I write this from the ancient land of Homeric heroes, Hellas, better known to the rest of you as Greece. Hellas has given us democracy, philosophy, tragedy, comedy, oligarchy, oratory, and ostracism. We also invented the Olympic Games, in which amateur athletes competed for a laurel wreath, and some died for it during the pankration competition. (It was like MMA but much rougher, and many expired rather than surrender.) Half of Greek males today are called Alexander—after the great king—and many others are named Achilles, in honor of the Homeric warrior who was a figment of the poet’s imagination.
Ironically, I don’t think I have ever met any modern Hellene whose first name is Menelaus. For any of you who watch TikTok instead of reading the classics, Menelaus was the King of Sparta whose wife was Queen Helen, later known as Helen of Troy after her kidnap by the Trojan prince Paris according to this writer—or having fallen for him after being seduced according to most sources, including Hollywood.
Speaking of that saccharine cesspool whose earnestness makes one gag, its latest paraphrase of the classics is casting a black Kenyan actress to play Helen, and the Greeks are up in arms. Are my countrymen racists? Heaven forbid. I’d call them realists who do not tolerate their classics being changed in order to please diversity freaks. Personally I blame director Christopher Nolan, a Brit whom I have never heard of, for having thought it up, knowing it would create a controversy, hence more publicity.
If Lupita Nyong’o, the Kenyan thespian, were beautiful, I would accept her as Helen, keeping in mind that Homer described her as the most beautiful woman on earth. Alas, Lupita is a normal looking female, someone even the blind poet Homer would have disqualified for the role. The goddess Athena is also portrayed by someone of color, Zendaya, a casting decision that is another living example of showmanship as opposed to craftsmanship.
Never mind. The gauzy mythology of the screen wins out every time. But beware of Greeks bearing grievances. A Greek friend put it best: Entertainment is now so debased, we now regard beauty as offensive, and it celebrates crass ignorance. Greek media platforms are busy stating that the movie in question does not include a single Greek. I see their point. The jerk Nolan could have included a Hellene or two for fairness’s sake; we are, after all, 9 million actors in modern Greece.
Basically, director Nolan casts people in order to meet Academy Award diversity requirements. What I don’t understand is why he didn’t cast an all-black crew and be done with it. (After all, another jerk long ago wrote a book claiming that all white people came from Africa, and they got whiter as they went up north.) Elon Musk, a man I greatly admire but have never met, called the director an anti-white racist. That the Brit jerk certainly is. I also think he’s just a cowardly opportunist; that is all.
And it gets better—worse, rather. The trans actor Elliot Page as Greek soldier Sinon, has more of my countrymen reaching for their spears. Mind you, filmmaking is a free-for-all, and paraphrasing the classics is now routine. Helen of Troy had a very small part in the original Iliad and Odyssey. The movies have enlarged it one-hundredfold. Once long ago I was invited to speak in front of around 50 young Brit lawyers. I began by telling them that while we Hellenes were building the Parthenon and writing Greek tragedy, the Brits were scratching their furry parts and eating roots. To their credit, they laughed and laughed, but most of them were already feeling no pain.
A few of them were Americans, too. Two-hundred fifty years, 500, 1,000, is a blink of the eye in Greek history, so a recent article by a British female that modern Greece was cooked up by early 19th century intellectuals sounded insulting. I presume that the writer, one Kate Maltby, must be like a eunuch in a harem, unable to comprehend what the ancients actually came up with, and how we are their direct descendants. Lupita playing Helen does not matter because Helen was fictional. Stating that Greece was cooked up is simply insulting and indicative of the lengths people will go to attract attention.
Again, never mind. In Athens I live directly across the Acropolis, whose marbles is the first thing I see in the distance every morning when I wake up. My father, leaving for war in October 1940, told my weeping mother that it was always like that, since time immemorial, and it was every Greek’s duty to serve and serve well. We’ve had quite a history, and neither the movies or know-nothings can change that fact. I am extremely proud to be Greek.
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