Did she put on his knowledge with his power?

Elon Musk has been on a racist tirade for many days now about Christopher Nolan’s decision to cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen in his upcoming film version of The Odyssey:

Musk—who was already sharing his outrage about the film reportedly casting Nyong’o back in January—commented “True” on Walsh’s post, then continued with some speculation of his own. “Chris Nolan desecrated the Odyssey so that he would be eligible for an Academy Award,” the Tesla founder said. In another post, he explained his rationale for this ridiculous statement by citing the Oscars’ diversity rules, which were enacted back in 2020. (Those rules don’t actually mandate that a certain number of onscreen roles be played by people of color; they were already in place in 2023, for instance, when Nolan’s nearly all-white Oppenheimer was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won seven. The movie was still eligible at the Oscars due to the diversity of its production staff.)

It continues to be under-appreciated that Trumpism is merely the latest culmination of the white supremacist temper tantrum that is modern right-wing politics in America. Musk’s bizarre obsessions with the supposed “oppression” of white people are of a piece with this.

Something else that isn’t fully appreciated is the misogyny that fuels the same radically reactionary revanchist movement. Even more preposterous than the outrage over casting a non-white woman to play a mythical character are the complaints that the casting is bad because Nyong’o isn’t “really” the most beautiful woman in the world:

Matt Walsh, a podcast host on Ben Shapiro’s struggling Daily Wire, was one of the first to make a racist complaint about the movie’s casting: “Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’ But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave ‘the most beautiful woman’ role to a white woman,” Walsh wrote, echoing the prejudiced attacks commentators have made about other recent blockbusters. “Nolan is technically talented but a coward.”

I don’t think it’s possible to improve on this comment:

In a way, isn’t causing men to crash out before she’s even done anything just proof that Lupita is perfect for Helen of Troy?

I forget who said that the art history of western civilization could be summarized as “men act; women appear.”

I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough’s wife and her leman, O’Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. I am a struggler now at the end of my days. But I will fight for the right till the end.

James Joyce, Ulysses