Curmie has written numerous times about variations on the
theme of casting decisions for plays, movies, and television series. In June of 2017, he discussed the controversy
surrounding the Public Theater’s production of Julius Caesar,
in which the title character bore more than passing resemblance to Donald
Trump. In 2021, it was the brouhaha at
the University of Michigan when a Distinguished Professor of Music showed the
Laurence Olivier version of Othello in class. The following spring, Curmie
argued that no, you don’t have to be disabled to play Richard III. In February of ’23, he suggested that obeying
the terms of the rights contract shouldn’t lead to the cancelation of a
production of Waiting for Godot.
In April or 2023, Curmie wrote about the casting of
black-presenting actress Adele James as Cleopatra in
what Netflix would have had us believe was a documentary. And in January of 2025, the topic was the
entirely white-presenting chorus (some of the leads were BIPOC) for a
production of the musical Elf in Sacramento. Oh, and there was a
lengthy comment on a post on Ethics Alarms in 2021 about the casting of black
actress Jodie Turner-Smith as Anne Boleyn; that one was designated a Comment of the Day.
Anyway, here we go again.
Curmie thought that if he wrote about Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film
version of The Odyssey, he’d concentrate on Nolan’s fondness for the controversial
(?) feminist (?) translation of Emily Wilson, which Curmie definitely wants to
read. But he’s going to write instead
about the three (Count ‘em! Three!)
casting decisions that have raised the ire of conservative commentators. Well, there are three that Curmie knows
about; there may be others. The first
and third, chronologically in terms of the brouhaha, are pretty similar and
frankly rather boring: OMG, Nolan cast a black woman (Lupita Nyong’o) as Helen
of Troy (and her sister Clytemnestra) and a black man (rapper Travis Scott) as
a bardic narrator figure! They should
look like the originals, you see. <Sigh.>
Ahem.
First off,
there almost certainly were no real-life originals. Were there Bronze Age places called Troy and Greece? Yes.
Was there a war between the Greeks and Trojans, fought at least
partially at Troy? Perhaps. Were there important (royal) people named
Helen, Odysseus, Agamemnon, etc.?
Unlikely, but possible. Are the
events of The Odyssey (Circe, Scylla and Charybdis, sirens…) even
plausible? Uh, no. Homer, whoever he, she, or they may have been,
either made that stuff up or perhaps inherited some of it from other writers
not lucky enough to have had their works preserved. Oh, and that line the right-wing critics like
to quote about Helen being “the face that launched a thousand ships”? That wasn’t Homer; that was Christopher Marlowe,
over two millennia later. Curmie’s a
theatre historian; he knows this stuff.
Secondly, even assuming that there were real-life historical
figures who served as the basis for Homer’s epic… uh… wouldn’t they be and look…
uh… Greek? As far as Curmie can tell,
there is not a single Greek cast member, or indeed with any Greek forebears. Interesting, that. It may be a bit strong to use the term
“racist” to describe those who see no problem with casting Matt Damon or Anne
Hathaway but get righteously indignant over Lupita Nyong’o or Zendaya, but not
by much. People of Greek heritage who
claim cultural appropriation have more of a point than those who want white
actors only.
Is it a bit too cute for Nolan to justify casting Scott by
suggesting that rappers are the closest thing we have today to the reception of ancient
texts via bardic oral tradition?
Sure. But it’s not a totally
crazy idea, and Curmie, being of the wrong generation and race to fully
appreciate Scott’s work, isn’t going to criticize that casting without as much
as seeing the film.
But all of this leaves the source of peak indignation from
the usual suspects, namely the casting of Elliot (formerly Ellen) Page. There were rumors that Page, at a slender 5’1”, was to play Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors. The response of Newsmax’s Rob Finnerty was predictably assholic: “You might even remember Brad Pitt played Achilles in
a movie 20 years ago, meaning we go from Brad Pitt to a girl who dresses as a
guy who’s five-foot-one, 118 pounds. That’s the person who’s going to be
playing the greatest warrior in history, because to the left, that is normal.
That’s okay.” A little later, he
proclaims that Helen was white. Nothing
to see here; move along.
Others, like the insufferable Elon Musk, also piled on. The problem, though, is that whereas there’s
no legitimate reason to object to Nyong’o’s casting, Page as Achilles is indeed
a bit of a stretch, to say the least. True,
Achilles appears as a ghost (you will recall, Gentle Reader that he was killed by
Paris in The Iliad), and it might be possible to film only close-ups, or in full armor, or with distortions, or whatever. But Elliot
Page would do well to lift a Bronze Age sword, let alone wield one well enough
to defeat Hector one-on-one.
But here, Gentle Reader, is where Curmie urges you to read
his introduction to this topic carefully: “there were rumors” that Page
would play Achilles. As of this writing,
the imdb page for the film lists Page as a cast member, but doesn’t specify a role. There has been no official announcement, but
it is now reported that that Page is expected to play Elpenor,
the youngest member of Odysseus’s crew, who gets drunk and falls off a roof to
his death. He’s the first ghost Odysseus
encounters in the Underworld (Achilles appears later), and causes some angst
because Odysseus had left him unburied. Elpenor,
like Achilles, is a relatively minor character in The Odyssey; either or
both could end up as little more than a cameo… or could be expanded into
something more. We shall see.
When Curmie first read about this controversy, the site he
was reading proclaimed that Page would play Achilles. Even Finnerty introduced his screed by noting
that Page reportedly would be in that role. But human nature being what it is, a rumor
became a report, and the report became a “fact.”
Were he of a cynical or snarky disposition (perish the thought!), Curmie might suggest that Christopher Nolan is not an idiot. Announce that Elliot Page is in the cast. Don’t announce who’s playing Achilles (if indeed the character will actually appear). Maybe even get a minion to accidentally-on-purpose mention that Page was under consideration (leaving out the “for maybe five seconds” part). Result: well, the right-wing critics look like folks who believe articles in The Onion. More importantly, there is a mountain of free publicity: we’re still two months away from the release date, and “The Odyssey” is getting a lot more headlines than anything that’s actually in theaters now. Perhaps, just perhaps, Team Nolan dangled a particularly juicy fake story out there… and Finneran, Musk, et al., rose to the bait.
Curmie suppresses a smirk. Oh, OK, no, he doesn’t.
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