Joyce Carol Oates Fires Back at ‘The Odyssey’ Translator’s Viral Slam: ‘Crude Language of MAGA Folks’

Joyce Carol Oates has jumped into the growing debate around Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey after translator Emily Wilson shared a harsh review of the film.

Oates, the award-winning author of Blonde and We Were the Mulvaneys, defended Nolan’s movie in a series of posts on X on Wednesday. She took issue with the way Wilson approached the film, saying her review came across as overly dismissive.

Oates wrote that Wilson’s “tone of dismissal & haughty superiority strike a sour note.” She argued that people can disagree about Homer and different versions of the story without attacking the people behind those adaptations.

The author went even further, saying Wilson had used language that reminded her of political attacks rather than a serious literary discussion.

“Rather than disagreeing with interpretations of Homer in a collegial manner, this person, who has benefited enormously from Nolan’s film, speaks in the crude language of MAGA folks attacking someone with ideas that differ from hers,” Oates wrote.

She added that Wilson, as a translator who works closely with Homer’s original text, should be especially careful when discussing someone else’s interpretation.

“One would expect a translator, of all people, beholden to a text, in service to a text, to be just a wee bit more thoughtful & respectful of others who are acting in good faith just as (she would claim) she is,” Oates continued.

Oates was responding to another X user who said they respected Wilson as a classicist and enjoyed her translation of The Odyssey, but felt her review of Nolan’s film was unfair.

While Oates criticized Wilson’s review, she also made it clear that she enjoyed Nolan’s movie. She said she would recommend both The Odyssey and the 1997 television miniseries produced with Francis Ford Coppola.

Oates pointed out that the two adaptations take very different approaches to Homer’s hero. Nolan’s film stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, while the miniseries features Armand Assante in the role.

She argued that there is nothing wrong with filmmakers changing or reimagining a classic story.

“No reason why Nolan, or anyone else, should not re-imagine/re-envision a classical hero through the prism of his own invention,” Oates wrote.

Wilson’s original review, published by the London Review of Books, was far less positive. The acclaimed translator argued that Nolan’s film misses many of the ideas that make Homer’s poem important.

Wilson wrote that “Nolan’s Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great.” She criticized the movie’s treatment of subjects such as war, memory, history, family and morality. She also attacked the film’s writing, characters, story structure and even its food.

Wilson also raised a major political concern about the production. She criticized Nolan for filming part of the movie in Western Sahara, arguing that the location choice ignored the ongoing conflict involving the Indigenous Sahrawi people.

Despite her criticism, Wilson did acknowledge one major positive result of the movie. She said the release has created a new wave of interest in Homer’s work, including her own translations of The Odyssey and The Iliad.

The debate comes as Nolan’s The Odyssey continues to perform strongly in theaters. According to the report, the movie has already earned more than $727 million worldwide after 12 days.

With the film still dominating the box office and attracting major attention, the disagreement between Oates and Wilson adds another layer to the conversation surrounding Nolan’s modern take on one of literature’s most famous stories.

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