Posted on 07/16/2026 5:57:29 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Lupita Nyong’o calls Homer’s 'The Odyssey' sexist, but the ancient epic’s women tell a far different story.
Acclaimed British filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s (The Dark Knight, Oppenheimer) newest film, The Odyssey, opens this week in the United States.
But controversy has already surrounded Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s 2,700-year-old epic poem about Odysseus’s 10-year struggle to return home after the Achaian victory in the decade-long Trojan War.
Some of the film’s actresses have suggested that Nolan is offering a more feminist—and long-overdue—take on the ancient poem. Actress Lupita Nyong’o, in particular, has criticized Homer’s purported sexism.
Perhaps her misreading of Homer stems from her admission that, despite receiving degrees from elite Hampshire College and Yale, the 42-year-old actress had never even read the Odyssey until she was cast in the minor dual roles of Helen and her sister Clytemnestra.
The Odyssey was composed orally sometime around 750–700 B.C., contemporaneously with the rise of the Greek city-state. Along with Homer’s other epic, The Iliad, The Odyssey marks the inauguration of Western literature. Over the next three millennia, it came to be recognized as not only the earliest but also one of the most profound works of Western civilization.
Far from being sexist, Homer’s Odyssey offers a timeless and diverse panorama of powerful, independent, and savvy women.
Take Penelope, the wife of Odysseus and queen of Ithaca. Unquestionably loyal to her missing husband, she outsmarts the bloodthirsty suitors who seek to force her into marriage and seize the kingdom through her steadfast courage and cunning.
She confounds them through a series of brilliant ruses, ultimately enabling her husband’s revenge.
Far different, but equally independent and crafty, are the immortal sorceress Circe and the divine nymph Calypso, who both shelter, seduce, and eventually bond with Odysseus. Both ultimately release him to continue his tragic journey
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
“ that the actress had never even read Iliad/Odyssey ... ”
So what?
98% of the critics on this forum haven’t read it
I don’t care what VDH says. Like all the others spewing paragraph after paragraph he hasn’t actually seen the movie. He’s just reacting to trailers, and copping a loud position to get clicks and make money.
Meanwhile I love Greek Mythology. And I love Christopher Nolan. So I was guaranteed to watch the minute it was announced. I think I first heard of it when I went to see The Return, which makes me giggle. I liked The Return.
“ The movie is based on a revisionist and inaccurate translation, hence, the movie cannot help but be revisionist.”
How do you think you know this?
What IS VDH criticisms? He says see the movie first.
LOL! I'm stealing that ;)
“ If I saw this on a plane, I’d still walk out,”
LOL”
Yes. Very cute. The Economist who said this did not see the odyssey. An Ignoramus
It is only the field that he is one of the world’s foremost experts in…that of Greek antiquity. So yes, I trust this point of view on this, especially from the view of a conservative., which he is.
His criticism is muted, as I would expect from a person as civil and gentlemanly as he is.
Too many tongue piercings, rings. Good diction is almost dead.
But he hasn’t seen THE MOVIE. So who cares.
How did you get in to see the Odyssey? It comes out tomorrow
“ How do you think you know this?
Know what? That the translation is revisionist, or that the movie based on an inaccurate, revisionist translation is inevitably revisionist?”
That’s how you get out of answering?
I’ve had better arguments with my 10th grade English students
Her face wouldn’t launch a single ship, much less a thousand.
Neither of you. And neither have I.
So who cares?
I wonder what the left would say if a white actor was cast to play Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a movie.
“ I likely won’t go to see it. I’m expecting it to suck and I generally don’t waste my money funding something that I expect to suck.”
But you’ll take the effort to comment on it
That’s strange
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