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In Business, Entertainment, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 28, 2026 at 12:17 am
Once again, the Right is enraged—this time, at a movie.
And not just any movie—“The Odyssey,” which looks to be the blockbuster hit of the summer.
It’s based on the epic poem, allegedly written by Homer, who lived between the eighth and ninth centuries. And while Homer likely earned nothing from his work, the film version of it opened with an estimated $124.5 million in domestic ticket sales and another $139.6 million from overseas,
Its director, Christopher Nolan, garnered the 2023 Best Picture Oscar for “Oppenheimer.” With a production budget of $250 million, it’s among the most expensive R-rated movies ever made. Universal is spending $125 million to market it.
Christopher Nolan
PhilipRomano, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The movie stars Matt Damon (the “Ryan” in 1998’s “Saving Private Ryan”) as Odysseus, Tom Holland as his son, Telemachus; Anne Hathaway as his long-suffering wife, Penelope; Zendaya as the goddess, Athena; Robert Pattinson as the suitor Antinous and Charlize Theron as the sea nymph Calypso.
So far, so good—for the Right.
But then comes the “controversial” part: Nolan cast Lupita Nyong’o, a black actress, as Helen of Troy and Elliot Page (a “transitioning” actor) as a soldier.
Right-wingers are furious that that a black woman has been cast as Helen.
Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh wrote on X: “Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’ But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave ’the most beautiful woman’ role to a white woman. Nolan is technically talented but a coward.”
Elon Musk charged: “Chris Nolan has lost his integrity.” And he vowed that that before the end of 2026, his AI tool Grok “will make a full-length movie of ‘The Odyssey’ that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
“By historically accurate, he means whiter than Christmas at Cracker Barrel,” comedian Colman Domingo joked during his stint as guest host on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
The Right’s fury can’t be based on the historical record—because the Odyssey is not history, but mythology. And according to ancient Greek myth, Helen was hatched from an egg laid after her mother was visited by Zeus in the form of a swan.
The Helen that Right-wingers envision is a product of Hollywood movie casting.
Troy did exist, and was located in northwestern Anatolia, in present-day Çanakkale province, Turkey. It lay just a few miles south of the Dardanelles strait, which connects the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea. This put the city in a highly strategic position controlling major ancient trade routes.
As a result, the famous Trojan War might well have been fought over conflicts in trade, rather than the alleged seduction/kidnapping of Helen, Queen of Sparta, by Paris, prince of Troy.
On the other hand, wars have been fought over perceived slights to the ego of one ruler by another. In William Shakespeare’s play, Henry V, the French Dauphin mocks Henry by sending him tennis balls, implying that Henry is a callow youth rather than a serious monarch. This leads Henry to invade France.
As for Elliot Page: Transgender surgery did not exist in the time of Homer. But homoerotic relationships certainly did—most famously among Greek soldiers.
Today, Right-wingers like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fear that homosexuals make poor soldiers. But their choice in sex partners did not prevent the army of Alexander the Great from conquering most of the known world of his time.
The truth is that most of what Americans think they know about the ancient world comes not from scholarly books but blockbuster movies—many of them dating back to the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
Among those beliefs:
THE ANCIENT ROMANS SPOKE WITH BRITISH ACCIDENTS. That’s because British actors played Roman aristocrats in so many movies during the 1950s and 1960s.
- Laurence Oliver, Peter Ustinov and Charles Laughton played high-born Romans in “Spartacus” (1960) and Richard Burton and Rex Harrison played them in “Cleopatra” (1963).
- Romans didn’t speak English. They spoke Latin—which at that time was the language of world commerce. Today, it’s not used as a primary mother tongue in any community. A movie whose characters spoke Latin would find itself with an extremely small audience.
Laurence Oliver in “Spartacus”
SPARTANS WERE THE GOOD GUYS. “The 300 Spartans” (1962) and “300” (2006) celebrate the three-day battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans and 6,700 other Greeks held the narrow pass against a huge Persian army. If the Spartans existed today, these films could serve as recruiting advertisements for their skill at war.
So far, so good.
What these films don’t say:
- The Spartans ruled a slave empire whose people farmed the land, supplied food and served as military laborers. Their forced labor gave Spartans the freedom to focus completely on military training.
- Once a year, Spartans were allowed to murder any helot they desired, just to remind their slaves who was boss.
- Spartan men were required to live apart from their wives in all-male barracks—and sneak out to have conjugal visits with their wives.
