Exactly how bad is race-swapping Helen of Troy?

I’m starting with the obvious here. Greeks weren’t Subsaharan African, they had little if any significant cultural or genetic ties to Subsaharan Africa at any point in the last 3,400 years. Let alone the last 12,000 years. The Greeks of Homers time, and Later referred to them as Burned Face - which is literally where we get the word Ethiopia from.The founding mother of the Hellenes was Helen of Sparta in Greek myth1. The blonde haired, blue eyed, pale armed Helen (using only Homeric descriptions here), was intentionally replaced with a dark skinned Nigerian, who herself has no cultural roots in western history, or a surface level understanding of the Odyssey and how important it was.— u/6mmARCnvsk

Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey has been all the talk of the town, and resurgent are accusations of its woke cast which race-swapped Greek characters to a multi-ethnic cast, such as the Kenyan-Mexican Lupita Nyong’o’s take on Helen of Troy, which seems to have caught the most attention and most ire among traditional enthusiasts of Homer’s original epic.

Most discussions I’ve seen place Nolan’s race-swaps into a binary: They’re either good, or they’re bad. But surely some race-swaps must be better or worse than others. It seems to me that Nick Fury, Tom-Holland-Spider-man’s best friend Ned, and the titular Invincible from Invincibile are all examples of uncontroversial race-swaps.

So here I present a seven-part scale to guide one’s indignant outrage at any race-swap or culture-swap, past or future or hypothetical.

Starting with the most heinous category first…

6 — Unique Icons

Ms. Marvel, AKA Kamala Khan, was the first Muslim superhero in either Marvel or DC to headline her own comic, and also the first for any screen adaptation. Muslim-Americans make up just over 1% of the U.S. population. With there being literal hundreds of superheroes already put to screen (between Marvel, DC, and Sony’s X-men), you’d expect there to be at least one Muslim among their numbers. Without Kamala’s presence in the MCU, Muslim representation of superheroes in Hollywood would drop to zero. This makes her in some sense a “unique” icon, representing something for 3 million Americans (and many more non-Americans) that no other character captures. Doing a race, culture or religion swap on Ms. Marvel would likely destroy what makes her special to her fans.

Few fictional characters can really be considered unique to that level, irreplaceable icons of a particular culture—but there are just as many icons in the real world as there are in fiction, and every real life human being is unique. You can’t authentically tell the life story of Johnny Cash while omitting the fact of him being a white man, nor Jackie Robinson and being black, nor Bruce Lee and being Hong Kongese. You just… can’t.

And that means under no circumstances should a real life person ever be race-swapped, without exception.

Right?

(More on that later.)

5 — Narrative Focus

Shōgun tells the story of John Blackthorne, an Englishman traveling with the Dutch who crash-lands in Japan and begins a most epic journey of profound culture shock, his brutish British ways putting him at constant odds with the Japanese and their severe, unbending, and seeming-to-him warped senses of honor.

Race-swapping Blackthorne to Japanese, or Lord Toranaga away from Japanese, would be an exercise in abject absurdity, or perhaps comedy, or maybe light-hearted fan fiction—but whichever the case, it would be a stretch to call this new creation still an adaptation of James Clavell’s original work.

However, I’m still categorizing Shōgun race-swapping to a less egregious level than that of “unique icons” because, for example, I don’t think there are many children across the world idolizing John Blackthorne like they do famous musicians, athletes, actors and superheroes. Race-swapping John Blackthorne would likely be confusing and nonsensical, but the harm of “ruining a beloved story” isn’t quite so great of a harm.

4 — Fungible Icons

Blade wasn’t the first black superhero put to screen. He was the first mainstream headline success of a black superhero. Like Ms. Marvel, that makes the performance extra special in a lot of fans’ hearts. Unlike Ms. Marvel, the character doesn’t deal with culture, religion or race to the same extent. Islam takes narrative focus in Kamala’s life story; being a badass vampire who kills vampires takes the focus for Eric Brooks. That’s why I’d say race-swapping Blade would be bad, but not as bad as race-swapping Ms. Marvel.

Blade is an icon. He also happens to be a somewhat more replaceable one, especially considering how many other iconic performances we’ve been gifted from inestimable black actors such as Don Cheadle, Samuel L. Jackson, Chadwick Boseman, and others.

By placing Blade into a lower category, am I saying that it’d be basically alright to swap Blade to a white dude?

Nope. The cutoff point between “basically, generally not alright” to “basically, generally fine” begins in the next category or two.

I’m also not saying that the lower category means you’ll anger fewer people with a potential race-swap. Blade surely has more fans than John Blackthorne. And more than Mr. Terrific, who I wanted to highlight for a different reason.

James Gunn brought Mr. Terrific to the DCU in his recent and excellent Superman (2025), played by Edi Gathegi, whose performance was easily the best part of the whole film.

