Aristotle Had Opinions About Skin Color. The Helen of Troy Debate Ignores Them

The casting debate escaped the internet. The history behind it is stranger than the argument.

Helen of Troy, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1863. Worthing Museum and Art Gallery. Public domain

Grabbed bananas and spinach on Monday night. Two women were arguing in the produce section about Helen of Troy.

Helen. Not the upcoming movie.

Whether Helen should be Black. Whether it even mattered.

Once people in my grocery store start arguing about Bronze Age Greece beside the avocados, the story has broken containment.

Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey trailer had already crossed 28 million views by then. YouTube jammed with angry thumbnails and red circles around Lupita Nyong’o’s face. One tweet about the controversy pulled 4.6 million views in a single day.