Last year, when I learned that Christopher Nolan was adapting Homer’s epic The Odyssey into a film, I got giddy. It’s one of the greatest stories ever told, yet it has never been adapted properly. The 1954 Kirk Douglas film Ulysses was forgettable, and the 1997 TV miniseries starring Armand Assante was plastic.
Nolan’s adaptation promised something grander. This was the filmmaker behind the Batman trilogy, Inception, and Oppenheimer, with Matt Damon reportedly cast in the leading role.
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Unfortunately, the movie is already drawing criticism over both real and imagined casting decisions. (Rumors that Elliot Page would play Achilles are untrue.)
The controversy began after reports confirmed that Helen of Troy — the woman whose beauty sparked a war between Greece and Troy in The Iliad — would be played by Lupita Nyong’o, who is of Kenyan descent.
Critics responded from several directions. Some argued Nyong’o was not sufficiently beautiful for the role. Others claimed Nolan was placating Hollywood’s “woke” diversity regime.
“Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world,’” Matt Walsh said. “But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave ‘the most beautiful woman’ role to a white woman.”
Elon Musk agreed with Walsh and later added that Nolan was chasing “the awards.” The comments quickly sparked accusations of racism. But while many are eager to label Walsh and Musk racist, additional context helps explain the controversy.
First, there is reason to believe race may have influenced Nolan’s casting decision. Films seeking Oscar eligibility must now satisfy the Academy’s “Representation and Inclusion Standards,” which took effect in 2024. So when Musk says Nolan is chasing awards, he is referring to an industry incentive structure. To take home a statute, films must be sufficiently “diverse.”
Second, Nolan has already endured attacks from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) activists. His 2017 film Dunkirk, which depicted the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of British, French, and Allied troops from France in the face of the Nazi advance, was criticized for its “lack of Indian and African faces.” Salon even linked the film to the “resurgence of white nationalism,” tying it to the violence in Charlottesville.
Nolan’s critics framed their objections as concerns about historical accuracy, noting that some troops at Dunkirk came from colonial territories such as Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. More likely, equity champions saw the film as an opportunity to make an example of Nolan for failing to satisfy progressive diversity expectations.
“A vast, all-white production such as Nolan’s Dunkirk is not an accident,” Zoe Williams wrote in The Guardian.
Most people reading this article probably either never heard about the backlash to Dunkirk or have long since forgotten it. But one person almost certainly has not: Christopher Nolan.
To be publicly accused of racism is no small thing. More than twenty years ago, scholar Shelby Steele, author of White Guilt, observed that many Europeans and Americans live in a “terror of the racist stigma.”
The modern DEI movement tapped into that fear, which is part of what made it such a potent and pernicious force.
The Right is correct to reject DEI, an unethical and often illegal system that elevates identity categories over merit and artistic judgment. But in resisting it, the Right risks mirroring the identity-driven politics it condemns. To describe Nyong’o’s casting as “cultural genocide” sounds eerily similar to the rhetoric of the Great Awokening, when activists raged about “cultural appropriation” because white women wore the wrong earrings or hairstyles.
Moreover, some of the criticism has turned nasty. I won’t pretend that Nyong’o would have been my first choice to play Helen of Troy, but she is undeniably talented and beautiful. Describing her as “plebeian,” “nappy,” or mannish is ugly, and calling Nolan “a coward” for casting her is foolish and counterproductive.
Nolan and Nyong’o did not create Hollywood’s diversity standards. They are artists trying to make movies while navigating an industry politicized by diversity zealots, who’ve made making Hollywood less white a moral crusade.
America has a long and complicated history with race, but one of its strengths is its aspiration to treat people as individuals. Slavery and Jim Crow were ultimately rejected because they violated the principle that we are all created equal and deserve to be treated so.
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The Left’s obsession with race essentialism gave us DEI and the Academy’s “Representation and Inclusion Standards.” That ideology must be rejected, not replaced with a different form of race essentialism.
DEI belongs on the ash heap of history. But if critics want to ensure it ends up there, they should focus their fire on the ideology itself and the institutions that perpetuate it — not artists trying to navigate Hollywood’s racial politics.