The Controverssey

Home as MacGuffin. Sharing stories with bad roommates. The Odyssey!

I’ve noticed something strange about the discourse around The Odyssey, which hits theaters this week. Complaints about the casting, the writing, the acting... all kinds of takes which I lump together as The Controverssey. (I won’t rehearse those silly attitudes here, but please do click that link if you’re not already informed.)

Of all the things people are complaining about — namely how the actors look, how their voices sound, and what language is being used — none have anything to do with the ostensible focus of the whole poem, which is the place itself: Ithaca, Odysseus’ home (οἶκος, oikos), or Greece, his homeland (πατρίς, patris). I tried to find pictures of the house, the land, anything about Ithaca at all — I can’t. This is a poem about yearning for home (νόστος, nostos), a real place. And yet none of us have anything to say about Ithaca. Why? Because we aren’t from Ithaca, we don’t know it. We call the poem itself our home, so to speak: this story is where we find our collective belonging, not the actual place of Ithaca — much less Greece.¹

Which is to say: any conversation about any home is limited to the degree that we don’t actually all know or share that place. In other words, the “home” that nostos says we yearn for is imaginary, and the actual physical “home” we refer to is surfaced only as a set of traits or relationships or ideas that we mutually recognize in the stories we tell. Nostos is a shared feeling that we can identify in ourselves, even if we don’t share the objective house (or oikos). There’s a gap: we can share our stories about home, but we don’t actually share the home itself.

Inhospitable roommates

For a movie about a story that’s all about the journey, I can’t wait to learn more about the making of this film

It’s ironic, therefore, that there are such loud complaints about the various choices the filmmakers have made for The Odyssey, given that one of the primary insights of the poem is hospitality and welcoming the stranger. Of course the artistic merit of these choices might be lacking — none of us know, because we haven’t seen the movie yet — but these complaints are different. It strikes me that protesting this or that casting or language decision primarily comes from a posture of entitlement. The whiners are demanding a certain version of the story in which they feel most comfortable, and agitating against others’ joy in and joining of that story.² In other words, these trolls and critics are being inhospitable roommates in this shared story we all call home.

We are all guests here. And not just in The Odyssey, but in the other shared stories we claim as our own as well. The Star Wars franchise has similarly been racked by disputes from entitled fans, for example. Most significantly and potently, the American and Christian stories are the two examples that bear heavily on me, because of how much I owe to both narrative frames. I am an American, and I am a Christian.³ Just as with The Odyssey, I’m disappointed in the inhospitable posture I see too many bring to a story that we are all guests to. These stories are gifts we have been given, and yet we treat them like they belong exclusively to us.⁴

The rhetoric of the Christian Nationalists of contemporary America aim towards racist and xenophobic caricatures of a homeland/patris which they feel nostalgia for. What I see in this dust up around The Odyssey is reflected in the cognitive dissonance I witnessed around America’s 250th birthday earlier this month: using a shared story (America, Christianity, or now The Odyssey) as a site for kicking unwanted people and ideas out (ἄξενος, axenos), even though these stories center on hospitality (ξενία, xenia). The irony and parallels are too significant to ignore.

My brushstrokes may be too broad in a claim like that, I know. I’m no classicist, let alone literary scholar. You don’t have to remind me how easy it is to identify the roots or aims of the American or Christian stories in colonization, violence, exclusion, etc. But it’s also easy to see the inclusive, hospitable aim towards justice that animated these narratives and brought so many of us into their wake. I’m American because both the Chinese and white sides of my family immigrated and stayed here — we were welcomed and included, even as strangers. Both sides of my family also found home in Christianity, which gave language and story around my parents’ integrative marriage that reflects the best of xenia. I won’t give up or abandon these stories’ foundations in loving the stranger, even if I’m pissed at the entitlement of these inhospitable roommates.⁵

Home as MacGuffin

Rumor is John Leguizamo plays Eumaeus, one of my favorite characters. Really interested to see how the various members of the household are portrayed. My favorite Bible story is the Road to Emmaeus (Luke 24), which is suspiciously close to being a homonym with Eumaeus… hmm…

For Odysseus, home is a MacGuffin.⁶ Ithaca is the object he’s pursuing, which drives the plot. Is the value of the poem reducible to this task being completed? Of course not. The beauty and excellence of the story — why we find ourselves drawn to it, millennium after millennium — is the full drama and struggle of the poem’s humanity. It’s no road atlas; this isn’t about technique or geography. This is a poem.

