Is Christopher Nolan an 'anti-white racist'? An interpreter of The Odyssey weighs in

[00:00:00][music] [music] >> Christopher Nolan's $250 million film, The Odyssey, [music] was always going to inspire and enrage fans.

[00:00:16]That's what you [music] get when you take on one of the oldest surviving stories in history and refashioning the hero at its center >> [music] >> for your own purposes.

[00:00:26]I'm Samantha Selinger Morris and you're listening to The Morning Edition [music] from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

[00:00:33]Today, Daniel Mendelsohn, editor at large for The New York [music] Review of Books and a translator of The Odyssey, on what Christopher Nolan is trying to tell [music] us with his version and why it's provoked Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr.

[00:00:48]>> [music] >> It's July the 22nd.

[00:00:55]Welcome, Daniel, to the podcast.

[00:00:57]>> Thank you. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:59]>> First up, can you just briefly tell us the story of The Odyssey and then perhaps your reflections on what it is about this epic poem, it's nearly 3,000 years old, that we know, why do we keep coming back to it?

[00:01:11]>> Well, The Odyssey belonged to a vast group of of epic poems, almost all of which have disappeared except for The Iliad and The Odyssey, that treated the Trojan War, it's the run-up to the war, the reasons for the war, the war itself and its aftermath.

[00:01:31]So, it's a story of how the great hero Odysseus, who was famed above all for his trickery, his cleverness, his intellectual power, his way with words, took 10 years to get home after the war was over because he was cursed by the sea god Poseidon.

[00:01:52]And so, we are with him as he either remembers all these incredible things that happened to him on the way home or as we follow him in the final stages of his homecoming journey, which are filled with shipwrecks and encounters with witches and seductresses and monsters and whirlpools and the other half of the story is what's going on at home. He has when he went off to war 20 years ago, he'd left a young wife and a newborn baby. It's now 20 years later. The wife has been holding out hoping that he will come home.

[00:02:27]Meanwhile, there are 108 young men from the island and the surrounding islands who are courting her because they want to now replace the missing Odysseus whom everyone assumes has is MIA or were or dead long dead.

[00:02:46]Once he gets home, he has to get rid of these 108 guys who have been camping out in his castle for the past several years. So, there's a climactic incredible revenge story as well.

[00:03:00]Why does it have eternal appeal?

[00:03:02]Everybody wants a little spice and adventure in their lives, but we also want a home. We want stable relationships, etc. etc. And the Odyssey sort of gives you both of these. It allows us to indulge our fantasies of adventure and encountering new kinds of things, but ultimately it is the story of you know, there's no place like home.

[00:03:28]So, I do think it speaks to something very deep inside of us.

[00:03:32]>> It's quite amazing and you have written that over many years. Uh you know, other poets have taken Odysseus and sort of refashioned him for their own purposes.

[00:03:41]You know, in Dante's Inferno, Odysseus who's called Ulysses is is damned for deceitfulness and madly sails over the edge of the world and then you've written that in the 19th century, Odysseus's perpetual restlessness made him a romantic hero. So, what do you think of how Christopher Nolan has refashioned his hero, and what do you think it tells us about the time that we're living in? You know, perhaps something that Christopher Nolan thinks we need to hear or be reminded of.

[00:04:08]>> Well, certainly. I mean, you know, the Odyssey has made this character available uh to subsequent generations. And no So, Nolan, I'm a big Nolan fan. I've admired a lot of his movies. I think he's a very ingenious uh very ingenious uh filmmaker. So, I was quite excited when I heard he was doing the Odyssey, actually.

[00:04:32]And what he has done is he has taken you know, the hero of the Odyssey. And if you If you've watched Christopher Nolan films, you know that there's a very specific type of hero that he keeps organizing these movies around. You know, tormented, dark men who are haunted by guilt, whether it's Batman in The Dark Knight series or Oppenheimer, you know, men who have great power but feel guilty about it.

