
• 31:35
  Yeah, yes.
• 31:36
  What he's trying to get away from.
• 31:38
  Right.
• 31:38
  And is that a figment of his imagination or is it divine intervention showing him, you know, their face?
• 31:45
  Right, right.
• 31:45
  Yeah, I.
• 31:46
  I think about it all the time.
• 31:47
  And because I'm reading or just finished Cersei as well, which is like all about the Titans and the gods.
• 31:53
  Like, oh, they're not like, they're mean and super powerful and.
• 31:58
  But not acting on a higher moral ground, which I think maybe naively, I just sort of thought the Greek gods and goddesses imitated our traditional Christian, Judeo, Christian idea of God.
• 32:11
  And I don't necessarily think that's true the more I read.
• 32:14
  Yeah.
• 32:15
  I think from what I understand, there is an element of monotheism kind of shifting the understanding of deity towards something that you can imbue a moral authority to, because it's a single voice.
• 32:31
  Right.
• 32:33
  When there's multiple gods, you can always pick one to blame things on or pick one to say that I was listening to this God against that God or whatever.
• 32:44
  You can put them against each other.
• 32:45
  And so, yeah, it's not as clear cut.
• 32:48
  Whereas one of the innovations of monotheism is, well, there is a right and a wrong because there's just the one God.
• 32:54
  And so what that.
• 32:54
  That God says is right and everything else is against that is wrong.
• 32:57
  Right.
• 32:58
  And of course, you will only know by who interpreted it for you.
• 33:02
  Sure, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:05
  Anything else on themes that you caught that I didn't.
• 33:08
  Didn't touch?
• 33:10
  It's not really a theme issue, but I was curious how you felt Penelope came across in this version.
• 33:20
  What a great question.
• 33:22
  I mean, similar to the Nolan version, but, like, maybe the.
• 33:27
  All of the female characters are a little Bit more fleshed out and a little more.
• 33:33
  There's like, some more humor there.
• 33:36
  I don't know.
• 33:37
  I'm trying to think specifically if I had any thoughts about Penelope, but I didn't.
• 33:41
  She's, like, more dramatic.
• 33:43
  Yeah.
• 33:44
  What do you.
• 33:45
  What do you think?
• 33:46
  Yeah, I guess I just, you know, I thought that she was a very compelling presence in the film and maybe that just, you know, it being visually presented and Anna Hathaway being a very charismatic presence, but I didn't
• 34:00
  get quite that same feel off the page here.
• 34:04
  She felt a little bit more.
• 34:05
  And maybe it was just that last sequence where it just seemed to take her a really long time to either realize or admit and acknowledge.
• 34:13
  And it was unclear, you know, what she knew versus what she was saying.
• 34:17
  But it.
• 34:18
  It was very late.
• 34:18
  Yeah.
• 34:19
  I think it was the proceedings with the.
• 34:20
  Yeah.
• 34:21
  That.
• 34:21
  That it was Odysseus.
• 34:22
  That the, you know, the beggar person was Odysseus.
• 34:25
  Yeah.
• 34:25
  And so that just felt weird.
• 34:27
  Yeah.
• 34:28
  And that piece of, like, the marriage bed, like, that's not in the movie, like our most recent retelling of it.
• 34:35
  Yeah, I think she was testing him.
• 34:37
  I think she was testing Odysseus.
• 34:39
  Yeah, that's.
• 34:39
  I can.
• 34:40
  I can see that.
• 34:41
  That take.
• 34:41
  That's fair.
• 34:42
  And, you know, he.
• 34:43
  We do see a bit more of him being distracted and wandering, you know, in this version.
• 34:50
  And so, yeah, maybe that's.
• 34:51
  Maybe that's a reaction to that.
• 34:52
  Of.
• 34:53
  Are you really interested in coming home?
• 34:55
  To me.
• 34:55
  Yeah.
• 34:56
  Which was he?
• 34:58
  Right.
• 34:59
  Was he.
• 35:00
  I mean, it took him how many years?
• 35:02
  Right, right.
• 35:03
  10 years at war, 10 years traveling.
• 35:06
  But, yeah, like we discussed earlier, that you didn't really get a sense of that.
• 35:09
  That whole time he was trying to make his way back.
• 35:13
  Right.
• 35:13
  And.
• 35:13
  And that's, like, true of every version.
• 35:16
  And it's interesting.
• 35:17
  I feel like the film, Nolan's film, it kind of let.
• 35:22
  Oh, my gosh, what's her name?
• 35:23
  Calypso, like, off of the hook.
• 35:25
  It didn't.
• 35:25
  It didn't exactly give the, like, the clearest picture of, like, what.
• 35:29
  Calypso, like the spell that she had over Odysseus or that she, like, basically kept him as a sex slave for these years.
• 35:37
  I think.
• 35:37
  What else I wanted to say about that.
• 35:39
  But, yeah, I don't think he was super passionate about getting home.
• 35:42
  Fair.
• 35:43
  It's a lot of side quest.
• 35:45
  Yes.
• 35:46
  Yes.
• 35:47
  Yeah.
• 35:47
  I think.
• 35:48
  I think that pretty much covers what I had, what notes I had made.
• 35:52
  Is there anything else that.
