Emily Wilson, the Homer translator who slammed Nolan's film, is retranslating the Odyssey from scratch
Emily Wilson, a University of Pennsylvania professor whose 2017 translation of The Odyssey served as one of the inspirations for Christopher Nolan's film adaptation, has revealed that she's tackling Homer's poem a second time. This isn't about revising the old work – it's a completely new text from scratch.
Emily Wilson, speaking with The Associated Press:
Its a complete retranslation. Its not a revision of the old version. Im about halfway through.
The AP and the academics they spoke with point out that its exceedingly rare for a translator to issue another translation of the same work from scratch. Wilson doesn't directly tie her new approach to Nolan's film.
That said, her feelings about the movie are well known. In her first op-ed, Wilson called the film abysmal and said she would be ashamed to have written any part of this script, adding that it lacks psychological, emotional, political, and ethical depth.
Her second op-ed focused on xenia, the ancient Greek code of hospitality that the film calls Zeus Law. Under this code, hosts must treat guests with respect, since a stranger could be a god in disguise. In Nolan's film, Odysseuss ruse with the Trojan Horse is depicted as the ultimate violation of that law.
Nolans Odyssey itself a kind of Trojan horse. The script grandly insists on the importance of human kindness, while the camera shows us an entirely different set of values. In these times of hatred and misinformation, we need more than the apparent magic of deceptive images. We need art that is truthful about the costs and the necessity of compassion, and that recognizes that a sense of spiritual superiority may not protect us from lies.
Nolan hasn't directly responded to Wilson's op-eds, though the director recently shared his thoughts on amateur film criticism in general, explaining that being able to identify the mechanism does not invalidate the mechanism.
Nolan isn't the only one to face the classicist's criticism. Wilson also had unflattering things to say about Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books, while acknowledging their popularity among her own students.
Many of my students love them so much. I think if I had read them as a child, I might have been a fan. Theyre not designed for an adult literary reader.
I think especially in the first Percy Jackson book, The Lightning Thief, theres very much an ideology of: Heres this white boy in America whos going to gather the whole of Western civilization, and therell be a heros journey, which will really be the heroism of American exceptionalism. And I just think that is ideologically and historically quite questionable.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3 premieres on Disney+ on November 20.
