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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 2, 2023

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Re: names, my professors largely interpreted that trope as a shout out. The catalogue of ships and the naming of random characters allowed the audience (across city states and tribes) to place their ancestors at the battle. The tradition of faux genealogy to the Trojan war continued well into the early modern period; Habsburg and English kings both traced their lineage to Iliad heroes at times.

Today of course, we don't identify by family or tribe but by gross-ethnicity, so we have racial tokenism. Or we see Chinese plots shoehorned into blockbusters to appeal to the Chinese market. Many Iliad names were added the same way, to appeal to a town or a family or a tribe by placing an ancestor at the battle.

Yes, during some of the action scenes I was reminded of gangsta rap (specifically Wu-tang clan ain't nothing to f' with) - youthful bravado and violence accompanied by a long list of shoutouts.

Though I dunno if I'd want my ancestor to be known as "guy who didn't do much then got killed instantly by Hector". No doubt there was some valor in just having been there.

Though I dunno if I'd want my ancestor to be known as "guy who didn't do much then got killed instantly by Hector". No doubt there was some valor in just having been there.

I expect that travelling bard were juggling who did what depending on their location. For example when telling story in place B then ancestor of their enemies were worse performing ones, while A ancestor were more glorious.