It’s wild that the U.K. doesn’t teach the Odyssey, I thought their whole thing was stealing other peoples’ culture and pretending they owned it now.
Shakespeare invented literature, so clearly there’s no value in teaching anything from before him…
You haven’t experienced Shakespeare unless you read it in the original klingon.
taH pagh taHbe’!
ghu’ qaS wa’DIch’e’, qar’a’!
Fair point.
Just looked it up, the Odyssey can be taught in the UK but it is rarely chosen because Shakespeare is easier to teach and students who pick Shakespeare get better grades on average.
We don’t like to brag about it but we fought the Brits in the War of 1812, one of the things we took from England was Greek literature. In turn, we Americans lost the definition of jams vs jelly and the superior spelling of “colour”.
Is it even taught in the US? 🤔
I didn’t read it for school. I just liked reading and had this gnarly book featuring all the greatest hits of Greek mythology growing up.
I read it for school
We had to do skits. Broke it down by chapters and each group did like a page or two. I was the son in the scene where he’s working with his dad in disguise right when Odysseus returns home and sees all the other guys trying to bang his wife
Literally a part of a classical education. As in Classical.
Definitely was in the rural, redneck school I went to.
Went to a mediocre high school in the US, and I had an English/writing course where the only materials were the Aeneid, Illiad, Odyssey, and Mythology by Edith Hamilton.
That seems above average, but I don’t have too much to compare it to. I read all of this when I took Latin as my language classes. And the odyssey for fun.
My 10th grade English class studied a small section of it, like one self contained story.
Well Greece wasn’t ever a British colony, so they didn’t have as many opportunities to steal artifacts and culture as they did with, say, Egypt or India
I’m sure they had ample opportunity to steal Greek artefacts from when Greeks invaded Egypt and India.
Not in secondary school but I did the Illiad, the Anaed, the Odyssey and Ovids Metamorphoses in 6th form college.
I’ve heard of Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, does that count?
That translation has fallen out of favor with contemporary scholars but you get the gist.
……………I did the odyssey at various points man I think the guy in the tweet is just Polyphemus or smthn like ‘I don’t know who this nobody guy is, ain’t never heard of no odyssey before bro’
When the only Homer they know is Homer Simpson.
Fun fact: the voice actor for Homer Simpson also voiced Homer (the Greek one) in the Disney Hercules animated series.
Fox should sue those lazy Greeks for stealing the name.
Even The Simpsons covered the Odyssey at some point though.
As an American, I am going to dine on this single example as if it disproves the idea that we are insular and provincial hicks for the next decade.
nah, it just proves that brits are as stupid as you are, which is, tbh, is not a surprise /s
We had Brexit. We can’t say nothing.
As a layman, i believe you have a stronger private school presence, which tend to specialize in order to differentiate. But I might be wrong because I have limited information on the topic of British education.
We have a strong private school presence, yes. Trouble is it leads to privilege and people get on in life not cause they’re clever, but cause they wear the right school tie.
Certainly stashing it away in the ammo belt.
The world doesn’t revolve around America, but you’ll see idiots in Bumbfuck, Romania talking about Soros and wokeism. It’s got to be exhausting.
Soros is a Hungarian Jew who survived the Holocaust and moved to America afterwards btw
Even more of a Nazi dog whistle than when the American right does it? I guess that would make it a Nazi Air Horn
More that it’s not just an idiot complaining about things supposedly happening in a different country.
“The Jews are trying to replace us.” ?
Orban / the party in charge were saying Soros was using his money and power to flood Romania with immigrants.
I find that people get more ticked off about the woke in non American countries even if it really doesn’t involve them (it should) but even then they increase their hostility because of it
The problem is, I have this big bag of stones in my glass house, and I want to throw them at the UK for being dumb, but if I do, I also have to admit the US education system is trash.
I’ll throw that stone for you
The British education system is almost as bad as the American education system. The biggest difference between our cultures is that a lot of Americans are willing to point out how incredibly racist our country is
So much broken glass, was it worth it? Now I have to go get the broom.
The amazing part is you somehow broke France and the Netherland’s glass too? Just so much to clean up.
