Who would have thought that it could be so sinful to enjoy a cinematic epic? This weekend, Christopher Nolan’s latest blockbuster, The Odyssey, opened to a flurry of ticket sales, to a storm of acclamatory notices, and to the enmity of a bunch of rattled conservative “influencers” who seem to have had Odyssea delenda est tattooed in wine-dark ink across their foreheads. Merely to signal one’s intention to see the film has caused one to be chased around Twitter by a cadre of digital Furies, flouncing, denouncing, and renouncing as they go. Among the charges that they have thrown at would-be audience members is that they are “enemies of Western civilization.” Gosh!
This, suffice it to say, is Weird Behavior — and it is no less so because it comes from people who maintain that their ends are pure. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with criticizing a popular movie, but, in its tone, its substance, and its aims, the present anti-Odyssey crusade no more constitutes “movie criticism” than last summer’s freakout over Sydney Sweeney’s denim commercial constituted “commercial criticism.” Criticism of art — which, naturally, is only possible after the critic has actually experienced that art — involves analysis, judgment, and thought. The suggestion that a person who attends a given film is, ipso facto, an accomplice to the destruction of the United States — or, in my particular case, ought to be “deported”! — reflects none of those things. Instead, it reflects politics — and a stunted, aggressive, illiberal politics at that.
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