THE ULYSSES WE DESERVE

As with Frankenstein, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and many other timeless literary figures, so it is with Ulysses. Every generation gets the Ulysses it deserves. Writers take what is universal in these creations and add their own contemporary stamp on them.

Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie Odyssey portrays Ulysses as a guilt-ridden war veteran, afflicted with an Hellenic version of PTSD. During the sack of Troy, while his comrades rape and loot, Nolan’s Ulysses, portrayed by a wooden Matt Damon, collapses onto the ground, wracked with remorse.

Nolan’s Ulysses is the spiritual brother of Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Both are destroyers, despairing over the destruction they have wrought.

In Oppenheimer, President Truman meets  Dr. Oppenheimer in the Oval Office, and is repelled by his visitor’s display self-guilt. “Don’t let that crybaby back in here,” he orders, as Oppenheimer is ushered out. Had Nolan visited Homer in Ionia and shown him his script, Homer probably would have said the same thing, though in Greek.  

Homer’s Ulysses was no crybaby, and he required no Calypso to administer psychotherapy. He was made of sterner stuff. The destruction of Troy and the slaughter of its people did not trouble him. Massacres were part of his world. Following the carnage at Troy, Homer’s Ulysses sailed off with 12 ships loaded with loot. He and his men made their first landfall at Ismarus, which they duly sacked, killing the men and taking the women captive.  

Nolan’s Ulysses also differs from those of other, more recent generations. In the 1954 movie Ulysses, Kirk Douglas portrays the character as a happy warrior, almost entirely bereft of guilt because he has lost his memory. The movie was produced in Italy, less than a decade after the Allies’ decisive victory in World War II. The writers had no conception of “endless wars,” the kind with which contemporary writers are all too familiar. It is hardly surprising that Matt Damon and Kirk Douglas portray very different kinds of Ulysses.

The poem Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, represents yet another generation’s particular image of Ulysses. The poem is a sequel to Homer’s epic. It begins where the Odyssey leaves off. Ulysses is home, his throne is restored, the suitors are dead. But there is no living happily ever after for him and his ever-patient, long-suffering wife Penelope. Instead, Tennyson’s hero thinks back fondly of  having “drunk delight of battle” on the plains of Troy, and finds his present situation, “match’d with an aged wife,” unsatisfactory. Rather than rest from travel, he yearns to “drink life to the lees,” to sail beyond the sunset, “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Not to yield to what? The answer may be found in Tennyson’s generation.

Tennyson’s poem, published in 1842, is partly a tribute to his dead friend Arthur Henry Hallam. But it also reflects the spirit of the Victorian Age, when England was in the process of establishing the largest global empire in history. His Ulysses is the type who would sail to Africa and to India, and then would plant the Union Jack on domains over which the sun will never set. This Ulysses will never yield to lethargy.

If every generation gets the Ulysses it deserves, the same holds true for his crew. Therein lies much of the controversy surrounding Nolan’s work.

Nolan’s supporting cast has been compared to the United Colors of Benetton. Eurylochus, Ulysses’s second-in-command is played by Himesh Patel, born of Indian parents. Crew member Anchialus, is played by martial artist Will Yun Lee, born of Korean parents. Helen of Troy is played by Lupita Nyong’o of Kenya, who also plays her twin sister Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon.

The most controversial cast pick has been Elliot Page, born Ellen. Page plays Sinon, a Greek soldier who had a key role in ensuring the success of the Trojan Horse ruse. Sinon does not appear in Homer’s Odyssey or Illiad, but he does appear in Virgil’s Aeneid, the epic poem of Rome. Page, while still Ellen, turned in memorable performances as a woman in Juno and Inception.

As one critic noted, “the characters feel like they were picked by HR instead of Homer.” Another critic noted that every group is represented in this Greek epic except for Greeks.

Perhaps Nolan’s supporting cast, with its racial and gender diversity, is the crew this DEI-oriented generation deserves. If so, that’s unfortunate for the cast members. One of the major problems with the “diversity” metrics which generate such casting decisions is the fact that they stigmatize the supposed beneficiaries.

Critics have accused Nolan of picking his cast to satisfy the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Representation and Inclusion Standards. These Standards establish requirements for consideration for the Best Picture Award.

The accusation is unfair to Nolan and to the actors he selected.

Yes, one of the Academy’s Standards (Onscreen Representation) requires that a film cast at least one of the lead actors or a significant supporting actor be from an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, namely Asian, Hispanic, Black, Indigenous, Native American, Middle Eastern, North African, native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. Alternatively, a film can satisfy this Standard if 30% of all actors in secondary or more minor roles come from two of the following categories: women, L.G.B.T.Q., an underrepresented racial or ethnic group, or those with cognitive or physical disabilities; or if the film’s main story focuses on an underrepresented group.

At a superficial glance, it does appear that Nolan’s casting decisions were an exercise in checking all the right boxes to satisfy the Academy’s Onscreen Representation Standard. But that is only one Standard. There are three others. And a film need only satisfy two of the four Standards to quality for Best Picture consideration.

The other three Standards involve “diversity” among those behind the scenes. The Creative Leadership Standard requires showing that at least two department heads or six crew members are from underrepresented groups, or 30% of the crew is from these groups. The Industry Access Standard requires the film makers to show they are offering paid internships, apprenticeships, or training programs targeting underrepresented groups. And the Audience Development Standard requires representation at the executive level in marketing, publicity, or distribution departments.

Before it produced Nolan’s film, Universal Pictures had already satisfied the Industry Access and Audience Development Standards. That’s two out of four. There was no need for Nolan to check any boxes to satisfy the Onscreen Representation Standard. Even if his cast were entirely white male, The Odyssey still would have qualified for Best Picture consideration.

But that fact has done little to quell the accusations – which highlights a problem with Standards like those of the Academy.

When filmmakers are pressured into casting actors from “underrepresented” groups, suspicion inevitably arises that the actors chosen were selected, not in spite of their status as underrepresented, but because of it. An unfair stigma attaches to their performance.

All of the actors in Nolan’s film turned in stellar performances. That includes Elliot Page, whose casting as the Greek warrior Sinon actually makes physical sense.

In Nolan’s version, Sinon was a little boy when he was conscripted into the Greek army to fight at Troy. The cowardly Antinous was supposed to go, but persuaded Sinon to take his place, with the promise that his wealthy family would financially support Sinon’s servant family. Even after ten years of warfare, the Sinon we see standing next to the Trojan Horse, convincing the Trojans to accept this “gift,” is still a teenager. Some critics were unhappy to see this trans actor playing a Greek warrior. But casting the diminutive Page in the role made sense. Casting an older, sturdier male actor would not have worked. It would have contradicted Nolan’s version of the story, which required a younger, slighter figure.

The Odyssey is rightly considered a foundational text of Western culture. Although it takes place at a certain time in a certain place, its themes and characters are universal. That is why we still read it – and watch movies based on it – 2,700 years after it was written. And as we do so, we accept changes designed to reflect our own certain time and place.  It is a difficult task, involving as it does the preservation of universality while injecting relevance. Engaging in this task produces a different, though not necessarily better, work. Through that process, each generation gets the Ulysses it deserves.

The stigmatizing of the supporting cast members points to a drawback of the kind of affirmative action programs imposed by the Academy’s Representation and Inclusion Standards. They detract from the true merit of the performers by causing us to question how and why they were selected. While our generation may get the Ulysses we deserve, his crewmates, the supposed beneficiaries of such programs, deserve better.