'The Odyssey' provokes outrage from 'woke right'

Who’d have thought an epic poem some 2,700 years old could ignite polemics? The current controversy is about Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of “The Odyssey,” but it also goes back to the original work. And it shows that the reactionary right has taken over from the progressive left as the movement obsessed with petty grievances, racial and gender identities, and “politically correct” art.

The silly outrage began a few months ago with the news that Nolan had cast Kenyan Mexican actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy — a very minor “Odyssey” character — and the rumor that Elliott Page, a transgender actor, plays Achilles. (In fact, Page plays a different character, a young Greek warrior Odysseus sacrifices for a clever scheme.) A swarm of right-wing social media warriors, led by tycoon Elon Musk, denounced the film as an insidious and even “anti-white” conspiracy to subvert Western culture.

Now, the movie has opened to huge box office success, but the battle continues. While many mainstream conservative pundits such as Commentary’s John Podhoretz have praised the film as an epic spectacle imbued with conservative principles — including personal responsibility and the importance of home and family — there’s still a contingent of loud right-wing voices trashing it as a vehicle for “woke” progressivism. Apparently, the “wokeness” — besides the casting of Nyong’o and Page — is in the fact that Odysseus is portrayed as haunted by guilt over the slaughter and pillage of Troy, and the trickery he used to enable the sack of the city is framed as immoral.

Other critics, including conservatives, say that Nolan’s reframing of Homer’s epic is not “woke” but Christian.

The fact is that some elements of Homer’s Bronze Age tale couldn’t be incorporated into a film adaptation in which Odysseus is the hero (even a flawed one) — not today, not 60 years ago.

Every film version, including the 1954 “Ulysses” with Kirk Douglas, alters Odysseus’ slaughter of dozens of trapped, unarmed men who had been carousing in his palace while he was presumed dead and pressuring his wife Penelope to marry one of them. Every version omits the hanging of the disloyal slave women who had consorted with the suitors. Also omitted: the casual mention of Odysseus and his shipmates sacking a city on the way back from war just because it’s there.

One can debate the merits of Nolan’s film. Many people who are not part of the right-wing chorus think that it takes the “guilt-haunted hero” theme too far and that it strips away Odysseus’ wit and bravado.

But the far-right attacks generally target two things that, not long ago, were the core of conservatism: a morality that treasures human life and liberty, based on a combination of Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment values, and the belief that the Western cultural tradition (of which Homer’s epic is a foundational text) belongs to everyone regardless of race or ethnicity. Many of the people up in arms about a Black Helen are openly angry about the supposed theft of white people’s Western heritage.

Those who are not bigots will see that Nolan is helping keep that heritage alive: love the movie or hate it, it has people not only talking about “The Odyssey” but apparently reading it, or at least buying it. In an age when so many lament the decline of reading, that alone deserves gratitude. As for the complainers, if “woke” means “hypersensitive to imaginary offenses,” they certainly deserve to be called “the woke right.”

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a writer for The Bulwark, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.