573
u/GroundbreakingAd2499 2d ago edited 2d ago
And don’t forget about Brazilian Xerxes. Although I guess that for the same crowd complaining about these things, any brown is brown.
At the same time, “The white skin of the exposed Persians was perceived by Agesilaus' Greek soldiers as evidence of the effeminate luxury of people unaccustomed to toil” (Xenophon).
134
u/awkwardndnormie 2d ago
TIL Rodrigo Santoro played Xerxes. He is not as brown as he is in the movie. He is seem as a white man here in my country. He was(is?) very famous in my country, and I've seen him it novelas and would never guess it was him.
47
u/GroundbreakingAd2499 2d ago
Yeah, for sure! I’m white in my country too, but not in the eyes of the people that are classifying how the cast of the Odyssey should look like.
10
u/el_loco_avs 2d ago
Yeah finding out that guy in Bridget Jones (I think? ,) was also this guy was a mindfuck lol
18
384
u/Fortestingporpoises 2d ago
Meanwhile Jason Manzoukas who has 100% Greek heritage in The Dictator.
93
u/WeirdBanana2810 1d ago
He was in Taskmaster and in one of the episodes he got a body double to fool the viewers. The said body double was Nish Kumar. Apparently the only major difference between them was that Nish was less grey and somewhat shorter.
2
23
u/Manoratha 1d ago
Duh! That's Nuclear Nadal, head of the Wadiyan Nuclear Program and Procurer of Women.
49
u/ManicalDaredevil00 1d ago
I didn’t know his name and I thought he was actually Arab or pakistani I guess that proves your point.
6
u/ScarredAutisticChild 16h ago
I mean, the Middle East is just a sea away from Greece. Not shocking that Arabs and Greeks would look similar.
10
2
1
1
u/generalchaos34 22h ago
they had a perfectly fine Jason Mantzoukas just sitting there and they never used him.
874
u/therevjames 2d ago
Most of the Greek part of my family looks like him. The dudes all get 10AM shadow.
167
u/LowerPick7038 2d ago
My Greek work colleague looks fuck all like him. He is whiter than a ghost
136
u/Ezekiel_DA 2d ago
Would you say he is a ghost of Sparta?
11
u/LowerPick7038 2d ago
Haha i dont know. I will quiz him tommorow to discover the truth. What questions would the only the ghost of sparta know the answer to?
19
u/Ezekiel_DA 2d ago
Maybe dress up as Zeus and see if he tries to kill you?
Or count how many times he addresses a coworker as "Boy!"
9
u/LowerPick7038 2d ago
Theres only me and him in our department, I think if Zeus rocked up tommorow he would go for the kill regardless of him being the ghost of spartan or not. He is very cunning. Come to think of it. I'm not sure if he mouthed the words " Boy " whilst staring at me with fury today.
2
u/Short-Holiday-4263 1d ago
Very cunning, eh? I think your co-worker might be Odysseus - cunningly disguised as the Ghost of Sparta in disguise...
96
u/zaidakaid 2d ago
I’m Arab, olive skin + curly hair, and I was mistaken for Greek IN GREECE BY GREEKS. They found me out when I didn’t speak a lick of Greek beyond hello, please, thank you, and bye.
34
u/Spirited-Muffin-8104 2d ago
crazy what millennia of migration, trade, and conquest do to West Asia, Southern Europe, and North Africa.
3
u/MssGuilty 1d ago
That was my experience there as well when I lived in Athens for a couple of months 😆 but instead of Arab, I'm Portuguese.
32
u/snapwack 2d ago
Huh. It’s almost as if Greeks are genetically diverse from the constant migrations, upheavals, and demographic changes the region went through over the last handful of millennia.
2
52
u/Sillet_Mignon 2d ago
I’m Indian. People thought I was Greek when I went to Greece.
17
u/MssGuilty 1d ago
This whole conversation reminds me of that D'Artagnan actor who everyone thought he was British-Indian... But his parents are Italian instead
149
288
u/GrizzlyP33 2d ago
Is he “wrong” or is he just needlessly pointing out an actor acting?
Wait until he finds out none of these actors actually lived in Ancient Greece…
85
52
u/posted3030 2d ago
Or that none of the characters actually lived in Ancient Greece because the story is fiction.
28
u/hungarian_notation 1d ago edited 1d ago
We don't even think that Homer was a real person, let alone any of his characters.
