Episode summary
A two-minute trailer, an ancient story, and a crowd of critics who had already made up their minds. Tayvin explores "don't judge a book by its cover," why English speakers bend familiar idioms, and what we miss when first impressions become final.
T.E.A. Time is hosted by English teacher Tayvin Bayless. Read the full transcript.
Hello, hello, and welcome to T.E.A. Time with Tayvin Bayless. To my returning listeners, it’s great to have you back. And if this is your first time joining me, welcome. I’m glad you’re here. Have you had a first impression turn out to be wrong? How did you change your mind?
There’s this movie that I’d been hearing about for a while. It’s by a very famous, big-name director. I’ve seen many of his movies in the past, and I’ve loved nearly every one I’ve watched. If you were to ask me to name my favorite director, well, he wouldn’t be number one. But he’d be in the top three for sure. The director is Christopher Nolan. Maybe you’ve heard of him before. He directed The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, and Interstellar, as well as many other critically acclaimed movies. That’s why I was so surprised when I started hearing so much online hate and negativity surrounding his newest movie, The Odyssey. This brings me to a phrase I’d like to explore for today’s episode.
The phrase is: don’t judge a book by its cover. Don’t judge a book by its cover.
Picture yourself standing in a bookstore. Hundreds of books on the shelves, and the only thing you can see is their covers. The cover is the very first thing you notice about a book: the title, the artwork, the colors. It’s designed to catch your eye. But here’s the thing. A cover can’t tell you whether the story inside is any good. A beautiful cover can be wrapped around a boring book, and a plain, forgettable cover can be hiding one of the best stories you’ll ever read. So when we say “don’t judge a book by its cover,” we mean don’t form an opinion about something, or someone, based only on how it looks from the outside. You have to open the book to know what’s really there.
And here’s what’s interesting about this phrase: we almost never use it to talk about actual books. We use it for people, places, and things. Here’s a quick example: I almost didn’t apply for the job because the office building looked so old and run down, but you can’t judge a book by its cover. It turned out to be the best place I’ve ever worked. Notice that it comes in two flavors. As advice, we say “don’t judge a book by its cover.” As an observation, we say “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” Same idea, slightly different use.
Keep that phrase in mind, because today’s story is really one long lesson in why it’s worth remembering.
In this case, the phrase may more aptly be restated as “don’t judge a movie by its trailer.” Almost all of the internet buzz, the outrage, the predictions that this would be Nolan’s worst film ever, seemed to be centered around trailers that were released months before the movie. If you’re unaware of the controversy, that’s okay. I’m not going to delve into the reasons why people were upset here. I think it’s sufficient to say that there were a few things, mostly casting decisions but also some translation and adaptation decisions, that set off some people’s “political messaging” alarms. People can be very sensitive to the themes and messages that are associated with a particular political party. In this case, some loud voices online that tend to be on the political right began widely reporting that Nolan’s new film was going to inject modern left-leaning ideology into a classic story, and suddenly conservatives everywhere were in an uproar.
I’m not here to disparage anyone’s political opinions. If someone thinks that a movie isn’t in line with their personal values, and as such doesn’t want to spend their hard-earned money to support it, that is entirely within their rights. There is, however, one major problem with the whole situation in my opinion. You may have already guessed what it is based on the phrase we talked about. No one had seen the movie yet. Only the trailer.
Last night, I went and saw the movie with my wife and some of her family: her brother and his fiancée, her dad, and her older sister. It was a late evening showing, starting at about 9:00, and it’s a three-hour-long movie. That meant not a lot of sleep for me, since I still needed to wake up at 4:30 to start my first lesson of the day at 5:00. Lately I’ve had the unfortunate tendency to fall asleep in the middle of movies that my wife and I watch together. I wasn’t even a bit drowsy for this one. Three hours went by, and I never once checked the time. That’s about the highest compliment my attention span knows how to give.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, sitting there in the dark, a thought struck me that I hadn’t expected. Of all the stories in the world that people could have judged by a trailer, this might be the most ironic one to choose. Because The Odyssey, the original epic poem that’s nearly three thousand years old, is itself a story about the danger of judging by appearances. For a large part of the tale, Odysseus is in disguise. He finally returns to his own home after twenty years away, and he arrives dressed as a ragged old beggar. Nearly everyone he meets judges him in an instant by what they see. The suitors who have filled his house mock the poor stranger at the door, never imagining who is actually standing in front of them. Meanwhile, the characters who look past the rags and treat the stranger with patience and kindness are the very ones the story rewards. Homer was warning his audience not to judge a book by its cover roughly twenty-seven centuries before English even had books with covers. And here we all were, thousands of years later, judging his story by a two-minute trailer.
