The Daily Signal - Victor Davis Hanson: ‘The Odyssey’ and the Woke Feminists Trying to Rewrite Homer’s Play

Episode Date: July 16, 2026

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey” has been drawing a lot of attention but not necessarily for good reasons.Actress Lupita Nyong’o, set to play Helen of Troy in the film, complained in an interview that Homer didn’t include enough women in his play. In actuality, “The Odyssey” was one of the most pro-women works for its time period. Nolan’s film has also received criticism for its controversial casting choices, including giving the role of the famed Greek mythological warrior Achilles to transgender actor Elliot Page. Nolan’s adaptation releases Friday, July 17. Only time will tell whether the film stayed true to Homer’s vision. 👉Pepperdine School of Public Policy - visit https://go.pepperdine.edu/dailysignal to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take. The Hulu original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus, starring Emmy Rossum. Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. Christopher Nolan, the renowned British director, has a new film coming out.

Everybody's been talking about it. One of the stars, Lupita Nyango, what she said was there was not a sufficient portrayal of women or they were not powerful enough. So, Homer, how do you feel about this screen time given to these women? She admitted she'd never read The Odyssey. How can you go in the United States to a premier college and then get a master's from Yale and not have ever read the Odyssey? There's no literature anywhere in the world at that time that has been more deferential to or more interested in women. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. Christopher Nolan, the renowned British director, has a new film coming out.

another remake of The Odyssey by Homer. It's supposed to come out July 17th. Everybody's been talking about it, not because they know what's in it, or they're trying to guess how he treats this age-old epic, but because one of the stars, Lupita Nyango, and forgive me if I mispronounced her name, has been very vocal that the,

as she views the script and Homer's, work himself, there's a matter of feminism that Homer did not highlight women sufficiently. Homer wrote, The Odyssey, remember, around 700 to 650 BC at the dawn of the Greek city state. It's a second of his two epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and it's a much different, it's a much different epic than the Iliad, which takes place in about 11 weeks on the plain of Troy. This is a panoramic view of the Mediterranean and traces the 20-year odyssey of the hero Odysseus to get back from Troy to the northeastern island off the coast of Greece, Ithaca. What she said was that there was not a sufficient portrayal of women or they were not powerful enough. I couldn't understand that.

I taught the Odyssey for 20 years in English at the California State University system to a variety of students, probably 2,000 students in humanities courses, as well as much smaller number in Greek. And one thing one comes away with that there's no literature anywhere in the world at that time that has been more deferential to or more interested in women. Remember that Odysseus is trying to get home to his palace as king of Ithaca, and his wife Penelope is there for 20 years, and soon the suitors, and these are people who want to marry her for the purposes of expropriating the kingdom, she's got to deal with him. She has no enforcer. The men of Ithaca have all gone with Odysseus to Troy, and they've all been lost, and their families are angry. Everybody's mad at Odysseus. He's not there. The suitors then represent this anger, and they want to take over. One of them, at least does the palace. But she brilliantly puts them off in hopes that someday he'll come back. She weaves every evening and says that when she's done with her shawl, blanket, tapestry, then she'll marry one. Then she onweaves it during the night, and they don't catch on for a long, long time. and she sort of organizes the resistance, or she has loyal servants and people on Ethica that are all waiting for Odysseus to come.

So when he comes, the suitors are in his house, but they haven't taken it over it, thanks to Penelope. He also is waylaid by two supernatural immortals. One is Circe the witch. I guess you call her a witch. She's a sorceress, and she meets Odysseys. and his crew on her own private island. They're very rambunctious her crew is. They're kind of coarse and crew.

They drank. And she turns them into swine, pigs, kind of a commentary on what women think of rowdy men that are empowered like Circe. And then she makes up with Odysseus and tries to help him. She becomes his lover. But the point is that she's not a typical Greek woman of 650 BC. She's very powerful. He meets another woman, Calypso.

He's there on her island for seven years, and she's a divine figure as well, and she makes love with him. She attends to his need. She's very unhappy when the goddess God Hermes tells her that he must leave is now the will of Zeus to go back. But she's also a powerful character, as is the goddess Athena, who is the patron saint of Odysseus. and she makes numerous appearances in the book. And what you get from her is even though she's not quite Zeus, by her wisdom, courage, and influence, she's really one of the two or three most powerful of the gods on Olympus,

and she alone makes it possible for Odysseus to get home. If you look at Helen, Helen is the one that caused supposedly the Trojan War, because she ran off from her husband Menelaus with the kind of, player, Paris, and she's known as the most beautiful woman in the world, the most powerful woman because of her beauty, and she's disrupted the entire course of what would then be mythical history. In actuality, it may be a reminiscent of a Misenian campaign over to the coast of Asia Minor. So there's all sorts of characters in the Odyssey that are female, and they represent all aspects of femininity, from domestic loyalty to self-reliance, to defining your own sexuality,

