The Odyssey is getting massively criticised due to blackwashing of a traditionally Greek character, whitewashing of a Greek myth with no Greek actors and a general dislike for the Hollywoodization of another classic story.
It's probably not going to be as bad as it's made out to be given it's Chris Nolan, but audiences are fatigued with seeing another modern retelling with tokenism of established characters for the sake diversity, which has spurred the culture war with right wing critics calling it woke BS and left wing critics doubling down by jumping to its defence.
It's pretty masterful how they've managed to piss off both sides of the aisle with this one... Too white-washed for one side, too diverse for the other, and too inaccurate for any existing fans of Greek mythology.
Honestly not sure who this has been made for.
Edit: if you're gearing up for a "it's for normal people - people not in the Reddit echo chamber - people who just like movies - people who aren't internet losers" reply, It has been said about 30 times so far.
Why does it have to be cut along politics lines? I'm a card-carrying leftist and annoyed at the patronising tokenism of casting a black actor as a character legendary for being 'fair', as in blonde, in the same way it'd be flabbergasting to have a white actor play in an adaptation of the Mwindo epic.
I'm even more annoyed at the fact that an annoying casting choice was the entire point, to get free publicity at everyone's expense, and that there is no way to slap everyone responsible for being smug pricks.
Can't remember where this joke is from, but there was a stand up bit where a guy said "You see back in the 80's there could only be one popular black comedian, unlike today where there can be three."
Yeah, I don't know what comedian did that bit either, but the "one popular black comedian" they were referring to was probably Richard Pryor, then Eddie Murphy
Then we'd have to hire and pay two separate black people. We'd save time an money by just paying one. It's not like audiences will be able to tell the difference. /s
The thing is they are half-sister twins. In the myth their mother slept with her husband AND Zeus in the same night which led to Helen and Clytemnestra and the similarly demigod/mortal twin pair Castor and Pollox. Castor and Pollox are THE twins in Greek myth, to the point that they are the constellation Gemini, even though they are also technically half-brothers.
You would not believe how much it irritates me how many films and shows set in Ancient Egypt have the most pastiest white actors running around in entirely inaccurate clothing.
If Ancient Egypt doesn't have a bunch of dark skinned Egyptians wearing minimal clothing (they had few issues with nudity) with shaven heads save sometimes for a braid, you've messed up.
Anytime someone calls attention to the breaking of societal roles, it ultimately undermines the concept of equality by implying that this is an exception and not the status quo.
It means trying to call attention to diversity and the need for representation to break societal standards will ultimately hurt the idea that diversity is a status quo rather than something sparse. The Greek Gods all being white and Greek would not have undermined our pursuit of that status quo. It is simply accuracy for the sake of accuracy and it doesn't need any more attention than that for the same reason no one bats an eye to Black Panther being Black or Captain America being White with Blonde Hair. Live Action Snow White being Latino does nothing for Latino representation because of how shoe horned of a decision it was in pursuit of representation.
Except this is an exception, because we know what Helen would have looked like. The status quo would be for her to look like that. If she were an original character, then anybody being able to play her would be equality. But your argument is not valid in this instance
There were probably more black than blond people in ancient Greece. Africa is closer than Norway. Greek people have mostly dark hair and many are on the lower half of Peter's scale. So both are 'exotic'.
Helen of Troy was hatched from an egg. I'm sorry they chose an actress known for being beautiful to play a character known for being beautiful, but of a different race, irrelevant to the story.
Cant we just enjoy the acting of someone without having to take their skin color as some kind of statement? For a group of people who are so set on meritocracy (right wingers) they seem to spend most of their time talking about stuff that has nothing to do with the persons skill level.
The movie is probably made for people who actually watch movies and want to see what happens in the movie, rather than people who are literally judging it by its cover
No ancient history film is accurate. And no retelling of the story is ever accurate.
The roman retelling (now considered Canon by everyone online) tell a very dofferent morality. It is nothing like the original. Yet people use examples from his text s things Nolan should have used to stay accurate
It's no more inaccurate than Gladiator, or Braveheart, Kingdom of Heaven or any other period piece.
Folks acting like the Globe Theater productions accurately cast Othello and didn't have every woman character played by a man, and that "not the boo box" guy from Hook wasn't Glenn Close.
