Article: https://www.vox.com/2019/11/6/20919221/alt-right-history-greece-rome-donna-zuckerberg

Summarized:

• Identity Building: Western civilization has become a socially acceptable code for white culture. By claiming the achievements of Greece and Rome as the exclusive heritage of white men, they attempt to create a historical foundation for white supremacy.
• Glorifying Patriarchy: These groups look back to ancient societies to justify traditional gender roles and misogyny. They often cherry-pick historical facts to frame these civilizations as ideal models of male dominance.
• Stoicism and Masculinity: There is a specific fascination with Spartan culture and Stoic philosophy. They interpret these disciplines not as tools for self-improvement, but as evidence that true masculinity is defined by emotional suppression and martial strength.

The Misinterpretation of History

• Erasure of Diversity: The article notes that these groups ignore the fact that the ancient Mediterranean was a diverse, multicultural hub. They recast these civilizations as white in a modern sense that would not have been recognized by the ancients themselves.
• Political Weaponization: Ancient thinkers like Plato and Aristotle are co-opted to undercut cultural progressivism and to provide an intellectual veneer to radical right-wing ideologies.

The Challenge for Classics

Donna Zuckerberg argues that the field of Classics faces a crisis because its subject matter is being weaponized. She suggests that scholars must actively work to debunk these narratives rather than allowing extremist groups to claim ancient history as their own.

the 2025 blog post . you can read about it : https://ekklesiamag.wordpress.com/the-case-for-emily-wilson-in-wilson-vs-right-wing-twitter/

My view:

I think the reaction to Nolan’s The Odyssey is going to follow the exact same pattern as the 2025 Emily Wilson discourse.

Wilson’s translation got attacked for sounding too modern, too accessible, too plain, and insufficiently epic. People treated her use of modern language as a betrayal of Homer, even though every translation is already an act of modernization. Archaic English is not somehow closer to Homeric Greek. It just feels more ancient to modern readers because we have been trained by older translations and prestige cinema to hear fake distance as authenticity.

That is exactly what is happening with Nolan movie discourse now.

The trailer uses dad and daddy, American accents, and direct emotional language, and suddenly people are acting like Homer is turned bland. But Nolan has openly cited Emily Wilson’s “Tell me about a complicated man” translation as a key point of entry into Odysseus. Wilson’s whole approach is immediacy: make Homer feel alive, readable, morally uncomfortable, and human, rather than embalmed in museum-language.

And that matters because The Odyssey is not just monsters, ships, and poems. It is also a domestic story. A son without his father. A wife under siege. A household rotting from the inside. A veteran trying to get home. Modern family language can make that emotional core sharper.

The same people who mocked Wilson for modernizing Homer are going to mock Nolan for making Homer sound intimate instead of grand. But that may be the point. Nolan seems less interested in the antiquity of it all and more interested in making myth feel immediate.

So when people say Nolan’s dialogue sounds too modern, I think they are really saying it does not match the museum Greek piece version of Homer they expected from hearsay or their school reading. Wilson already exposed that argument. Nolan will put it on an IMAX screen.

The Wilson backlash had a very specific pattern: X/brigidoconnor said Wilson’s Homer sounded like Netflix or grocery-store language, X/alanbwt said reading Wilson meant you had not really read The Odyssey, and X/mualphaxi/Max Meyer called her work Woke Homer, a crime against the classics, and accused her of sucking the ancient life out of Homer.

That is basically the same argument now forming around Nolan’s trailer: dad daddy, American accents, modern emotional directness. The complaint is that Homer must sound old to feel epic. Wilson’s defenders already answered that: Victorian style English is just one modern option for Homer. Nolan seems to be choosing another.

We see the same where the notion that Nolan casted a Trans actor and right wing twitter is specifically using Elliot Page, A black woman playing Helen of Troy (Lupita Nyong) and Zendaya. This is going to get very ugly very fast.

EDIT: I forgot to add this:

A lot of the right wing obsession with Rome, Greece, and western ancient civilization is less about history than ownership. They cling to the classical world as the supposed foundation of Western civilization, then use it as a cudgel to police who gets to belong to that civilization. Race, masculinity, hierarchy, tradition, a form of modern cultural protection, all get smuggled in under the language of defending the classics.

That is why something like Emily Wilson’s Homer, or Nolan using a more modern emotional register, makes them angry. It threatens the fantasy version of antiquity they built: rigid, white, masculine, aristocratic, and safely distant. But the ancient world was messy, multilingual, violent, intimate, contradictory, and far stranger than their culture war

Specifically https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/christopher-nolan-reveals-odyssey-translation-052819038.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACLzHa_fEDlL5D0esA_G_UgxyrmBt-MKorqEYP4W2fQAnGAgdexynwOUxWmZzI9mkypPLXNnf4ipG8J6qO2RUD5DKFThEvI6kekuwp5RZ0xfQ1geCYOI0-1W0u_1kWLq_Mgalwm8EJDF1aEi8kwguNFTMuntaul-MvwDHw-NR5wF

Where Nolan says he used Emily Wilson translation of Odyssey as inspiration for his movie

Here is how her translation is unique :

- Wilson translates the first descriptor of Odysseus (polytropos) as "complicated” replacing traditional terms like "man of many ways" to emphasize his moral ambiguity, adaptability, and internal conflict.

- Nolan explicitly cited Wilson's "complicated man" line as a key inspiration for his script. Matt Damon’s Odysseus is portrayed as a wily, inventive, and morally gray strategist rather than a purely noble soldier.

- She strips away Victorian or archaic language (e.g., "thee/thou"), opting for crystalline clarity and contemporary syntax to make the characters feel like real people rather than distant statues.

- Wilson uses iambic pentameter (the rhythm of Shakespeare) instead of the original dactylic hexameter. This creates a fast, driving pace that mirrors the oral tradition's momentum rather than slowing it down with flowery prose.

- She replaces euphemisms like "maid" with "slave" to accurately reflect the brutal social hierarchy and highlights the violence and misogyny of the era without softening it for modern sensibilities.

- The trailer features modern phrasing like "dad" and "let's go", mirroring Wilson's philosophy of using language that feels immediate and real to the audience, rather than affecting a fake historical distance.

-Wilson reframes Penelope not just as a faithful wife, but as a strategic thinker whose patience is an active form of resistance and intelligence, mirroring Odysseus's own cunning.

- Just as Wilson "de-Victorianized" the text to reveal its brutality, Nolan’s film is described as a realistic interpretation with a weathered haunting tone, featuring visceral depictions of war and the physical toll of the journey.

The Sirens scene

he orders the ship crew to fill their ears with Bees Wax so they don't hear and jump off ship and drown . He choses to tie himself to the ship Mast to resist their music.

He also tells the crew that no matter how much he begs, screams, or orders them to release him, they must only tie him tighter

Deep Blue at Sea
Bright lights at the Shore
Amber at Ithica at night
Gold at War at night
Neutral when Odysseus finds clarity
Warm during Day at Ithica
The Dark tone of Underworld
Overcast in Day Battle
Neutral when in front of gods
Dogs and Happy light
Dogs and Sad light
Warm hue with Monsters
Cold hue with Sea Sirens