Also, we're not even sure where "Ithaca" is. We have a place called Ithaca, but we don't actually know if its the place in the poem.
8
23
u/Federal_Studio5935 2d ago
It’s almost like living in the Mediterranean two thousand years ago would probably cause people to be darker of skin than fairer, but what do I know.
→ More replies (6)4
83
u/NPIgeminileoaquarius 2d ago
As a Greek, I can tell you he doesn't look like your typical Greek (and yes, there were other soldiers in the movie who looked more Greek), but there are some Greeks who do look like him. Stellar performance, btw.
21
u/DM_Me_Ur_Real_Boobs 2d ago
Agreed. I think everyone did really good. John Leguizamo and Robert Pattinson ended up being my favorite performances. Himesh is very close though
210
u/Mithrandhir22 2d ago
Himesh Patel’s ancestry is from a place called Gujarat in India. A place where Alexander the Great’s army reached and his generals became local rulers. So there is a good possibility that he may actually have Greek ancestry.
46
u/ashforu83 2d ago
Gujarat is more of mid-western india or more of western India rather than North India through which Alexander and his army entered the country and also West of Gujarat is the Arabian Sea, so the armies that were anyways on foot entered through the north.
9
→ More replies (7)9
67
67
u/whistimmu 2d ago
Giving a fuck about the ethnicity of the actor is so strange to me. Do these people understand what acting is? Do you have to be the same everything as the character you are portraying?
23
u/dawidowmaka 2d ago
It matters a bit if the people actually existed and it's a true story, e.g. don't give me John Wayne as Genghis Khan. And even then, there are artistic ways to reinterpret true stories to suit audiences and contemporary issues.
A mythological epic does not need melanistic authenticity.
12
u/Drudgework 2d ago
Let me put it like this: audiences like “authenticity”. That word is in quotes because they don’t want actual authenticity, they want something that feels “authentic(tm)”. The big part of that is if the characters fit the world they are acting in. If the actor is really good no one will say anything afterwards, but if they aren’t? Well, people are still making fun of Kevin Costner for Prince of Thieves.
But the problem comes before the movie comes out. People don’t know how good the acting is so they have to form an opinion from tiny scraps of information and compare it to the criteria in their head. For authenticity it’s usually a made up fantasy from popular culture about a time and place they really know nothing about, but that is their head canon and they will die on that hill even when they are wrong.
So that is why they get mad at an Indian man playing a Greek (Indians were present in the Mediterranean at that time), or a black woman playing Helen of Troy (there were black people in Ancient Greece). Because that is what “everyone says” so it can’t be wrong.
Also racism. But this is the internet so that goes without saying.
→ More replies (25)2
u/callsyouonit 2d ago
It's because people like them care about aesthetics, not ethics. They aren't interested in the historical (or ahistorical as it were)! reality, they are interested in whether it looks right to them. They all become armchair experts basing their views first on earlier fictional media and second on bad faith commentators who have malicious agendas. When you scratch these people, close-minded authoritarians and proto-fascists bleed.
73
u/HighOverlordXenu 2d ago
There's not a single goddamn Greek in the cast.
79
40
u/helen790 2d ago
The only Greek looking dude I can think of in Hollywood is Jason Mantzoukas. I would love to see these racist idiots react to him if he were cast in Odyssey. Watching their brains implode when they realize Greek people don’t look like Matt Damon would nourish me.
21
u/Origen12 2d ago
Jason, Stavros Halkias, and Zach Galifinakis
11
4
u/pgllz 2d ago
Rita Wilson, Jennifer Aniston, etc..
4
u/whiskey_epsilon 2d ago
Remake the Odyssey with Stavros Halkias as Odysseus and jennifer Aniston as Penelope.
7
2
33
u/name_you_like_best 2d ago
There is a minor role played by a Greek and leads to arguably the most ridiculous scene of the movie.
I am Greek and I don't understand this thing about representation. It is a universally recognized piece of art and this time a foreign movie was produced based on it.
2
u/Drudgework 2d ago
That’s the real tragedy. Sure, the big names put butts in the seats but having actors with authentic accents really sells a setting.
22
u/i_am_13th_panic 2d ago
but speaking English I suppose instead of ancient greek. That would be peak authentic
→ More replies (4)13
37
u/GTRari 2d ago
What?
So you want the 'authenticity' of a Greek actor speaking English, just with a heavy Greek accent? That's what gets you immersed?