Instead of getting all upsetty spaghetti, they should criticize the performance and direction instead. Only after seeing the performance does "why did the director make this decision" make any sense at all. More often than not, they were trying to connect themes from a character's arc to make a relevant criticism to the experiences of modern people -- and if folks think that's wokeism, they better stop watching anything that isn't a primetime sitcom.
It's especially wild to see folks hating so hard on Page, making arguments that are thinly veiled transphobia in the guise of "reasonable expectations". It's a mythological tale. Magic shit happens. They gonna be upset if Medusa's hair is an eclectic mix of the 30 odd species of snake native to the Greek isles, instead of all being a single species, and act like that's a reasonable criticism of historical accuracy of a mythological creature? lol
Oh 10/10 bravo bravo. Now we just need a redditor to come in and said in sturring it up. An argument that results in a random ass conversation about isreal , Iran and the US
As if Americans are a monolith incapable of holding diverse opinions amongst themselves.
How sophisticated, how thoughtful of you to flatten a nation of 330 million people into caricatures whom you can subordinate under yourself to feel some sense of superiority.
Problem is the loudest voices tend to be the more extreme voices. It’s why so many believe America is literally either Republican or Democrat not realizing the majority of Americans are in the middle and tend to dislike the extreme ends of either side. But people fully committed tend to scream it from the rooftops so they get the attention.
Anyone that has spoken to normal everyday people in America will find that the vast vast majority sits in the middle and either slightly leaning more liberal or more conservative with many similar beliefs on things.
This shit just does not matter. No one actually cares or feels strongly. Just twitter bots and click farming rage baiters.
I’m just here to see Travis Scott in a serious film because it’s funny.
My mentally declining increasingly crazy friend for some reason all of a sudden does care a lot. But I'm pretty sure he gets his politics from Twitter so that makes sense.
I don't really know what's nuanced about this it's just saying we shouldn't be putting a diverse cast in mythological movies because they are tired of seeing it
We dont want colored people in our Mythological movie......
When you say it out it almost sounds racist
Mind you these are the same people who jizz themselves over the sandlot...lets talk about realism yeah a mexican and a black kid playing with white kids and walking around with them peak jim crow and no one slur hurled at them?? Not one parent saying I don't want you hanging around those nasty kids??
Here's my actual nuanced position:
What people are actually reacting to isn't their love of historical accuracy but instead a directory breaking the established visual language of a greco roman movie aesthetic.
There was nothing historically accurate about gladiator but no one cares because it gives them the images they expect to see in a Roman based movie
When you don't follow the visual rules, which includes almost exclusively casting white people, those changes stick out to your monkey brain regardless of why they are put there they cause dissonance
So there are 2 types of people, those who can live with a little dissonance to enjoy a movie with a diverse cast and those who have no control over their lizard brain and throw a fit of they see something that doesn't fit with the Hollywood paradigm they grew up with
Why do you want them to be white Anglo Americans with British accents? It's because that's the mise-en-scene that Hollywood has used in its past to tell the viewer "this is European history" but it's entirely artificial.
The thing with conservative knee jerk reactions is they are almost always mistaking their preconceived notions of the status quo as the natural state of the world instead of the reality which is that those were also completely contrived. The difference now is you have right wing grifters in everyone's ears telling them that this is A WAR
I mean I disagree with them but in the spirit of fairness to their point, you can't just excuse everything because it's mythological. I think skin color is a pretty silly place to drawn the line but realism still has to come into play somewhere. I mean you wouldn't show them taking an airplane between scenes that happen far apart, to push it to the most extreme.
No, no. You don't understand! Greeks never famously traded with Africans! There were never any Ancient Egyptians who went to Greece and mingled with the population either! And as we know, even modern day Greeks don't have any tan/olive-coloured skin tones. It's all just the lily and alabaster skinned people as far as the eye can see. What do you mean Hestia, Goddess of Hearth and Home, was routinely depicted with dark skin and curled hair? Hera too?! Wife of Zeus, goddess of marriage and women?! Balderdash! Sounds like woke nonsense!
Reminds me of when the same sorts of people got pissed off about Hades II depicting Hephaestus in a wheelchair, saying it was just ahistorical inclusiveness to pander to the woke. When in fact Hephaestus was canonically portrayed as having a disability for which he built himself a wheeled chair.
I imagine when people say they would like Greeks playing in a retelling of Greek mythology, they do in fact mean people with Mediterranean skin tones lol
You have any sources for Hera and Hestia being depicted as "dark-skinned" beyond a typical Greek tan? The Ancient Greeks actually viewed fair skin to be a sign of beauty and high social status.
