When Silence Pays Off
Christopher Nolan, The Odyssey, and Palestine
For the last three years, whenever I find myself wanting to watch a new show or movie, I always do a bit of research. Specifically, I want to see what the main creators’ stances are on Palestine and/or Israel. Have they done or said anything? Have they used their platforms and positions of power within their industry to try to change something? Have they been severely affected by the images, stories, and realities that have irrevocably altered my heart and mind?
I’m sure a lot of people do this. A quick search on wikipedia to see if they are pro-Israel, or taken a stance against the ongoing Genocide in Gaza or, more recently, in Lebanon. Afterall, you don’t want to find yourself moved by a story of love and compassion only to find out that the filmmaker shares none of that for Palestinians, or any other victims of Israel’s genocidal brutality.
It feels like a betrayal. Especially as a Lebanese person myself, it feels like the storytellers don’t see me as a human being deserving of dignity and respect. So why should I care about them or their stories? If they can’t empathize with me, why would I try to empathize with them or their characters? Beyond that, why would I give them my money?
So this of course brings us to Sir Christopher Nolan’s new hit film ‘The Odyssey’. Released on 17th of July, the film has already grossed around $700 million in the box office. It has become an instant hit, with many content creators doing commentary videos about the film, its themes, and the ridiculous right-wing backlash it has elicited.
Now a quick search of Nolan’s stances on Palestine reveal basically no results. In keeping in line with his ‘apolitical’ persona - which I think is the largest reason why I’ve never found his films particularly interesting - he’s basically said nothing. Three years of active genocide which his government supports and this Knight of the British Empire has not felt compelled to do or say anything at all.
As the saying goes, silence is complicity. This is especially true for a multi-millionaire white British man, one of the largest and most powerful figures in the film industry. But of course, it is far easier to condemn someone for what they have said or done, as opposed to what they haven’t.
To me, I can’t dislodge the two. For someone with such tremendous power and influence, with such close proximity to the largest propaganda organ in the West, Hollywood, Nolan’s silence is more than just passive complicity. It’s actively asserting that Palestinian lives simply don’t matter, that genocide is a thing that can happen that doesn’t shift anything - even if just your heart. It’s simply not a big enough deal.
Beyond that Hollywood productions have always played a crucial role in perpetuating American cultural hegemony and domination, with it the implicit overtones of white supremacy, the righteousness of the American empire and of the global capitalist system.1
All of this is also not even mentioning the very real active harm that the production of The Odyssey had on the Moroccan-occupied people of the Western Sahara, where parts of the movie was filmed. This film DID cross a picket-line, and anyone watching it in the theatre did too.
In a sense, Nolan’s choice to film in the Occupied Western Sahara positions him as pro-occupation, even if just ambivalently. His movie and his profit trump all other concerns of human rights, international law, and basic human decency.
Now I’m not hear finger-wagging at people who want to watch the latest blockbuster movie. I know I’m really standing against the current if I were to do that. I’m just feeling really disheartened these days by the strong feeling that we seem to be entering a new collective phase: specifically, a post-giving-a-shit phase.
Everything feels irrevocably fucked, and so people are enjoying what they can before the world blows up - or heats up to unlivable levels. They may still engage in some acts of protests or boycotts, but the totality of the crises they face feels so overwhelming that they seem to have given up hope that anything can actually change. I’m very pre-occupied by this and, noticing few other people talking about, decided to make a video essay trying to analyze what I’m calling Political Burnout.
So if going to watch The Odyssey isn’t gonna change anything, then why not?
Here I’m not going to argue for the efficacy of boycotts cause at this point it’s a tired argument (as in we need SO much more than just boycotts at this point). I’ll only speak to the crushing psychological and spiritual impact of a feeling of collective passivity towards silence. That is, the acknowledgement that, yes, silence does pay off.
Which of course, is what Nolan (and many many others) were banking on. And that’s so depressing to see them being proven to be right.
But for me, I hold that silence as condemnable. Sir Nolan may not be explicitly pro or anti Genocide, but its clear that he is ambivalent about it. That to me is enough to say, I’m not interested, in the slightest, in his cultural productions. And I’m certainly not gonna give him any of my money.
Many cultural and political theorists have argued this point. For the purposes of this essay one particularly sharp critique is ‘Reel Bad Arabs’ by Jack Shaheen. https://archive.org/details/reelbadarabshowh00shah/mode/2up