This is not so germane to the main point, but I think it's probably not true that the Odyssey movie shows the persistence of Woke or the illusory nature of the vibe shift. It appears to be genuinely very unpopular and will likely lose money. The same happened with the SuperGirl movie recently, while indie horror films that are perceived as non-woke or even anti-woke at some level are making >100 ROI. People really don't like the race swapping that goes beyond the bounds of plausible suspension of disbelief, nor female superheroes if they have unpleasant personalities, and they don't like ironizing of hero narratives if it's too heavy handed.
1990s Bill Clinton liberalism commands huge popular support; people really want it despite the inability of elite or MHC factions to organise around it.
No doubt this stuff is unpopular and they will lose money from it. But the fact is that everyone involved must have known that this would be the case, and yet they went ahead and did it anyway, and if you look at cast interviews or read media articles they are all wallowing in this bubble of self-congratulation and contempt for the proprieties of the audience. I don't pretend to understand the industry or Nolan's thinking very well, but maybe he sees this as his 'legacy' work in which he piles up all his accumulated goodwill and credibility with the audience and burns it on an altar to show that he was on the Right Side of History after all.
So the problem with the vibe shift concept is not so much that there is no popular backlash against woke – arguably it has been around as long as woke has – but that it can't be transferred to the media/administrative class with any permanency just because the people vote a certain way in an election. It's as if people have got the memo that elections aren't as important as they thought and then added an epicycle to their worldview so that they can go on acting and thinking as they did before.
Maybe everyone should just see the movie before freaking out? Or be like you and just be disinterested. My guess, contra non-Zionism, is that it will not lose money, and that it’s “wokeness” will be much less important than the insane action set-pieces Nolan seems to have in store
You could be right. In any case it's getting some good reviews, notably from Jonathan Pageau, who described it as a 'Trojan Horse' with a conservative story and a woke veneer. I suspect, though, that it is more of an attempted synthesis of the two.
I think the bigger battle is just for the film industry to even survive at this point, as opposed to woke vs. not woke; I like movies and theaters and wish them to survive so I'd rather the movie make money even if it's turbo woke.
Just saw the movie; definitely not woke, it is critical of the Trojan war in a way the actual odyssey obviously isn’t, but it affirms honor and valor and violence for certain causes. In some ways I think it is Proto-Christian; Odysseus is shackled with the sin of deceiving and sacking Troy, but eventually finds grace and crusades against the suitors in the name of honor, family, and lost comrades. Civilization declined through deception but will rise again through honor and abiding by Zeus’s law.
Also, the action scenes were amazing, I know you said you don’t care but you should see it in Dolby vision, it’s a real spectacle of epic proportions.
"This is not so germane to the main point, but I think it's probably not true that the Odyssey movie shows the persistence of Woke or the illusory nature of the vibe shift. It appears to be genuinely very unpopular and will likely lose money"
That could be because, as it turns out, it wasn't as straightforwardly woke as it appeared to be (from what I've read on it so far it seems to be a kind of woke-conservative synthesis). My own take on it looks superficial in retrospect, but of course the film is not the actual subject of this post.
>Another thing you notice is that the Greek word polytropos (lit. ‘many-turned’, both ‘much-travelled’ and ‘variously-shifty’; perhaps ‘multifarious’, ‘recourseful’) is causing some of the translators real problems. Fagles’ ‘man of twists and turns’ is quite good, I think, apart from its lack of formulaic versatility, but I cannot say the same for Lawrence’s ‘various-minded man’ or Fitzgerald’s ‘skilled in all ways of contending’. Wilson’s ‘complicated’ might just stand as the best solution of the four
A straightforward option in german is "vielseitig". Its typical english translation (used in that very paragraph) is "versatile". This even has the right etymology, but its not transparent to most people. I think these two work well if they are transparent - they normally apply to tools, and have a definite user-perspective to them, but using them on a person would move out of that and to a more literal sense. You could capture that literal sense in english directly with "multifaceted" (pretentious) or "many-sided" (archaic feel, but Im sure Ive read it before).
(I found poly- as a common paradigm interesting. I wonder if Saruman first was polychromos in Tolkiens mind.)
Those work about as well as the others, but the difficulty is in capturing the ambiguity of 'many-turning' in the context of Odysseus (i.e. someone whose mind turns many ways, and whose course is also diverted many ways). 'Multifarious' and 'recourseful' come close to it only by punning; 'circumspect' would also evoke it, but only vaguely; another option would be to split it into two similar words (e.g. 'divers, diverted') at the risk of labouring it a bit.
Here is a recent translation by an individual hostile to both past and present translations and attempted an archaizing style. You may be averse to his twelve syllable meter but he does not rhyme. I am partial to his style and his inversions because I personally know the author but could not really say if it has real artistic value. Perhaps the sample of the opening lines, with your poetic knowledge, can be a better judge of its value. I wouldn’t call the author dissident right but his introductions make it clear that he is no fan of the progressives.
