The Complicated Politics of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
I didn’t become much of a movie buff until recently, and even then that’s questionable. I still haven’t seen a single one of the Lord of the Rings movies, I have absolutely no desire to see Gone With the Wind, and if I have to hear one more guy in my life say “You haven’t seen The Big Lebowski?!?! Come on, it’s a classic!!!!”, I will gouge their eyes out with my DVD copy of an actual classic: Eloise at Christmastime.
I don’t have anything against the movie, or the Coen brothers. I don’t know enough about them to even have much of an opinion. I know they’re brothers, with the same last name, and they seem to have a thing for male ensembles that have to deal with obstacles, shenanigans, and “tight spots”, but manage to make it out okay in the end. That’s not much, and it’s pretty broad. But to be fair, I do really enjoy their movie my Classics and Mythology teacher had us watch my sophomore year of college.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a 2000 crime-comedy-road-trip movie set in the Dust Bowl Depression era that’s actually a retelling of Homer’s Odyssey. Stop me if this is sounding too broad and easy to market.
Luckily, they were able to market it off the success of the Coen Brothers, who had already directed Fargo and The Big Lebowski to tons of critical and commercial acclaim, as well as off its star-studded cast. George Clooney was fresh off ER and ready to start doing movies, the Johns, Turturro and Goodman, were Coen Brothers staples by that point, and while Tim Drake Nelson was a relative newcomer, his acting and singing in the movie were more than enough to launch his career. Add to that a catchy bluegrass soundtrack and some groundbreaking color correction work for that sepia look, and it’s no wonder this movie is considered yet another Coen brothers classic.
But I don’t want to talk about any of that. I want to talk about the politics of this movie, both literal and social. Let’s start with the literal, shall we?
Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Constituency?
One of the many subplots of the movie involves an electoral race. Yes, this is going where you think it’s going, but maybe not the way you think.
The incumbent candidate is our man with the cigar up there, governor Pappy O’Daniel, who was a real governor in the real world during the Depression. However, given that they went out of their way to change a lot about the historical figure for the character, even what state he represents (the real O’Daniel represented Texas, while the character represents Mississippi), he becomes more of a symbol wearing a historical figure’s hat than an accurate representation, and we’ll be treating him as such.
Like the real figure, and reminiscent of Roosevelt after him, he hosts a radio show consisting of “old-timey” music and his own warm, friendly speeches (coupled with ads for his own brand of flour, which, okay). The first time we hear him is in one of his radio shows, but the first time we see him is when our heroes are leaving a radio station, having just recorded a song and gotten a ton of money (at the time) for it. They see a man pulling up, and don’t recognize him, but are eager to share this get-rich-quick method with him.
Delmar: Hey mister! I don’t mean to be tellin’ tales outta school, but there’s a fella in there’ll pay you ten dollars if you sing into his can!
Pappy: I’m not here to make a record, you dumb cracker!
Woof. Not exactly the kind and caring Pappy from before, is it? And in case you think he acts better towards his own son, just seconds later:
Junior: Ain’t you gonna press the flesh, Pappy? Do a little politickin’?
Pappy: I’ll press your flesh, you dim-witted sumbitch! You don’t tell your Pappy how to court the electorate! […] Shake a leg Junior! Thank God your mammy died givin’ birth. If she’d have seen you, she’d have died o’ shame.
WOOF. Even acting as a literal Pappy doesn’t seem to be this guy’s forte. There’s also some serious classism going on, with the cracker remark, which isn’t a good look at any time, but especially not during, y’know, the Depression.
So let’s take a look at our reform candidate, Homer Stokes.
He’s definitely got an eye for showmanship as well, though his involves more of the in-person variety. He drives a truck around that displays his poster, plays music, and has someone standing up sweeping on the back of it. This is supposed to represent how he is going to, in his words, “grab the broom of reform, and sweep this state clean” of “cronyism, nepotism, [and] rascalism” (whatever that last one is). He calls Pappy O’Daniel a “slave of the interest” and promises that he, in contrast, is “a friend of the little man”.
Sound familiar yet? Here’s another trip down memory lane for ya: much later in the movie, our three boys stumble upon the meeting of a “certain secret society”.
They step in to shut it down because their one black friend, Tommy, is about to be lynched. They are quickly unmasked, though, and since they accidentally did blackface by covering their skins in dirt to try and blend into the night earlier, they are treated as such. In true wacky shenanigans fashion, they manage to escape with Tommy while causing some chaos. However, during the fray, the Grand Wizard unmasks himself to get a better look at the situation, and…
Not only is Homer Stokes a member of the KKK, he’s the damn leader of his…faction? District? Troop? Weirdly enough, I don’t really know how the KKK works.
So yeah, neither candidate is great, right? You’ve got a classist jerk and a two-faced racist. Granted, most of the characters don’t know all of those things, but you, the audience, do. So how does that get resolved?
