Occasionally I would find an article to be so awesome that I want to quote the whole thing. In today’s case, it is wonderful to read Professor Julia Kindt’s argument that the biggest takeaway from Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026) is the appreciation of what the Humanities can offer us.
According to Wikipedia, the Humanities are “academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including certain fundamental questions asked by humans”. As a scholar in ancient history, Kindt suggests the film’s success is just one example of how, even today, “members of the public are clearly still hungry for stories that are not only visually compelling and entertaining but that help them make sense of the human condition”.
“The ancient world still has the capacity to inspire reflection on questions that remain as urgent today as they were nearly three millennia ago. Featuring prominently among them are those of exile, return, identity, power, trauma, violence, loyalty, justice, and finally, the question of what makes us human itself.”
“I find the controversies surrounding [the film] revealing… Race and gender, identity and belonging, as well as the boundaries between reality and fiction, are among the defining issues of our times. So, too, are debates about ‘wokeness’ and the truthfulness of narratives, historical and otherwise. As unsettling as it can be to encounter opinions that may seem ill-informed or fundamentally at odds with our own, moments such as this remind us of the importance of public spaces in which ideas can be tested and contested, challenged, and reconsidered.”
“[The film] is a reminder of why the humanities matter. They provide the knowledge and critical tools that allow us to engage meaningfully with the stories, ideas, and cultural traditions (both real and imagined) that shape our world. They offer frameworks for asking better, more pointed questions, for understanding why certain narratives endure (and others don’t), and for navigating the difficult debates that inevitably arise around them.” (Note: Words in bold are emphasised by me.)
You can find Professor Kindt’s excellent article HERE via the Australian Academy of the Humanities. The image is The Odyssey by Homer as translated by Emily Wilson (W.W. Norton & Company, December 2017), considered a “landmark” by Professor Kindt.
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 