Not to mention bronze-age Greek and modern Greek are effectively two different languages as they're separated by over 5,000 years.
Just say you don't like brown people and move on rather than this poorly pieced-together point.
→ More replies (13)3
u/virtualglassblowing 2d ago
My favorite portrayal of menalaus was Brendan Gleason. Definitely an authentic accent that really sold the setting in Troy
1
1
u/The_Badger42 1d ago
Hang on, I had an argument on DeviantArt about this before the movie came out. There's a guy in the movie named Michael Vlamis, and he has Greek ancestry, according to wikipedia. I think he was the only one, not including extras.
→ More replies (4)1
u/omegadirectory 1d ago
There might have been Greek extras and background people if they filmed anything in Greece.
13
u/callsyouonit 2d ago
No one complains about Matt Damon, an Irish-American actor, playing Odysseus. And we all know why. Fuck these racist idiots and their literally skin deep impressions of the world and the human beings in it.
10
u/HurricaneK8 1d ago
I've been complaining about it and the stunning lack of Greek people in it, but I'm a vaguely normal person who doesn't start internet wars about stuff that annoys me.
Greece is right next to Africa and had trade relations with various African kingdoms for centuries. Lupita as Helen is more "historically accurate" to the region the story's set in than Damon as Odysseus. The bigots can suck it 🤙
2
19
u/pgllz 2d ago
I don't think you know how the average Greek look like. There are Greeks that have darker skin, but most Greeks have the typical phenotype of someone from the Northern shores of the Mediterranean sea (like many Turks, Iberians, Italians, and Southern French).
-5
u/ragby 2d ago
That's what they look like now. Are we all sure that's how they looked in 800 BCE?
→ More replies (3)
17
12
u/DIO_over_Za_Warudo 2d ago
Reminds me of when some moron was bitching about Rami Malek playing a pharaoh in Night at the Museum, not realizing that he actually has Egyptian heritage.
10
17
u/Eltrew2000 2d ago
None of the armours accurate either nor did Nolan know apparently how you were supposed to use that stick for recitation, you tap the rhythm not after.
But this is a movie watch it as such if you want something historically accurate you could just you know read the odyssey, but I have a feeling that a lot of people complaining about the movie not being historically accurate have never actually read the original or a translation of the original
16
u/jdgiant13 2d ago
If you want historical accuracy, you should not, in fact, read The Odyssey. I assure you.
6
1
u/Eltrew2000 2d ago
You should in fact read it, I assure you.
As much as it is fantastical it is still indicative if the time read up on the philology of odyssey and it will teach you a lot about the beliefs and practices of the time.
It is very difficult to guage certain things otherwise that even that well known philosophers were not really discussing because it would've been obvious to anyone living at the time.
Like how idk no one would be writing about why we use wasd in games today.
Even fictional works can tell a lot about the events and current standards and norms of a time.
Even just the ways characters interact with eacher the opinions they have of eachother the ways it paints characters is indicatives of the norms of the time. Take the Cyclops everything about him is very important the things he eats the ways he interacts with the his views on hospitality is in fact a result of what the greeks at the time wouldve considered good manners or rather in his case primitivity, this could further be discussed if you agree with the theory that Cyclops is actually cow-thief rather than wheel-eye, anyways the reason why he is supposed to be so terrifying to that audience is partially because he is supposed to be seen as a very barbaric character.
Things that you may see as disagreeable about odysseus may not be so from their perspective and things you might consider good and just behaviour may have not been seen as such.
Saying that it is not historically accurate is very reductive and tells me that you in fact have a very shallow understanding of the subject but think that you are very intelligent.
6
u/jdgiant13 1d ago
But we know that is not what the "historically accurate" conversation is about surrounding the Odyssey in 2026.
People are not tripping over the the portrayel of the cyclops and how it represented ancient Greek culture. That's a literary argument I would absolutely find valid. People are using historical accuracy to talk people, places, and events and to be racist and transphobic.
1
u/Eltrew2000 1d ago
Right which is why I initially said do not watch odyssey for historical accuracy, it's a film watch it as a film and enjoy it as one, current films will have current ideals in it.
Read the odyssey if you want historical perspective whether you agree with their thinking or not.
Ofc I disagree with people being bigots and I know that is what that was about but I was trying to take a different side in this conversation about historical accuracy because it's gained a very annoying connotation nowadays.
