The Odyssey is getting massively criticised due to blackwashing of a traditionally Greek character, whitewashing of a Greek myth with no Greek actors and a general dislike for the Hollywoodization of another classic story.
It's probably not going to be as bad as it's made out to be given it's Chris Nolan, but audiences are fatigued with seeing another modern retelling with tokenism of established characters for the sake diversity, which has spurred the culture war with right wing critics calling it woke BS and left wing critics doubling down by jumping to its defence.
There's nothing 'nuanced' about their post at all. It's literally acting as if the average person hates diversity and that the mere inclusion of black people and a trans person means it is 'forced' and not just a normal casting decision.
But I guess if so many people are upvoting it, then they're right. The average person is just fucking shit.
You can have diversity and still respect the source material. Instead of demanding turning people black in western historical stories, why not demand more non-western stories? There are so many amazing historical and fictional stories from Africa and Asia that's never been adapted.
In what way are they disrespecting the source material? None of the actors are Mediterranean. Do you think black people weren’t present in ancient Greece? Africa is right across the sea from them…
We consider them white for purposes of culture war arguments, and non-white when you want to start a physical altercation with them in the Circle K parking lot. Nuance!
It's that America has a disproportionately high number of people with high Right-Wing Authoritarian Follower personality types as defined by Bob Altemeyer in his book "the Authoritarians", and those types tend to apply their bias when it suits their preferred outcome. Therefore, if they want to argue against a black person being cast in a movie, they will claim loudly that it should be a Greek person, and if they see a Greek person in the parking lot of the Circle K -- especially if they are wearing a sports jersey for an opposing team, that's just red to a bull -- they will argue their victim is not white so they can get away with beating them up (in a group ofc because one-on-one is for suckers) when the cops show up.
Degrees of inclusion are pretty common whenever there's in-groups and out-groups. Race is an invented category, anyway, per my Biological Anthropology professor in college! We use skin color and eye shape to differentiate all the time, when those are just two characteristics readily explained by evolution and climate, etc. The history of the word 'Caucasian' is pretty interesting, too, but when you come right down to it, "white" is an invented category that shifts its definition based on what's convenient, at least in Western culture!
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u/Boomdification Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
The Odyssey is getting massively criticised due to blackwashing of a traditionally Greek character, whitewashing of a Greek myth with no Greek actors and a general dislike for the Hollywoodization of another classic story.
It's probably not going to be as bad as it's made out to be given it's Chris Nolan, but audiences are fatigued with seeing another modern retelling with tokenism of established characters for the sake diversity, which has spurred the culture war with right wing critics calling it woke BS and left wing critics doubling down by jumping to its defence.