Ruining the Mystique of the Coen Brothers

Yesterday when I was giving the definitive take on Christopher Nolan’s version of The Odyssey, I made a kind-of throwaway mention of O Brother, Where Art Thou? as a case of the Coen Brothers’ being uninterested in adapting The Odyssey so much as making fun of the pretentiousness of filmmakers who’d presume to adapt The Odyssey. Today, I saw a good essay titled “All Coens Are Liars: O Brother, Where art Thou? and Homer’s Odyssey“ by Anise K. Strong-Morse, where she goes deeper into comparing the movie and the source material, as well as its various references to other sources throughout film history, in particular The Wizard of Oz and Sullivan’s Travels, along with the history of the southern US and bluegrass music. I recommend it to anyone who’s a fan of the movie! It provides a lot of context that I wasn’t aware of, and suggests some elements (like Everett’s hair nets) that I wouldn’t have recognized as having any possible connection to mythology. But the most interesting part to me…