The Odyssey Is An Anti-Woke Masterpiece

Christopher Nolan is a genius

Hate-watching is a peculiar pleasure. Given the hype and promotion surrounding Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, I thought — perfect. I will watch and wallow in everything that’s wrong with Hollywood and the world. “Achilles is trans?” I muttered to myself in indignation, ordering my $15 popcorn. “The lead actress said what feminist drivel about Homer?” Nolan’s gone woke, I had decided as I took my seat, stewing in silent rage. I bet Zeus is a disabled environmentalist wearing a keffiyeh.

Like the Trojans, I had been fooled. Not only is the film not woke, it is fully anti-woke.

Take trans actress Ellen Page. Rumour had her playing hero Achilles. In fact she plays the minor role of Sinon, a character who’s been deceived and deceives others only to end up in Hades. A perfect analogy for the trans cult.

Ellen Page as Sinon

Nolan is no fool. He knew full well the symbolism of casting a gender-dysphoric woman in the role. Of course he did. Ellen Page puts all her might into appearing male, but fails to transcend the appearance of a lost child. Exactly as her character Sinon is not chosen by fate to be a warrior but tries his best to appear as one. The real question is — does five-foot-one Page know she is being used like this by the director as she heaves her oversized armour?

That is not the only meta-game Nolan plays. Perhaps even more controversy whirls around the casting of Helen of Troy.

“So, Homer, how do you feel about the screen time given to these women considering how little you spent with them?… Like, ‘Hmm? Remember us?’” — Lupita Nyong’o, actress portraying Helen of Troy.

Lupita Nyong’o, of Mexican-Kenyan heritage, made her jab at the patriarchy by going after Homer in a press junket for the film. How dare he not give women more time, she sneered. A painfully shallow understanding of Homer and the classical world, and a cringeworthy exhibition of her progressive ideology. But herein lies Nolan’s genius again. Bear with me…

“I agree that she [Nyong’o] is beautiful, but casting a Black woman to play a White woman in a foundational work of European literature is no more right than casting a White man to play Shaka Zulu!” — Elon Musk

Unlike Musk, to me the controversy is not that she is black, but rather that she is not that beautiful. Certainly not “the most beautiful woman in the world”. As far as unrivalled beauty can be objective, Halle Berry or Sydney Sweeney might have been good proxies. I recall Jesus’ depiction in Ben-Hur, the director opting not to show His face. Nolan’s meta choice here is on par. In fact, in Nolan’s adaptation it is made quite clear that the Trojan War is not inspired by Helen. Her kidnapping is just the pretext.

Lupita Nyong’o as Helen

Owing to the film there is now a public debate about the face that launched a thousand ships. Just as Agamemnon’s troops would undoubtedly have debated at some point in their 10-year-long war.

Beauty, terrible beauty! A deathless goddess — so she strikes our eyes!

Not only is she not that beautiful, the actress’s personality is, on the surface, ugly. These bitter feminist outbursts certainly are. Perfect symbolism for a character whom Homer leaves ambiguous as to whether she was willingly or unwillingly kidnapped to Troy. If unwilling, she is the picture of innocence and the war is just. If willing, she is a villain and the war is an unjust tragedy. Nolan’s choice sits very comfortably with the grand moral of the story (for you to see when you watch the film).

Casting a not-that-attractive woman (inside and out) to play Helen also ridicules the woke inversion of hierarchies. Woke ideology divides people by various lines of arbitrary identity and re-orders them into new hierarchies, with those preferred by the woke at the top and labelled “oppressed”, and those least desirable placed at the bottom and labelled “oppressors”. Nolan’s casting of Helen shows just how preposterous such inversions are. Beauty hierarchies exist, and beautiful people are not oppressors.

Over the last decade politically motivated casting in Hollywood has ruined cinema. Not because audiences care what race the actors are, but because audiences don’t want to be lectured by elites, whether it’s D.C. or Hollywood. And of course the race-swapping has only gone one way. Nolan turns this on its head by using woke identitarianism to portray profound non-woke truths.

The Odyssey’s meta-games ridicule wokeism, but also seem to have exposed some of the puritanical anti-woke crowd, like Musk. While the woke want every film to be a Noah’s Ark of ethnic diversity (if not a complete eradication of white people), the anti-woke are showing some inconsistencies in their own thinking.

Musk complains that Helen is not white, but not that Matt Damon playing Odysseus is not ethnically Greek. I am yet to hear anyone complain that the film is not in the original archaic Greek language. If we are able to suspend disbelief just enough to have the ancient Greek characters speaking modern English, portrayed by Anglo-Irish Americans as they battle a giant Cyclops, why the big fuss if one or two soldiers appear to be Asian?

The film has the false veneer of being politically correct, whilst actually being a classic return-of-the-king/loyal-wife hero’s journey. Nolan’s Trojan horse has fooled a lot of people. Not least woke audiences who may think this is a victory for diversity when hiding within is a masterpiece in storytelling and a portrayal of traditional male and female archetypes. This film is as good as cinema gets. Watch it.

WM