#mashdyssey

[flintism]

okay absolutely obsessed with this part of emily wilson’s interview about her translation of the odyssey

[hardoncaulfield]

I'm a few days late making this but bc of the mashdyssey posting I thought I'd post the uhh clothing theory that's been boiling my brain for some weeks now. These posts gave me the initial worms & then I got to thinking about the symbolism of the pink henley in terms of BJ/Odysseus parallels. Because clothing in the odyssey is so incredibly important, like one scholar says: "For Homeric society what a person wore represented in a real, not just a symbolic, sense what he was. A king without his proper raiment is not a king.."¹ Clothing is implicated at every level of Odysseus' journey —

[Both inserts²]

But Odysseus doesn't disguise himself, is the thing, Athena does it for him, or else his clothes are gifts from women:

[See this post.]

So, in the odyssey Clothing becomes representative of identity to such an extent that it even qualifies a person's status as a person — when Odysseus washes up naked on Phaeacia he covers himself in leaves, an inhuman covering that makes him less-than-human. So when Nausikaa offers him clothes she is reintroducing him into society and, specifically, offering him a role in that society as her potential spouse.

& this is where the red party comes in — Hawkeye becomes a sort of anti-nausikaa, he resents the clothes that tie him to the society/institution he is part of and make him complicit in the army's violence. And, quite different from the situation in the odyssey where the clothing-gift orginates with Nausikaa and brings Odysseus into society by offering him a role in that society, here BJ gifts Hawkeye clothes he himself wears (and continues to wear for the rest of their time together) & rather than the clothing-gift representing a role inside the established order, BJ continuing to wear red is him saying that he's with Hawkeye against the lot of them. He'll stand with Hawkeye outside society. & this is sort of the crux of him going from being an excellent Nobody [I sent this ask but was too chicken to ask off anon, look at me now 😔✌] to acknowledging that he's changing and that change might not be all bad. (Thanks @flintism for pointing this one out)

& I think it's interesting to overlay this with that moment from Odysseus' homecoming — the triumphant moment when he throws off his beggar's disguise and stands there completely naked and therefore completely himself — where we see that it is only because he can claim his identity that he is able to claim his nostos. & I don't have a conclusion for this but I think it's interesting to consider how BJ changes his clothes because of his love for Hawkeye in light of Odysseus' having to prove himself to be himself before he can go home and also that scene from book 19 where Penelope recognises Odysseus by the clothes he wore when he went away to war even while she fails to recognise that the man himself is sitting in front of her — much 2 consider

1. Studies in the Odyssey. B. Fenik

2. Clothing and Identity in the Odyssey: The Case of Penelope's Web. Naoko Yamagata

[gaysails]

I’ve been so fucking busy between moving and my increased duties at work that I haven’t had any time to keep up with the mashdyssey blogging but “bj as odysseus” is a level of the iceberg we could never have dreamed of this time last year and I just want to say well fucking done everyone and shoutout to @flintism and talls the pioneers 💖I promise I will go through clem’s tag at some point but if anyone else has additional records of it please share

[flintism]

STILL thinking about bj & clothes & recognition & the “it could have been anybody in a uniform” line and it’s like.....  the idea that war erases who you are/changes your identity to the point that you come back defined by war... every man who comes back from war is the same man.... there was a bj before there was a war but who remembers him... 

[flintism]

Oh god this makes me so insane this makes me so insane - bc like, the crux of odysseus' lying is that by lying he reveals himself to be all the more odysseus — odysseus polymetis, the man of many tricks. The more he lies and the more he convinces other by his lies the more he proves he is himself, the only person who possibly could lie so well. Then, there's the fact that odysseus returning home is also when he reclaims himself to be only odysseus (the only odysseus: 16.204) he throws off his beggar's disguise and stands there naked to slay the suitors — completely revealed. Because the nostos only works if its him, its his identity that claims the house, his kleos. Which is why he made the mistake of shouting his real name to polyphemus as he sailed away, he wanted the glory of the victory to be attached to his name. Now the thing is — BJ isn't just Nobody for the purpose of a trick he's Nobody all the time, and he's polytropos but he's so polytropos that it becomes unclear where the real man is hiding. He's so good at disguising himself that it's doubtful that his nostos will ever be complete as odysseus' was — because it would require him to claim himself as well as his house & family — and the argument is, of course, that the self he discovered with Hawkeye is more himself than the self he was before the war. He can't claim both himself and his homecoming at the same time

