Spyke

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View original on sh.itjust.works

111 replies

The Odyssey is a work of fiction. It's a heroic epic, not a history. How do you make a historically accurate version of fictional oral poetry?

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Well you see he's stupid and can't tell the difference between fiction and reality

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feddit.org

Hire a historian to give a no-nonsense talk about the history of ideas Homer used. Believers in Greek gods and countries mentioned were definitely real. We don't know nearly as much about them as Homer did but we know Odysseus wouldn't encounter supernatural beings and can conjecture what these themes were inspired by.

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prolereply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

We don't know nearly as much about them as Homer did

True, the man truly had vision.

There's nobody better than a blind man to write historically about the hue of a person's skin.

1

It is also speculated by historians that Homer wasn't just one person but in fact entire industry of people whose job it was to tell stories.

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lemmy.ca

I get what you're saying, but maybe that's a bad example. I actually do want them to release a historically accurate version of Star Wars... ie. the version that was released in 1977 in which Han Solo shot first and there wasn't a bunch of CGI shit all over the place.

3

Star wars silver screen edition. Look it up, it's out there. It's like a 25 GB download but you can find it.

Bunch of fans got a hold of original film print of the movie and digitized it. No remastering, just the movie as it was presented in 1977.

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bonesawmclreply
lemmy.world

Well that exists! Sure not quite officially, but look up project 4K77, you can download that version of Star wars right now (and it's awesome. I've watched all three of them in their most original version)

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Yeah I got the despecialized edition and it's fine. It's weird that you have to pirate one the most popular movies to be shown in the theater to get what was shown in the theater.

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SkyezOpenreply
lemmy.world

Han Solo shot first only.

Han straight up ended greedo. Bug-eyed bastard never even got a shot off.

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Well yeah, Greedo didn't shoot. Because Han Solo shot first. I don't think it needs to be stated that Han Solo wouldn't miss at a range that close.

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lemmy.ca

Um, the Odyssey is fiction. It literally can't be "historically accurate".

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lemmy.world

It's a dog whistle for casting only white people and no queer actors. If something has a racist angle, assume that's the one Musk means

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lemmy.world

(Looks at the history of Musk in the public eye)

I'm gonna say it's the idiot one. All the moron had to do was keep his mouth shut and keep paying to buy the founder title of other market disruptors and he'd've been the next Henry Ford (literal nazi that Americans remember fondly cause he was "pro-labor" (threw labor a bone to disrupt union efforts))

Instead, we now all know he's an evil idiot with an ego problem.

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TL;DR; Narcissistic emotionally stunted manchild acts out to get attention because he can't figure out why he isn't getting the respect or adoration he clearly deserves.

And any attention is better than none.


Im not sure that's all idiocy though.

It's certainly a large helping of narcissism and hubris.

Nepo-lucking your way up enough to mingle with the other amoral arseholes probably requires some skill of a kind.

It could just be trolling, he's certainly rich enough and that gives him a layer of protection in the current capitalist societal structure that's thick enough he can pretty much just be a 24/7 dick and there will be zero effective consequences.

I personally think he's got in to a position where he can have basically whatever he wants except the things he actually would like to have.

He's a boring, lonely, sad child of middling intellect and can't figure out why the things he does doesn't get him the things he needs/wants.

So he escalates, and lashes out, because he can and its his only form of communication.

Like a crying toddler with big feelings, they can't articulate the problem so they cry and scream until someone else figures they need food and a hug.

Except his tantrums kill people and ruin lives.

If he was an idiot that might go a ways to explaining the continual inability to just not be a dick to everyone, all the time.

But I think it's worse than that, i think he's choosing to continue being a dick, as a way of proving to himself he still has an effect on the world , not the respect, acceptance or adoration he wants, but still, something.

/rant

6
communick.news

The Odyssey is fictional story.
Does he think magic and giants and gods are historically accurate?

What about a historically accurate version of Harry Potter Dresden?

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JK Rowling is a bigoted cunt, and her content doesn't deserve even a sliver of acknowledgement.

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binuxreply
sh.itjust.works

I do think it’s still fair to consider the very likely possibility that there’s a fair amount of truth contained within the story though (obviously not all the supernatural stuff, but still). That’s definitely the case with the Iliad; Troy was literally discovered in modern-day Türkiye in the 1800s.

All the crazy stuff in it is probably at least in part a result of its origin as an oral tradition instead of written text. The story being passed down across generations of memorizers without any hard reference to go off of tends to make for a really long game of telephone.

None of this is to humour Musk by the way. I just think this topic is interesting in general.

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homesreply
piefed.world

New York City is a real place that exists, but that doesn’t make the Avengers films any less fictional.

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binuxreply
sh.itjust.works

I’m going off of what real historians have hypothesized, not just baseless rhetoric. Nor am I claiming that the legends themselves are wholly factual (though as I’ve said it’s definitely possible to be partly the case). Feel free to read the Wikipedia article on it and draw your own conclusions.

