Yesterday afternoon on the way home I got caught in early afternoon traffic. A two-hour commute turned into a four-hour odyssey (see what I did there?). I used the time for a variety of things – some insanely loud, and some productive – including listening to a 1971 lecture that Joseph Campbell gave on the Odyssey when he taught at Sarah Lawrence College.
Christopher Nolan's IMAX interpretation of Homer's "Odyssey" has gotten people thinking and talking, which is a hallmark of great art. Nolan's version also holds up a mirror to the modern American moviegoing audience. If you lead an organization or care about the values that inform politics and societal norms, or even just see yourself as the hero of your own story, it may have something to say to you.
Stories have always been important to Homo sapiens – it's been argued that our ability to organize in large numbers around abstract, fictional concepts (like countries, religions, and sports) is the distinguishing quality that helped us outcompete other hominid species and put us at the top of the food chain. Stories help us find meaning in life and make sense of the experience of being alive. We make everything into a story! We tell stories about our relationships, our projects and companies and products and services, and even what happened to us just yesterday. The stories we tell ourselves define our ideas about who we are. Stories can also serve as mirrors to help us see and understand the times in which we live – vampires were the media monsters of the "greed is good" (the vampires of Wall Street and Bonfire of the Vanities count) bloodsucking eighties, while more recently zombies have taken center stage. [Note: It's easy to see where the zombie writers get their inspiration – check out the family sitting together at the restaurant table, all glued to their phone screens, oblivious to the woman in the crosswalk outside getting struck by a delivery van because both she and the van driver were also head down on their phones.]
Events unfold as they do, and we regularly report on them because we're wired that way, but thematic stories only happen on purpose. They are written with intention by motivated people who dedicate themselves to the task over time. Most American students only read excerpts of the Odyssey by Homer as adventure stories – Homer defeats the cyclops! Homer listens to the song of the sirens while tied to the mast! – but apart from being spared the rest of the original 12,000 lines of poetry, not to mention all the sex and violence that makes stories [a] compelling and [b] inaccessible in school, most of us didn't learn much about why Homer wrote the story, or how it got famous enough to be passed down through the generations.
Campbell pointed out to me in the car that Peisistratos, the ruler of Athens from c. 600 BC – 527 BC, standardized Homer's 12,000 spoken word poem in writing to serve an important purpose: "It was Peisistratos' idea that an urban mythology should be fashioned for Athens. Now this is something that also happened in the biblical tradition: to fashion, to make up, to invent a mythology that will validate and support and give historical prestige to this newly merged people, or city."
Campbell's explanation of Moses returning with the tablets as the story's scribes' way of saying "so here are the rules we're gonna live by" was pretty straightforward. It led me to reflect on the emphasis Nolan's script put on values. Matt Damon eventually gave into the will of the gods and lamented breaking Zeus' law, right there in 70mm IMAX.
Nolan's and Damon's Odysseus was very 21st century American. We see his virtuous traits: fidelity to his wife Penelope, love for his son Telemachus, guilt over dishonoring the law of Zeus and the rules of combat by using the Trojan Horse to "turn the fight into a hunt."
But... hang on a sec. That might be the whole movie picture, but it's not the whole story. The movie depiction of Circe (which Maureen Dowd writes "is like a vindictive feminist hippie making ceramic pots in Vermont") turns Odysseus' men into pigs, which is true to the tale, but in Homer's text, Circe is a nymph (as in "sexy nature maiden" and the root of the word nymphomaniac). She is the seductive daughter of the sun god and a titan, a powerful sorceress who has sex with Odysseus. A lot. And he likes it. He stays with her for a year, ignoring the homesick pleas of his men, and has two sons by her.
Then there's Calypso, which Charlize Theron plays as a therapeutic guide who may as well have been pimping ayahuasca or ibogaine to a tech bro. Athena shows up – and disappears – a few times, but the movie gods aren't nearly as selfish, capricious, and manipulative as I remembered from reading the story. And Athena didn't even have to persuade Calypso to release her sex slave, as she did in Homer's version. In the movie, Calypso is oddly maternal as she nurses Odysseus back to consciousness (I don't think he even ate the lotus in the original story, it was just seven years of great sex) and sends him home.
The movie's biggest departure from the Odyssey as I learned it was on the island of the Cyclops. Again, just to be clear: I think the movie is amazing. I'm glad I saw it, especially on a screen big enough to see what Nolan saw. I love that he even built special housings for the IMAX cameras to reduce noise. But there was so much more to Homer's story, and here that matters precisely because Nolan advanced the use of technology with this film. So I wish he would have included the dialogue where Odysseus told Polyphemus (the Cyclops) his name: "Outis (Nobody)." I wish Nolan would have included Odysseus getting the Cyclops drunk, and then stabbing him in the eye, so that when all the other Cyclops heard Polyphemus howling of pain and said, "Tell us who did this to you so we can kill him!" all the blinded Cyclops could reply was, "Nobody! Nobody did this to me!"