all of them. There's even monsters such as Skila, the Montser-Skilla, that kind of embodied angry women or the deadly feminine. So there's all aspects. I don't understand why Lupita Nagan Long ago said that she didn't really feel that women were appreciated because then she admitted she'd never read the Odyssey. How can you go in the United States to a premier college and then get a master's from Yale and not have ever read the Odyssey? And if not reading the Odyssey and reading it for the first time, you don't think you would weigh in in advance of the movie to sort of say that women don't play enough role. The other issue very quickly is people were very controversial because she is black, and of course Helen is described by Homer as fair, fair arm, beautiful.

And you get the impression from Homer's description. She's white, as are most of the characters in the Odyssey. The Iliad has the Ethiopians, they're noble. That's a word in Greek, which means sun face, meaning because they're in Africa, they're a little darker. But they're always treated with respect and honor. but people have complained, why are you having a black character play a so-called white rule? That used to be called character appropriation. I don't think it really matters unless the race is central to the character,

or by changing the race or radically the appearance or the nationality or the ethnicity, it changes the intent of the author. Historically, the same thing would be true. So I don't think it would be wise to have a black Abraham Lincoln, nor if you have a bio op of Martin Luther King, to have a white person play Martin Luther King. In the past, people have been criticized. We used to see Charles Bronson, Bert Lancaster, as Indian chiefs. We saw Audrey Hepburn in one Western as playing in Indian. That was always criticized.

Sir Lawrence of Bolivier played Othello, even though he was. not black. But I think people now, the idea is that white characters should not play black characters, but black carriers should play white carriers. It's kind of reminiscent of cultural appropriation. If you're white and you have blonde hair, you probably shouldn't have dreadlocks. If you're black and you want to wear a blonde wig, it's okay. But by and large, we're not going to worry about the color of the actress or actresses, how well these characters appear. on the screen and to what degree they're good or bad actresses next week when we see it. Finally, we're going to, what we all should be happy about is that you actually see a great

work of literature put onto the screen. And we've had other versions. Kirk Douglas was Odysseus and a moving one. We've had a recent one from Italy. One of the things that is a little bit bothersome, this is the national epic of the Greek people. So we've had all of these wonderful Greek actors for years that have been very successful in Hollywood and European film. There's a number of them on the stage. So why in the world, if you really wanted to portray the national epic of Greece, you wouldn't find a Greek Helen or a Greek Penelope?

And I think that's kind of tragic. It would be almost as if a director was making. another version of how the West was won, and there were no Americans in it. There were all Europeans or Africans or Asians, but no American actors, even though that was our past. And so the same thing was true. That would be my only limitation, but I'm suspending judgment, of course, because we haven't seen it. So watch for the issue coming up in the media of cultural appropriation. Can one person of one race play a character of another race, and what is the role of women in the Odyssey?

but these are all peripheral issues. And finishing, the real issue is there's a hero who fought at Troy. He offended the gods. They're trying to punish him. And he wants to get back to his family, his wife, and his son. And it takes him 10 years on the plane of Troy to fight. And when the war is over and he should go home, like most of the Greek heroes, Ajax, Agamemnon, they're waylaid.

Bad things happen to them. They get on the wrong side of the gods. And we have a 10-year Odyssey, and it's brilliantly portrayed through flashbacks. And you're going to meet Cyclops. You're going to meet the Lysregonians, the Lotus Eder, Circe, Calypso, all of these mythical monsters that try to stop him. And they cannot stop Odysseus. He wants to get home, and the suitors and the people of Ithick cannot stop Penelope. she wants to preserve the kingdom and confidence that he will get home.

So in the essence, it's a monumental love story about duty, loyalty, and family. Thank you very much. This is Victor Davis-Hanson for The Daily Signal. America is going through a higher education transformation where students are realizing that what they want and need is a place that doesn't stifle their intellectual freedom. Standing out among the few graduate programs that value viewpoint diversity is Pepperdine's University School of Public Policy, where I've taught the last two years. Their master's of public policy is both applied and practical, preparing the next generation of leaders to participate in government agencies, the business sector, and think tanks.

Pursue your MPP at Pepperdine. Daily signal listeners qualify for an automatic 50 to 75% tuition scholarship and can learn more at go.peperdine. edu slash daily signal it's go dot pepperdine dot edu slash daily signal thank you for tuning in to the daily signal please like share and subscribe to be notified for more content like this and also check out my own website at victorhansson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition