Is the Wisdom of Homer Immune to Cancel Culture?

[Ptarmigan]

Is the Wisdom of Homer Immune to Cancel Culture?
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/76838-is-the-wisdom-of-homer-immune-to-cancel-culture-2021-01-07

Amid the current hysteria of toppling statues and renaming things, we keep mindlessly expanding the cancel culture.

We are now seeing efforts to ban classics of Western and American literature. These hallowed texts are suddenly being declared racist or sexist by preening moralists.

Or, as one Massachusetts high school teacher recently boasted on social media, “Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year!”

Proud?

Over 20 years ago, John Heath and I co-authored “Who Killed Homer?” We warned that that faddish postmodernist race, class and gender theories — coupled with narrow academic specialization — was killing the formal discipline of classics in universities.

The Odyssey is not just literature. It is very insightful about human experience.

Classics teach us about the great challenges of the human experience — growing up, learning from adversity, never giving up, and tragically accepting that we are often at the mercy of forces larger than ourselves. All of these trials are themes of “Odyssey.”

Sometimes, Odysseus needs more than brains and brawn — like luck and divine help. How does the old Odysseus, after 10 years of wandering to get home to Ithaca, differ from his younger heroic self on the battlefield at Troy? What old skills and what new ones allow him to defeat the human and inhuman forces of the universe that try to stop his return home?

Great Western literature also questions, or even undermines, the very landscape it creates. Why is Athena, the tough female god, so much more astute than male Olympians like the touchy braggart Poseidon?

How does a supposedly docile, wifely Penelope outsmart the purportedly best and brightest male suitors on Ithaca?

Why are slaves such as poor Eumaeus more generous, loyal and savvy than the free and rich? “Odyssey” does not just present the so-called white patriarchy; it simultaneously questions it.

Homer also offers archetypes and points of lasting reference — not just for future literary creation, but for all of us as we mature and age, and as we seek examples to warn or encourage us.

The undaunted spirt of Odysseus, the threats to his return and the skills needed to overcome those threats become models for subsequent masterpieces, from James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and Constantine Cavafy’s “Ithaca” to Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows” and the Coen brothers’ film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?

They promote questioning.

Yet in the pre-Christian pagan world of early Greece, morality is also defined as hurting enemies and helping friends, not turning the other cheek.

Hubris begets divine retribution, not Sermon on the Mount forgiveness of one’s sins. But to appreciate the values of the New Testament requires knowing a few of the more brutal tenets it sought to replace.

Our current cultural crisis is not from reading too much, but from not reading much of anything at all. Most of the people who deface monuments and wreck statues know almost nothing about the targets of their furor.

Canceling Homer is not virtue-signaling. It is broadcasting ignorance.

Ignorance is dangerous.

[dutch508]

Look at the lists of books and thought banned in the USSR and CHICO State.

Gives you a good idea what to expect from the leftists who now run our country.

[Movie buff- The Sequel]

This is atrocious.
The Odyssey has long been one of my favorite stories, ever since I first read the 'Adventures of Ulysses' translation of it by Bernard Evslin as part of a class unit when I was in the sixth grade.
I can still remember when our class was divided into groups, with each group having to create a picture showing a scene from the story; My group got the "Scylla and Charybdis" segment, and I had a ball making Scylla look as ugly and scary as possible!
It's a great adventure story with loads of symbolism and commentary, plus well- developed and interesting characters.

"The undaunted spirt of Odysseus, the threats to his return and the skills needed to overcome those threats become models for subsequent masterpieces, from James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and Constantine Cavafy’s “Ithaca” to Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows” and the Coen brothers’ film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

I can just imagine some effeminate SJW with a man- bun going through those titles and putting them on a list of what he should push to have "Cancelled" next for some petty, asinine reason ("'The Wind in the Willows'... Let's see, Mr. Toad starts by riding in a horse- drawn cart, and then decides to get a motorcar. So, right away this book promotes animal enslavement and the use of fossil- fuel- powered vehicles that cause climate change! I bet this book's publication was funded by (GASP) BIG OIL! So, THAT's a big no, and needs to be banned. 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' No LGBTQ+ representation at all, portrays Christians in a positive light, no diversity in its soundtrack, promotes the idea of a heteronormative family, AND has a scene with a KKK rally? AAAAAAAAAAAH! TRIGGERED! Not only should this be completely banned and not available to be seen by anyone, but everyone involved in making it should be arrested for committing a hate crime! I've got to tell everyone on Twitter about this!").

"Our current cultural crisis is not from reading too much, but from not reading much of anything at all. Most of the people who deface monuments and wreck statues know almost nothing about the targets of their furor."

Heck, most of the people who deface monuments and wreck statues probably can't even read at more than maybe a second- grade level, and think books are for "Old white people."

[Drafe Hoblin]

In the 'neighborhood' of my 6th-grade I didn't have a reading-assignment regarding Homer, but I recall learning about Ulysses' wife Penelope... and some sort of strife she was the nexus of. 

But about the same time, we had to read 'The Trial Of Socrates'... whom nothing biographical was ever written-about.  All we know about him came from (call them 'libs') his students/self-appointed defense-attorneys, notably Plato and Xenophon.  Our social-studies class had to list & explain what Socrates' students were possibly exaggerating... and not exaggerating in Socrates' defense. 

For not believing Athens' Gods were legit, was Socrates fined one-fifth of his property and acquitted, or was the death-penalty/hemlock-drinking account what really happened?  Only the hero-worshipping crybaby text survived.