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A New Perspective

In class, we just watched the movie “O’ Brother, Where Art Thou?” and compared it with how Homer’s The Odyssey story progresses. I saw the movie about two years ago for the first time before ever really knowing the story of TheOdyssey, so it was really interesting to see it now and be able to have a new perspective after having read The Odyssey.
I remember when I watched it for the first time, I made the connection between the sirens in the movie and what I knew about the sirens in the real story. My dad also pointed out to me the connection between Big Dan in the movie and the Cyclops from The Odyssey. Those were pretty much the only similarities I was able to detect before understanding the full plot of the epic poem by Homer.
Watching the movie after having read the poem, however, gives it a whole new fun perspective! I never knew that Odysseus was coming home to face a bunch of suitors, and that that was a large part of the plot of the actual Odyssey. So now, seeing Everett return to find the man courting his wife (pointed out to be a “suitor” several times by one of his daughters), I can see another big connection between the movie and the poem.
Something I wondered this time while watching the movie, though, was which character could be seen as a parallel to Athena? Definitely there aren’t always parallels between parts of the movie plot directly to the Odyssey, but Athena was such a major character in the poem that you would think the movie would have some sort of Athena character.
Another great part of this movie was the songs. I can see how the Soggy Bottom Boys would attract a crowd of fans in the 1920s and I think it would have been fun in the actual Odyssey to see some musical numbers performed by Odysseus and his crew.

Comments

  1. Elizabeth TFebruary 23, 2019 at 12:15 PM

    The absence of Athena is one notable part of Oh Brother (although as we pointed out in class, Everett does seem to have some divine help in his own journey). I think it's down to the different time periods - while in American Mythology, we have precedents for stories involving manifestations of the devil, manifestations of God (or other friendly deities) are less common. Therefore, Athena's heavy-handed way of interfering with the story wouldn't really work out.

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  2. Tue DoFebruary 26, 2019 at 4:42 PM

    Nice post. It's kind of weird that the main instigator of the plot of the Odyssey is pretty much absent in Oh Brother Where Art Thou? I also really enjoyed the music in the movie. I can totally imagine watching this without reading the Odyssey and interpreting things differently, though.

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  3. KatMarch 3, 2019 at 3:23 PM

    The songs were definitely one of my favorite parts of the movie and I find myself listening to Man of Constant Sorrow probably more than I should. It was interesting hearing your perspective on watching O Brother, Where art Thou before knowing it was based on The Odyssey and then later realizing more of the connections. I agree with you that it's weird there's no obvious Athena character. Something I was considering is is Athena the dam flooding? Because that is what Ulysses drives his mission with, and what eventually saves them in the end.

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