Doesn’t need to be dissident right, but he sounds like a man after my own heart in many respects, at least to judge from this description on Amazon:
“Duban does not believe in plainness or simplicity, in part because he sees himself as fighting against an impoverished contemporary literary culture that has simplified language for all the wrong reasons. Also, he regards self-conscious archaism as an essential feature of Homer's epic poetry and thinks it important to remind English readers of this feature… he has created a kind of performance text that is meant to be read out loud, or recited from memory, so that the insistent rhythm of the verse appears to drive the narrative forward”
That would be my ethos exactly. The only thing I’m not sure about is his writing it all in alexandrines; I can see the logic behind it but I’m not sure it flows all that well. At some point I will probably rework part of the Alliterative Iliad into those Old English-derived six-stressed lines with variable syllables and see how that compares.
In the realm of creators outside the neverending restatement of political theory, I have liked the Reactionary history crowd on Youtube (mainly Apostolic Majesty and his crowd).
For lower brow scifi/fantasy there is Isaac Young and Devon Ericksen. Like your work with poetry, all small and struggling to sprout because neither progressives nor conservatives will actively support it.
I fund you all to the best of my ability ofc. I'm doing my part.
You certainly are and I'm thankful for that. And I could have mentioned others beyond Passage and Imperium who are doing good things. As I'm sure you appreciate, this sort of post is best pitched with all the nuance of a bucket of cold water to the face.
Hollywood didn't stop being woke so much as it just stopped being relevant. Nolan's Odyssey is, despite being lame, almost jarringly blockbuster-like in composition. Pretty much every other movie nowadays is about boring interpersonal shit because they know that nobody goes to the movies anymore and they can't afford to film/render dramatic scenes that hold up wrt modern consumer SFX standards.
"woke is just one of many names for the folkways and caste taboos of the modern ruling class, which has suffered no loss of power or institutional authority in the last ten years of Trump’s ranting and bumbling in and out of office"
Woke is, IMO, no more than less a genuine American phenomenon, exactly like Salafism is a genuine Sunni phenomenon and Hikkikomorism a japanese phenomenon. You have indeed a woke left and a woke right (Auron McIntire is indeed woke right).
It's therefore more bottom-up than top down, and if people don't want realize it, the issue will never go away.
This is not so germane to the main point, but I think it's probably not true that the Odyssey movie shows the persistence of Woke or the illusory nature of the vibe shift. It appears to be genuinely very unpopular and will likely lose money. The same happened with the SuperGirl movie recently, while indie horror films that are perceived as non-woke or even anti-woke at some level are making >100 ROI. People really don't like the race swapping that goes beyond the bounds of plausible suspension of disbelief, nor female superheroes if they have unpleasant personalities, and they don't like ironizing of hero narratives if it's too heavy handed.
1990s Bill Clinton liberalism commands huge popular support; people really want it despite the inability of elite or MHC factions to organise around it.
No doubt this stuff is unpopular and they will lose money from it. But the fact is that everyone involved must have known that this would be the case, and yet they went ahead and did it anyway, and if you look at cast interviews or read media articles they are all wallowing in this bubble of self-congratulation and contempt for the proprieties of the audience. I don't pretend to understand the industry or Nolan's thinking very well, but maybe he sees this as his 'legacy' work in which he piles up all his accumulated goodwill and credibility with the audience and burns it on an altar to show that he was on the Right Side of History after all.
So the problem with the vibe shift concept is not so much that there is no popular backlash against woke – arguably it has been around as long as woke has – but that it can't be transferred to the media/administrative class with any permanency just because the people vote a certain way in an election. It's as if people have got the memo that elections aren't as important as they thought and then added an epicycle to their worldview so that they can go on acting and thinking as they did before.
Maybe everyone should just see the movie before freaking out? Or be like you and just be disinterested. My guess, contra non-Zionism, is that it will not lose money, and that it’s “wokeness” will be much less important than the insane action set-pieces Nolan seems to have in store
You could be right. In any case it's getting some good reviews, notably from Jonathan Pageau, who described it as a 'Trojan Horse' with a conservative story and a woke veneer. I suspect, though, that it is more of an attempted synthesis of the two.
I think the bigger battle is just for the film industry to even survive at this point, as opposed to woke vs. not woke; I like movies and theaters and wish them to survive so I'd rather the movie make money even if it's turbo woke.
Just saw the movie; definitely not woke, it is critical of the Trojan war in a way the actual odyssey obviously isn’t, but it affirms honor and valor and violence for certain causes. In some ways I think it is Proto-Christian; Odysseus is shackled with the sin of deceiving and sacking Troy, but eventually finds grace and crusades against the suitors in the name of honor, family, and lost comrades. Civilization declined through deception but will rise again through honor and abiding by Zeus’s law.