It’s not just slavery minimization. A lot of far right Americans have taken over local school boards to ban books that talk about gay people existing or the fact that sex is something that happens, among other nefarious purposes. And a religious organization in Texas writes pretty much all the textbooks used across the country. It can’t be this bad in the UK can it?
I mean, I have no qualms with recognizing the US education system is garbage… It gives me more fire to try to improve it.
I can do both. I’m ot gonna let some backwater pit like the UK insult my home, especially since the UK is essentially completely dependent on the US at this point.
Both can be true. We can be trash in different ways!
Liam’s a tool. UK schools absolutely do teach the Odyssey, and have done so at least as far back as my youth.
most of the time someone says something wasnt taught in school its because that person straight up didnt pay attention in class
I suspect there is significant overlap between the kids who were complaining in math class that what they were learning was useless along with the adults who claim math class didn’t teach them “how to do taxes”. (As if you do anything other than fill out a form, anyways.)
Take the numbers from the numbered boxes, and transpose them into the numbered boxes on the tax form. There, you know how to do taxes, what are we gonna do with the other 13 years of your pre-college education?
Wait we were supposed to pay attention in school now it makes sense
Guess someone didn’t pay attention when the teacher said “Pay attention please” multiple times.
Mine didn’t. We did Buddy, The Crucible, Animal Farm and Shakespeare from what I remember. First I heard of the Odyssey was when I was 19 and DW did a retelling of it on Arthur. When I saw a copy of the story in the shop I worked at, I got it so I could read the actual story.
Were you not aware of it at any point? I don’t necessarily mean as part of the GCSE curriculum. I’ve been aware of the Odyssey and the Iliad from the “Ancient Greeks” part of our primary school curriculum back in year 4. Of course we weren’t analysing texts, but I’d expect any ten year old to be capable of rattling off some major plot points like blinding Polyphemus, or sailors plugging their ears with wax against the sirens and tying Odysseus to the mast.
To be fair, the only people left on Xitter are idiots
$10 says the dipshit in question did a frantic google, saw ‘ulysses’ and went james joyce.
Still not American though
Getting closer at least
…the US is not closer to the UK than Ireland though…
I prefer to watch it in its original Japanese.
I’m partial to the one set in rural Mississippi during the Great Depression.
Damn, we’re in a tight spot.
I am tired of western Cinema jerking off to same old stories, which tbh aren’t the pinnacle of literature or storytelling. There are so many cultural epics which are deserving of the big screen, but unfortunately this western culture bias keeps the general audience from being exposed to any of it.
It wouldn’t matter, but the issue is then you have utter fucking illiterates and philistines who believe that only western writers, thinkers or philosophers came up with anything good. New flash, many, many of the western writers took their influence from non-western sources.
I mean
Every culture does that, though? If anything, Americans appreciating the works of the Greeks is as widespread and diverse as a culture can possibly get.
Every couple of years Chinese make a new Sun Wukong move, TV show, or videogame. Tibetan Monks and the Dali Lama are a huge cultural phenomenon all over the world. Wuxia/Xianxia based on old Taoism writings and diagrams are popular in all forms of media. Period Dramas about the old aristocracy in Asia are a huge genre.
Koreans shove Korean dragons and Dokaebi into every medium they can.
Japanese love them some Shinto priestess main characters and Yokai stories.
Arabia’s got thieves guilds, Solomon, and genies and other creatures of fire and wind.
Russia has Baba Yaga and Rasputin depictions.
Germany and western Europe have Fairy Tales, northern Europe is obsessed with Trolls.
India has a strong and proud history of racism, classism, Hinduism, nepotism, sexism, I don’t really remember where I was going with this point, tbh.
Africa… Honestly, Africa might need more time to recover, idk what their cultural epics entail…
That’s how culture works. The differences and uniqueness make them worth experiencing, and why people work so hard to preserve them in perpetuity across many generations. Except India. Idk y tf they’re doing that shit.
They could all appreciate some other shit, yeah, but that’s not how culture works.
Every couple of years Chinese make a new Sun Wukong move, TV show, or videogame.
Let’s not forget that in the same way you can trace a huge amount of things you see in Western stories to the Greek epics and Gilgamesh you can trace a huge amount of things you see in anime/manga to the Journey to the West.
fucking crazy to denigrate South Asia like that when you made the effort to respect culture for all the other regions you mentioned. I guess all the other countries you mentioned don’t have a history of racism, classism, nepotism, sexism or religion?