Personally, I think it would be absurd if it were the case that in Late Bronze Age Greece — in or around the Bronze Age Collapse — they chose Troy (evidently not even a Greek setting) specifically to be the setting of an oral war story without there being a material reason for it, however minor. But that’s just me obviously.

Addendum (This is somewhat unrelated but still important to bring up): I think it's honestly quite offensive to compare an entire cultural heritage's creation to relatively simple blockbuster films made not even a couple decades ago. You're comparing a cultural creation brought about in the midst of an entire mythos, through countless generations, to a few simple narratives; the origins of which can be found not even a century ago. Not only is it a false equivalence, it's downright ignorant if not explicitly ill-intended. One was made through the contributions of several minds over hundreds of years through the sole intent of participating in a rich communion of ideas; the others were made, fundamentally, with the intention of turning a profit. It's belittling and ethnocentric to pretend that they're equivalent in any form.

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lemmy.zip

I mean, “the Greeks have always been at war with the Persians” was always a good rallying cry. And arguing that the Persians are descendants of Troy would probably work as propaganda

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We do know for a fact that the Achaeans and the Hittites had several conflicts over all of Western Anatolia and specifically control of Wilusa (Ilios / Troy) between the 15~14 and 12th c. BCE, and that the city got destroyed in battle during the collapse around 1180 BCE. We have a bunch of complaints from the Hittites about it.

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sp3ctr4lreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

The theories are that its a mythic retelling of a legend that's an embellished version of something that basically 'kind of' happened, around the time of the Late Bronze Age Collapse, between the 13th and 12th centuries BCE.

The original date of it being first written down is somewhere in the 8th century BCE, so, yeah roughly 500 years of oral tradition untill then.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Is-the-Odyssey-a-True-Story

Schliemann’s findings and the continuing work of later archeologists seriously fueled theories of the historicity of the Trojan War, dated by later Greek authors to the 12th or 13th century bce. While the mere existence of Troy is not proof that the war was real, the discovery of arrowheads, signs of fire, and unburied bodies found in a layer corresponding to the 13th century bce indicates the possibility of battles having occurred.

Supporting evidence includes Hittite records mentioning warfare with Wilusa, their name for Troy. Some historians believe that a kingdom the Hittites called Ahhiyawa was really Achaea, or ancient Greece. Records suggest that sometime in the 13th century, Ahhiyawan forces were involved in a war against Wilusa, whose ruler, Aleksandu (very similar to Alexandros, a name for the Trojan prince Paris), requested military aid from the Hittites. Experts believe that a real conflict or a series of conflicts of some scale—either a struggle for political or commercial supremacy—inspired embellished accounts of the Trojan War.

So... taken in whole... the Odyssey is maybe roughly as actually historically accurate as... the Old Testament.

If your lense is 'is this legitimate history?'...

There are kernels of events that basically actually happened, and some important people who did something vaguely similar to what's described in the stories... around which is erected a grand mythic narrative featuring a great amount of totally fantastic and impossible nonsense, and many wholly fabricated characters and 'plot points'.

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lemmy.ca

Schliemann dug straight through the actual Troy that he was looking for, destroying a huge chunk of it to get to an even earlier settlement in the strata beneath that he decided to call Troy. His "method" was essentially do dig a trench all the way to the bottom, assuming that the oldest level would be Troy. (Yes...he was that stupid).

It was only afterwards that other, actual archaeologists placed the proper stratum that the homeric Troy would have existed in. And by then, much of it was already obliterated.

I majored in Near Eastern Classical Archaeology with a focus on the Bronze age (Hittites, Minoans, Mycenaeans, Babylonians, etc...), and lesson one may as as well have been titled "Why Heinrich Schliemenn was an asshole."

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sp3ctr4lreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

This is extremely true and worth saying as you have.

Yeah, I'm not an subject matter specialist? expert? as you are, but yeah... errybody hates Schliemenn, because his idiotic site practices very likely destroyed a whole lot of ... pretty important history.

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lemmy.ca

I'm far from a specialist. Not only is my knowledge about 25 years or so out of date, I ended up leaving with half a year left on my degree because not only did a divorce make me unable to afford to continue, but some guys from the middle east crashed into the World Trade Center and ignited a war that shut down any actual archaeological work in the most of that part of the world for a decade or so.

So rather than specialist, I'm a guy that has 3.5 years of a 4 year Bachelor's degree, and then went off to take a bunch of computer certificates instead. lol.

Still regret never going back to finish it once the middle east settled down again.

4

Well... middle east is never settling down again, in our lifetimes, so... best make your peace with it, if you can.

I still appreciate 3.5 years of out of date study.

3.5 more years than me!

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binuxreply
sh.itjust.works

This is an incredibly disingenuous reply so I'm not even going to do it the dignity of a fully-fleshed response.

All I need to say is that if you seriously read my comment as saying that the Odyssey is completely reliable history with little to no flaws or embellishments in its writing, then it sounds like you should take a course on media literacy.

-4

... Did I say that you said that?

No.

I did not.

I was adding general context to what you said, for general readers.

More people read comments than... just you.

Calm down.

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Does he think magic and giants and gods are historically accurate?