I’d like to preface my thoughts by saying that I don’t believe a movie, or any piece of art, can satisfy everyone. We all have our own unique preferences and artistic taste. A movie that I think is a masterpiece might be entirely unenjoyable to you, and a movie that you absolutely love might be strange and confusing for me. So, who would I recommend this movie to? If you’ve seen other Christopher Nolan movies and enjoyed them, if you are happy to watch a three-hour-long epic, if you’re interested in seeing what can be done with on-location filming and practical effects instead of relying heavily on CGI as most modern movies do, and if you want to watch a movie that faithfully adapts much of the source material while making you rethink some of the story’s most famous scenes, then this is a movie you might enjoy. I definitely did.
Now, before we move on, I want to take a closer look at something I did with the phrase don’t judge a book by its cover earlier in the episode. You may not have even noticed it. Near the beginning, I said “don’t judge a movie by its trailer.” Here’s a little secret: that is not a real, established English expression. I made it up on the spot. And yet, every native English speaker who hears it will understand it instantly.
That’s because English speakers love to play with familiar idioms. Once a phrase becomes famous enough, it turns into a kind of template. Don’t judge a book by its cover becomes don’t judge an X by its Y. Don’t judge a restaurant by its parking lot. Don’t judge an album by its cover art. Don’t judge a house by its front yard. The original phrase is so deeply planted in everyone’s mind that we can swap out the pieces, and the meaning still comes through loud and clear.
You’ll see this kind of wordplay everywhere once you start looking for it: in news headlines, in advertisements, in the jokes your coworkers make. And this is one of the understated rewards of learning idioms well. When you truly know the original phrase, you don’t just understand it when someone says it word for word. You understand it when someone bends it, stretches it, or rebuilds it into something new. You’re in on the joke. That, to me, is what real fluency sounds like.
Deciding not to read a book or watch a new movie because of a quick judgment might mean that you miss out on something you would have enjoyed. That’s a genuinely small consequence, and probably not something you need to worry about too much. I know that I’ve passed up on hundreds of books because of a title or a cover that I didn’t find eye-catching. But the consequences of snap judgments can get a bit bigger as we move away from entertainment and into other areas.
People can have a much bigger impact on our lives than the typical book or movie might. A coworker, a classmate, or a neighbor might completely change the direction of your whole life. And people, unlike books, rarely get to design their own covers. The clothes someone can afford, the neighborhood they grew up in, the way they speak: so much of what we judge in the first ten seconds was never chosen at all. Being willing to reconsider my judgments when presented with new information is something that I’m still working on every day. It’s rather difficult to do in a fast-paced world of viral trends and 24-hour news, but I think it’s worth it.
And if you’re listening to this podcast, there’s a good chance you know this feeling from the other side. When you speak a language that isn’t your first language, your accent, your pauses, and your occasional grammar mistakes become your cover. Some people will hear one small mistake and make a snap judgment before you’ve even finished your sentence. I want you to know that those judgments say nothing about who you are, the ideas you carry, or the story inside you. You are not the beggar’s rags. Anyone who takes the time to actually listen, to open the book, will figure that out quickly. And in my experience, the people who are worth knowing are exactly the people who do.
I know that my own cover is not the most impressive. The website, podcast, and YouTube channel are rather plain. But I hope I’m providing you with a helping hand on your English journey. Thank you for not judging this book by its cover.
And with that, my cup is empty. Thanks for joining me for T.E.A. Time. Until the next pot.
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