I'm not sure who needs to hear this, but there were black people in ancient Greece IRL. It's not even "woke," just historically accurate!
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2026
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It isn't an issue any more than whether Odysseus had a hairy back or not or what colour hair he had. This entire topic is all a nothing burger.
I hate the word "woke" in general after it deviated from it's intended cause (not by the ones that coined it of course).
However the right wing is very smart is disguising certain things that they pretend to champion and mask it as if they're doing people a favour. A big part of "woke" (even though they can't put it into words) is corporate pandering. Which I don't think the left cares for too much... but that can be stretched to mean anything to be fair. The thing is that some people can THINK they mean: shoving representation to only sell tickets but it can also fit under as hating minorities because they're taking over. It all fits into the same umbrella.
In any case, black people were in ancient Greece just as there were black cowboys. World was more diverse than some think.
Those who make a fuss about about skin tone will never be happy. The binary world they imagine is not the real one. Nolan's choice was brilliant.
I do imagine Athena being more mature than Zendaya though, but we'll see. I've never actually seen her act.
I feel like I hear this argument about casting from every side. If it's done one way it's woke and another way it's white washing. Like 95% of the time I couldn't care less. 5% of the time the casting is extremely distracting from the story which is what I care about. Like hypothetically if someone cast Hitler as an African, Indian, or Chinese person in an otherwise period correct film it would be super distracting. Similarly if someone cast like a white dude as Bruce Lee's character in like a remake of Enter the Dragon and like Kareem Abdul-Jabbars characters like with Peter Dinklage I would have a really tough time paying attention to the film like the original.
Casting most of the time isn't too sensitive for myself, but there are certain conditions where the casting kinda has to be a particular way for the story to work. Like if you have a film. That's supposed to be set in Bejing and everyone is Italian with a thick Italian accent it's just not happening for me.
I remain convinced all casting drama is, from day 1, viral marketing.
SMH
We all know black people weren't invented until 2009 when Barack Obama was born
Fully grown, in a dastardly tan suit, which he used to hypnotise the masses into thinking he was an american born citizen.
But lo! The denizens of Facebook and 4chan have a totally legitimate copy of his Kenyan ~~broth~~ birth certificate, if only the sheeple would just listen to them!
What's next they're going to ban BatFace?
Starring Will Neff as the Woker
What’s next, Cat Woman giving a black woman the role of Helen of Troy in an Elizabethan tragedy?
I'd watch it
Sadly you’ll need to travel to 1950s Paris to watch it performed on stage, but Eartha Kitt would’ve been amazing to see.
Isn't that just a miscast and not a catastrophe?
It’s a myth. No one who matters cares what color the actor’s skin is as long as they do good work portraying the character.
Tell that to Ursula Le Guin when she saw all those white people in the Earthsea adaptations.
Note: There are few characters in the Earthsea books who are white precisely because most fantasy is white.
If you can’t tell the difference between random white people on the internet complaining about a film adaptation of the Odyssey and the author of Earthsea not liking the TV show they made about her books just because they’re both fictional narratives, you might be a bit out of your depth in attempting to critique Le Guin about anything.
I'm not. She's the best and I will defend her to my last breath.
Then I have misunderstood you entirely, and I apologize.
That's partly on me. To be clear, I wanted to point out there are cases where it's a valid complaint, outside of the usual white genocide dipshits. The current "controversy" with Helen is not one of those cases
I might care if the character has a well-defined appearance in the source material and it's important to their character. That's not the case for The Odyssey of course, but there's a steelman version of the argument that has some merit.
I haven’t seen the newest version of this. Which character are they mad about this time around?
Helen of Troy
They're butthurt about Helen of Troy in the new Odyssey movie being a very attractive actress, but not white.
Okay that’s even funnier than I expected, thanks. It’s been awhile, but I don’t remember Helen’s paleness having any particular relevance to the plot.
She was so white her face could blind a thousand ships
It’s a myth.
It's a myth of ancient Greece.
In my opinion the appearance of an actor may be irrelevant for the theatrical piece, but for cinema miscast will damage the overall image.
Bullshit. It’s a modern take on an ancient myth where half the characters are barely described physically. Nothing about people who never existed can be miscast by skin color, unless you’re going to try to tell me that this is meant to be a historical reenactment of, again, events that never happened.
I suppose Charybdis could be miscast if they used a kangaroo, but frankly I haven’t seen the movie and don’t know if that part is even depicted.
Nothing about people who never existed can be miscast by skin color
You're ready to throw ethnological context out of the window?
It seems pretty important to the myth representation.
If seeing a black person in a movie ruins the “myth representation” for you, maybe just skip going to see it. No one’s going to drag you to a theatre and strap you into a chair.
It would be strange to me to see a Caucasian person in a film adaptation of a myth of ancient China or of an African tribe as well.
Maybe skip those too, then ¯_(ツ)_/¯
There isn’t a shortage of movies. I’m willing to bet someone is out there pandering to your preference for historically accurate skin tone in fictional stories where it’s barely described and has no meaning in relation to the plot.
skin tone
Oh come on!