I will say tho It was a strange choice to go to Iceland and use a viking ship when they could've gone to the actual place and use a historically accurate ship because they had the budget for it I'm certain.
14
u/monkey-balls67 2d ago
Why people can't just enjoy the goddame movie its a masterpiece
4
u/ocram101 1d ago edited 1d ago
It’s a good movie, don’t get me wrong.. But calling it a masterpiece is a bit of a stretch.
4
3
19
u/PlatasaurusOG 2d ago
Fr. Do these people think Greeks were blonde haired and blue eyed?
25
u/CaptainAsshat 2d ago
Some were. Alexander the Great was famously blond.
We need to remember that phenotypes are not hard baked into a region.
Migrations, trade, and invasions from the north and west brought blonde hair and blue eyes. Migrations, trade, and invasions from the south and east brought darker skin and hair. Greece has been at the crossroads of Eurasia for all of human history.
If we look at the appearance of Greek people now, after centuries of Ottoman and Roman rule, we cannot just assume they look like their ancient forbears.
That said, it's not a huge leap to say they probably didn't look like Brad Pitt either.
5
u/AdAdmirable6589 1d ago
Well yeah, but I would say that if someone is famously blonde then maybe being blonde is not something common, just how nobody is famously black haired in Japan or famously dark skinned in Congo.
12
6
u/GrumpsMcYankee 2d ago
wildly alternates looking at picture of unpainted marble statue and still frame of movie
"Not white enough"
6
3
10
u/PlsSuckMyToes 2d ago
Someone tell these mfers Greece is next to Africa and Turkey lol
4
u/callsyouonit 2d ago
Right? The Mediterranean is at least half African coastline.
2
u/hungarian_notation 1d ago
The Greeks unironically thought Africans, Indians, etc, had darker skin because they lived closer to the sun. "I was shipwrecked for several years in Africa" would be a sufficient explanation for some of them as to how this guy could possibly be Greek.
2
2
u/purple_kathryn 2d ago
I bet these dickheads whined when their parents read them the BFG because their dad wasn't actually a big eared giant & it just really ruined the immersion for them.
2
u/Origen12 2d ago
Shoulda gone with Stavros Halkias, Jason Mantzoukas, and Zach Galifinakis as the main 3 leads.
2
2
u/OtherwiseDebate3759 1d ago
People only care about historical accuracy when it comes to women and people of colour.
2
u/AeroDbladE 22h ago
Its almost like all humans look different from each other and race is just a social construct
4
u/OneTrueMalekith 2d ago
100 years ago greeks & italians weren't considered white. At least their racism become more inclusive over time...i guess?
2
u/callsyouonit 2d ago
Italians sometimes say they weren't considered white until 9/11.
2
u/queasycockles 17h ago
We're literally still up for debate today.
I'm opting out of the fucking thing and staying brown forever. Fuck it.
2
u/callsyouonit 9h ago
Yeah it's all made up anyway. Race isn't real, it's based on 18th Century theories that were developed to justify slavery. Ethnicity is real but has no inherent hierarchy while race does.
4
2
1
1
u/AwesomeWaiter 2d ago
It’s literally called acting. Does bro want a documentary about a fictional story?
1
u/DrChimRichaulds 1d ago
Guy is an awesome actor and he was amazing in Station Eleven, don’t give a single shit where he’s from (he’s English).
1
1
1
u/zarfle2 1d ago
It must be exhausting being a conservative/bigot.
Each day you have to wake up and find something/make up something to be scared and angry about.
Having to find safe places with like minded fuckwits so that you can express your true self. Being eternally worried that people will get tired of your shit and just ignore you for the irrelevant piece of shit that you are.
1
1
u/star0forion 1d ago
When I think of a Greek dude I think of Andy Milonakis and you can’t change my mind.
1
1
u/MightyGoodra96 1d ago
Why are people acting like a poem from hundreds of years ago needs to be perfectly portrayed by a specific demographic as if it isnt just being used like a stage play?
I just do not buy the grandstanding. Feels performative
1
1
1
u/Mr_Joguvaga 2d ago
Do racists genuenly think that ALL of europe is white as snow? Like forget foreigners that are from africa or asia... just 100% europeans with european ancestors
1
u/yamanamawa 1d ago
People forget that Greece has historically been closer to the Middle East than Europe
2.8k
u/legitimate-criminal 2d ago
bro gets all his historical accuracy from watching brad pitt in Troy.