ithaca is in mississippi

When I began to watch O Brother, Where Art Thou? I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to other works: the Odyssey, yes, but also Hadestown- a Broadway musical set in the depression-era south that re-tells a classic Greek story. Sound familiar? At first, I wondered what had led two disparate creative teams to such a similar outcome, but upon further reflection, I realized that the two settings of ancient Greece and the rural south overlap in more than a few ways.

First, both have histories steeped in oral folklore. You’ve probably heard O Susanna, for example; the majority of our folk songs and oral legends come from the region. This rich history makes the kind of poetic storytelling we associate with ancient Greece a natural fit for the American south. Further, the strength of religion and sense of distance from any kind of ‘modern’ society (i.e. the lack of electricity) in the rural south creates a sense of mysticism; in some ways, it feels harder to deny the presence of the supernatural than to confirm it.

I’d also posit that the uniquely hierarchical structure of the south resembles the relationship between human and gods. Not to say that these hierarchies didn’t exist in other regions, but they were highlighted especially strongly in the south via policies such as Jim Crow. And during the depression, the lines between white and black, rich and poor, grew even more sharply defined. As the gods use the lives of mortals as pure entertainment, helping some people and screwing others over based essentially on their moods, so do the wealthy and powerful in the world of OBWART. Sheriff Cooley plays Poseidon, the leading antagonist, and the boys are ultimately saved by the whim of the governor. And, at the end of the movie, they’re saved by a natural event caused by powers far beyond them- a dam is destroyed (presumably by, again, a far more wealthy and powerful group than the Soggy Bottom Boys) and the final conflict simply washes away. A sense of powerlessness proliferates both narratives; Everett and Odysseus may struggle long and hard, and they may be cool and all, but at the end of the day, they succeed because the some higher power wants them to.

(As an aside, the same is true in Hadestown; the main antagonist, Hades, is the exploitative boss of both hell and an underground factory.)

Finally, as we discussed in class, Everett, like Odysseus, gets the favor of the ‘gods’ because of his charisma. Athena likes Odysseus because she likes his stories; Pappy O’Daniel pardons Everett and co. because he likes their songs- and because he thinks it’ll make a good story.

Ultimately, the similarities between the two settings are a bit more than coincidental, and, in my opinion, fit well together.