Which is Better the Movie or the Book?

I really liked O Brother, Where Art Thou? and most of my friends that had seen it shared the opinion. It was an enjoyable movie and the songs and action were fun and the characters were likable.

When watching O Brother, Where Art Thou?, I saw it as more enjoyable when I viewed it as a stand-alone film as opposed to an adaptation of The Odyssey. The appeal of hero stories to me is definitely the characters and I think that the characters in O Brother, Where Art Thou? are more likable when they aren’t compared to the Odyssean characters. I want to watch the movie because I care about the story because of Everett or Tommy or whoever, not because I'm interested in the retelling of a heroic narrative that I've heard so many times before. The Odyssey wasn’t particularly likable in my opinion because neither Odysseus nor Telemachus were especially likable characters. So when I think of Everett as a version of Odysseus, I care less about his story.

However, I think that if you don't watch the movie as an adaptation of The Odyssey, the plot takes a hit. The movie seems to just be a jumble of events that don't seem to really have any strong connection. However, when you look at them in the context of The Odyssey, you begin to see the parallels and the story seems to come together a bit more. When watching the movie, the sirens, the lotus eaters, the cyclops, etc, all seem so random until you see them as their Odyssean counterparts.

So if possible, I believe that this movie is best seen as a combination of a stand-alone film and as a film adaptation. However, I think this is hard to do. I think either way you watch it, either the plot or the characters take a hit.

Crying

Throughout the entirety of The Odyssey, Odysseus cries all the time. In today’s modern society, masculinity seems to be a very fragile thing. Male friends in a modern context are often called gay or feminizing terms if they are physically affectionate with their male friends or if they show weakness of any sort.

Emotions like sadness and fear are seen as feminine and unacceptable for men to experience or display, but in The Odyssey, these emotions are supposed to be humanizing. When Odysseus cries it’s meant to endear him to us readers and show that he really is sad and he really is affected by being kept away from his life and family for so long.

Another instance of Odysseus showing “unmasculine” emotion is when he fears for his life when faced with fighting the horde of suitors. As we discussed in class, this could be a tactic to show the audience that the suitors were a reasonable foe for Odysseus and their slaughter was something to be admired, but still, a male hero being afraid isn’t something we’re too used to in modern contexts. It could be argued that this fear only enhances his masculinity because it makes him brave, in that he was afraid but he conquered his enemies anyways. Also, is it a trial if there is no fear? If he is confident all the time, what kind of hero would he be? There wouldn’t be any triumph; it’d just be an “I told you so” kind of ending.

However, all of these “weak” emotions are balanced out by a stereotypically male penchant for affairs with women and a thirst for blood. But either way, perhaps the gender roles in ancient Greece were different than those we are familiar with today.