The New ‘Odyssey’ Movie Is Sparking a Right-Wing Backlash. This Female Scholar Knows It Well
Key takeaways
- The confirmation of her casting in May kicked off another wave of conniption fits.
- Few people know more about these squabbles than Emily Wilson.
- The dust-up around Wilson’s Odyssey, published in 2017, starts at the beginning.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Still from The Odyssey.Photograph: Universal/Everett Collection Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Who’d have thought Helen of Troy would cause so much trouble?
Earlier this year, certain quarters of the internet spun out at news that Kenyan-Mexican Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o was rumored to appear as the impossibly beautiful Spartan noble Helen—whose face, it was later written, launched a thousand ships—in Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming Hollywood Homeric epic, The Odyssey.
The confirmation of her casting in May kicked off another wave of conniption fits. One YouTuber seemed to seriously suggest that the nation of Greece should file a lawsuit against Nolan. (On what grounds, exactly?) “Helen of Troy” rocketed up the trending topics on X, with the website’s trillionaire owner claiming that Nolan “has lost his integrity” and had “desecrated the Odyssey so that he would be eligible for an Academy Award.” Such a feverish reaction to the idea of a fantastical ancient queen being played by a Black actress has become grimly predictable. History, literature, and even completely made-up myths have become fodder for reactionaries, cranks, and amateur historian content creators with names like @RomanHelmetGuy, all contesting vague ideas of “Western culture.” (@RomanHelmetGuy did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)