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The overnight ratings haven't come in yet, so I have no
idea how many millions of other Americans joined me in
watching The Odyssey
these past two nights.
It was required for a mandatory humanities class during my college days. Several hundred pages of iambic hexameter looked like heavy work, especially when contrasted with more important collegiate interests like beer and girls, and so I took a journalistic approach -- Classic Comics and Cliff's Notes -- and thereby passed the class.
But I kept thinking that I should read the real thing someday, and the opportunity came when our daughters were about 10 years old. Although they read quite well, they still wanted me to read to them at bedtime, and complained loudly if I didn't.
Thereby forced into spending quality time, I looked for reading matter that I could stomach. We enjoyed E.B. White and C.S. Lewis, but eventually we ran out of talking spiders, car-driving mice, trumpet-bearing swans and Narnia chronicles.
Then a no-lose proposition dawned on me when I found a prose translation of the Iliad.
I could read that to them. If they hated it, which seemed likely, I could get out of my evening duty with a clear conscience -- after all, I'd tried.
If they liked it, I'd get it read, and read in a good way -- slowly, taking time to look things up, discussing it as we went along. Further, the girls would acquire some classical lore.
And so we read the Iliad and the Odyssey before the
girls became too big for bedtime stories. The effects
linger to this day -- we still have a tomcat they named
Hector
back then when he was a kitten. (Aptly named
at first, since he fancied himself a great warrior despite
his emasculation, but after an ocular injury in battle, he
should be Cyclops
now.)
I commend these classics to any parent who has trouble finding suitable bedtime stories. But then again, Homer's tales reek with sex, violence, magic, sorcery, deception, butchery, pagan rituals -- in these enlightened times, if Social Services found out what you were exposing your children to, you might well never see them again.
Indeed, I wonder what would happen if Homer appeared at a publisher's office today, to discuss the Iliad and the Odyssey with two editors -- one a family-values right-winger and the other sensitive and politically correct.
Mr. Homer, we like your work -- good
characterization, generally fast pace, plenty of action --
but I have a problem with the relationship between Achilles
and Patroclus. We can't have gay or bi-sexual warriors --
Colorado for Family Values would boycott us in a
minute.
Well, I don't see a problem there. But having
Achilles sulk for years because Agamemnon won't let him
keep a captured person of the female gender -- more
patriarchal objectification of womynkind, and it's got to
go.
I can live with that. But there's too much sex here.
Is it really necessary for Hera to lure Zeus into
intercourse so that he'll fall asleep afterward and the
Achaeans can prevail for a day against Troy?
That's just a fair comment on how men always fall
asleep afterward, instead of cuddling. Let's move on. Is it
right for Odysseus to cat his way around the Mediterranean
while faithful Penelope waits at home? Talk about
perpetuating gender stereotypes. You've got to fix that,
Mr. Homer, or we'll have pickets outside the office, and I
will be among them.
There are other passages you must change first, Mr.
Homer. The drug references must go -- that lotus stuff with
Odysseus, and then you've got Telemachus, a mere boy,
taking opium -- just because you call it nepenthe doesn't
fool me. The last thing we need is an attack from William
Bennett or DARE for glorifying drug use. Cut that
stuff.
Well, I am not fond of the way you portray Odysseus,
Mr. Homer. Here he is, trying to get home, and everything
is working against him -- the sea, the wind, the follies of
his crew. Yet he's in denial. He refuses to see himself as
a victim, and so he refuses to get the support and therapy
he so obviously needs. What kind of message is
that?
There are even worse messages in there. This Odysseus
fellow often tells flat-out lies to get himself out of
predicaments -- telling the Cyclops that his name is
Nobody, for instance, or duping the Trojans with that
wooden horse. We simply can't allow such a character to be
a hero -- what kind of moral example would that set for
today's impressionable youth?
The two editors continue their heated dissection of Homer's work, with one upset because of all the pagan deities and the other angry because goddesses like Aphrodite and Artemis should play larger roles.
Despairing, the blind bard sneaks out of the office and throws his manuscript into the river. He had toiled for years, but he now knows that his work is totally unfit for modern Americans.
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