Slaying of the Suitors
—thoughts on finishing Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey
Ancient Cinema
Book 22 of The Odyssey plays like a scene of The Punisher
so we know that men have been bloodthirsty since the Greeks sacked Troy
(at least) and that Homer rivals Hensleigh in imagery of hacked limbs
and scarlet springs. Almost 3000 years have not dulled our thirst
for an aesthetic of pain. We can imagine Homer yakking with Tarantino
of techniques depicting dread death and cruel dispatch over cups of sea-dark wine
imagining clueless suitors mocking an 800 BC ISIS collapsed into the form
of one Odysseus disguised by Athena as an old mendicant, a beggar envisioning
his tormentors' imminent decapitations, amputations, punctures, skewers,
unconcerned of R ratings, happily scripting till bloody-fingered dawn rolls in
with crime scene cleaners to make the place respectable for the almost-civilized
who’ve slapped down good money for tickets to clean, screen brutality
and spent small fortunes on popcorn and coke
Jim Culleny
1/26/18
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