- Homosexuality played a major role in the lives of Spartans.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog
300 (MOVIE), ACHILLES, AGAMEMNON, ALEXANDER THE GREAT, ALTERNET, AMAZONS, AMERICABLOG, ANNE HATHAWAY, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BEN HUR (MOVIE), BLOOMBERG, BLUESKY, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHARLES LAUGHTON, CHARLIZE THERON, CHARLTON HESTON, CHRISTOPHER NOLAN, CLEOPATRA (MOVIE), CNN, COLMAN DOMINGO, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DAVID AND BATHSHEBA (MOVIE), ELLIOT PAGE, ELON MUSK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, GORDON MITCHELL, GREEK MYTHOLOGY, GREGORY PECK, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HECTOR, HELEN OF TROY, HENRY V (PLAY), HERCULES, HOMER, HOMOSEXUALITY, HUFFINGTON POST, ISRAELITES, JESUS CHRIST, JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!, KINIG OF KINGS (MOVIE), LATIN, LAURENCE OLIVER, MATT DAMON, MATT WALSH, MEDIA MATTERS, MEL GIBSON, MENELAUS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, NBC NEWS, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, ODYSSEUS, OPPENHEIMER (MOVIE), PBS NEWSHOUR, PENELOPE, PETE HEGSETH, PETER USTINOV, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, PRIAM, RAW STORY, REUTERS, REX HARRISON, RICHARD BURTON, SALON, SAMSON AND DELILAH (MOVIE), SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (MOVIE), SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SPARTA, SPARTACUS (MOVIE), SUSAN DEACY, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE 300 SPARTANS (MOVIE), THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE FURY OF ACHILLES (MOVIE), THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE ILIAD, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE ODYSSEY (MOVIE), THE ODYSSEY (POEM), THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (MOVIE), THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (MOVIE), THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TROJAN WAR, TROY, TROY (MOVIE), TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, WOLFGANG PETERSON, X
THE RIGHT’S NEW TARGET: “THE ODYSSEY”–PART ONE (OF TWO)
In Business, Entertainment, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on July 28, 2026 at 12:17 amOnce again, the Right is enraged—this time, at a movie.
And not just any movie—“The Odyssey,” which looks to be the blockbuster hit of the summer.
It’s based on the epic poem, allegedly written by Homer, who lived between the eighth and ninth centuries. And while Homer likely earned nothing from his work, the film version of it opened with an estimated $124.5 million in domestic ticket sales and another $139.6 million from overseas,
Its director, Christopher Nolan, garnered the 2023 Best Picture Oscar for “Oppenheimer.” With a production budget of $250 million, it’s among the most expensive R-rated movies ever made. Universal is spending $125 million to market it.
Christopher Nolan
PhilipRomano, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The movie stars Matt Damon (the “Ryan” in 1998’s “Saving Private Ryan”) as Odysseus, Tom Holland as his son, Telemachus; Anne Hathaway as his long-suffering wife, Penelope; Zendaya as the goddess, Athena; Robert Pattinson as the suitor Antinous and Charlize Theron as the sea nymph Calypso.
So far, so good—for the Right.
But then comes the “controversial” part: Nolan cast Lupita Nyong’o, a black actress, as Helen of Troy and Elliot Page (a “transitioning” actor) as a soldier.
Right-wingers are furious that that a black woman has been cast as Helen.
Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh wrote on X: “Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’ But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave ’the most beautiful woman’ role to a white woman. Nolan is technically talented but a coward.”
Elon Musk charged: “Chris Nolan has lost his integrity.” And he vowed that that before the end of 2026, his AI tool Grok “will make a full-length movie of ‘The Odyssey’ that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
“By historically accurate, he means whiter than Christmas at Cracker Barrel,” comedian Colman Domingo joked during his stint as guest host on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
The Right’s fury can’t be based on the historical record—because the Odyssey is not history, but mythology. And according to ancient Greek myth, Helen was hatched from an egg laid after her mother was visited by Zeus in the form of a swan.
The Helen that Right-wingers envision is a product of Hollywood movie casting.
Troy did exist, and was located in northwestern Anatolia, in present-day Çanakkale province, Turkey. It lay just a few miles south of the Dardanelles strait, which connects the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea. This put the city in a highly strategic position controlling major ancient trade routes.
As a result, the famous Trojan War might well have been fought over conflicts in trade, rather than the alleged seduction/kidnapping of Helen, Queen of Sparta, by Paris, prince of Troy.
On the other hand, wars have been fought over perceived slights to the ego of one ruler by another. In William Shakespeare’s play, Henry V, the French Dauphin mocks Henry by sending him tennis balls, implying that Henry is a callow youth rather than a serious monarch. This leads Henry to invade France.
As for Elliot Page: Transgender surgery did not exist in the time of Homer. But homoerotic relationships certainly did—most famously among Greek soldiers.
Today, Right-wingers like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth fear that homosexuals make poor soldiers. But their choice in sex partners did not prevent the army of Alexander the Great from conquering most of the known world of his time.
The truth is that most of what Americans think they know about the ancient world comes not from scholarly books but blockbuster movies—many of them dating back to the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
Among those beliefs:
THE ANCIENT ROMANS SPOKE WITH BRITISH ACCIDENTS. That’s because British actors played Roman aristocrats in so many movies during the 1950s and 1960s.
Laurence Oliver in “Spartacus”
SPARTANS WERE THE GOOD GUYS. “The 300 Spartans” (1962) and “300” (2006) celebrate the three-day battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans and 6,700 other Greeks held the narrow pass against a huge Persian army. If the Spartans existed today, these films could serve as recruiting advertisements for their skill at war.
So far, so good.
What these films don’t say:
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