oh wow yeah this is such a galaxy brain ask... the way you compare bj's and odysseus's lying.... mind blowing thank you.

re: the idea that bj is nobody all the time... i do think that there's a journey from invisibility to visibility when it comes to bj, for example the way he first hides that he's the practical joker in dear sigmund but how, in the joker is wild, he wants everybody (especially hawkeye) to acknowledge that he's the better prankster, or how he goes from wearing his army clothes in a very conforming way to wearing red/pink both as an act of love & as an act of rebellion. like he lets other people see him more and more over the course of the show. but i also agree that he continues to hide until the very end (because he's hiding from himself): his refusal to reveal what bj stands for, the lies, etc.

"the argument is, of course, that the self he discovered with Hawkeye is more himself than the self he was before the war. He can't claim both himself and his homecoming at the same time"

yeah absolutely i love the way you worded this!! this is def part of my current bj thesis, the idea that for bj going home means having to redefine what he considers to be home by accepting that change can be a positive thing & doesn't necessarily mean death. so, speaking in greek terms, maybe s11 is bj's metaphorical katabasis 😂

[flintism]

okay this post about how odysseus needs to “remember the return” & how one of the dangers he faces is forgetting that he wants to go home in relation to bj in war co-respondent saying that he can’t allow himself to have feelings for aggie/hawkeye because if he did he would lose his lifeline = the little house in mill valley where his wife and daughter live = his idealized vision of a future/of home. bj saying “i’ve got to live for tomorrow because for me there is no now”  & constantly projecting himself into the future as a coping mechanism as the equivalent of odysseus having to remember that he needs to go home. 

[flintism]

more thoughts on pegnelope: emily wilson says that “we get only glimpses of Penelope’s state of mind, which is repeatedly described as ambiguous or opaque” and that when she decides to show herself before the suitors in book 18 “Penelope’s desires and motivations are defined as unknown”. which is interesting considering that we know basically nothing about peg. we only know what bj tells us about her/their relationship & what we can infer from her actions & we only see her “physically” twice through bj’s distorted point of view 1) in his nightmare in dreams 2) when she acts his fantasy of their wedding anniversary. she’s mostly defined by her absence & the consequences of this absence on bj. if there’s one “character” whose state of mind is opaque or whose desires and motivations are unknown to us i def feel it’s peg

[flintism]

love that odysseus is called “the lord of lies”. i think we should start calling bj this too

[flintism]

also there’s a really interesting part of the introduction about how odysseus is a builder/a construction worker: conceiving the wooden horse/building his own bed in his home AND building his own raft to leave calypos’ island. while bj def isn’t what i would call a builder he does like to repair things. i’m thinking specifically about the bike in bloods and guts which the annoying journalist destroys but bj comes across another bike in gfa which he doesn’t repair this time but which he does paint, making it his. & it’s on this bike that we metaphorically see him leave korea/exit the story 

[flintism]

when i rewatch the entirety of mash s4-11 paying close attention to bj’s use of the passive voice/first person pronouns then you’ll see 

[flintism]

also had important mashdyssey thoughts but too tired to make sense of them rn i feel like i’ve lived five days in one

[flintism]

rewatching blood and guts and hearing the annoying journalist be like i’m here to create a glorious story/narrative out of this ugly reality is truly making me feel things after all the mashdyssey talk from today

[hardoncaulfield]

wow. unfollowing now. admired their work on mashdyssey had no idea they watched supernatural

This is fair. The whiplash in taste over the last 6 months is remarkable