“Test my ability, let me know yours.” Odyssey, Emily Wilson Translation, Book 8, line 213
In Emily Wilson, we have the joys and horrors of our internet age, a world where the academic, interested intellectual, pseudo-intellectual, and mansplainer live together, however uneasily. Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey got widespread acclaim. Her new review of the film has gotten equal if opposite disdain.
Wilson’s review, though, for me highlights one of the biggest challenges of the Internet age. We’ve made experts of amateurs. Scott Galloway, for example, was a marketing guru, turned prof, turned lifestyle guru. In raising sons, he is no different than anyone else, but he expounds with great aplomb so people listen. Similarly, Wilson’s review of the movie is largely a literary review. She is extremely qualified to critique text, with degrees in Renaissance and Classical literature. But this is a movie.
To use her own language, “But there is no restraint” in Wilson’s review. Her comments are a grab bag of complaints about the language, personal feelings, and snippets of history. She had two biases she barely acknowledges. She doesn’t like Nolan’s films: “Unlike some of Nolan’s other films, The Odyssey is not boring thanks to the source material.” She goes on to say, “It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle.” She shows herself to be biased against film and broad-audience material within the first paragraph of her review.
We all have biases. I picked up Wilson’s *Odyssey *because she’s a woman. I’m definitely biased toward women.
But Wilson’s biggest bias is one she didn’t acknowledge. She’s biased towards text. Given her field, she’s likely always gravitated to language. She also likely sees this as a strength. But this is a film review, not literary criticism. Her review barely mentioned visuals, and when she did, she couldn't identify what was missing. For example, she says, “I gazed at the shipwrecks and bloodbaths without any agony of emotion.” What was missing in the visuals? How in the language of film could this have been performed better?
Overall, her critique framed her as the elite. Her essay included a dig at Nolan’s college (UCL being less prestigious than her Oxford degree). She also notes that her teenagers enjoyed it, implying that learned adults like her are above that. Her list of wonderful adaptations of the classics is largely books and plays.
From this rarified perch, though, she missed noticing how little her review discusses the film's visuals. For example, any viewer would see the ways in which bloodbath was implied, in fairly common visual shorthand for war movies—a couple of dead guys standing in for the many slain. Her critique that the film didn’t focus on war highlights her unfamiliarity with the medium of film.
What’s sad she had valid points about how Nolan handled the female characters. (I’ve written a critique of his handling of them as well.) She could have focused her argument on what was missing textually, as a literature specialist, without the extraneous snark. Why didn’t she acknowledge that her expertise doesn’t extend to film criticism? As I’ve mentioned before, academia is prone to overestimating its ability to translate its skills beyond its field. She’s replicating existing elitist tropes about dumbing down language for the masses and the primacy of visuals. Movies are for the hoi polloi, but text is for the learned.
It’s actually Wilson’s own point that made me write this. She said she hoped Nolan’s films would make administrators put more money into the humanities. In a sense, I hope her article helps people see that broad humanities education is essential. Learning to critique text does not make you inherently capable of being able to critique visuals based on that text. I’m a voracious reader, often reading three books a week. While I’ve taken literary criticism courses, textual criticism is not my field. I can like or dislike books, but my points will be personal, not based on the work of literary criticism.
That’s actually what Wilson wrote: a personal take on a film she didn’t like. She’s allowed to dislike films, as is everyone. But she didn’t acknowledge how her bias toward language and dislike of Nolan biased her review. Even worse, she modeled for all the online bros that their equally personal reviews could stand in as the be-all and end-all of critical thought.
As I’ve written before, we’ve democratized thought to the point where the worst and best coexist in a milieu of confusion. When academics employ their norms in the broader sphere without acknowledging their biases, they do not make the culture of public thought better. They often just replicate problematic norms and validate a general dislike of academia. They also give fodder for the worst of mansplainers to continue to ply their dumb trade.
In a sense, I wished she could have stepped out of the academy and understood this: “I’ll take on all contenders, gladly, test them head-to-head!/ I’m no disgrace in the world of games where men compete.” The online world is simply about being right. Nuance and complications get in the way of the stupidest of games that ever existed—online discourse. As someone who works online, I promise you there are great people sharing truly interesting ideas. Then there are others who drone to be heard and those who scream to be noticed. We’re all in that terrible sea together. Like Odysseus, we’re set off course every day. Wilson could have easily helped everyone navigate the film from her learned position in ways that increased the discourse. Instead, her petty elements and the bigger refusal to acknowledge visuals kept us going adrift.
