Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is the most-anticipated film release of the year. What's not to like about a beloved director taking on such an ambitious story? Well, it is a terminal affliction of the culture critic to mine the world for negative angles. And so here it is: this is just more evidence that culture in the 21st century is stuck. Has Nolan lost the ability to come up with his own material? What a shame that we rely on the work of a poet from 3,000 years ago. Why can't we produce anything as definitive, original, sprawling and, well, “epic†now?
Here's a spiel you prepared earlier: in 2026, artistic production is in stasis. Hollywood is handcuffed to the franchise-industrial complex – Marvel movie upon Marvel movie. And what is with all these remakes? The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Gossip Girl. The bodies of the Harry Potter films are still warm, and yet money-hungry vultures are taking the story to the television studio. We are meme-ing ourselves into the abyss; no one has anything new to say; it's impossible to identify emerging artistic movements. When we look back on this period all we will find is a void.
In fact, this might actually be “the least innovative, least transformative, least pioneering century for culture since the invention of the printing pressâ€, according to one celebrated essay in the New York Times from 2023. David Marx, cultural theorist du jour, carries on the argument in Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century. And then there are the op-eds. “The age of cultural stagnationâ€, says the New Republic. At the Frieze Art Fair in London, the Guardian found a “graveyard of creativityâ€. Just google “culture is stuck†and you can rifle through a Rolodex of think pieces rattling off the argument.
Mea culpa: I have argued this myself before. But the release of The Odyssey and all the attendant sniping forced me to interrogate that lazily inherited idea. And, well, I would like to consult Occam's razor first: is it really plausible that in 2026, where the means of artistic production are in the hands of more people than ever in the entire history of the human race, that creativity would be at a historic nadir? Now that our ability to communicate cross-border, cross-language, cross-religion, cross-whatever is higher than ever, is it likely that we are in a never-before-seen doldrum? The entire idea falls apart with a moment's consideration.
But let's borrow a few ideas from history just to really nail down the point. In 117AD Roman provinces were stuffed with identical busts of the emperor Trajan. They were mass-produced, entirely mimetic, whisked off the assembly line and pumped into the world, indiscriminately. Now, 1,909 years later, well-meaning culturephiles inspect that Caesar haircut, long nose and thin upper lip in the British Museum in London; the Capitoline Museum, Rome; the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and Villa Pinciana, Rome. And yet, I don't hear too much from them about how ancient Roman culture was stuck, how the ancient Romans were uniquely unable to produce original work, how they were all just run-of-the-mill copycats.
The Odyssey itself is a terrible example for anyone trying to evidence the cultural stagnation of the 21st century. It was an oral poem, told by all sorts of bards over the centuries, and written in a consciously repetitive style to make it easier to replicate, remember and retell. Retelling is, in fact, the entire point of the poem. Christopher Nolan is doing a service to Homeric art – not acting as a lazy, uninspired thief.
Of course we can point to countless examples of bad art and bland mimicry. But that has always been the case. The Finkler Question, broadly considered to be a dud, won the Booker Prize in 2010. Rather than decide that novel-writing post-financial crisis was in a crisis of its own, we can just apply the filtering effect of distance – the year before it was Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall that won the prize. One will be remembered as indicative of the era, and I don't need to tell you which.
[ Timothée Chalamet is right: no one cares about opera or balletOpens in new window ]
It is such an obvious thing to say that I feel foolish for having to say it – but it is hard to identify in real time exactly what will have staying power, or what will come to define the spirit of the century or decade. With a little hindsight we will know what is interesting about the 2020s. And it won't be Marvel franchises or Gossip Girl reboots. But it might be the slew of novels published by Fitzcarraldo Editions; or, hey, it could be Taylor Swift. The point is we just don't know yet. The great critics try to predict, the bad ones flail their arms and say everything is bad.
But back to the Odyssey. It was long overdue a new production. That's what it's there for.
