The New Vandals

The right-wing freak out over Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” is old news by now. They hate its casting, mainly the presence of Black and trans actors. They hate what they see as its diminishment of Odysseus into a haunted, reflective hero. And they deride all of this as “historically inaccurate.” Nevermind that The Odyssey is an epic poem of mythology set in the Bronze Age. 

I think it’s helpful to dwell further on these attacks primarily because of how they map onto a racist and male supremacist mythos about the world. Complaints about Nolan’s “Odyssey” are mainly complaints about what does and doesn’t count as Western, as manly, and as heroic art. And those complaints are about maintaining a highly circumscribed and prejudiced boundary of American identity downstream of a facile, vulgar conception of the ancient “West.”

It’s worth stressing—if, somehow, it hasn’t been stressed enough—that many of America’s right-wing nationalists view the United States as a culmination of a fancifully idealized Western culture. That culture flowed from the Greeks and Romans, winding its way through the great European powers to bestow its wisdom on the world through colonialism, imperialism, and the global dominance of the West. For them, it’s a story of the irrepressible greatness of Western man. Take, for example, Matt Walsh’s defense of Christopher Columbus after the White House installed a reconstructed statue of him on its grounds:

Christopher Columbus is the ultimate IQ test. You immediately know that someone is a r--—ed halfwit if they start screeching some nonsense about how Columbus was a genocidal maniac or whatever. Intelligent students of history understand that he is one of the great men of western civilization. This is an awesome move by the White House.

This is standard fare for right-wingers like Walsh. Whatever violence Columbus did was in service of the hallowed mission of spreading Western culture and power. Therefore it is always, already good. Walsh’s bit also evinces the obsession with great man theory that lords over right-wingers today. The history of the West is, for these decidedly unremarkable 21st-century men, a parade of great male figures imposing their will. 

Of course, plenty of impressive and history-defining individuals have existed, but what matters more here is who is seen as capable of making history. It’s certainly not women, and it’s absolutely not non-whites. In fact, these groups operate as destroyers. Women weaken society from within with their empathy—or worse, their unwillingness to settle down and have children. Immigrants attack what the West has built. No, none among these groups are great individuals making their mark. They’re traitors, deviants, and barbarians tearing down what the great Western man had built on his own. 

Take another Walsh post:

Europeans (and eventually Americans) explored the entire world, mapped and charted every ocean and populated landmass, and then when they got bored in the 19th and 20th centuries decided they might as well go up to the North Pole and down to Antarctica and then up to the highest peak on Earth and down to the deepest depths of the ocean, and when all of that was done they went to space. The greatest indictment of our education system is that most kids will graduate grade school and then college without even the slightest appreciation of this absolutely remarkable story. A story totally unique to western civilization. No other people have ever been as hungry to know and understand the world, and as willing to give up everything, including their lives, in the pursuit.

Again, the foundational view here is that Western men, white men, make history—they create, explore, build, invent. Non-whites are destructive and uncultured, lucky to receive Western colonization, and too dangerous to be allowed to immigrate into the countries that once dominated them. It’s pure white supremacy in all its repugnance. 

And this sentiment was echoed in “Odyssey” criticism, with right-wing posters on X deriding Lupita Nyongo’o’s Helen of Troy in viciously racist ways. Nolan’s decision to cast rapper Travis Scott as a bard in the film has come in for similar criticism, such as this post from Outkick’s Jon Root:

Christopher Nolan defends casting rapper Travis Scott to play the power in The Odyssey…

Nothing like a black dude, portraying an Ancient Greek, mumble rapping about the Trojan War & Odysseus’ heroism.

Nolan has claimed oral poetry like this story, is “analogous to rap.”

A Black woman cannot possess the beauty of Helen of Troy! A Black art like rap has no relation to poetry! There is no subtlety here. 

It’s especially telling that all these men see Nolan’s adaptation not only as bad history but as an attack on them and their vaunted culture by women and non-whites. Noted Christian nationalist Andrew Isker directly accused classicists Mary Beard and Emily Wilson, the latter of whom produced the translation of The Odyssey that Nolan adapted, of being out to destroy Western civilization: 

It’s clear Nolan’s Odyssey is a humiliation ritual designed to deconstruct a bedrock of what remains of Western man.

You should ask yourself why they feel the need to do this. Why have Mary Beard and Emily Wilson and their ilk devoted their lives to subverting and destroying these things if the West is already dead and buried?

It is precisely because it is not that they do this.

Western Man is subjugated and comatose. He has had his memory wiped. Yet in his blood, in his bones, and in his soul remains his former glory.

That he still exists is a mortal danger to globohomo. That he could revive at any moment keeps them up at night.

Rather than dismaying over The ODEIyssey, you should take that they think they have to do this as a point of pride.

They must attempt to destroy what has always been ours because it terrifies them. We terrify them. Just by existing.

It’s a febrile bit of paranoia, but the racism and male supremacy come through clearly. Western man, past and present, is to be revered. Nolan’s 21st-century telling of the Odyssey—a brooding and, yes, diverse story of war, loss, and longing—fails to properly worship at that altar. Author and MAGA pugilist Eric Metaxas flatly called it a sacrilege:

The Odyssey is one of the greatest works of literature in history. As a lover of Western Civilization—and as the proud son of a Greek immigrant—I denounce Nolan's sacrilege in perverting this great epic with DEI & trans lunacy. Shame on him & shame on Hollywood.

The men savaging “The Odyssey” are, of course, wrong. Great works of literature can and should be repurposed for their times. We have a long tradition of adapting and retelling old stories in new ways to extract fresh meanings and experiences. Their theory of history is wrong, too. It’s a boorish, vulgar historicism—one that places only white men at the center of the action and discards everything else. It’s nakedly racist, but it’s also hopelessly intellectually inert. 

But getting caught up in correcting their historical and literary facts misses the forest for the trees. The study of history and the craft of mythology are deeply intertwined because our understanding of the past is always about our understanding of ourselves in the present. What matters most here is that we confront an attempt to tell a story that cuts out the vast majority of humanity in favor of a few white men and to make that story the defining truth of the American experience. That is a lie that goes beyond errant history. It’s one that’s meant to shackle millions to a false and degrading inferiority all so these men can sack the riches of human civilization for themselves. 

Featured image is Genserich's Invasion of Rome, by Karl Bryullov