Near the end, Homer Stokes has what I have to assume is a fundraising dinner of some sort called The Homer Stokes Hoedown, which is also being broadcast on the radio. Pappy shows up, as do our three heroes in disguise. It turns out that song they recorded into a “can” earlier was a huge hit, and when they start singing it, the crowd goes wild. They only get halfway through the song, though, before Homer recognizes them and grabs the microphone.
He tears them to pieces saying they’re “not white — hell, they ain’t even old-timey!”, accuses them of “interfering with a lynch mob in the performance of its duties”, basically admits with barely any shame that he’s a member of the KKK, reveals their fugitive status, and informs them that Tommy “sold his soul to the Devil”. (It says something about the movie’s weird relationship with reality of that he is actually and literally right)
Unsurprisingly, the constituents turn on him and literally ride him out on a rail.
But here’s the thing — none of the stuff I just mentioned is what makes the crowd turn on him. They don’t care that he’s part of a lynch mob. They don’t care that he’s a Klansman. They don’t care that the band is made up of fugitives, and while they’re certainly religious people, it’s clear most of them don’t believe Homer’s claim about Tommy selling his soul (which, just want to remind you, is ACTUALLY TRUE).
Why do they ride him out? One reason: he interrupted the music. As one person shouts “We was all havin’ a good time!”
They mostly stay silent during his string of accusations, so it’s unclear whether their silence is in defiance or solemn agreement. But the minute he declares “This here music is over!”, the booing and jeering starts, and it doesn’t stop until he’s taken away.
It wasn’t moral character that saved our heroes. It wasn’t the constituents standing up to a racist murderer for his crimes, or even understanding that a life of crime was (and is) often the only way out of poverty. Homer Stokes’s unforgivable crime in this situation isn’t any of that. It’s being a party pooper.
And going back to Pappy, he’s not a Klansman (that we know of), but he’s just as racist as anyone else. When he mentions that the boys are a hit, Junior’s quick to point out, “But Pappy, they’s integrated!”. He doesn’t seem happy about that, but he says in a daze, “Well, I guess, folks don’t mind they’s integrated!”. And as soon as Homer is dragged out, he yells “Goddamn! Opportunity knocks!” and gets up on stage to dance with them and make a speech not only endorsing them, but giving them a full pardon and appointing them as his brain trust.
But again, this is not out of the goodness of his heart, or even a change of heart. It’s just a strategic political move. He even goes out of his way to shoot serious looks to the boys, as if daring them to contradict him or try to get a word into this conversation.
So, Pappy wins. Is that a good thing? Yes, he’s better than a Klansman, and yes, it’s possible that all those times he snapped were less an inherent part of his nature and more a product of the stress and anxiety of losing his job. But it also means things aren’t going to change, which is only good for a select few people. Then again, the status quo is still better than outright endorsing the Klan. And who’s to say if Homer Stokes would even follow through on his promises, or what kind of political experience he even has?
Unfortunately, this debate is irrelevant, since in the real world, we chose Homer Stokes. So let’s move on to a lighter topic.
“Old-Timey” Racism
Lighter -skinned, that is.
This movie doesn’t shy away from the racism of the 1930's.
But it doesn’t exactly do much to break stereotypes, either. Aside from Tommy, who we’ll get to, the only black characters in the movie are the mystical prophet, two young boys carrying ice in one scene, and the other members of the chain gang. Like, seriously, our three leads appear to be the only white people in that entire chain gang they escaped from. To be fair, that’s an accurate picture of the prison system in general, but the movie doesn’t really do anything with it.
Let’s go back to Tommy. He’s another character based on a real historical figure, and thus, he is treated with more respect than the other characters. But he’s treated with respect the same way that Pocahontas was treated with respect by Disney: so respectful that he’s more of a bland prop than a character. His role in the story is to tell us what the devil looks like in order to foreshadow The Warden later on, to play the guitar for the plot-saving song twice, and to be the catalyst that makes the boys stop the lynch mob. He disappears halfway through the movie for no stated reason. Presumably, you’re supposed to think it has something to do with this lynch mob, but at least a few days have passed between when he disappeared and the lynch mob meeting, so what was he doing all that time? Why did he leave in the first place? Did he run off and then get kidnapped, or was he kidnapped and just kept somewhere all that time? For a story that goes out of its way to tie up every single plot thread, this one is left noticeably hanging.
There’s also the fact that, aside from the characters occasionally calling him “boy” or “son”, Tommy is treated like an equal by our white protagonists. I’m not saying this isn’t historically accurate, nor am I saying historical accuracy or even logical accuracy is this movie’s goal. But when it comes to stories like this that are written by white people, if there are going to be bad and racist white people, it seems like there always have to be good and not-racist white people so that the white audience can not feel icky and uncomfortable by actually confronting racism. Hidden Figures did it, Pocahontas did it, Hairspray did it, so on and so forth. It’s not necessarily out of place in this movie, but it’s a larger trend that I think is worth pointing out when it comes up.
It does paint a good picture of incidental racism with the minor characters, like the blind record producer, but at the end of the day, it’s very much a white man’s story. And speaking of men…
An Interesting Change
The Coen Brothers made no secret of the fact that at the time they made this movie, and possibly to this day, they had never actually read Homer’s Odyssey. They knew the story only through its various adaptations. In fact, the only person among the cast who’d actually read the story was Tim Blake Nelson, who may I remind you, plays the dumbest character in the movie.