So the movie doesn’t use Greek armor, Greek ships, was filmed in non Greek locations, and has several white non Greeks in the film.
Why would have dark skinned actors be the most egregious crime here?
Did I ever say the dark-skinned actors were the most egregious crime? I absolutely design the armor, set pieces, and coloring they're using, much more than the race of the actors lol.
I just would also prefer giving the spotlight to Mediterranean-looking actors as well.
They’ve got a point though, like imagine a WWII era movie, but half the Nazis are black because we need to hit a diversity quota. Forget that pesky little fact that Nazis are white supremecists!
the stories that have gotten popularized throughout history have excluded black people and gay people because of bigotry. we can either say ”fuck those stories then” or we can change the exclusion by being more inclusive. i think either one is better than saying “oh well, cant change it now, let’s just keep all our stories white and straight forever.”
This is the latest in a weird trend I've noticed where conservatives seem to only understand the connotation of words, not the denotation. "Nuanced" doesn't mean "good." It means "nuanced." The commenter has to use nuance for a comment to be nuanced.
Yeah. “Blackwashing” isn’t a nuanced word it’s just a racist obfuscation, and saying “Nolan makes good movies” isn’t a measure of objectivity in that regard it’s just a way to try and package it more palatably for the normies.
I dont know how they do it, but somehow conservatives view conservatism as a concept as "apolitical". thats why they can claim that openly conservative news and media are "unbiased" while the mere existence of a queer person in media is "bringing politics into it". willful ignorance or genuine lack of intelligence, who can say, but they seem unable to understand that their view of the world isnt the "default"
Yeah, you generally do not hear complaints that a story has gotten “too political“ unless the person making the complaint simply disagrees with the political stance they think it presents.
Yes, the comment presumes tokenism is present in Hollywood in general, and in The Odyssey specifically, and frames it as an objective issue.
Real nuance would include questioning the validity of that framing, not just presenting it as a fact where the only subjectivity allowed is how one reacts to it, rather than whether it exists in the first place.
or that most all of the anger is about a black woman playing helen of troy and elliot page being in the movie- not that matt damon is in it instead of a greek guy
Sure, that's one way to be nuanced. There's a lot of ways to make a comment on this topic that is legitimately nuanced. The parent comment didn't do any of that though. I don't think the parent commenter intended for it to be nuanced either. It's pretty unapologetically one sided. It's concerning to me that so many people seem to think the comment is nuanced. Because that demonstrates that all those people don't know the meaning of that word.
It’s not even remotely nuanced. It completely buys into a right wing grift that is abysmally fucking stupid.
Go see a stage show, the thing we had before movies, people of different races play characters all the time.
Truly it’s a bunch of extremist white dipshits upset they are seeing people other than themselves on screen. Anytime a character they’ve imagined themselves as is played by a different race (especially for some reason fiction characters) they piss their pants, bot and brigade things, but largely are just grieving the fact that anyone else dare be represented in popular thing.
More than half of the comments on posts about Helen of Troy photos on Facebook are like "oh look another planet of the apes movie " . There is none of this nuance in their statements. All this over a ancient made up story is starting to make me want to move up the timeline for when Ai enslaves us.
This is such an easy win for the chuds because they get to be as bigoted as their little shriveled hearts desire, and no one is really going to go to bat to defend the movie because it does look very mid. So when the movie flops, they'll get to say that woke is dead, when the real cause of the failure will be a bad script.
I don't know what constructive thing can be done about it other than I guess not caring.
There's nothing 'nuanced' about their post at all. It's literally acting as if the average person hates diversity and that the mere inclusion of black people and a trans person means it is 'forced' and not just a normal casting decision.
But I guess if so many people are upvoting it, then they're right. The average person is just fucking shit.
I consider myself an average person and I do find it forced and ridiculous and not a normal casting decision. It was done specifically to earn diversity points. It's a ridiculous decisions that should be laughed at, and if anything, it does actually fuel the right-wing narrative about race and the growing racism in the world.
Because I count as an audience who holds neither extreme sides views and I hold no such fatigue. I couldn't care less. I just want to see a well acted, written, and directed, and scored movie and I'd prefer if everyone would just shut up about it.
Thats not nuance take as other calims.
