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Furore over Lupita Nyong’o’s Helen in Nolan’s Odyssey is about beauty standards, not Homer

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is the talk of the town, and so is his Helen, Lupita Nyong'o, as armchair classicists argue that Helen of Troy was definitely not Black.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has just been released, but months before it was out, its casting had already acquired the texture of an internet morality play.

There is something deliciously ironic about watching audiences invoke the sanctity of historical accuracy to defend a woman who, according to legend, hatched from an egg.

Casting Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy inspired the predictable chorus: she could not have been dark-skinned. Even Elliot Page’s casting provoked another cycle of outrage. Is he playing Achilles? How can a trans man play the golden boy of Greek mythology? Then, the internet found out he was playing a Greek warrior, Sinon, and yet the indignation remained. Page is, after all, a transperson.

But Zendaya as Athena has generated comparatively little resistance. A reminder that audiences are remarkably flexible about diversity when it is packaged within an already familiar ideal of beauty.  Plus, she is biracial.

All these long-drawn debates regarding the castings have been dressed up as fidelity to Homer. However, it is, in fact, a debate about beauty standards and about who has historically been allowed to embody them.

What would Homer say?

This kerfuffle would have left Homer himself baffled. His Helen belongs to the porous territory where myth and poetry constantly trespass upon each other. His was a world where gods........

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