Why is that scene so important? Because it's Odysseus the master strategist at work,
and to ancient Greeks this was a perfect example of techne, the Ancient Greek word for cleverness. Techne is the root of the English word and concept of technology. American movie audiences – everyone, really – would be better off if we understood more about the roots of technology in our culture, and how/why our ability to effectively use tools is essential to ensure that our tools don't wind up using us.
As I walked out of the theater last week into the dazzling summer sunlight of a Los Angeles afternoon, I realized that Nolan's movie made total sense to the audience. No one had to struggle to understand it or argue over a key point. The guy next to me didn't take a break from snacking, texting, or slurping out of his giant soda bucket for nearly three hours.
I started this newsletter by mentioning traffic. Traffic is relatable, but it's nothing to complain about. I enjoyed air conditioning, called my wife twice, listened to music, and cued up a podcast to learn directly from one of the most insightful members of our species. Our ease and convenience undermine our ability to adapt, get stronger, and confront true adversity. Nolan's "Odyssey" is brilliant because it's so accessible, so easy on the eyes and the psyche – and that's it's biggest problem.
In modern societies from Hollywood to India, movie theaters are temples and movie stars are gods, "icons" and "larger-than-life idols" that we worship in the dark. So shouldn't our heroes be unapologetic master strategists who can not only string the bow, win the war, and save the day, but relish the clarity of their cause? Why worship the conflicted guy next door? Why is our Odysseus an ordinary-ish guy who has all this guilt about the war he won – if there had been a better, more honorable way to do it, shouldn't he have done that? Does he want to have amazing adventures and risky extramarital sex or does he want to go home? Does he have a decision-making disorder? Homer's Odysseus was himself a storyteller – who exactly is our guy? Did he succeed or fail?
The last thing Campbell said to me before I got out of the car was, "If you just look at these stories and see where you are, you'll be somewhere on the hero journey."
Maybe the word journey has recently become so popular because Campbell's point is the very thing more of us need to engage with – in our work, in our relationships, and even in our private minds. Gaining more clarity about our identity and purpose would certainly shed some light on shared values, like collaboration and organizational vision, and it might even help us fulfill our individual potential. I don't know about you, but I'd rather be challenged by heroes. I don't want to watch the Olympics if no one can run faster than me. And when I see a protagonist that's three thousand years old and 80 feet tall, I want to be inspired to become a better version of myself, instead of watching a multimillion dollar hero who kinda sucks and isn't sure about what he's done.
America, like Troy and Athens, is not just a place but an idea. A story built on a foundation of stories. And the story of America is changing. Our heroes are different now than they were when Campbell gave his lecture (one year after George C. Scott starred in "Patton," another general who would be difficult to portray the same way today). They are certainly different than when Homer first composed the Odyssey and Peisistratos used it to strengthen the culture of ancient Athens. Maybe it's worth viewing America through the Nolan Odyssey lens and ask what story we're reinforcing, or what we have lost by winning.
Christopher Nolan built a commercial masterpiece on the foundation of a great story, and I don't doubt his choices – I just wonder what they say about us.
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Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.
What I'm Watching –
Last week was a tale of two hero stories. The day after I watched Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, a friend sent me a link to "The Boys" on Prime. To whatever extent Oscar Wilde was right about life imitating art... yikes.
Quote I’m pondering –
Some years back I heard Steven Pressfield (who wrote "The Legend of Bagger Vance" and "The War of Art," among other things) say that he began writing sessions by reciting the first few lines of Homer's Odyssey, the invocation of the muse, translated by (the one and only) T.E. Lawrence. Here it is:
INVOCATION
O DIVINE POESY
GODDESS-DAUGHTER OF ZEUS
SUSTAIN FOR ME
THIS SONG OF THE VARIOUS-MINDED MAN
WHO AFTER HE HAD PLUNDERED
THE INNERMOST CITADEL OF HALLOWED TROY
WAS MADE TO STRAY GRIEVOUSLY
ABOUT THE COASTS OF MEN
THE SPORT OF THEIR CUSTOMS GOOD OR BAD
WHILE HIS HEART
THROUGH ALL THE SEA-FARING
ACHED IN AN AGONY TO REDEEM HIMSELF
AND BRING HIS COMPANY SAFE HOME
VAIN HOPE—FOR THEM
FOR HIS FELLOWS HE STROVE IN VAIN
THEIR OWN WITLESSNESS CAST THEM AWAY
THE FOOLS
TO DESTROY FOR MEAT
THE OXEN OF THE MOST EXALTED SUN
WHEREFORE THE SUN-GOD BLOTTED OUT
THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN
MAKE THE TALE LIVE FOR US
IN ALL ITS MANY BEARINGS
O MUSE
– from Homer’s Odyssey, translation by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)
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David Preston
Educator & Author
Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE