In Celebration of the Oldest Profession.

No, not prostitution;  parenting! And let’s be historically honest, here, what I want to celebrate is motherhood.

Not only is motherhood the oldest profession.  It is one of the least rewarded and least visible. It is often a journey for which there are no maps, no reliable vessels and rapidly diminishing supplies.

The seafaring metaphor is apposite: I want to look at motherhood in Homer’s Odyssey and also in one of its more recent great, great, great, grandchildren, the Coen Brothers’ film Brother Where Art Thou?

The Odyssey is the great epic of nostalgia. The hero, Odysseus, takes a twenty-year detour on his way home from the Trojan War (modern day Turkey) to his island home of Ithaca (off the western coast of Greece). At home is his wife, Penelope. [Spoiler alert!] After many fantastic adventures, he eventually reaches home.

Brother Where Art Thou? Casts George Clooney in the role of Odysseus – his name is Ulysees Everett McGill. Like, Odysseus, Everett is trying to get back to his wife. Like Odysseus, Everett undergoes trials and tribulations, adventures and excitements, but the much longed for reunification eventually happens [sorry, spoiler alert!].

At the level of plot both of these texts follow the same trajectory. The pull of home is far greater in the Coen brothers’ movie, though.

Why is this? In simple terms, George Clooney loves and respects his wife and the mother of his 6 children. Odysseus does not live in a world where you love and respect your wife;  Penelope is just another piece of property – and an untrustworthy one at that – she is competing for attention alongside so many other things. These other things – the lust for adventure, the good in itself that is storytelling, the danger, the death, the killing and the wondrous challenges of navigating through a world controlled on all sides by the supernatural – are what make The Odyssey so very compelling and beguiling a story. And while these ingredients are mixed into Brother Where Art Thou?  too, the ostensible reason for the journey – reuniting with his wife and the mother of his children -  is actually the real reason, the real motivating factor for the Coen brothers’ Odysseus.

Again and again, Odysseus describes himself and is described as a victim:

“But not even so could he bring his troubles to an end” (Bk 17 575)

“Here Odysseus sat, the man of many trials” (BK 19 112)

“I’m a man who’s had his share of sorrows” (Bk 19 130)

The Coen brothers take up this theme with Ulysses Everett McGill performing the song A Man of Constant Sorrows.

There is a difference of tone that sets the two versions of Odysseus poles apart ,though. While For Odysseus, this claim is really nothing more than a narrative flourish, a storyteller’s trick to win the sympathetic ear of his audiences, the hero of Brother Where Art Thou? is genuinely sorrowful that he can't be with his wife.

Clooney’s character, just like Odysseus has a great way with words; however there is a difference of tone here, too.

Pallas Athena scolds her favourite mortal for spinning a web of fiction upon his initial return to Ithaca:

“not even here, on native soil would you give up those wily tales that warm the cockles of your heart”

Ulysses Everett McGill describes himself as follows to the modern day Polyphemus, played by John Goodman:

“I detect, like me, you’re endowed with the gift of the gab”

Homer’s hero’s raisons d’etre are killing, cunning and living to tell the tale. He’s going back to his wife but he has so many more interesting things to do it takes him twenty years to avoid the anti-climax.

The Coen brothers' hero is an adventurer, he is a storyteller but he is these things second – he loves his wife first.

Penelope is mother to Telemachus. Telemachus, by any standards a cheeky, disrespectful brat in how he talks to his mother:  (Bk 11 518)

So, mother, go back to your quarters. Tend to your own tasks, the distaff and the loom, and keep the women working hard as well. As for giving orders, men will see to that, but most of all I hold the reins of power in this house….Astonished she took to heart the clear good sense in what her son had said” (BK 1 410)

Penelope’s role is to keep her mouth shut, let the men make the decsions, but above all she must not exercise any free will over her sexuality.

The thing is that women are not trusted in Homer’s Odyssey: 

The ghost of Agamemnon tells Odysseus  “the time for trusting women’s gone forever” (Bk 11 518) and the women in the story – human and supernatural alike confirm this: Circe, Calypso, Helen, Clytemnestra, the Sirens all prove to be unpredictable and deadly.

The women in Brother Where Art Thou? are different. The 'Sirens' are not out to enchant and destroy. Enchant, yes, but destroy - no. Clooney's character is not afraid. Unlike the Homeric prototype who had himself tied to the mast of his ship lest these fatal temptresses lure him to his doom, this Odysseus is respectful and stammering- most un-Geroge Clooney-like!

The Penelope of this film is a strong willed and determined mother. She has six daughters. And she has taught them well. When they see their father, Everett, they tell him “You ain’t bona fide”.

Unlike Odysseus, Everett is not wearing the trousers in this family. This Odysseus cannot dismiss his wife, indeed, he does not want to. Her job – mother to her children – is more important than his adventures, his tale telling, his plan. He has to prove himself to his wife.

George Clooney, then is a post-feminist Odysseus because in this film the mother and the wife, her struggles and her concerns are celebrated, trusted, revered.

This is how Odysseus would have acted had he been married to Pallas Athena!