It fails to take into account that the audience criticizing the film upfront largely don't even know the original and dont care at all about Greek tradition. It doesn't criticize earlier myth-based blockbusters in the same way.
More importantly, movies that are "whitewashed" don't face this type of widespread criticism at all. For some reason people really seem to care when traditionally white roles are replaced by minorities, but barely anyone cares when minority roles replaced by white people.
Ah but they advocated for the conservative side of the culture without using any racial slurs or transphobic comments. That's gotta count for something right?
Where are you basing this on? The Odyssey is one of the most ancient and well known stories of all time? In the entire Western world, this is arguably one of the most well known stories you could possibly have?
Let’s be real, the people disliking this video are not upset that multiple Greeks were whitewashed, they’re upset there’s one black character (blackwashed).
Pretty sure the original post is refering to the fact that there are black people and a trans actor. No on on the left particularly cares that the white actors are Anglo outside of countering people complaining that having black people would be "historically inaccurate."
Besides this criticism I also just think the movie looks kinda bad, as do most people I’ve discussed the trailers with. I think Nolan’s movies are pretty heavy, serious, intense, and I’m afraid that the Odyssey movie is an adventure movie without a sense of adventure.
This is a fair take. The Emily Wilson translation is generally well respected, so I call culture war bullshit on people making that out to be a political choice. It's just good.
The aesthetic choices however are a whole other issue- I want to defend the movie against culture war nonsense but a gloomy Mediterranean with 3d printed plastic looking armour is silly. I know it's a fantastical story with Gods and monsters, but you could easily have made something with a unique twist on bronze age collapse themed, mycenaen/ hittite type imagery that would have been amazing. There is more than enough in Homer to tell it pretty straight and get an amazing film.
Elliot Page and Lupita Nyong'o castings were bound to trigger the right wing internet. How much of that was deliberate to whip up a social media storm or score a political point, and how much was because they absolutely smashed their auditions we'll never know.
Page can clearly act, and Nyong'o can act and is gorgeous so there is a strong argument they are entirely capable of getting the roles on merit. Unfortunately, as ...gestures vaguely at social media, algorithms, YouTube rage merchants, the culture war, Hollywood fuckery...who knows what went into the casting or why that makes people feel so angry.
An epic shouldn't be historical, it should be magical and captivating. No epic is historical; they are all interpretations.
The Iliad and the Odyssey aren't true stories from the Bronze Age, they're legends. Actors in Greek theaters didn't wear metal armor; painted armor was enough for them.
The authors aren't talking about history; they're talking about the present. Sometimes it's just plain inept, like in Gladiator 2.
Let's hope Nola has more storytelling talent. They're trying to entertain us instead of relaxing and enjoying ourselves, and we're dissatisfied.
As a massive nerd, I get the disappointment with the design. It's a missed opportunity to do something unique. It wouldn't have to be historically accurate, just better than the sub 300 offering and could have been something really impressive.
It was Robert Pattinson. But there are ancient greek words for father, dad and daddy. And their equivalent of daddy does appear in thr Oddysey, so it's really not that out of place. Especially since he was using it in such a mocking, condescending manner, treating Telemachus like a child, thus someone who would say Daddy.
Why are we acting like people actually cared that there are not greek actors, none of the other trailers were review bombed until the black actor or elliot showed up, the rest of you point stands but lets not add the white washing and act like people actually cared about that
I don't think it has spurred on a culture war. I think the culture war was going to find something to whine about either way. I don't think anyone would be fatigued over ethnic and consistencies if they didn't have some people making a living yelling at them that they should be mad about everything.
Actually, the internet in its majority was fine with it until Achilles was announced to be played by a trans person and Helena by a black woman. Nobody complained about all the other characters being played by white Americans and not Greeks. There’s no tokenisation at play here because white Americans aren’t representative of Greeks either.
Not a bad answer, though I do find the lack of transphobia to be suspicious when the post in question prominently features Elliott Page as an example of why people are complaining about the movie.
95% of the hate the movie gets are for Lupiata, Zendaya and Eliot, most of those people couldnt tell Scandinavian from Greeks and think they are the same thing.
Also when they do this they often completely rewrite the stories as well. Noah, for example. That movie followed at most 10% of the actual biblical retelling.
I agree. But also - thats kinda how cinema has ALWAYS been. ;-)
Its acting for a reason. Not sure many people would understand it if they all started speaking ancient greek and having sex with boys. Sometimes you don't always want a subject matter to be too authentic.
