Key Takeaways
- As Christopher Nolan’s hit adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey continues to dominate the box office, fans are highlighting parallels between the epic poem and Donald Glover’s Atlanta.
- Key to the conversation is “Barbershop,” a particularly Homer-esque episode from the show’s second season.
- Similarly, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the 2004 SpongeBob SquarePants movie are also being cited as key Odyssey-influenced works.
As Christopher Nolan’s exhilarating take on The Odyssey continues to dominate the box office, now’s the time to take further stock of just how pervasive the source text’s influence is on pop culture at large.
Enter Donald Glover’s Peabody and Emmy-winning series Atlanta, which wrapped its four-season run back in 2022. With virtually everyone flocking to theaters for Nolan’s Homer adaptation, parallels are retroactively being drawn between the two on social media, though—as is readily apparent for those who were familiar with the material prior to Matt Damon and company bringing it to life this year—Glover’s FX gem is far from the only modern story to be in conversation with the ancient epic poem.
Atlanta’s “Barbershop” episode
As seen in the X post below, the focus has been on “Barbershop,” an especially Odyssey-esque episode from Atlanta’s second season. In the Stefani Robinson-penned episode, Paper Boi, played by Brian Tyree Henry, finds himself at the mercy of his barber Bibby, played by Robert Powell III. The escalatingly bizarre situation forces Paper Boi into an epic journey of his own boasting everything from leftover Zaxby’s, to a callback to an invisible car prominently featured in the show’s first season.
Meanwhile, some have gone as far as to directly link Bibby to Odysseus, the central character in The Odyssey.
Interestingly, the previous episode in Atlanta’s second season is titled “Helen,” taking its name from a city in Georgia visited by Glover’s character, Earn, and Zazie Beetz’s character, Van. Mere coincidence or not, Helen of Troy is a central mythological figure in Homer’s Odyssey.
Atlanta characters Paper Boi, Earn, Van, and Darius were definitely on an Odyssey-esque journey of their own
While Glover doesn’t appear to have ever directly connected Atlanta to The Odyssey in press interviews, what’s certain is that, not unlike Odysseus, all four of the show’s main characters—Paper Boi, Earn, Van, and Darius (played by LaKeith Stanfield)—are very much on a collective and individual journey of epic proportions throughout the story’s four-season execution. Along the way, they encounter no shortage of surreal interventions that, in many ways, call to mind the godly ones employed by Homer.
But don’t forget about SpongeBob
Odyssey’s influence, of course, can be seen widely across film and TV. 2004’s The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, for example, follows in the same lineage, as does the 2000 Coen brothers classic O Brother, Where Art Thou?
All that to say, go watch Atlanta right fucking now if you somehow missed it during its original run. The Odyssey, meanwhile, is in theaters now. Here’s everything you need to know before diving in.
