by Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n
Private Papers<\/em><\/p>\n As a movie,\u00a0Troy<\/i>\u00a0is okay.The fighting is fun, and the scenes with the ships arriving and those showing us the city of Troy are convincingly real. But as an interpretation of Homer’s\u00a0Iliad<\/i>, the movie is an abomination. Everything significant and interesting about Homer and his characters has been eliminated, leaving behind a predictable melodrama.<\/p>\n The first mistake the film-makers made was to ignore what the Roman poet Horace told us was one of Homer’s great insights: to start the story\u00a0in medias res<\/i>, in the “middle of things,” rather than going back to the beginning. In this way Homer concentrates all his dramatic force on the key characters and the most important event of the war, the death of Hector and the events leading up to it.\u00a0Troy<\/i>, on the other hand, dissipates the drama by going back in time to the beginning of Paris and Helen’s affair, and forward to the sack of Troy, losing that dramatic concentration and power.<\/p>\n Next, in the movie the affair of Paris and Helen is reduced to the sentimental, worn-out romance paradigm more suitable for a soap opera or a romantic comedy.\u00a0 The idealization of sexuality that forms the core of our romantic delusions was unknown to Homer. In his world, sexual passion, like Achilles’ wrath, is a destructive force that overthrows the mind and the sense of shame and honor, leading one to behavior destructive to the self and society. In the\u00a0Iliad<\/i>, Helen despises both Paris, a pretty-boy weakling, and herself for desiring someone she knows is inferior to her husband.\u00a0Troy<\/i>\u00a0could have challenged the audience’s romantic preconceptions by showing us Homer’s realist view of sexual passion, but instead we get something straight out of supermarket romance.<\/p>\n The film’s worst offenses, however, are its reduction of Homer’s complex characters into melodramatic clich\u00e9s. In Homer, Agamemnon is a portrait of what happens when a man’s character and virtue aren’t up to his power, a political lesson the Greeks returned to in tragedy, history, and philosophy. In the movie, he’s a moustache-twirling villain with no interior conflicts. Likewise with Homer’s Hector, who embodies the tragedy of being second best and then thinking he can achieve more than his fate and talents allow. When Hector kills Patroclus, knowing full well whom he has killed and who will seek to revenge the death, and then puts on the armor of Achilles, he stakes a claim that he ultimately knows he can’t fulfill–to be Achilles, that is, to be the best. The changes made by the movie destroy this tragic complexity, and leave out the powerful scene of Hector’s realization of his delusion and folly in the moments before his fatal duel with Achilles.<\/p>\n So too with Achilles: unlike the film, in Homer he sends out Patroclus in his armor to save the Greeks. That is Achilles’ tragic error: to think that Patroclus can be him and fulfill what he owes to the other Greeks, while Achilles stays out of the fight and nurses his vengeful wrath. When Patroclus dies, Achilles is consumed with guilt as well as rage against Hector. His ultimate insight is to realize that the pursuit of honor costs not just his own life, but the life of the one he loves most. Since the movie removes Achilles’ complicity in the death of Patroclus, it flattens out Achilles’s character and thus ignores his growth into an awareness of his own limitations, a recognition that despite all his excellence and achievements, he is like all of us: subject to passions that drive him to actions he never would’ve chosen.<\/p>\n So, if you want to see some standard action-flick mayhem in ancient Greek costume, see\u00a0Troy<\/i>. But if you want some insight into the tragic complexity of human action and character, read Homer’s\u00a0Iliad<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n All copyrights reserved by Bruce Thornton<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers As a movie,\u00a0Troy\u00a0is okay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22,801],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1o7","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2174,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/afghanistan-and-the-trojan-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":5339,"position":0},"title":"Afghanistan and the Trojan War","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Herbert Jordan Private Papers For perspective on the war in Afghanistan, President Obama ought to take a look through the lens of the oldest geopolitical conflict in the history of Western civilization, in which Greek warriors crossed the Aegean Sea to Asia Minor, besieged the citadel of Troy, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2009"","block_context":{"text":"November 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/november-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":690,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-summer-with-virgil\/","url_meta":{"origin":5339,"position":1},"title":"A Summer With Virgil","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Defining Ideas \u201cTo read the Latin & Greek authors in their original,\u201d Thomas Jefferson once wrote, \u201cis a sublime luxury.\u201d Fortunately, for those who don\u2019t read Greek and Latin, the great works of Classical literature are available in first-rate translations. The following five classics are some\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3812,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/homer-economics\/","url_meta":{"origin":5339,"position":2},"title":"Homer Economics","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The showdown between public employee unions and cash-strapped state governments on display in Madison should be bad news for President Obama and the Democrats. While millions of Americans are unemployed, and those lucky enough to have jobs pay for their retirement and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6606,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bruce-thornton-on-secure-freedom-radio-with-frank-gaffney\/","url_meta":{"origin":5339,"position":3},"title":"Bruce Thornton on Secure Freedom Radio with Frank Gaffney","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Seth Jones, Bruce Thornton, Peter Pham, Diana West October 9th, 2013\u00a0\u00b7\u00a0Comments SETH JONES, Associate Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND Corporation, joins guest host DAN BONGINO, to help explain the terror threat from and historical background of the terrorist organization al-Shabaab. BRUCE THORNTON, a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5363,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/spitzers-comic-fall\/","url_meta":{"origin":5339,"position":4},"title":"Spitzer’s Comic Fall","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 1, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The understand the disgraced governor, brush up your Aristophanes. by Bruce S. Thornton City Journal Commentators are already calling the rise and fall of New York governor Eliot Spitzer \u201ctragic.\u201d The tragic arc, as the old Greeks articulated it, goes something like this: talent and drive lead to success, but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6289,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-hollywood-has-ruined-sex\/","url_meta":{"origin":5339,"position":5},"title":"How Hollywood Has Ruined Sex","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 31, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0Acculturated.com \u00a0 In the early 80s my mom and her sister dropped by our condo while my wife and I were watching\u00a0Payday\u00a0on HBO. (If you\u2019re unfamiliar with this movie and Rip Torn\u2019s brilliant performance, just think\u00a0Crazy Heart\u00a0for grown-ups.) They happened to come in during a scene\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Hollywood_Sign.jpg?fit=566%2C297&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Hollywood_Sign.jpg?fit=566%2C297&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Hollywood_Sign.jpg?fit=566%2C297&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5340,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5339\/revisions\/5340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}