Draken Shows Off Her Star Power in ‘Odyssey’ – Loose Cannon
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When all else fails, try journalism. Draken Shows Off Her Star Power in ‘Odyssey’Per the Naysayers, Nothing Is Quite Right, Yet Somehow Magnificent
Last month, Loose Cannon poked fun at the folks moaning about a black woman playing the role of Helen of Troy in the movie “Odysseus.” These folks had obviously been hoping for someone more like Nicole Kidman. “The poet Homer may have been blind, but that doesn’t mean he was colorblind,” I wrote in jest. Last night, we attended the film’s opening at our local theater, and I can testify that 1. The movie was breathtaking, and 2. Black Helen (Lupita Nyong’o) was a minor character with only a few minutes of screen time that hardly mattered. Whereas Odysseus’ ship was a major character, she being the vehicle that transported these Trojan War veterans from one nightmarish disaster to another. (Forgive the trivialization, but the movie harkened back to cruising the New England coast in my old wooden sloop, during which we faced “a crisis in every port” of engine failures and near sinkings.) The Bronze Age penteconter was played by Draken, a replica of a 10th century Viking longboat. As I jokingly pointed out, this choice was more a-historical than a black Helen. The Vikings built lapstrake hulls, while the Greeks stuck with carvel planking. Truth be told, the distinction was hardly noticeable on screen, and I shall return to Draken’s performance shortly. But FirstPredictably, a few of my own readers last month fell into the “I like white” camp, not from racism but a nerdy devotion to Homer’s sacred text. I rarely debate readers anymore. I have become convinced that you should be able to have your say without an author feeling he or she has to nitpick back at you. But this time I felt these grown-up prep-school grads had entirely missed the point.
As I explained to one skeptic, the Odyssey is really akin to a fairy tale, albeit an epic one. Fairy tales are stories where wolves and pigs can talk and witches are real. The narrator began last night’s movie by telling us that the events of the Odyssey happened “in a time of magic.” That plays out as you watch scenes of goddess Athena walking among us, a one-eyed giant, a witch or two, monsters and deadly sweet-singing mermaids. But, no. Helen’s got to be milky white—Irish looking, if possible. Let me go into some background about Helen that was not included in Homer, but would have been known to everyone listening in his audience: Helen was hatched from an egg. Yeah, Zeus yearned for a little lovin’ from a human woman named Leda, who happened to be queen of Sparta, so he came down to court the lady the way one does. He took on the form of an oversized swan, swept down from the sky and raped her. (The New Testament God took a more nuanced approach when he sent the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove to impregnate Mary—via her ear in one telling.) William Butler Yeats described the rape in his poem “Leda and the Swan,”¹ which begins: A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
So, with dad being a bird and all, Leda was unable operate her gestation machinery in the conventional way. Instead, she laid a clutch of eggs, one of which housed embryonic Helen. Pray tell, amigos mios, what color should a person be who was hatched from a friggin’ egg? In a July 16 article for Slate, writer Myke Cole described the same phenomenon, except from the point of view of military history buffs who were fussing over Director Christoper Nolan’s choice of costumes, armament and fighting tactics:
Which brings us back to the boat, as we must do, to fulfill Loose Cannon’s mission statement. Draken was simply magnificent, even as an anachronism in Hellenic disguise. Beach scenes depicted Odysseus and crew running for their lives back to their ship, clambering on board and rowing away chaotically from pursuing Cyclops or the Laestrygonian cannibals. It occurred to me that scenes such as these must have played out thousands of times during the Viking Era, but with Saxons and Franks instead of giants.
As fierce as they are portrayed, Norse raiders were also casualty-averse. They had to be, and the reason was simple. Each amphibious band had to maintain a certain number of hands in order to operate the ship—60 or 80 men to row, for example. They developed tactics and technology for the quick get-away, rather than risk too many casualties. On a rocky shore, Vikings would drill a hole into a boulder, a hole big enough to loosely nest an iron mooring pin. These pins were likely fabricated with a big eye on top. Think: closed-loop oarlock. They would secure the bow of the longship to the pin with a long line, while deploying a stern anchor to secure the boat perpendicular to shore—barely afloat or barely grounded. When pressed to escape a larger force, men on the bow could whip the line vigourously, flipping the mooring pin out of its hole, thus freeing the bow, as men aft hauled in the stern line, quickly moving the ship into deep water, while oarsmen took station. For decades hopeful amateur archaeologists scoured the shores of New England, whereupon finding any hole in rock, would declare this as evidence of a Viking visit. I will stop now, lest I be confused with a “lonely, nerdy obsessive.” LOOSE CANNON covers hard news, technical issues and nautical history. Sometimes he tries to be funny. Subscribe for free to support the work. If you’ve been reading for a while—and you like it—consider upgrading to paid. 1 In its entirety, “Leda and the Swan”:By William Butler Yeats A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? |
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