Entertainment
Nolan Uses Feminist Translation That Calls Odysseus Problematic Instead of Cunning
Matt Walsh Show
Ep. 1779 - The Odyssey Looks Awful. Here’s Why.
"Previous translators have called Odysseus shifty, cunning, and 100 other things. After grappling with the alternatives, Wilson chose complicated, hoping also to convey the sense of problematic. Her first sentence, tell me about a complicated man, instantly makes him our familiar charismatic prince who's too impossible to live with and too desirable to live without."
Walsh reveals that Christopher Nolan based his Odyssey screenplay on Emily Wilson's 2017 translation, which explicitly reframes Odysseus as problematic rather than cunning or heroic. Walsh argues Wilson deliberately stripped masculine themes from Homer's epic, turning phrases like skilled in all ways of contending into tell me about a complicated man to undermine the hero's character.
From this episode
Matt Walsh Show