The release of director Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has sparked intense debate online, especially on the right. On today’s edition of The Editors, Charlie is “confused by . . . the notion that this is some sort of attack on our cultural patrimony.”

“I even saw one person, and of course this is literarily clever, say that ‘The movie is the Trojan horse, and it’s got behind the walls of our history and our civilization and our literary tradition to destroy it,'” Charlie says. “I think that’s crazy.”

Charlie adds, “This is a work that has been treated over the last nearly three millennia very differently by different people,” and names Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare as some of the most prominent.

“Maybe, like some of the people who have sent me rude emails, you think I should be deported for liking the movie,” Charlie says. “But whatever your view, what Nolan’s doing here just doesn’t strike me as being that different than what lots of other great people within our literary tradition have done for centuries, which is using a great story to make art.”

The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.