• 35:55
  That you wanted to bring up?
• 35:56
  Or discuss.
• 35:57
  Yeah, I really liked the poetry in this.
• 36:01
  And overall.
• 36:02
  And I think I had said on a.
• 36:04
  Another discussion here at Systematic Ecology about how much I appreciate an oral tradition.
• 36:11
  You know, this story was told for maybe a thousand years before it ever even was written down.
• 36:15
  I think that's so beautiful.
• 36:17
  And to use this character of Billy Blind to, like, play that bard, I also just really love.
• 36:27
  It plays into, like, my own West African ancestry.
• 36:30
  That's like, gosh, everyone I know in West Africa is, like the most brilliant storytellers.
• 36:35
  It's just in our DNA.
• 36:37
  They, like, are so good at that oral tradition.
• 36:38
  And that's where we get, like, you know, hip hop and rap from.
• 36:42
  And I love that we can take it all the way back to these ancient stories.
• 36:45
  Awesome.
• 36:47
  Yeah.
• 36:47
  You know, for as much as I struggled with the visuals of it, the craft of the.
• 36:52
  The writing on a sort of line by line basis definitely comes across.
• 36:55
  There was definitely a lot of skill there to render the story in a different poetic form.
• 37:02
  Right.
• 37:02
  It's obviously written as Greek poetry and translating that into another kind of poetry in another language.
• 37:10
  I've never attempted such a thing.
• 37:11
  I can only imagine that it requires a lot of skill, a lot of time and patience and creativity and familiarity with the language.
• 37:19
  With both languages.
• 37:20
  Right.
• 37:20
  A deep familiarity with both languages.
• 37:22
  And so, yeah, kudos to Derek Walcott, I guess.
• 37:25
  I don't know.
• 37:25
  Good job that it was very well done in that respect.
• 37:30
  And also, like I said, while being playful and fun and having lots of puns and wordplay as well.
• 37:35
  Yeah.
• 37:35
  I hope I have a chance to see it live on stage someday.
• 37:38
  Yeah.
• 37:38
  It definitely has me now thinking that if I see that come up, that I would want to get tickets.
• 37:44
  And also the Langston Hughes Nativity.
• 37:46
  So now I've got two things to.
• 37:48
  To keep your eyes.
• 37:48
  Can you remind me where you're located geographically?
• 37:52
  I'm in Pittsburgh.
• 37:53
  Okay.
• 37:53
  Oh, I'm sure it's playing somewhere.
• 37:56
  I will.
• 37:56
  I'll have to seek that out.
• 37:58
  Yep.
• 37:59
  Very good.
• 37:59
  All right, well, I think then on that note, it's a good place to start our wrapping up.
• 38:06
  We'll remind folks we will be bringing this to a close, but then we'll come back for a bonus question.
• 38:11
  I was thinking in terms of.
• 38:14
  Since there have been so many different versions of the Odyssey, it seems only inevitable that eventually there will be a Muppet version.
• 38:22
  So, obviously.
• 38:24
  What else do you do?
• 38:26
  So I thought we would spend a couple minutes figuring out which Muppets play which characters and who is the lone human in the main cast.
• 38:34
  So hope you're up for that.
• 38:36
  And if that sounds of interest to you listeners, then you'll want to sign up to be a member so you can get access to that bonus question.
• 38:45
  I love it.
• 38:46
  And then before we, before we get to that, is there anything else that you would like to recommend folks to read beyond this particular play around this subject or just any, you know, the prompt is any other reading
• 39:05
  that is connected in some way.
• 39:07
  Maybe it's another play.
• 39:08
  Maybe it's something else about the Odyssey.
• 39:12
  Well, I think I have to go with the Circe, which is the book I was reading.
• 39:16
  And I also heard the same author has a book about Achilles.
• 39:20
  So let's just make this the year of Greek mythology.
• 39:23
  Excellent.
• 39:24
  So Derek Walcott also has a poem called Amoros.
• 39:28
  It's not a play, but it's another Greek epic inspired thing in a Caribbean setting.
• 39:35
  And so having read this, it got me thinking that I should check that out as well.
• 39:39
  So I just wanted to flag that up for everyone else.
• 39:41
  In case you were not aware that that is something out there that is probably worth your time based on the poetry in this, in this play.
• 39:50
  I like it.
• 39:51
  All right, so thanks everybody for listening.
• 39:55
  And again, please if you can rate and review us, we always appreciate that wherever you are getting this, whether it's on YouTube, as a video or in some kind of podcast feed, it is always helpful to get those
• 40:09
  likes so other folks can find our episodes.
• 40:13
  And we want to thank Ethan Overcash, one of our supporters, for his financial contributions.
• 40:18
  And we ask you again to consider becoming a contributor either as a one time thing or as an ongoing basis or getting some of the All Reading couch merchandise, which again, the proceeds from which will benefit local libraries.
• 40:32
  And yeah, I think that's all we want to ask of you this time around.
• 40:37
  So hope you can join us again next time for another All Reading counts episode or another Systematic ecology episode.
• 40:43
  And until then, remember, if you are going to geek, please do so systematically.
• 40:47
  Bye bye,.
• 40:54
  Sam.