Victor Davis Hanson: ‘The Odyssey’ and the Woke Feminists Trying to Rewrite Homer’s Play

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🗓️ 16 July 2026

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey” has been drawing a lot of attention but not necessarily for good reasons.Actress Lupita Nyong’o, set to play Helen of Troy in the film, complained in an interview that Homer didn’t include enough women in his play. In actuality, “The Odyssey” was one of the most pro-women works for its time period. Nolan’s film has also received criticism for its controversial casting choices, including giving the role of a famed Greek warrior to transgender actor Elliot Page. Nolan’s adaptation releases Friday, July 17. Only time will tell whether the film stayed true to Homer’s vision. 👉Pepperdine School of Public Policy - visit https://go.pepperdine.edu/dailysignal to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent.
0:05.1	Now, without further ado, here's today's take.
0:08.2	Christopher Nolan, the renowned British director, has a new film coming out.
0:12.9	Everybody's been talking about it.
0:14.3	One of the stars, Lupita Nyango, what she said was there was not a sufficient portrayal of women or they were not powerful enough.
0:21.6	So Homer, how do you feel about this screen time given to these women?
0:25.6	She admitted she'd never read the Odyssey.
0:27.6	How can you go in the United States to a premier college and then get a master's from Yale and not have ever read the Odyssey?
0:35.6	There's no literature anywhere in the world at that time
0:39.6	that has been more deferential to or more interested in women.
0:58.3	Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for The Daily Signal.
1:08.1	Christopher Nolan, the renowned British director, has a new film coming out, another remake of The Odyssey by Homer.
1:10.7	It's supposed to come out July 17th. Everybody's been talking about it,
1:12.1	not because they know what's in it, or they're trying to guess how he treats this age-old epic,
1:18.4	but because one of the stars, Lupita Nyango, and forgive me if I mispronounced her name,
1:25.2	has been very vocal that the, as she views the script and Homer's work himself,
1:35.5	there's a matter of feminism that Homer did not highlight women sufficiently.
1:41.2	Homer wrote The Odyssey, remember, around 700 to 650 BC at the dawn of the
1:47.0	Greek city state. It's the second of his two epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and it's a much
1:53.2	different, it's a much different epic than the Iliad, which takes place in about 11 weeks on the
1:59.9	plain of Troy. This is a panoramic view of the Mediterranean and traces the 20-year odyssey of the hero Odysseus to get back from Troy to the northeastern island off the coast of Greece, Ithaca.
2:25.9	What she said was that there was not a sufficient portrayal of women or they were not powerful enough.
	...

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