[00:05:05]And what what Nolan has done in this film is to turn our charming, clever, seductive, amusing James Bond-ish Odysseus into a guilt-ridden hero. So, the sort of operative theme of the movie is that he's tormented by guilt of about having won the Trojan War and the terrible destruction of Troy that followed the Greek victory, which, as everybody knows even if you haven't read the Odyssey, was made possible by the Trojan Horse.

[00:05:38]That's how the Greeks finally infiltrated the city of Troy. And the Trojan Horse, by the way, was Odysseus's idea, because he's the great trickster.

[00:05:47]So, it is a it is not Homer's Odysseus.

[00:05:52]It is very much of a Christopher Nolan Odysseus.

[00:05:57]>> Do you think that that message is particularly resonant perhaps in this geopolitical climate in which obviously Yeah, well, tell us how.

[00:06:06]>> Well, remember, you know, guilt is a modern notion. The Greeks didn't experience guilt. They experienced what anthropologists call a shame culture.

[00:06:17]So, you acted in a certain way because you didn't want to be shamed by other people in your group, not because you felt an internal sense of guilt, but because this shame was being imposed from outside. So, it's not a very Greek notion, but I do think your point is very well taken. Certainly, this kind of guilt-ridden character is the kind of character we're familiar with.

[00:06:44]And I also do think that Nolan has gotten something very right that is also very much in Homer's Odyssey, which is Odysseus is a loner.

[00:06:58]You know, in the Iliad, the prequel to the Odyssey, it's a it's a war story.

[00:07:02]So, there's a lot of guys and their comrades and they have fights, but they have to get along and blah blah blah.

[00:07:09]This is about one guy trying to make his home through a kind of post-apocalyptic landscape where he doesn't know the rules anymore.

[00:07:19]The other thing that's worth saying is in the Iliad, the gods are all over the place.

[00:07:23]They're in the plot, they're pulling strings, they're hooking up, they're they're on the battlefield, they're fighting with their favorite mortals, they're watching the action. In the Odyssey, they're basically gone.

[00:07:34]Athena sometimes shows up, but otherwise, you really feel that this is a person alone in a sinister landscape where the old rules don't apply anymore.

[00:07:45]And for that reason, I feel it's very modern.

[00:07:49]>> And is I mean is that particularly resonant in the Donald Trump era, do you think?

[00:07:54]>> Well, >> [laughter] >> Daniel, >> know what's I don't know what's resonant in the Donald Trump era.

[00:08:01]>> Well, I get Well, I guess just just hearing what you were speaking of. I >> No, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, oh, to be serious, you know, I mean, I think you know, the old rules don't apply anymore. We're in a strange landscape where we have to figure it out all for ourselves. So, I definitely do think you know, there is I always say there's something kind of post about the Odyssey if that makes sense.

[00:08:23]You know, we're in we're in new territory and we haven't yet figured it out. And in that sense, I do think it speaks to modern times. You know, we're post God knows. We're post everything. You know, the the old order, certainly the global geopolitical order is falling apart. The the order that was put in place after World War II is obviously disintegrating largely thanks to our president. And and certainly the I would say also [music] the the sort of just the way people talk to each other, you know, the rules of civil civil [music] conversation have disappeared. You know, everything is now a free-for-all. And so, I do think we identify with this sense [music] that you get in the Odyssey of this guy doesn't know what the rules are. He's just making [music] it up as he goes along. And that feels very modern, I think.

[00:09:19]>> After the break, >> nobody in a contemporary, [music] you know, version of a Greek Greek classic is going to look anything like these people look like, whether they're black, white, orange, or purple.

[00:09:33]>> [music] >> And so, if the only thing you care about is race, then that just says something about you.

[00:09:47]>> And what about like this theme, I think that runs through the poem and also the movie, which is the sort of obligation that humans have to their fellow humans?

[00:09:56]Do you think that yeah, Christopher Nolan's film perhaps reminds us in this age where obviously there's increasing geopolitical tension, there's two very sizable wars that I guess threatened to become so-called forever wars. I mean, it's obviously a very dark time. Do you think he's reminding us that we have an obligation to our fellow citizens?

[00:10:15]>> Well, yes, there is a lot of talk, and this is something else I admired the film for because it captures something central to the epic.

