While the primary concern of a leftist should be material and economic matters the facts of men's issues means that how cultural topics manifest will have some relevancy to how men are represented in those areas and thus how we are held in the cultural consciousness. With this in mind I'm going to make some critiques of cultural items. Movies, games, stories, TV, all of it can hold some relevance to our issues and concerns.

The work of fiction that prompted this is my aborted reading of Circe. This isn't going to be a review as I DNF'd the book. This is mostly going to be how well, or rather poorly as the case may be, that I think the author handled a specific element of the story. It's also going to have some notes about the concept of "feminist retellings of old stories" in general.

If you care about spoilers in the event you want to read the Madeline Miller novel you have been warned.

Circe is a "feminist retelling" of a portion of Homer's Odyssey. No points for guessing which part. I was recommended this story by several people, both on reddit and in person. They said it would be the perfect thing for me to read. It's not a secret to many of my friends I'm a fan of Ovid I'm also an SA victim. It seems either or both of these facts may have prompted them to get me to read this story. In the original telling of the Odyssey Odysseus is sexual victimized at the hands of both Circe and later Calypso. In a shocking contrast to what is very common in modern fiction the fact Odysseus is forced and upset with this arrangement is not glossed over by the narrative.

Alright, a retelling of that, especially since Circe is the focus and was one of the predators from the source material, is something I could get behind. Feminists are always telling us they care about our SA too right? Maybe this one will at least try to put her money where their collective mouths are. Lol. Lmao even.

I hated the novel.

Circe is completely whitewashed as an evil element and Odysseus's victimization is completely ignored (in fact it's practically non-existent in this story). He instead takes to Circe's bed willingly, they even have "pillow talk" where Odyseus praises her. Circe is the put-upon, girlboss, woobie victim that's trying to protect herself and her nymphs from all the bad men of the world instead of the seductive sorceress she's depicted as in EVERY form of the source material. It also commits the supposedly cardinal modern fiction sin of using a woman's rape to move the plot forward, in this case Circe, a powerful magic using goddess, is reduced to a completely vulnerable rape victim which sets off her later evil acts.

This is both patently offensive and absurd.

The absurdity comes in, as I said, with Circe being a goddess. She should have absolutely no reason she would be vulnerable enough to be in this position from mortals in the first place. Another god maybe but not mortal men. This would be like if I retold Ovid's Medusa as forcing herself on Poseidon instead of the other way around. It's insulting to victims to whitewash an offender like this and it's absurd from the source material's perspective. Circe never needed an excuse to be evil in the original myths, she was evil because she had power and abused it and no one could or would stop her.

Miller flat out does not understand the original story and crafted a completely new character but gave her the same name anyway. She completely butchered the characters and what they represented. All to do a "feminist retelling."

I feel this is the common element with those kinds of retellings, they butcher the source material in an effort to center female figures but lose the point of the story elements along the way. They should just make new characters and settings if that's their goal.

Miller had an opportunity to tell a story of a male victim, Odysseus, and his coercion (and later slavery) at the hands of two women. Even if Calypso doesn't show there's a lot Miller could have done anyway. The source material already did most of the work for her, it doesn't hide the fact Odysseus was victimized even if it doesn't say as much in our modern terms. She could have done that thing feminists claimed to do, care about it when it happens to men, but instead Miller commits to erasure to make the predator the victim. If feminists wrote like they claimed to she would have made Circe worse to emphasize the victims more so it would be unmistakable what occurs, if she needed to make characterization changes at all. Instead we're left with this. Maybe I'm bitter because of the reasons I was recommended this book giving me wildly different expectations but even looking at the facts it still annoys me.

On the other hand I have to give her credit on pacing and prose, it's the characterizations and concepts she utterly fails at.