For Gathegi, this role helped him to close a disheartening chapter of his career, when he’d previously played a superhero in X-Men: First Class:

“I called my agents to say, ‘Hey, listen, I have a problem with the fact that this character is the only Black character in the film aside from Zoë Kravitz’s character. I am also the only mutant who meets an untimely demise halfway through the film,’” Gathegi tells The Hollywood Reporter in support of Superman‘s July 11 theatrical release. “It was 2009 at the time, and I was like, ‘Killing the Black guy first is so played out. I can’t do this.’”“They assured us that it was essential for the storytelling in order to motivate the mutants to avenge my [character’s] death. They also fully intended to bring my character back as they do in the comics. [Darwin] can’t die; he regenerates,” Gathegi recalls. ”So we held onto the hope that they would honor their word. When I didn’t come back for X-Men: Apocalypse, I just knew it was done.”

I’m happy for the actor, happy for the solace he found, and I think it would be an insult to Gathegi were he to be replaced by a white actor (though I wouldn’t oppose Gathegi’s Mr. Terrific being complemented by a white Mr. Terrific in some multiverse setting, probably played for comedy). Not all roles are like this. For instance, I suspect neither William Shatner nor Chris Pine would mind whatsoever the prospect of a race-swapped Captain Kirk.

It’s neither hypocritical nor anti-White racist to support race-swapping for Captain Kirk and not for Mr. Terrific. All it requires is recognizing that characters exist in different contexts, and mean different things to different people.

3 — Apocryphal/Ancient Icons

What if you’re considering the race-swap of a fictional unique icon of a culture that’s been long since dead?

How about a historical figure with debatable biographical details, or who may never even have existed?

Jesus Christ, if he really existed, was very unlikely to have been a pasty white boy—and yet he’s normally depicted as such.

That’s not to detract from his status as an irreplaceable icon. In the modern world, there’s a list of the most beloved figures of all time, and Jesus Christ is at the top of that list, followed closely by Muhammad, and followed closely by no one else. It’d be level 6 to culture-swap Jesus away from his born Judaism—and since “race” is a concept that covers so much more than skin color, any discussion of race-swapping should have him at level 6, not level 3. But I’m discussing him here because skin color takes the brunt of focus in these sorts of discussions, and I find it strange to apply one standard to Hollywood casting but a different standard for the son of God.

“William Shakespeare never existed” or “William Shakespeare was the lady Emilia Lanier” are most likely false theories, and some would even call them conspiracy theories—yet we don’t know for certain. I think that automatically grants greater leeway in how to depict him. Other historical figures are even more uncertain, like the poet of The Odyssey himself, Homer. If The Odyssey did indeed have a singular author by the name of Homer, maybe he would’ve been a typical light-skinned Greek. Or maybe he could’ve been the darkest skin ancient Greek to have ever lived. Or maybe he was white, but not Greek, a secret immigrant from some other part of Europe. There’s no way to know.

What we do know is that the balance of probability puts Homer at light-skinned and Jesus at darker-skinned, and any outrage felt at race-swapping in this category should be at most proportional to such probabilities.

2 — Narrative Consistency

Sometimes a character’s ethnicity isn’t the focus of their story (like it is for Ms. Marvel or John Blackthorne), but is part of the story’s plot or premise, without which the story’s logic is tested and suspension of disbelief is lost.

For instance: Snow White. Her snow-white skin is literally her name. If she’d been named “Elara” or “Karen”, then nobody would care if she gets race-swapped. Her complete and utter lack of character or personality (judging from the Disney cartoon, I surmise that Snow White is… a nice person?) renders her skin-color as the most salient thing about her, which makes both of the following true:

• It doesn’t make any sense to change her skin-color.
• It’s risible to get upset over a change in her skin-color. (I’m puzzled as to how anyone could get emotionally attached to such a void character in the first place.)

1 — Habitual Narrative Characteristics

Other characteristics are neither relevant to plot, premise, or personality, but are iconic all the same. They say familiarity breeds contempt, but there is also comfort in the familiar. Superman being a harbinger of hope is essential to his character; the colors of his costume are more of a comforting detail.

Sherlock Holmes should always be tall (except he wasn’t when he was played by Robert Downey Jr.). Harry Potter should always have an “N”-shaped lightning-bolt scar (except that was an invention of the book covers and movies, not the text itself). And so on.

These details are nice to have but not necessary. It’s fine to prefer black-hair actors to play James Bond, but it would’ve been a massive mistake to pass up on Daniel Craig for such a minor reason.

And speaking of Bond: Years ago, I would’ve voted for Idris Elba to replace Daniel Craig as Bond. Now my vote goes to Dev Patel. I’d also be happy to vote for Austin Butler—but the Brits would probably string me up for such a suggestion.

I categorize race-swapping Bond as level 1, but swapping him to a different nationality would be somewhere in the 4 to 6 range.