[00:10:22]There's a lot of talk of what they call Zeus's law.

[00:10:26]So, in the Odyssey, one of the if the most important ethical law of the Odyssey is something that the Greeks called xenia.

[00:10:36]It comes from the word xenos, which means a stranger, but it interestingly also means a guest.

[00:10:43]Because you're supposed to welcome strangers, even if you don't know them, into your home as a guest.

[00:10:50]And in the movie, they call it Zeus's law.

[00:10:54]So, in in ancient Greece, this was a real thing that if somebody showed up on your doorstep, you have to bathe them, feed them, you know, give them something to eat, and only then do you ask who they are.

[00:11:08]You So, this is and it's a reciprocal thing because then if you're ever in their neighborhood, they have to do the same thing for you.

[00:11:15]So, it's a little bit sort of golden rule-ish.

[00:11:18]>> And quite a stark contrast to the immigration policies in your country at the moment, I guess.

[00:11:22]>> Yeah, no, God knows. Yeah.

[00:11:25]And so, Nolan rightly harps on this all through the movie. So, you know, for example, the reason Odysseus A lot of people are shocked by the end of Homer's Odyssey because Odysseus kills all 108 of these suitors who had been pursuing his wife. And the reason he kills them is not because they have offended him personally cuz they've been trying to marry his wife, but because they have violated this principle by entering this guy's house uninvited and eating him out of house and home while he's away. It's a violation of this principle of xenia.

[00:12:05]And And Nolan is onto this and he keeps emphasizing it throughout the film in different ways. So, I think in that sense, it does feel, you know, to connect it to what you were saying before, a little like a reminder of the way that we need to treat each other because, of course, you know, as the Greek knew The Greeks knew, if you don't follow this law, which they held in the highest importance, Zeus himself will punish you.

[00:12:36]And in fact, in this movie, Nolan sort of twists the story a little bit and he makes the It's the Greeks who are guilty of violating this by having sent the Trojan horse into Troy, which they pretended was a gift to the Trojans, but of course contained this deadly ambush. So, Nolan wants that famous story to be seen as a violation of this principle of guest hospitality.

[00:13:09]>> Interesting.

[00:13:10]>> It is interesting, but he he's hip to the fact that this is important in the Odyssey and he's found a way to sort of represent it.

[00:13:18]>> And And I wanted to ask you about something you just wrote. You wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times about something of an outcry which erupted after it was revealed that the incredible actress Lupita Nyong'o would was cast as Helen of Troy. Uh we know that Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr. have both uh lashed out against this amongst others, particularly amongst I guess conservative circles. So I guess tell us a bit about the outcry and what that says if anything, I guess, about the challenges of the time we're living in perhaps.

[00:13:49]>> Yeah, I mean, I think so what happened was you know, over the past year or so Nolan has been dropping teaser trailers and you know, which have then excited tremendous amounts of comment.

[00:14:03]And one of the trailers revealed that as Helen of Troy, who of course is part of this story he cast the Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong'o, who's an Academy Award-winning actress.

[00:14:17]And the you know, the sort of right-wing loonies went crazy and they said it was a desecration of this great Western, you know, work of Western literature and it was, you know, I think Musk said it was pissing on Homer's grave and blah blah blah. There were a lot of ugly racist comments that rose to the surface.

[00:14:40]And it it launched a whole global, you know, online social media sort of firestorm of, you know, pros and cons. People defending Nolan for choosing an African uh uh looking actress to play Helen of Troy, the legendary beauty, and people, you know, hating on him for it.

[00:15:03]As I tried to point out my piece, I mean, it it it First of all, this is 2026. [music] The fact is nobody in a contemporary, you know, version of a Greek classic is going to look anything like these people look like, whether they're black, white, orange, or purple. Uh and so if the only thing you care about is race, then that just says something about you.

[00:15:32]>> Well, Daniel, it has been such a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you so much for your time.

[00:15:36]>> Uh for me, too. Thank you so much.

[00:15:44]>> Today's [music] episode was produced by Chi Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills, [music] and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick.

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