I remember my grandmother saying to me: "I don’t care what they tell you in school, Helen of Troy was Black."
A reminder: this actress has a Master’s in Fine Arts from Yale. And she never read the Odyssey before being offered this role
An excellent discussion with Prof Hanson on one (of many) controversies surrounding Chris Nolan's "The Odyssey".
FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR
Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall
American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness
His website: Victor Davis Hanson The Sword of Perseus
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I remember my grandmother saying to me: "I don’t care what they tell you in school, Helen of Troy was Black."
It is simple to me, if they really believed race swapping should not matter why is Moana live action a Polynesian girl, and not a 6+ foot tall white, blue eyes Nordic woman? Basically, why is it only white characters that get race swapped.
These people think we are stupid, they believe it with the blissful ignorance of their own foolishness.
Helen of Detroit
The Wayne and Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College
Stuff like this makes the studio era look better and better.
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That was excellent! (big fan of VDH here)
What is behind these type movies is the effort to move the standard of beauty away from beautiful Caucasian females to a more non-white standard. By traditional Caucasian female beauty standards, the female playing Helen of Troy is not beautiful at all. One could go to any Podunk Junction hamlet in the United States and find black females much prettier than her.
If we have to stretch our imaginations that far, why not just make it an audio podcast?
Will any Whites ever be shown to live in Wakanda in those Black Panther movies? You know, inventing all that cool tech they have?
We read a then-new and excellent English translation of “The Odyssey” in our first-term Humanities class at MIT.
The central character of the epic is a man. That cannot be changed. A feminist version of “The Odyssey” is no longer “The Odyssey”! Feminist critiques of “The Odyssey” are legitimate, I suppose. But one has to stick to the original, via an excellent English translation of the Greek.
Many of these current commenters on “The Odyssey” would have flunked freshman Humanities at MIT. Since these classes were often taught by Harvard affiliates, they would have flunked it at Harvard, too. Maybe they would do better in 2026, but maybe not.
Socrates: And there are true and false propositions?Case closed.
Hermogenes: To be sure.
Socrates: And a true proposition says that which is, and a false proposition says that which is not?
Hermogenes: Yes; what other answer is possible?
Socrates: Then in a proposition there is a true and false?
Hermogenes: Certainly.
Socrates: But is a proposition true as a whole only, and are the parts untrue?
Hermogenes: No; the parts are true as well as the whole.
Socrates: Would you say the large parts and not the smaller ones, or every part?
Hermogenes: I should say that every part is true.
Socrates: Is a proposition resolvable into any part smaller than a name?
Hermogenes: No; that is the smallest.
Socrates: Then the name is a part of the true proposition?
Hermogenes: Yes