Can someone explain me the casting controversy around this film?
I've only heard a trans actor was cast as Achilles, which is, if you actually know the Illiad, a choice that absolutely makes sense.
Don't know what the other controversy is about though.
People are mad about a black woman being in a movie set in the Mediterranean, even though we already know that the movie isn't trying to look accurate to the time and place. And frankly, it makes way more sense for a black person to be there than all the pale English and Irish actors that we usually see.
As a Greek, no, it does not make more sense to cast a Sub Saharan African actress to portray an ancient Greek woman simply because of geographical proximity. Ancient Greeks were Mediterranean European people and modern Greeks are their closest cultural and genetic continuity.
Geographical proximity alone does not determine ethnicity or appearance. Greece is geographically closer to Slavic countries than to Central Africa, yet nobody would argue that Greeks are therefore Slavic. By the same logic, Americans being geographically close to Mexico would not automatically make them ethnically Mexican. The argument simply doesn’t hold up.
And to clarify, North Africans and Sub Saharan Africans are not interchangeable populations either, historically or genetically.
People are objecting because they feel that modern media increasingly reshapes historical populations through an American racial lens, often disconnected from the actual historical and regional context.
Ancient Greece was, of course, connected to Africa, the Near East, and many surrounding civilizations through trade and cultural exchange. But acknowledging contact between civilizations is not the same thing as claiming those populations were ethnically identical.
I never said the populations were identical, but it would have been more likely to see someone from East Africa than to see an Irishman in ancient Greece
Actually you said pale English and Irish actors vs black actors, so that implies that you meant greeks are closer to black Africans than pale caucasians
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u/SosseV 13d ago
Can someone explain me the casting controversy around this film? I've only heard a trans actor was cast as Achilles, which is, if you actually know the Illiad, a choice that absolutely makes sense.
Don't know what the other controversy is about though.