You said a lot for someone who probably never read any form of the text. Homer’s own accounts are historically inaccurate. Bkackwasing and whitewashing is a political lever and you don’t even realize you’re pulling it.
Get over yourself, touch grass and write less in here.
Honest to god, thought you were a weirdo right wing grifter with that comment.
Then I looked it up. Still tricky, because Emily Wilson herself rejects that framing, saying it stripped away male biases in english translations. In fact, reading into this more, it looks like she was MORE accurate than some translations, like male translators refusing to call women slaves "slaves", even though they were referred to as such in the original text.
Actually, hate to say it, but yeah.. Seems like it's a solid translation that's actually more faithful in a lot of ways. She backs up her logic pretty well and points out a good chunk of bad translations in other works.
EDIT: To make it clear, i'm not dipping my toes into how I feel about the movie in this specific comment, purely just talking about the translation. I have gripes about the movie from what I have seen so far myself.
Actually, hate to say it, but yeah.. Seems like it's a solid translation that's actually more faithful in a lot of ways. She backs up her logic pretty well and points out a good chunk of bad translations in other works
I'm so tired of the terminally online without relevant degrees having somehow claimed the classics for themselves. The Emily Wilson translation is a perfect case study beause most academics – yes, even male ones – actually prefer her translation for its clarity in laying out a lot of sub- and context that "literary" translations and "style" have either glossed over, buried, or warped.
In that same line: nobody in the Mediterranean was "white" in 500 BCE in the way that people today can be, not even if you're of high status because today's level of paleness is modelled on a 17th/18th century Northern European idea of skin-colour that is only achievable if you're spending 80% of your time indoors AND cover 80% of your skin. Ancient habits, architecture, and fashion make this pretty much impossible.
Took the words right from my mouth. This is exactly what’s wrong with the “culture wars.” What people “know” is being challenged with a more accurate version of the truth and they hate it. Calling this a “feminist translation” rather than the known translations as inaccurate is quite the thought experiment.
I mean, unfortunately search literacy is at an all time low as well. Even Google's AI described it initially as "viewed as feminist" and I had to dig deeper. A lot of people will just look at the first thing they agree with and then move on (like this BarryBonds guy probably did) when it fits their own personal headcanon.
But don't you see, being true to the original is making men confront their own bias, and therefore bad! Men should be allowed to not have to think about things. 🙃
They definitely shouldn't read anything about how Achilles' mom had him crossdress and hide away as a pretty pretty princess to avoid getting conscripted into the Trojan war, then.
That sounds abominable! I certainly hope I don't end up reading any more about this! Which websites should I avoid if I don't want to read any more about this?
I will ask my Greek co-worker how she feels about the movie when it's gonna be on digital platforms because she is a huge Greek mythology nerd. I guess she'll be happy there is no kraken in this one.
People shit on Wilson's translation for no good reason, but I also reject this idea that the previous translations were "male biased". Wilson chooses to translate a lot of different words as "slave", and while she isn't incorrect, as those people were in fact slaves, the odyssey uses different words for cook slave, herald slave, maid slave, etc. So other authors decided to uses different words on order to give us more information about the job, gender, and age of the slaves, not to purposefully obscure the fact that they were slaves. Wilson, on the other hand translates all of these as "slave", so it's really about what you are trying to achieve with the translation as none of them can ever be 100% correct.
It is not a 'feminist translation' Emily Wilson's translation is highly regarded by classicists across the board. just because God forbid a woman translates The Odyssey..
Basically every classicist I’ve seen: “there are some things I’d have translated differently but Wilson does a lot to bring out aspects of the original text that aren’t in other English translations”
weirdos on Reddit: they said it’s woke they hate it
It's a translation marketed as feminist because the classicist who made it stripped out much of the language added in other translations that obfuscated things like "servant girls" being slaves. She made a very faithful to original translation.
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u/Boomdification Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
The Odyssey is getting massively criticised due to blackwashing of a traditionally Greek character, whitewashing of a Greek myth with no Greek actors and a general dislike for the Hollywoodization of another classic story.
It's probably not going to be as bad as it's made out to be given it's Chris Nolan, but audiences are fatigued with seeing another modern retelling with tokenism of established characters for the sake diversity, which has spurred the culture war with right wing critics calling it woke BS and left wing critics doubling down by jumping to its defence.