English Composition I - C455 TASK 2
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Jan 9, 2024
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Elora Hicks
English Composition I – Task 2
8/8/2023
Many great films have been created since the first movie by Louis Le Prince in 1888. Of the movies made in my time, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) directed by the Coen brothers, is by far my favorite. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
has many merits, such as being a comedic adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey
, showcasing a brilliant soundtrack, and displaying various issues from 1920s Mississippi, from which the movie is set. The first merit is the unique way the Coen brothers implemented similarities between Homer’s The Odyssey
and O Brother, Where Art Thou?
First, the main character in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
is Ulysses Everett McGill played by the very talented George Clooney. The name Ulysses is Roman for Odysseus, the name of the main character in The Odyssey
. “Everett”,
as he goes by, is an escaped convict on a mission to get home, much like in The Odyssey
where the main character is attempting to get home. Everett deceives his fellow escaped convict friends to join him in a futile search for a lost treasure. Everett’s friends are played by none other than Tim Blake Nelson as Delmar, and John Turturro as Pete, Odysseus also travels with a group. Sirens are used in both the poem and film. In The Odyssey
, sirens are portrayed as mermaids that drag men out to sea using their songs. In O Brother, Where Art Thou?
the sires are shown as 3 women washing clothes in the river whilst singing. The 3 friends are hypnotized by the women and decide to approach them. The sirens give them a drink that makes them pass
out and when the friends wake up, Pete is gone. Delmar believes the sirens have turned Pete into a “horny toad” due to the fact that a frog was jumping around inside of his laid-out clothing. The “Cyclops” in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
is a one-eyed bible salesman named “Big Dan” played by the amazing John Goodman. He leads them to believe he is an innocent man but then decides to beat them and take what he thought to be money in a shoe box, turning out
to be the frog, which he kills. Mirroring the Cyclops in The Odyssey
by beating the crew and killing some of them. Another merit of O Brother, Where Art Thou?
is the soundtrack. The music in O Brother, Where Art Thou?
is a mixture of bluegrass, gospel, and southern folk music. The biggest hit from
the soundtrack is “I am a Man of Constant Sorrow” by the Soggy Bottom Boys, having won Single of the Year at the CMA Awards in 2002. The Soggy Bottom Boys are actually the film’s 3 main characters Evertt, Delmar, and Pete, along with their new friend Tommy. In the movie, the 4 friends recorded the song to make a few dollars but u
nbeknownst to them, the recording
becomes a major hit and the 4 end up playing it at a political event supporting Homer Stokes for
Governor. The soundtrack was so successful, it won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2002, having been only the second soundtrack to have ever done so. (Betts, 2017)
Music producers and singers also won Grammy Awards, along with many other awards. The soundtrack hit #1 on the Billboard Top 100 in 2001 and has reached 8x Platinum, having sold over 8,000,000 copies as of 2019. (http ://www.roughstock.com, 2019)
The last merit being the historical context. The film is set during the Great Depression in Mississippi and displays many kinds of issues from that era. From racism to poverty, to introducing historical figures from the 1920s. During one scene of O Brother, Where Art Thou?
, Everett and his friends infiltrate a Ku Klux Klan meeting by disguising themselves as Klan members to save Tommy, a black man, from being lynched. Many of the political figureheads in the film are revealed to be members of the Ku Klux Klan, which reflected law enforcement being
corrupt and targeting minorities and outsiders during the time. The film depicts poverty by showing how many of the townsfolk resorted to living in shacks, tents, and wagons due to job loss. Everett manipulated his friends into joining him on a quest for a nonexistent treasure in hopes they would become rich. Meanwhile, a crowd of people walked down to the river to get baptized, in hopes of cleansing their troubles. Many historical figures were written into the film, such as Robert Johnson (depicted as Tommy Johnson), an African American blues singer whom legend says sold his soul to the devil to play the guitar, George “Baby Face” Nelson, a bank robber who was associated with John Dillinger and Al Capone was known to shoot cows and hated his nickname, which was displayed in the film, and Pappy O’Daniel, a politician and businessman who served as Governor of Texas and later as a Senator.
In conclusion, I believe O Brother Where Art Thou?
is an amazing film. It received a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes and amassed multiple nominations and awards. The film is creative and clever, humorous, symbolic, and most of all, entertaining. It has multiple merits, the way the Coen brothers adapted Homer’s “The Odyssey” into the film, the soundtrack, and the way it depicts America’s history in such a creative way, are just a few.
Sources
Betts, S. L. (2017, March 28).
Flashback: “O Brother, Where Art Thou” Wins Album of the Year Grammy
. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/flashback-o-
brother-where-art-thou-wins-album-of-the-year-grammy-125585/
http ://www.roughstock.com, R. -. (2019, October 9).
Top Country Catalog Album Sales: October 9, 2019
. RoughStock. https://roughstock.com/news/2019/10/43989-top-country-catalog-
album-sales-october-9-2019
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