Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Lindybeige explains the Iliad

This is splendid. 


The most interesting I learned is Lindybeige showing how to teach. Step one; love your subject.

And the second thing is professor types play with toys.

And the movie did mislead me by making this the most breathtaking fight scene in all cinema.  I sure hope it plays. Achilles vs Boagrius.

17 comments:

rcommal said...

I'm a fan of Dewayne Blackwell, for example.

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Also, Chip, believe it or not, way back 30-40 years ago, I cared about what later became the deaf community.

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I can even put a face and a name on that, Chip, back when I was in 9th grade, in Mr. C's history class, at Christiana High School in Newark, Delaware, when I was a freshman and Allison's desk was right there.

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rcommal said...

We hung out together, Chip. A whole chunk of what she told me, way back when I was 14-15+, did make a difference for the rest of my life. Ahoy, Chip!--and make no mistake about it.

rcommal said...

AS for Mr. C, he worked his ass off to learn various sign languages, and he did that well.

rcommal said...

Chip Ahoy, you refer, both regularly and frequently, to a particular community;--that is, you "refer to" but don't "state plainly."

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Now, of course, you also have talked about so many other things as well, and those things are separate things, of course, and make no mistake about that.

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Still:

rcommal said...

You persist in putting down the few, I guess because it's most important to you to join up with many.

rhhardin said...

The unsavory aftermath of Helen's whoring around, as Anne Carson explained it.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Splendid.

The Dude said...

That ill-dressed pompous arrogant twit in the first video gets close to the point - The Odessey and The Iliad were both memorized and recited by story tellers. What he neglects to mention is that they are both long poems, and that form allows them to be more readily memorized and repeated.

As poems, it is crucial that the translator who renders them into English have a sense of poetry similar to that of the author, Homer. Robert Fagles captured the spirit of the poems and had enough poetic sense to carry forward that rhythm into our own time.

Other translations are barely readable - they are truly monstrosities.

William said...

I'm reaching towards a Grand Unified Theory to explain why liberals are so stupid. It seems that bards always celebrate the hero. Well and good, but they always choose the most vainglorious and self indulgent warrior to celebrate as the hero. Achilles is the star of the Iliad. That's the role played by Brad Pitt. Hector is the good family man. He is not the star of the Iliad,and in the movie was played by some actor whose name I forget......So it goes throughout history. Shakespeare wrote plays to celebrate the stories of Mark Anthony and Caesar, but it never occurred to him to write anything about Ciincinattus. Closer to our own time, Napoleon has captured the imagination of poets and the scholarship of historians for over two hundred years. This is a man who broke all the boundaries. His opponent, Wellington, was demonstrably the better general at. Waterloo and the greater statesman at the Congress of Vienna. Despite this, Wellington is not the star of his era.. The problem is he didn't break through the boundaries and act like a self indulgent asshole like Caesar and Achilles. That just doesn't fire the imagination of the bards..........In WWII, Patton has emerged as the warrior hero. This is not despite his vainglorious qualities but because of them. It also helps that unlike MacArthur and Eisenhower he was never a Republican candidate for President........I suppose in our own era, it is the revolutionary hero who gets the epic treatment. Che Guevara, Mick Collins, Nelson Mandela have all had glossy biopics that magnified their derringer do and minimized their deficits.........So much great poetry has been written about assholes.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

@ Sixty ...What he neglects to mention is that they are both long poems, and that form allows them to be more readily memorized and repeated.


He did mention that.

The Dude said...

He may have, but I couldn't listen to his entire talk because I was distracted by his inability to dress himself properly. That, plus his hideous accent.

Based on his little toy film the key to being victorious in battle is to use the back of a cello as a shield.

Methadras said...

No, he mentioned them as epic poems with the spoken word tradition. Also, it's one thing about what this poem never is talked about which is how women, the love or lust for this particular woman can drive men to the heights of stupidity. I've observed this often in both men and women in that once two people become bonded it is either the most glorious thing to see or it is one of the most toxic things to see. There are so many examples of each I can give you that I would take all day to list out.

Given that, I actually enjoyed Troy the movie. A lot. It got shit on, but that particular scene with Achilles and Boagrius while initially intense left me a little pissed. Even as I watched it again, I was annoyed all over again. I find it hard to believe that Boagrius could not see and run straight ahead and let Achilles side step him like that and plunge that blade into his shoulder and neck like it was butter. Also, I know that this is a technicality, but men of that age were vastly smaller than portrayed. Men like Boagrius in terms of their size and stature and muscularity were quite rare. That is because the amount of meat required to get a man like Boagrius to that size would have been expensive and substantial. Not to mention the type of bulk and muscularity that the actor that portrays Boagrius was even rarer in those times. Extensive exercise and training to get that type of physique, not to mention the diet required to attain it would have made him a one in a million, plus the genetics involved to allow that type of development to occur.

I believe the average height for men back then was about 5' 4" or so and women were shorter by about 4" to 6" more. So someone like me at 6' 0" or most American men, would have been considered a nation of giants and would have dominated and struck utter terror in any army they faced, but the amount of food required to get them to that height for those times would have been unheard of. Either way, I would have loved to have put my swordsmanship training against someone like Achilles, Hector, Ajax, or any one of those men. It would have been cool just to see them fight.

ricpic said...

It will never end. War. Invading and being invaded. The Europeans, those fools, are about to experience a massive Trojan War. Assuming that is that they don't simply submit to the hordes they have invited in.

Does rcommal have a crush on Chip?

Sydney said...

I loved the Lindybeige video. Thanks for posting that.
I never saw Troy, mostly because I have trouble believing Brad Pitt could be a manly warrior. He's too feminine. After watching that clip, I still believe it. Should have cast someone else as Achilles.

Methadras said...

Sydney, you are touching on what I said in my earlier post. There are many technical issues that many movies fail to adhere to simply because they might be impossible or are done for the sake of the entertainment factor. Also, because someone like Pitt is a draw. Who else do you think could have played Achilles?

rcommal said...

The unsavory aftermath of Helen's whoring around, as Anne Carson explained it.

Now that there ^ is entirely awesome.

rcommal said...

I've spent a lot of time throughout my entire life listening to people, and I don't regret that.