Debate over who can play Helen of Troy misses something more interesting: in Homer, she emerges as a rare figure capable of questioning fate, power and her own responsibility.
Elon Musk was deeply unimpressed when Lupita Nyong’o was cast as Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, joining critics who accused the director of ‘race swapping’. The ensuing argument focused almost entirely on whether a black actor could plausibly play an ancient Greek demigod.
But there is something far more interesting about Helen than the colour of her skin.
Helen’s ‘terrible beauty’ that started the Trojan war places her at the centre of the stories of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Yet feminist critics have argued that Helen remains on the margins, defined by the male gaze and blaming herself for eloping with Paris, the wayward son of the king of Troy. This is something the text implies: “bitch that I am, vicious, scheming – to freeze the heart!” Contemporary critics of Nolan’s new film have extended this feminist approach, saying that Helen is diminished, occupying only five minutes of screen time.
To understand Helen this way is to ignore her revolutionary nature. Helen is important because she cannot be contained within feminist readings, nor within the all-enveloping order of gods, fate and the male warrior code of vengeance, duty and honour.
Contrary to popular belief, not everyone thought that Helen was responsible for the destruction of Troy. In fact, Priam, the king of Troy, says to her: “I don’t blame you. I hold the gods to blame. They are the ones who brought this war upon me.” Yet given a reason to blame the gods, Helen demurs and tries to take responsibility for her actions.
If only death had pleased me then, grim earth,
that day I followed your son to Troy,
forsaking my marriage bed, my kinsmen and my child.
This could be framed as a simple case of victim blaming. Or it could be seen as the stirrings of a new form of self-reflection and self-responsibility in Western culture.
In Homer, human agency is very limited for men and women alike. The Iliad focuses on Achilles’ rage, over which he has little control. A telling example occurs when Achilles allows Priam to properly honour his dead son after desecrating Hector’s body. This appears to be the moment in which Achilles exercises some degree of free will, but the text tells us otherwise:
He (Achilles) feared that, overwhelmed by the sight of Hector,
wild with grief, Priam might let his anger flare
and Achilles might fly into fresh rage himself,
cut the old man down and break the laws of Zeus.
This is the normal way of things. Homer’s world is one in which human beings are beholden to the gods and to the emotions, lusts and fears they embody. Helen provides an alternative.
After Aphrodite helps Paris escape from an important battle with Menelaus, Helen is ordered to go to Paris’ room and to lie with him. But Helen resists. Her objection is not simply that she does not want to go. She accuses Aphrodite of deceiving her by asking her to do something that is morally wrong:
Not I, I’ll never go back again. It would be wrong,
disgraceful to share that coward’s bed once more.
Only when Aphrodite threatens her – “Don’t provoke me, wretched, headstrong girl!” – does Helen submit.
What is striking here is not that Helen overcomes the will of the gods – she doesn’t – but that she consciously and independently judges Aphrodite’s command to be morally wrong.
Whereas ‘cunning’ Odysseus focuses on manipulating the external world, Helen develops an inner consciousness of herself as a free moral agent. Odysseus asks, how do I work within these forces and come out on top? Helen asks, what is my responsibility within them?
In The Iliad, Helen’s ability to reflect is connected to her position as a woman outside the heroic centre of a culture dominated by fighting, rage, power and duplicity. This is a man’s world. Achilles rages. Hector fights. Agamemnon commands and Odysseus schemes.
Helen reflects.
Perhaps it is in the margins that reflection and the cultivation of consciousness best occur. Helen is able to see things differently because she does not occupy the heroic centre of Homer’s world.
Judging from Elon Musk and Christopher Nolan’s new film version of The Odyssey, Helen is still known for her looks rather than her insight. But rather than trying to perfectly depict a mythical demigod of ‘terrible beauty’, we would be better served listening to her.
Adrian Rosenfeldt
Dr Adrian Rosenfeldt teaches at Melbourne University. He is a journalist, public speaker and the author of The God Debaters: New Atheist Identity-Making and the Religious Self in the New Millennium (2022). www.adrianrosenfeldt.com