(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Odyssey: A Woke Patriarchy is Still a Patriarchy [1] ['Chitown Kev', 'Belinda Ridgewood'] Date: 2026-07-30 After seeing Nolen’s ‘Odyssey, because everyone fell all over themselves to talk about how great it was, I have some thoughts to share, as a woman. First though, know that I love the cinema. Not all movies unconditionally, to be clear. They have to be good. Or at least entertaining (if done “well.” I’ll take le bad cinema too, especially after a tough day when I need a laugh.) Great cinematography in a movie theater can viscerally relax my back and shoulders in seconds. And I might be thinking about a well-written script, or brilliant acting turn for days, weeks, months or even years after (Daniel Day Lewis and Meril Streep occupy quite a bit of real estate in the old cerebral cortex.) And from my perspective, the term “woke” is a compliment. (Who wants to blunder about asleep in such a flawed world?) The movies can be a powerful art form. And to start out on a positive note, The Odyssey is up there as a new favorite from Nolan, with Interstellar, perhaps. Impressionable cinematography, good artistic performances, themes of the pointlessness of war: four out of five stars!. It’s not five stars, however. I need to talk about the script, especially where it concerns women. Know that this being a Nolan movie, my expectations of female representation weren’t high, to be clear. I still throw up a little in my mouth when I think of the female characters’ underwritten and stereotypical roles in Oppenheimer. (Though, Emily Blunt was brilliant with what she was given.) And yes, I might be a little bitter that the superior Barbie did not actually win the well-deserved Best Picture. But this is Hollywood, the bros always win. Additionally, if you are looking for a weedy takedown, this review, written by Emily Wilson, that caused quite a few to clutch their pearls over its scathing take, does a good job of really parsing all the problems with Nolan’s intersection of two cultures separated by thousands of years. Since I am a mere layman when it comes to classic literature, my disappointment with Nolan’s script is rooted more in the Groundhog Day elements of women’s modern struggle to be respected – as equals – to powerful men. Let’s review what Nolan’s writing did to the female’s characters of the Homer epic. (Spoilers ahead). Helen: relegated to an excuse for a more contemporary war catalyst of “trade routes”, but she is also mutilated and abused. We’re not allowed to actually experience her famous power or understand her motivations. (I suppose the face and actions of her apparent twin Clytemnestra has a few seconds to glow, but remember, the line isn’t that Clytemnestra’s face “launched a thousand ships.”) The goddess Athena reduced to a manifested guilty conscience with the face of a victim by his men’s hands during the sack of Troy. Circe and Calypso reduced to a bitter vengeful witch and – maybe – celibate nurse maid, respectively. Penelope. OK so here the woman stays the same dutiful wife. The peace I found initially with her lines was all negated in an instant with the shrill “I want Odysseus!!!” But here, Nolan can, ironically, be forgiven, because he kept her character in the spirit of the original one spun (no pun intended) by Homer. Boring female characters cast into pictures authored by men is not a new problem in the world of film, I get it. However, in the Year 2026 where women have more choices in the world (allegedly), why are we still enduring it? A powerful man in Hollywood creates his dream project covering a story written in the Iron Age, set in the Bronze Age, modifies it to his liking, and the girls are actually rendered more pathetic than in the original epic poem. Can a powerful man really know how to write a satisfying female character? Nolan’s script answer to that question is “no.” Does he even know any women in real life? These characters were microscopic. In Homer’s era, women were indeed vulnerable to second-class citizen status, which they very much were, by the toils of childbirth and terrible healthcare. However, Homer still imagined the goddesses as powerful when measured next to the mortal men. And even the mortal girls had agency. In Nolan’s Mediterranean Sea, women – both mortal and immortal – are bland and subservient. And weak, so… so, weak. Perhaps he thought he was doing a service – showing the world how men mistreat women, say. Perhaps he feared if he stayed closer to the original poem, he’d be criticized as depicting the girls as mostly sexpots. Intention should matter more in our age of cancellations; and most of us in this era just can’t win for losing. But by flattening any agency allotted at bare minimum to these women characters, the movie’s world just felt pointless. What’s the joy of living on a planet where half the population is dull as dirt? Did Nolan ever ask a trusted woman in his life for feedback? Most women (I say “most” because, unfortunately, this is not true for all of us) have stopped thinking of ourselves as Adam’s Rib a long time ago. Women shouldn’t be that difficult to explain: we’re just people. Nolan should write us that way, instead of timid cardboard cutouts. (For example, did you know that Alien’s Ripley was written originally as a man? Guess what: she was still a convincing woman in the final cut, because women are fully sentient thinking people, Mr. Nolan. Not a group of people that live just to make men’s lives easier.) At least in Homer’s Odyssey, women had the power of their fairer faces and wit, and again, of their immortal characters’ power and elite sentience. Though, yes, Homer’s expectations of a wife in the figure of Penelope are laughable, at least she was clever. (For a great foil to Homer’s Penelope plotline, read Margarete Atwood’s Penelopiad. It’s funny and brilliant.) Where art follows history, it may feel difficult to write in depth for characters from populations that had little real-life power. We cannot know what anyone is really thinking, but ourselves. This is the nature of art – we can only create from the experience of one person’s consciousness – our own. It’s easy to imagine that they were just mindlessly saying prayers for their men and/or holding babies while making dinner. But in today’s modern age, I think this is a copout excuse. Women are where they are because of the legacy system of patriarchy, not because our minds are any different than men’s, in the context of brain cognition. It seems to me that many men still don’t understand this fact. And some, perhaps, think we deserve our marginalization. But, powerful artist gentlemen, you have the power to influence. Does art imitate life or can life follow your art to more equal footing? As real-life modern-day women face male political power that wants to rob us of our civil rights based on centuries of sexism and misogyny, we could use allies in widespread pop culture to spur more esteem rather than the usual patronizing “pat on the head” so to speak. So I have a suggestion: write all your characters’ thoughts from your brain’s perspective as someone that has actual ideas and aspirations about themselves, then slap female names and vaginas on them in the final edit. Your script – and movies in general – will be that much richer for it. And any female producers and artists: please continue to fight the good fight. As Nolan’s script proved: you are needed more than ever. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/7/30/800076947/community/the-odyssey-a-woke-patriarchy-is-still-a-patriarchy/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/