A diverse “Odyssey” is the triumph of Western civilization
We should want a canon, and that means an inclusive canon.
My ninth-grade history teacher was a bit old-fashioned. She’d taught the class for many years and always referred to it as Western Civilization I rather than its official title World History I, presumably because that was the name when she began teaching it.
Her framing always stuck with me, so much so that I’ve recently been considering a post making the case for bringing back the notion of “Western civilization.” I think a certain old-fashioned and somewhat Whiggish version of history that emphasized the idea that contemporary Americans are the heirs to a kind of specific historical legacy is a useful and constructive idea.1
There’s something of course both arbitrary and false about this kind of historical conceit. But there’s no one true way for nations to narrativize themselves, and this traditional understanding of “the West” has a lot of real value. I was envisioning this as a fairly conservative-inflected take that would, among other things, endorse the Trump administration’s push to get civic buildings to use neo-classical architecture. I’m not a hater of modernist buildings per se, but that design language has a particular meaning that pays homage to the Founders’ conceit that they were acting in the tradition of Athens and early Rome and it’s good to respect that.
Instead, though, I get to give a more libbed-out version of this take because Elon Musk spent much of last week being mad online about the casting of Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming movie, “The Odyssey,” arguing in particular that the decision to cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy reflects the nefarious influence of Academy Award diversity rules.
Musk is factually wrong about the Oscars,2 and I genuinely think the underlying pattern here is one of his worst qualities as a public figure. He likes to mouth off on Twitter (I sympathize), which means he sometimes gets stuff wrong (I also sympathize), but he absolutely never acknowledges error.
Whatever is going on with this movie, it’s not about the Academy Awards. And more broadly, I think we should take a more positive and optimistic view of a racially inclusive “Odyssey.”
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