No they do but for most of them it’s sort of died off a little bit in the last 200 years.
In India, it doesn’t seem to be declining much…
Looks like it’s being lifted up.
I would actually argue that in many ways it’s increasing, at least in Pakistan where I have family, but these aren’t the only countries with growing fascism and regressive social politics (see lots of Europe and of course the US).
But your comment was about stories of cultural importance, not race or gender or class; I can’t help but feel offended that you would choose to shit on my culture for some reason instead of identifying relevant stories like you did for the other cultures you mentioned in your comment. I agree that those -isms should be criticized, but India definitely caught a stray from your comment.
Yeah, and I did very poorly represent my case. I really didn’t give it much effort or thought, and I apologize for that. It just appears from an outsiders perspective that the Caste System, while not officially in effect, is an integral part of India’s society and it shows in their films and TV. This is also true for the USA whose poor record of Civil Rights is also a continued focus for films and TV.
That wasn’t exactly my point. There are examples of Epic tales from other cultures which people often get exposure to by default because the main focus of western cinema or storytelling is Greek or English.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_folk-epics
Note that epic tales are a distinct type of genre
This comment serves as a reminder that the normalized hatred directed at India/South Asia on Reddit is alive and well on Lemmy too
A wise man once said “There are two things in the world I can’t stand: people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures… and the Dutch.”
In both his case and mine, the cultural insensitivity was part of the joke.
Western media trends towards the myths and legends from western culture? No shit
I mean, what else would you expect? That’s human nature. Kinda a wild thing to be complaining about
But imagine if African or pre-Columbine American mythologies were used to film movies and series.
The Illiad and the Odyssey are classics and hardly American culture. They are western culture as a whole. No idea what the drama is about but some dude not knowing what the Odyssey is, is the same as not knowing any other classic. (There are too many to count, but not knowing the most popular ones are is like not knowing the titanic sank.) (Spoilers)
That’s the joke.
is this why the miniseries is trending on some torrent sites?? haha!
Probably trending because of the musical tbh , it’s been pretty popular in some circles.
It was also just announced that Christopher Nolan’s next film will be the Odyssey
It could be an amazing movie if they follow the story and make it a multi part series… but also those hollywood assholes cant help but fucking up stories that tell themselves so I expect it to be shit.
Yeah, something like this deserves a several season show with one hour episodes. At least 10 episodes per season.
Remember when some assholes made The Dark Tower (eight novels, 4250 pages) into an hour and a half movie? I sure wish I didn’t. Great casting too. Such a waste.
simpsons did it first
Wasn’t that the Minivan Homer rented? So many cup holders
Wait… some people don’t know the Odyssey?
What! He never saw Wishbone’s the Odyssey?
I was way to old for Wishbone but damn did I stop and watch when that cute fucking dog was on the tv. Anyone who didn’t is a heartless bastard.
The Illiad was like the Bible before the Bible.
Iliad was not a religious text(or even a text for many centuries). It was just a story of a dude trying to get back home.
I know you know this and likely just mistyped, but for clarity, the Iliad is about the war itself. The Odyssey is about the dude trying to get back home.
They weren’t religious texts per se, but they were certainly cultural touchstones which contain important lessons about the human condition, death, love, and what’s truly important in life. They would fill a role similar to histories in the Old Testament, probably, like the book of Ruth.
I have not read the Iliad and I’ve only read a few excerpts from the Odyssey. They available as an audio book anywhere that isn’t Audible?
Only in that it was widely published but there are others too like the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The Illiad was like the ancient Greek Bible because it was used to provide behavioural guidelines and views common to all Greeks. It was a text central to any Greek’s education. How does a leader act? Read the Illiad. How are battles waged? Read the Illiad. What is the relation between humans and gods? Read the Illiad.
Alexander the Great was known to carry a copy of the Illiad with him at all times, and many philosophers routinely used excerpts from it to illustrate their points. And people would reference it like we reference things from the Bible in the west (Judas, turn water into wine, cross to bear, turn the other cheek etc)