Would you put it past him? The guy is so high most of the day he probably thinks the sparkle fairy brings him a coffee every morning.

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knifereply
lemmy.world

good point and how can we be sure it didn't go down the way christopher nolan said it did

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Because American English was invented a few days later and at least two streets away.

4

Funnily enough the harry potter movies are historically inaccurate

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Why are we okay with every robin hood movie being an interpretation, but all the sudden the oddesy needs to be historically perfect?

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"This person doesn't have the correct generalia" ??? They are fools

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Malycareply
lemmy.zip

Evidently Lupida isn't beautiful enough to be Helen even as she is one of the prettiest women alive.

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lemmy.world

Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy? First I've heard of it, but she's gorgeous, and a very talented actor. I think she's a good choice.

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I haven't seen it but I bet she did a great job, as always

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lemmy.world

They'd like everyone to look like, I don't know, Bruce bailaban, Lucy lawless, some third thing, or hells forbid another space commerce gremlin. It's important for the sex scenes to have the right amounts of nips and penes.

3

Elon will run his mouth for a while, then forget about this.

He will never follow through.

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sopuli.xyz

With historically accurate cyclops, scylla, charybdis, sirens and ghost of Agamemnon...

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How is this a "threat"? What would be the dire consequences if he did?

"Offers" is the right word here.

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Like if you look at how most billionaires since the 80s came into being its almost entirely one strategy:

  1. start with a decent pile of money

  2. Put the money pile on a stock market bet

  3. Manipulate the stock price by lying, cheating, stealing or making a popular product.

Elon musk is some kind of idiot-savant in manipulating stock prices and then diverting a maximal amount of money away from material product creation. His "money taken" to "physical product created" ratio is just modestly better than elizabeth holmes.

There is a larger discussion to be had of whether we should allow society to give people that level of power because they're good at marketing and backroom dealing. Especially since the entire reason we created the entire stock market system was in theory to build more popular products, not to reward skilled stock market manipulators.

Its sort of salt in the wound that the material value of most of elon's companies and products are largely dwarfed by the amount of money musk has been awarded by the government.

Society would probably have been better served by spinning up state owned electric car factories and state owned satellite delivery systems because we could have gotten all the same benefits for a fraction of the price we paid for it and are continuing to pay for.

23

I do think his emotional growth was retarded or completely stopped around the ages of 10-14 years old. It’s a valid use of the word in his case.

10

Ketamine melted his brain. He was always a loser but not to such an extent.

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lemmy.ca

This has nothing to do with me yet you are insulting me and others who have nothing to do with this. Fuck you, too, if you're going to be abusive to random strangers.

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lemmy.world

I can't wait to see a historically accurate Polyphemus.

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piefed.social

he should buy memphis the water treatment plant he promised so grok can stop using AQUIFER DRINKING WATER for cooling.

fuck elon i hope he gets pancreatic cancer and 4 flat tires on his ride home.

37

Thank GOD! I HOPE he can do the Same with Avengers so we can FINALLY get a HISTORICALLY Accurate version of THAT too!

33

You don't need to make en entire fantasy film to show us that historically accurate cyclops, Elon!

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lemmy.world

I can’t wait to see what a historically accurate cyclops looks like.

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And he wants to do it all with AI, of course, because he has even less talent and creativity than a rotting dog turd.

13

I have a feeling he wouldn't wanna hear about Caeneus

The Lapith Caeneus was originally a young woman named Caenis and the favorite of Poseidon, who changed her into a man at her request, and made Caeneus into an invulnerable warrior

15

Bring back Troy McClure and his cologne, Smellin of Troy.

You may remember him from such classics like "Lead Paint: Delicious But Deadly".

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Zorquereply
lemmy.world

Did they replace supply-side jesus already?

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lemmy.world

I'm going to pray to Jah every night that he follows through on this train wreck of a movie.

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I believe the idea is "never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake." If he wants to task mecha-hitler with making a movie that will flop because he can't handle people that aren't his favorite color, let him. It's better than letting him spend that money on more orphan crushing machines.

5

Maybe he actually meant Biblically accurate? The two are quite easily confused, after all.

Also, remember DeepDream?

Like that.

7

He couldn't do a worse job tbh. They are wearing pants in that movie, the Greeks thought only effeminate barbarians wore those.

5

lol impossible because it’s fiction.

But go ahead and try, I’d love to pirate it to laugh at

6

Oh cool. I cannot wait to see that sultry, steamy, Unicorn sex scene. And the epic hot dog eating contest that no one can stop talking about. And the cross stitch contest between the forest witches. So... many... good... memories!!!!!

3

I didn't like Odyssey but I very much doubt Musk can make a better version.

What I didn't like had nothing to do with the characters. It was more that all the man eaters looked like video game template characters, in the battle of Troy everything exploded and burnt, there was a lot of light inside of the Trojan horse and Ithaka looked run down. I don't mean run down because of all the "guests", I man it really looks several thousand years older than it was at the time.

The boat scenes, the initial appearance of the Cyclops and the transformation by the witch looked really cool though.

2