It takes very little to set the rightwing nut jobs off into starting a new front in the culture wars, usually over things that are either non-existent or highly unlikely, such as fears that immigrants are eating their pets or that a drug cartels are taking over American city streets or that it was forbidden to say “Merry Christmas” any more.
I find it particularly amusing when right wingers get up in arms when some recounting of stories in films and TV do not conform to their weird ideas of authenticity. It becomes even more ludicrous when the stories are purely fictional so that appeals to history make no sense. Remember the insistence that Santa Claus is white? Or the flap over the live action remake of the Little Mermaid because the title character was a person of color?
The latest silliness involves Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey that has opened to rave reviews and massive box office sales. It is the latest retelling of the Homeric poem and it features actors of color in key roles such as Helen of Troy and a transgender actor in another role. Of course, the whole epic is an obvious myth (the fact that Helen was hatched from an egg that was the product of Zeus transforming himself into a swan and mating with Leda, the queen of Sparta, should have been a clue) but that did not deter these loonies.
I plan to watch the film at some point, simply because the poem is so famous but I have never read it and have only the haziest idea of what it is about and so hope to get at least a superficially better understanding of it. Katherine Kelaidis discusses the deeper history behind the myth.
First, let’s be clear about the relationship of “The Odyssey” to both modern Greek identity and global culture. Because neither history is a straightforward one.
Certainly from the Classical Period — that is, roughly the time of Pericles and Socrates — Greeks understood the Homeric poems as their founding myths. Yet just as the English would discover much later, when elevating “Beowulf” to the status of national epic, there is a problem with placing the oldest existent text in your language at the center of your national identity. Namely, your national (or rather ethnic, in the case of the ancient Greeks) identity is usually much more recent than the first text in your language.
…The Greek claim to Homer is a ultimately a linguistic claim, one which is complicated by the fact that from the time of Alexander the Great, who lived more than 500 years after “The Odyssey” was first written down, the Greek language spread far beyond the eastern Mediterranean, becoming an important lingua franca in the ancient and medieval world. And that was before the Renaissance.
…All of this, though, only works if we believe that the ancient people of the Mediterranean were “white” — a term and concept that would have meant as little to them as “Greek” would have meant to Odysseus. That assumption also obscures another historical irony: The modern inhabitants of the Mediterranean, including the nation-states of Greece and Italy, have not always been seen and treated as “white” — particularly in the United States, at least not in the ways that count most.
…The terms of our debate, weirdly accepted by each side, are flawed. When we encounter a story as ancient as Odysseus’s, we directly encounter the hubris — a favorite sin among the ancient Greeks — of believing that our concerns, categories and even identities are timeless. Instead, the timeless aspects of “The Odyssey,” like those timeless things found in the epics of ancient India and the Hebrew scriptures, are those universal things that defy our changing human categories and that usually defy language altogether: loyalty, desire and the unrelenting need to find ourselves in a place where we belong. All else flows from these things.
When we argue over who can authentically play a woman who hatched from an egg, we miss these more profound — and real — lessons. That might be the best lesson we can take from Homer today.
Of course, publicity hound Elon Musk never misses a chance to get involved in such silliness and he has announced that he will create an AI-generated version of the story that features ‘historically accurate people’, something that is silly on its face when talking about a work of fiction. Maybe he can get Tilly Norwood to play Helen.
Musk is notorious for overpromising and underdelivering. I will be very surprised if his ‘film’ ever sees the light of day.
It’s worth nothing the hypocrisy of those complaining about the Odyssey and the other examples noted above. Leslie Jones shows how the same people are claiming there is no more racism and that they don’t see color: youtube link to the Daily Show video
santa claus should resurrect more serial-killed children, for historical accuracy
oh and the more historically accurate one better not have white marble statues. that shit needs to be eye-searing gonzo colors.
The Odyssey was the first “classic” book I had ever sought out to read. On the Detroit channel 50 Saturday matinee, sometime around 1975, they were showing the 1954 movie, Ulysses.
I was probably told it was an adaptation of The Odyssey, but I remembered there was a book on our shelf of the same name. It was the 1929 translation in prose by George Palmer with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth. I was eight, and it started me reading other classics. It also started my education of painting through the illustrations by Wyeth. Later I inherited my grandfather’s copy of the 1905 edition of William Cullen Bryant’s 1871 translation in verse with Flaxman’s illustrations. I still own both editions, as well as a few more versions I’ve just picked up over the years. I guess it was The Odyssey which started me on my journey as a bibliophile.
As I look over the Wyeth illustrations of very pale, Caucasian, people, I guess I can understand how some people may think all the characters should be white. Odysseys himself is a blond in the Wyeth illustrations. I recognize that Wyeth, and other artists, were painting what they knew or what their editors required. I can’t imagine Thomas Arnold requesting an illustrated Homer with characters which looked non-English. A Welsh Ulysses would have been beyond his ken (let alone an ethnic Greek), even though the prejudicial notions of the wiley character of Welshmen would have fit the character of Ulysses better than the stolid character of an Englishman.
But part of art is to challenge someone’s existing views. Part of art is to show someone something they hadn’t considered. There are actually movies I avoid because I know it will change the way I imagine the setting/characters. Most of the time I can disregard the vision some other person has, for example I will never see Kenneth Branagh (or Peter Ustinov) as Hercule Poirot. David Suchet almost exactly matched what my imagination conjured up for the character, and no other actor before or since has managed that. Similarly with the Jeremy Brett vision of Sherlock Holmes. But in both cases my prejudices were not challenged. I could appreciate the skill and dedication to bringing those characters from the page to the screen, but my view of those characters was not changed by these productions.
As laughable as the Robert Downey Jr. version of Sherlock Holmes was, it didn’t violate canon very much. The books talk about Holmes being an expert in judo, single-stick, and boxing, including entering the ring on occasion. We are so accustomed to the calm, intellectual, Holmes that when media shows Holmes to be athletic and aggressive (which can be justified by canon), we are surprised. The art challenged our expectations. (As an aside, how many people can identify the very famous violin virtuoso and composer mentioned in the Holmes canon? It is a contemporary, and Holmes and Watson are mentioned as spending an afternoon at one of his concerts. What throws people off is that Doyle used a contemporary spelling of his name which is no longer used today. If people want a hint I can mention which short story it was in.)
At some point I will see the Nolan Odyssey. I’ve read multiple translations, I enjoy the story, and the movie versions (including those made for TV), have ranged from poor to atrocious. I hope to not only be entertained, but also to have some of my visions of characters modified. There are characters in the original tale who probably should have a louder voice, especially in relationship to today’s world. I expect Nolan gave those characters their due. I could care less about casting choices, so long as the performances are good. I want to be challenged.
You could look at the box-office success of Nolan’s Odyssey as a gauge of how unpopular right-wing media has become. For all the complaints of historical inaccuracy (for a myth?!?) and poor casting choices, people are going to see it. If only we could channel that desire for entertainment into paying attention to what they are voting for.
@4, flex, I hope you saw it on Bill Kennedy!
The historical accuracy thing is beyond risible. It’s been many years since I read the Odyssey as a teenager, but even then I wasn’t taking the accounts of one-eyed giants, pigs that were formerly sailors, and god-assisted slaughters as the historical record.
I suspect the critics would still be complaining if all the actors were as greek and as dark as Jason Mantzoukas. They would probably call him an ‘Ay-Rab’.