All Coens are Liars: Homer, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and the Reconstruction of the Past

Anise K. Strong (Northwestern University)

Joel and Ethan Coen claim to have never read Homer’s Odyssey, despite writing and directing a film, the 2000 O Brother, Where Art Thou?, explicitly based on the ancient epic. They also allege that O Brother is a simple hayseed comedy about stupid people doing silly things, rather than any sort of “message” film.

By and large, reviewers and scholars have taken the Coens at their word, just as the Phaeacians gullibly accept the fantastic accounts of Odysseus’ daring fights with monsters and seduction by fantastically beautiful immortal temptresses. To the extent that comparisons have been made at all between Homer’s epic and the Coens’ film, they have remained at a basic, simplistic level: John Goodman’s deceptive one-eyed club-wielding Bible salesman as the Cyclops, or the singing river laundresses as the Sirens.

Such a reduction of the film to its most obvious elements ignores the deeper and subtler ways in which this movie engages with the themes and structures of the Odyssey and uses them to comment directly upon American mythology. O Brother may be a light-hearted comedy, but it also explores the creation of a false, comfortable, idealized mythology about the American South in the early 20^th century. The Coens have successfully enchanted their viewers into blind acceptance with sight gags and stirring music. It is time to pull the sheepskins off of these deceptive tricksters and explore why, precisely, they chose a 3000-year-old Greek maritime epic as the basis for a film about the American South in the 1930’s.