The Grift at the Gate
The Grift Industrial Complex targeted Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey—and got buried.
Three thousand years ago, Homer gave us the face that launched a thousand ships. This weekend, Christopher Nolan gave us the film that launched a million grifts, and he buried them.
His Odyssey opened to $124 million domestically and a whopping $264 million worldwide. The haul does not prove the film is good. It does prove that the seven-month social-media campaign against it face-planted the moment real people bought tickets.
Their indictment ran on three charges. Nolan cast Lupita Nyong’o, a black actress, as Helen of Troy, the legendary beauty of the ancient world. Elliot Page, the transgender star, was said to be playing Achilles, mightiest of the Greek warriors. And Nolan, it was whispered, had built the whole production on a “woke” adaptation of the classic. On these grounds a faction of the online right spent seven months urging America to stay home.
Homeric Heresies
In recent days, an overheated debate has been raging over Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming adaptation of The Odyssey. Much of the controversy has focused on the casting of black actress Lupita Nyong’o in the dual roles of Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra. (Reports that Elliot Page would be playing Achilles appear to be inaccurate.)
This was not merely the work of anonymous cranks. Elon Musk declared that Nolan had “lost his integrity”. Matt Walsh, a man whose idea of valour is exhuming Rosa Parks’ corpse for a beating, called him “a coward”. Lauren Chen, of all people, demanded to know what diversity money lay behind the production. Around them gathered the usual ecosystem of influencers and anonymous accounts, each promising that Western civilisation would render its verdict at the box office.
Much of the noise may not even be organic. Politico reported this week that part of the influencer campaign against the film appears to be financially sponsored.
Americans went anyway, and the charges collapsed on contact with the movie. Nyong’o plays Helen and her sister Clytemnestra for a few minutes of a three-hour epic. Page was never cast as Achilles; the rumor was invented. The “feminist” adaptation amounted to Nolan noting that Emily Wilson’s translation was one of three he read before production. The accusers, it turned out, knew almost nothing about the film, or the tradition they claim to defend.
Honestly grappling with the material was never the point. These personalities and accounts exist to farm grievances and keep conservatives in a permanent crouch, cut off from a shared cultural inheritance and, with it, from our fellow citizens.
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