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‘The Odyssey’ sparks classic duels over race, casting — and fairness

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It’s the controversy that launched a thousand X posts. 

Elon Musk, who is a fan of Homer, has kicked up a fuss by objecting to filmmaker Christopher Nolan casting the black actress Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy in his forthcoming movie version of “The Odyssey.”

The epic production presumably won’t rise or fall based on its depiction of Helen, the legendary beauty who precipitated the Trojan War.

That conflict, after all, is portrayed in “The Iliad” — while “The Odyssey” follows the Greek warrior Odysseus on his return home after the war, a story that doesn’t feature Helen prominently. 

The casting of Nyong’o, though, has raised the perennial question of what Helen looked like, as well as the more pedestrian matter of what the standard should be for actors playing people of a different race or ethnicity (or, these days, gender). 

Helen was a Spartan woman, married to Menelaus, the King of Sparta.

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