Nolan’s The Odyssey spawned a culture war even before its premiere

Both are quite certainly products of a long-standing poetry recitation culture that has been written down several times.

Of course, Homer has a burial place on the island of Íos, where, especially in antiquity, it was believed and still is believed in the tourism industry that the great poet rests.

The richest man in the world Elon Musk in the X service he owned, perhaps he referred to exactly this cluster of stones when he wrote the director in May Christopher Nolanin peeing on Homer’s grave.

Musk in the front teeth was Nolan’s movie based on the work of Homer, which will be released in cinemas in July The Odyssey -movie.

Not many other right-wing internet commentators have been satisfied with the movie’s casting choices. For example, the role of Helen of Troy, “the most beautiful woman in the ancient world”, is played by a Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong’oand the rapper Travis Scott appears as a Greek bard, i.e. the performer of a poem.

A podcaster known as a provocateur Matt Walsh started the discussion that Musk continued by saying that director Nolan is afraid of being labeled a racist. This is why, according to Walsh, he did not choose a white woman for the role of Helena.

Transgender Elliot Pagen the role was long assumed to be the hero Achilles (or his ghost), but in recent days leaked, a possibly unreliable casting list according to him he would play Odysseus’ cousin Sinon. Uncertainty about Page’s role and its magnitude has not prevented it woke criticism that is raging online from catching wind.

It’s good repeat a little what is being talked about when talking From the Odyssey. Not only is its author ultimately unknown, the characters in the work also represent mythology, not historical sources.

Many antiquarian scholars have criticized the debate because people who don’t know Homer, or to whom his poetry seems to mean nothing, make accusations against the film based on their own flawed understanding of history.

Professor of Antiquities Susan Deacy says In an interview with the BBCthat every age creates its own Homer, and ours is no exception.

His interpretation could be continued: perhaps it belongs inseparably to the antique culture of our time 300-the machismo of men who were passionate about the movie in their youth.

For them, this is Sparta, regardless of the subject and with a big America icing, even though the Greek-speaking cultural circle included hundreds of other city-states.

To mythology based film should still be able to be handled on its own terms.

The legend says that Helena is born from an egg together with her siblings, of whom King Tyndareus’ daughter Klytaimestra is also played by Nyong’o in Nolan’s film.

However, unlike her sister, who was born in an unusual way for mammals, Helena is not human, but the daughter of the supreme god Zeus himself.

He is born with his brother Polydeukes from the same egg, when Zeus in the form of a swan has seduced their mother Leda.

Does it require imagination, or perhaps the lack of it, to suggest that an immortal being spawned from an egg laid by a human woman, conceived by an overgod disguised as a swan, must necessarily be a white-skinned woman by modern standards?

Be that as it may, more serious criticism The Odysseyn solutions have been presented. A journalist with a Greek background Chris Cotonou writes in The Guardianthat there is not a single actor of Greek background in the film, even if there were many good options in Hollywood, Billy Zanesta since.

According to Cotonou, there is a familiar feeling in Greece that Hollywood is looking past, even though a version of the national epic that everyone is familiar with is now being made.