Elon Musk objects to Lupita Nyong’o – is anyone really surprised?

Noted classical historian Elon Musk has weighed in with some strident views on Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation of The Odyssey. And what is it that has got the tech buffoon so riled up? Wearyingly, and predictably, he has taken issue with the casting of a black actor in one of the main roles.

Perhaps Musk is getting bored with all that work getting ready to flog his rocket-making company on the US stock market, and looking for a way to let off steam. And so he decided that the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy was some kind of civilisational affront to western values, and hopped on his social media platform X (now there’s a civilisational affront to western values) to let everyone know about it.

“Chris Nolan,” Musk thundered, “should be ashamed of himself.” He went on to accuse the director of “desecrating Homer!” before concluding that “Chris Nolan has shown contempt for the Greek people.”

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It’s interesting that Musk seems to think the ancient Mediterranean was some kind of “whites-only” enclave, particularly as its entire southern shore happens to consist of, er, Africa.

And there were plenty of north Africans around in the classical world. The mathematician Euclid, for example, whose approach to geometry underpins the formal logical foundations of western thought. No Euclid, no Newton, no space rockets. Elon might want to mull that one for a bit. (He won’t.)

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But perhaps more significantly, if Musk had typed the name “Helen of Troy” into a search engine, he might have discovered that she was in fact the daughter of Zeus. Yes that’s right – Helen was the daughter of the king of the gods, or in other words, she was an entirely mythological character. She was 100% made up.

Which means that here we have the world’s richest man whinging that an actress doesn’t look like the person she’s portraying, when in fact the person she is portraying never existed. Oh dear.