Also, the action scenes were amazing, I know you said you don’t care but you should see it in Dolby vision, it’s a real spectacle of epic proportions.
Although thinking about it a bit more it’s a bit too moralistic; could’ve used some sex but Nolan doesn’t really do sex
"This is not so germane to the main point, but I think it's probably not true that the Odyssey movie shows the persistence of Woke or the illusory nature of the vibe shift. It appears to be genuinely very unpopular and will likely lose money"
I was completely wrong about this it turns out.
That could be because, as it turns out, it wasn't as straightforwardly woke as it appeared to be (from what I've read on it so far it seems to be a kind of woke-conservative synthesis). My own take on it looks superficial in retrospect, but of course the film is not the actual subject of this post.
>Another thing you notice is that the Greek word polytropos (lit. ‘many-turned’, both ‘much-travelled’ and ‘variously-shifty’; perhaps ‘multifarious’, ‘recourseful’) is causing some of the translators real problems. Fagles’ ‘man of twists and turns’ is quite good, I think, apart from its lack of formulaic versatility, but I cannot say the same for Lawrence’s ‘various-minded man’ or Fitzgerald’s ‘skilled in all ways of contending’. Wilson’s ‘complicated’ might just stand as the best solution of the four
A straightforward option in german is "vielseitig". Its typical english translation (used in that very paragraph) is "versatile". This even has the right etymology, but its not transparent to most people. I think these two work well if they are transparent - they normally apply to tools, and have a definite user-perspective to them, but using them on a person would move out of that and to a more literal sense. You could capture that literal sense in english directly with "multifaceted" (pretentious) or "many-sided" (archaic feel, but Im sure Ive read it before).
(I found poly- as a common paradigm interesting. I wonder if Saruman first was polychromos in Tolkiens mind.)
Those work about as well as the others, but the difficulty is in capturing the ambiguity of 'many-turning' in the context of Odysseus (i.e. someone whose mind turns many ways, and whose course is also diverted many ways). 'Multifarious' and 'recourseful' come close to it only by punning; 'circumspect' would also evoke it, but only vaguely; another option would be to split it into two similar words (e.g. 'divers, diverted') at the risk of labouring it a bit.
Here is a recent translation by an individual hostile to both past and present translations and attempted an archaizing style. You may be averse to his twelve syllable meter but he does not rhyme. I am partial to his style and his inversions because I personally know the author but could not really say if it has real artistic value. Perhaps the sample of the opening lines, with your poetic knowledge, can be a better judge of its value. I wouldn’t call the author dissident right but his introductions make it clear that he is no fan of the progressives.
Doesn’t need to be dissident right, but he sounds like a man after my own heart in many respects, at least to judge from this description on Amazon:
“Duban does not believe in plainness or simplicity, in part because he sees himself as fighting against an impoverished contemporary literary culture that has simplified language for all the wrong reasons. Also, he regards self-conscious archaism as an essential feature of Homer's epic poetry and thinks it important to remind English readers of this feature… he has created a kind of performance text that is meant to be read out loud, or recited from memory, so that the insistent rhythm of the verse appears to drive the narrative forward”
That would be my ethos exactly. The only thing I’m not sure about is his writing it all in alexandrines; I can see the logic behind it but I’m not sure it flows all that well. At some point I will probably rework part of the Alliterative Iliad into those Old English-derived six-stressed lines with variable syllables and see how that compares.
In the realm of creators outside the neverending restatement of political theory, I have liked the Reactionary history crowd on Youtube (mainly Apostolic Majesty and his crowd).
For lower brow scifi/fantasy there is Isaac Young and Devon Ericksen. Like your work with poetry, all small and struggling to sprout because neither progressives nor conservatives will actively support it.
I fund you all to the best of my ability ofc. I'm doing my part.
You certainly are and I'm thankful for that. And I could have mentioned others beyond Passage and Imperium who are doing good things. As I'm sure you appreciate, this sort of post is best pitched with all the nuance of a bucket of cold water to the face.
Important to follow a bucket of cold water with some warm coffee and over-easy eggs
Kind of did it the other way round on this subject. Oh well.
Hollywood didn't stop being woke so much as it just stopped being relevant. Nolan's Odyssey is, despite being lame, almost jarringly blockbuster-like in composition. Pretty much every other movie nowadays is about boring interpersonal shit because they know that nobody goes to the movies anymore and they can't afford to film/render dramatic scenes that hold up wrt modern consumer SFX standards.
"woke is just one of many names for the folkways and caste taboos of the modern ruling class, which has suffered no loss of power or institutional authority in the last ten years of Trump’s ranting and bumbling in and out of office"
Woke is, IMO, no more than less a genuine American phenomenon, exactly like Salafism is a genuine Sunni phenomenon and Hikkikomorism a japanese phenomenon. You have indeed a woke left and a woke right (Auron McIntire is indeed woke right).
It's therefore more bottom-up than top down, and if people don't want realize it, the issue will never go away.