The tears of Priam: reflections on Troy and teaching ancient texts.

• Author: Dillon, James J.
• Position: Critical essay

"Sing, goddess, the anger of the critic at the devastation wrought by the movie Troy, which put pains a thousandfold upon the bard Homer." Warner Brothers 2004 release of Troy, a $100 million feature film based on Homer's Iliad, was a valuable opportunity to present a powerful story to a wide audience whose eyes probably had never seen the written text and whose only familiarity with the poem was through football team mascots and figures of speech like "Trojan horse."

I had excruciatingly realistic expectations going into the film, and did not expect or desire utter fidelity to the original text. I was aware that Brad Pitt was cast as Achilleus, so I was fully prepared for a Hollywood dumb-down. I am also (to a fault) a rather gentle critic. Having tried my hand at several literary endeavors, I am always willing to cut authors and directors more slack than they probably deserve. But in the case of this film, my good will simply ran out. Like Achilleus, I found myself in the midst of something like rage.

About a half hour into the movie, I wrestled with whether to hold my position or retreat from the scene of battle by leaving my seat and comrades to set up camp beyond the walls of the theater in the hollow of my car. Like a good warrior, I endured to the end, but an intense burning in my breast remained. I have read enough Freud to know that such a strong reaction cannot be due to a present event alone. Perhaps, I thought, there was some unmetabolized shard of past experience in my soul that the film simply called forth. Alas, I was correct. The movie, I slowly began to realize, perfectly crystallizes the way most modern students (and some colleagues) approach and interpret classical texts. Thus, my own strong response to the film summons my frustrations from fourteen years of presenting classical material to undergraduates.

Unlike most other texts, the "classics" have the potential to upend our typical modes of understanding, challenge our baser impulses, and confound our historically and culturally constituted presuppositions. The classics are "spiritual exercises" that leave our souls finer and stronger than the way they were before we read them. But the classics are not magical entities. Their power can only be realized in readers who are willing and able to listen seriously to their questions and claims.

The problem is that most modern readers do not approach classical material tactfully or respectfully. They are often ensconced in the certitude of their ordinary modes of thought and belief, and read only to have this certitude affirmed and celebrated. If a text is in any way challenging, it is either ignored, e.g., "I don't get it," or it is made irrelevant, e.g., "This is so outdated." Modern readers remind me of the children in Jean Piaget's (1) early studies on language acquisition who engaged in what he called "collective monologues." On the surface, the children appeared to be having actual conversation with each other in that they followed the rules of turn-taking and made eye contact while they talked. But upon closer examination, what Piaget found was that these kids were not engaging in dialogue at all, but were treating the statements of their interlocutors as mere occasions...