0 - Zero

A Game of Thrones is fantasy. Within its setting are many different families and regal bloodlines of varying import, among them the Targaryens, white-hair conquerors and dragonriders somewhat prone towards madness and extremely prone towards incest. The “white-hair” aspect of their bloodline is plot-relevant, especially to The World of Ice & Fire, which is being adapted in HBO’s House of the Dragon.

Much ink was spilled by frothing internet conservatives when House of the Dragon announced that one offshoot of the Targaryens, known as the Velaryons, were being cast as white-hair and black-skin.

The Velaryons’ skin color doesn’t matter in the slightest, and the badass Steve Toussaint alone makes this race-swap well worth it. I have zero patience for anyone who still has a problem with this.

Helen of Troy

So which category should Nolan’s Helen of Troy fall into?

There’s long been an association of pale skin with beauty due to its connotations of class: Being from the elite crust of society meant not having to perform physical labor in the hot sun, and that meant becoming significantly less tanned. Thus Homer described Helen of Troy as white-armed, which reminds me of nothing more than Robert E. Howard’s Conan, of all things:

Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content.

The blue-eyed barbarian himself, however, is described as having bronzed skin, as befitting this Herculean character who can so readily master any labor, prevail in any melee, and conquer any obstacle2.

But then Howard describes the Queen of the Black Coast, Bêlit, a pirate who should be every inch as bronzed as Conan himself, as “a slim figure whose white skin glistened in dazzling contrast to the glossy ebon hides about it”.

The truth is, though he may have been relatively enlightened for a white Texan of his time, the dude was still a bit racist. He wanted to surround his character with only the most beautiful of women, and in his mind, the tie between beauty and pale skin was too strong. This led to the minor continuity error of Bêlit’s lack of bronzed skin, which later Marvel comics explained by attributing her skin color to her mother, Derketa the Death-Goddess.

Helen’s skin was most likely described as light for the same reason as Bêlit’s, that association between beauty and lack of tanning that comes with higher social class. It’s her beauty that’s an intrinsic component of her character, like Sherlock’s intelligence or Harry Potter’s orphan status. The exact skin color is an extraneous detail, and I’d say even more extraneous than Sherlock’s height or the shape of Harry’s scar. That’s because you’d expect a typical Greek storyteller of that time to have described a beautiful woman as light-skinned, whereas you wouldn’t have expected Arthur Conan Doyle to describe his clever sleuth as tall, or J. K. Rowling’s protagonist as having such a notably shaped scar. Less-expected details are more salient, more memorable, and more likely to reflect deliberate artistic choice from the author.

In other words, Helen’s skin color only matters insofar as it supports other details of the story, such as Helen’s beauty or Helen’s Greekness. Her beauty can certainly be preserved while expunging the light skin; what of her Greekness?

The Odyssey is a quintessential Greek tale, not about Greekness itself in opposition to other cultures, but certainly about components of Greek culture, like xenia. Helen and Odysseus might qualify as icons, to some degree either unique or fungible.

But The Odyssey is ancient. Probably there were fewer centuries between the Black Plague and today as there were between The Odyssey’s creation and the Bible’s. I would posit that there’s nothing wrong with race-swapping Ms. Marvel or Blade after 300 years have passed, much more so 3,000 years.

And I think that applies to all of the Unique Icons category—not just characters like Ms. Marvel, but real life figures too.

I posed the question earlier of whether it’s ever acceptable for real life individuals to ever be race-swapped, and the answer is clearly yes, because Hamilton already did it to wonderful effect.

Of course, Hamilton is attempting something very different than your typical biography or biopic, something more along the lines of… would satire be the right word?

But even with more serious and straightforward renditions of a person’s life, there can still be wiggle room, exceptions that can be made for good reason.

For this, I can only provide a hypothetical example: Let’s say the esteemed and aforementioned-Sherlock-actor Robert Downey Jr. passed away, and Hollywood chose to produce a biopic of his life, and RDJ happened to have a loving nephew or grandson or stepson who really wanted to play his part. Let’s call this man Bobby Double Jr, or BDJ for short, and let’s say the following are true:

• BDJ takes after his uncle in being a fantastic actor.
• BDJ has got the vocal and physical impressions of his uncle down pat.
• BDJ also happens to have a significantly different skin color.

BDJ wants to portray his uncle out of real love, and can capture RDJ beautifully. I’d say: Let him! Audiences are smart enough to suspend their disbelief and appreciate the performance.

And more importantly, such a scenario would allow deft writers to reinvent this scene from Tropic Thunder with even more layers.

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1

Not true.

2

The actor who’s in the right age range today I think would best capture Conan’s primal joy, vicious cunning, and raw masculinity is Michael B. Jordan. Robert E. Howard most often emphasizes the Cimmerian’s blue eyes and black mane, and much less often references the skin color, so I’d say: Give him lenses and a wig, let him play the part.