Topical Talks!

Ø We’ve opened the invitation for this group to members of the Philosophy Salon and The Wisdom School because we think the subject matter is applicable and would be enjoyed by all. Please RSVP on the Meetup site.
Ø If you can, see the movie. It’s well worth it. You do not need to see it to attend, but it will make the discussion richer and more nuanced.
Ø There will be pictures, reels and maps. Yippee!!
Odysseus: Trickster or Hero?
Released on July the 17th, as of August the 9th, Christopher Nolan's movie “The Odyssey” has made approximately $1.1 billion. It has received a 94% approval rating from critics and 97% from verified audience ratings. NB: it has not yet opened in China.
The film has succeeded spectacularly with a mass audience. It isn't simply a critical/art-house success. An ancient Greek poem has been turned into a $1-billion-plus commercial blockbuster.
I suggest that a primary reason the film has been so successful is that it managed to maintain the Homeric frame while translating the values of 7th c. BCE into those that a contemporary audience finds both accessible and relevant. Nolan took a tremendous risk in his re-visioning of the narrative. There are multiple examples of this in the movie (we will be mentioning several of them in discussion). One of the most fascinating of these is the difference between the Homeric poem and Nolan’s narrative concerning the core character of Odysseus.
When we think of a hero, we have a fairly clear idea what that means. A hero is brave. A hero faces danger. A hero protects others and, ideally, possesses some kind of moral integrity. But then we encounter Odysseus—and things become considerably less straightforward.
Odysseus is one of the most enduringly complicated figures in Western literature. He is courageous, resourceful, extraordinarily intelligent, and capable of surviving circumstances that would destroy most people. He also lies, disguises himself, manipulates people, tricks monsters and enemies—and sometimes his own allies. Homer's Odysseus is essentially a Trickster. His defining quality is not courage. In Homers poem Odysseus is certainly brave, but courage isn't what sets him apart. His great gift is mētis: intelligence, adaptability, the ability to read a situation and find a way through it. His defining epithet, polytropos, “of many turns” or “many devices,” captures this quality precisely. He is extraordinarily good at surviving, but that doesn't necessarily make him a good man. And yet, the Greeks clearly thought of him as a hero. Do we? Should we?
That question becomes particularly interesting when we look at how Christopher Nolan has chosen to reinterpret Odysseus—not simply as the man who gets home, but as a man whose journey may require him to evolve; to become something different from the man who left. Why did Nolan change the fundamental archetype that Odysseus embodied (from trickster to hero) and what might that tell you about the values that we are looking for in heroism today?