I tell the same thing to clients that I work with: this home you’re looking for is a MacGuffin. Your life, your relationships, your priorities, your agency and identity are all braided into this process of moving. And moving is driven of course by the need to find a new home, but that’s not why it’s important or valuable. This is a crucible of your life, a moment in time when you can reorder, reframe, reprioritize. The way you relate to your partner, your kids, your pets and plants, your work, but especially your own desires and identity: it’s all colliding at once as you browse Zillow and go on home tours and submit offers. The home is the object, but the process of getting there is where your story takes place.

And also, of course, home is not a MacGuffin: it’s a real, physical place, with real people and creatures who belong there. The imaginary layer that we lay on top of “home” is distinct from the reality of the specific house upon which this story supervenes. Of course the house matters! Of course the layout, the mechanics, the neighborhood, the appraisal, etc etc all matter! But the paradox to hold onto is that grasping too tightly to one side or the other — MacGuffin vs real place — will amount to an incomplete and unfulfilling experience.

What else I’m into

Hana found sunglasses for Pacita — Babyators — and they’re overwhelmingly cute

1. For how muted and fraught the 250th birthday of America was, I’ve been thrilled by how hospitable America has been, on the whole, to the World Cup. Stories of the fandoms and teams getting to know the vast and diverse versions of America is energizing. For other countries, this is more unusual. For America — when we’re at our best — this is what we do every day, constant joining and meeting and learning and sharing of cultures. It’s awesome. I wouldn’t call myself patriotic, but it’s for this kind of stuff that I feel pride in this country. I was expecting far less/worse, so this level of hospitality and xenia has been thoroughly surprising.

2. The Free Baby Goods Exchange. Hana organizes an awesome project which helps parents give away baby and kids products they don’t need and take products they do. She’s been doing it for years, but now that we have our own kid, BOY is it useful! Kids need a lot of STUFF! And the BGX is a spectacular resource. If you’d like to donate or learn more, check out https://www.instagram.com/freebgx/. I’m now also on the board of The Simple Way, which helps host and organize the event as well. If you can’t donate goods, donate cash!

3. Adapting routines to life with a baby isn’t easy, but good neighbors and friends makes it waaaaaay easier. So thankful for the support we’ve received as we transition into parenthood. The food, especially, has been far better than I expected. Eternally grateful for all of your generosity. And for the New York Times Cooking app, which is the one piece of that subscription I can’t let go, even though they raised the price… It’s just so easy to find easy and delicious recipes. Comment with your favorites, I’m always on the hunt for the intersection of yummy + cheap + easy + healthy recipes.

Be well! Enjoy the summer! Welcome the stranger!

Wes

1. If you ARE Greek — or especially from Ithaca — then of course I’m interested in how all this fervor around the poem strikes you!

2. My favorite writing on this topic is Jennings’ commentary on the book of Acts, which grapples with this in Christianity.

3. I am NOT a classicist or even a big fan of The Odyssey; I only read it for the first time last year. Emily Wilson’s translation is incredible!

4. An attitude reflected in how we relate to our homes and environments, generally. Ownership and entitlement, ugh.

5. Now, if The Odyssey as told by Christopher Nolan winds up indulging the same inhospitality that is so incongruent with the poem’s original intent, then I’ll be just as critical as anyone else.

6. “…an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself.” Think of the ark in Indiana Jones, or destroying the ring in Lord of the Rings. The Rug in The Big Lebowski. The holy grail.