The Coen Brothers only knew the broad strokes, and it does show in the movie. Our Ulysses and his gang come up against the most famous of the monsters, like the Cyclops and the sirens, but don’t meet any equivalent to the witch-god Circe, on whose island Ulysses spends almost a year of his adventure, or the six-headed Scylla, or Ulysses’s dead mom, or anyone else, really. It mostly follows the broad story people know to the letter. Ulysses tries to get home, punks a Cyclops, almost gets punked by sirens, comes home to his faithful wife, and kills her suitors.
Or, it almost does. It makes one big change to the story that certainly raises my eyebrows.
Penelope, now Penny, is actually and willingly set to marry someone else in this version.
I don’t know if I can explain how bizarre this change is. Penelope’s patience and faithfulness are some of her core character traits. I understand that going off to war and going to jail are very different scenarios, but you’re telling me no one has ever waited for someone to get out of jail?
Penny’s changeover was fast, too. That baby she’s holding is Ulysses’s, which means he hasn’t even been in prison a year. He also busted out in the first place because she told him she was remarrying. Homegirl found another man and got him to put a ring on it not only in less than ten months, but presumably while pregnant.
Now listen. They could have made this work. They could have had her choose to remarry because she had no money to feed the kids (and they do have seven of them). I mean, it is the Depression, after all. Or it could have been that, much like in the myth, he was pushing her into a relationship she didn’t really want, and she was just biding her time and stringing him along until her husband came home to deal with him.
But no, she genuinely doesn’t want him anymore, because he’s a “lowlife”. It’s understandable, but rings pretty hollow when she accepts him back the minute he becomes successful and sort-of gets a job. That plus the fact that she insists they can’t get married until he goes and fetches a specific ring for her, and after everything he went through to get it —
— she gets upset because it’s not the right ring and insists that he comb the entire newly-made lake to find it, and that’s how the movie ends. Oh, women! Nothing us men does can satisfy them, ain’t that right, boys?
Penny seems to have more agency and character than her mythical counterpart, but it’s all surface. Penny changes her mind on a dime, outright lies to her kids about their daddy being dead, and is unreasonable to the very end. It’s not even clear what she wants, exactly. It seems at first that she’d accept her ex-husband if he just got a stable career, but then she keeps going on about that very specific ring. Her motivations and goals are incredibly unclear, so she comes across more as a prize for Ulysses to get, or more specifically, a sidequest that keeps unlocking more sidequests.
The original Penelope, meanwhile, always had a clear goal and motivation. Yes, both of those were a man, but it still makes sense. She loves her husband, and doesn’t want to marry anyone else, but all these suitors descend on her. She can’t actively tell them to shove off, so she tries to bide her time coming to a decision. She deals with them taking her food, messing up her house, and sexually assaulting her and her handmaidens, all with grace, calm, and brains. And in the end, she is rewarded for her cunning, her patience, and her loyalty by the welcoming embrace of the man she waited for. It’s very man-centric, but it’s also believable and compelling.
And the only other women of note in the film are the literal sirens.
As with many things in the movie, there is both a supernatural and a logical explanation for them. The logical explanation that they give is that the women knew who they were, and purposely seduced and drugged them so they could turn them in for the reward money. But that doesn’t explain a) how they knew they were coming when they came by car and the road was a good few yards away from the water, b) why they only turned in Pete and not the other two, and c) why they apparently turned him in naked and left his clothes and the other two in starfish positions.
So, probably supernatural. In summary, our only notable female characters are literal siren and metaphorical harpy.
In Conclusion And Before You Say I Hate This Movie
I don’t.
“(beat) Do. Not. Seek. The treasure!” gets me every time I see this movie, and I’ve seen it many, many times. Any unattributed pictures above are screengrabs from my own DVD copy. I mostly like the social commentary in this movie, particularly the stuff regarding George “Babyface” Nelson, which I didn’t even have time to get into.
The way the screenplay ties up (almost) every single tiny subplot it introduces indicates master screenwriting, and the color correction and look really immerses you in this world. There’s a reason it’s considered a classic, and why the Coen Brothers are considered geniuses.
But I can simultaneously love this movie while also pointing out its failings, minor flaws, and parts that are pretty good but could do with a spit shine. Being critical of the media we consume is how we get better media. Just look at the difference between Pocahontas and Moana if you don’t believe me. (I don’t know why Pocahontas came up so much in this thing, honestly. It was just as unexpected for me as it was for you, and I do apologize.)
Taking media studies into the real world is valuable, too. It’s worth comparing Homer Stokes to Donald Trump, especially since one was shamed and shunned before votes were even cast and one is the actual President. It’s worth seeing how successfully or unsuccessfully white men integrate people of color and women into their stories (oh yeah, no black women at all in this movie).
And it’s worth noting that the song that brings everyone together over race, class, and gender, is a song about how life is constant sorrow and then you die.
