分类： entertainment

As Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated big-screen adaptation of Homer’s epic *The Odyssey* prepares for its global theatrical release this Friday, a firestorm of pre-release debate over casting choices has dominated headlines in international conservative circles — but public opinion in Greece, the birthplace of the 3,000-year-old tale, tells a far different story.

Discourse around literary adaptations often fixates on rigid faithfulness to the original source material. But for Greeks, who grow up studying and revisiting Homer’s epic at every level of education, the poem’s centuries-long survival has never depended on staying static: it has thrived precisely because of constant reinvention.

Filippos Mantzaris, a seventh-grade educator who teaches *The Odyssey* to young Greek students, explained that the core lesson of the epic is not about rigid adherence to an ancient text. “What we want children to understand is that every new creation is exactly that — a new creation,” he told the Associated Press. In Greek classrooms, *The Odyssey* is not taught as a fixed artifact: students debate the morality of Odysseus’ revenge, question whether the battle-weary king qualifies as a positive role model, and participate in role-play exercises to step into the hero’s journey themselves. For 12-year-old student Kyriakos Agapiou, the epic’s core message is one of resilience: “That everything is possible and we should never give up.”

This culture of open interpretation extends beyond school walls. Farm scientist Nikos Varelas recently attended a local stage adaptation of *The Odyssey* with his 4-year-old son, after the pair read simplified youth versions of both *The Odyssey* and *The Iliad* together. “It is our duty as parents, as Greeks,” Varelas said of passing the story to a new generation. Manos Pintzis, an actor who portrayed Odysseus in the stage production, noted that live performance makes the ancient myth accessible to young people in a way mandatory reading cannot. “You don’t tell a child, ‘Just read the story because you have to,’ because the child will resist when something is forced on them,” Pintzis explained. “When the child sees all of this unfolding before their eyes — that becomes a valuable step toward learning, to willingly learn what they’re expected to study.”

The pre-release controversy ignited largely in the United States, where conservative commentators and public figures have attacked Nolan’s casting choices, most notably the casting of Black actor Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy. Billionaire Elon Musk went so far as to claim the director had desecrated the epic, despite having not seen the film. Other conservative voices, including commentator Matt Walsh, have echoed these complaints, arguing the casting prioritizes “identity politics” over tradition, a familiar line of attack against recent diverse reboots of beloved genre properties.

Nolan has pushed back against the pre-release criticism, noting that these debates hold little weight before audiences have a chance to see the finished film. “Backlash comes with the territory,” he told The Telegraph, adding “these conversations that happen before people see the film — they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.” Speaking to the AP, the director explained his goal was to create a version of the ancient story that feels modern and accessible, breaking from outdated conventions of how ancient Greek stories have been portrayed in past Hollywood productions. “You want to question people’s assumptions about how things should be portrayed in movies and what those are based on,” he said. “There’s a challenge to that and a risk to that. But my hope is that by creating a cohesive world, people understand the world as they watch the movie and they feel they understand it.”

For most Greeks, the casting controversy is nothing new: Hollywood has a long history of casting non-Greek foreign actors in iconic ancient Greek roles, a practice audiences have grown accustomed to over decades. Scotsman Gerard Butler became globally famous for playing Spartan King Leonidas in *300*, Oklahoma-born Brad Pitt portrayed Achilles in *Troy*, and Irish actor Colin Farrell led the 2004 biopic *Alexander* — and even one of the most beloved on-screen Greek characters of all time, Zorba, was portrayed by Mexican-American actor Anthony Quinn in the 1964 classic. Nolan’s all-star cast, which includes Matt Damon as Odysseus alongside Nyong’o, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Zendaya and Charlize Theron, is simply the latest iteration of this longstanding tradition.

Only a small niche of Greek public opinion has aligned with the international backlash: far-right nationalist party Niki has objected to both the casting and the Greek government’s decision to provide roughly 6 million euros ($6.9 million) in production subsidies, claiming public funds are being used to impose “woke-type ideology” on Greek cultural identity, echoing Musk’s criticism. But Greece’s Culture Minister Lina Mendoni issued a sharp rejection of these demands. “It is not the state’s role to dictate to a creator how they should artistically interpret a work or a myth,” she told Greek pop culture magazine Lifo. “Can we seriously be having a conversation about whether the state should censor Christopher Nolan?”

Christos Tsagalis, a professor of ancient Greek literature at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, noted that whether the adaptation succeeds is ultimately up to individual viewers to decide. What matters most, he argued, is that the epic continues to be reimagined for new audiences. Homer’s works have endured for millennia precisely because they have been reinterpreted across generations and adopted as shared global culture, he explained. “I think it’s wonderful that something that is created at a specific point in time by a given people is shared by so many people across the globe … It’s shared culture,” Tsagalis said. “It’s a fascinating story. It is like a movie.”

Nearly a millennium after it was last on British shores, one of Europe’s most iconic medieval artworks, the Bayeux Tapestry, has completed its historic journey to London’s British Museum, brought in under a cloak of secrecy and cutting-edge security measures that read like a scene pulled from a reverse heist film.

The 70-meter-long embroidered chronicle of the 1066 Norman Conquest — the last successful military invasion of England — arrives on a multi-year loan from its permanent home in the French town of Bayeux, where renovations are currently underway at its dedicated museum. It will open to the public starting September 10 and remain on display through July 2027, marking the first time the tapestry has been displayed on English soil in nearly 1,000 years.

Anticipation for the tapestry’s arrival has run high among British history and art enthusiasts, but every detail of its transport schedule and logistics was locked down over intense security concerns. British Museum Director Nicholas Cullinan called the moment “extraordinary” as the artifact neared its new temporary home, noting “It’s incredibly exciting that after so much work and planning, a piece of both British and French history so significant is finally on these shores.”

The complex transport operation was designed to protect the fragile 1,000-year-old artwork every step of the way. The tapestry was carefully folded into an accordion shape inside a temperature- and humidity-controlled case, which was then secured in a custom-built shock-absorbing cradle. The entire container — roughly the size of a small passenger car — was loaded onto a truck that crossed the English Channel via the Channel Tunnel’s vehicle shuttle service. After an 11-hour, 560-kilometer journey escorted by armed police, the truck backed slowly into the British Museum’s loading bay in the dead of night, where workers gently lowered the container to the ground. When the cargo was confirmed safe, the assembled team of museum staff and British and French diplomats, who had waited in hushed silence, broke into spontaneous applause.

Before going on display, the tapestry will spend several days acclimatizing to its new environment, after which it will be carefully unpacked and stretched for exhibition. Museum officials already project the show will be one of the most popular in the institution’s centuries-long history: more than 100,000 advance tickets sold out on the first day they went on sale earlier this month. Cullinan compared the demand to securing tickets to the Glastonbury Music Festival, adding “I don’t take for granted that people care that much about a 1,000-year-old embroidery. I think that’s an amazing thing.”

Woven from wool thread on plain linen, the Bayeux Tapestry depicts the full sequence of events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in October 1066, where William, Duke of Normandy defeated the Anglo-Saxon army of King Harold II to claim the English throne. Historians widely believe the work was commissioned shortly after the conquest by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, William’s half-brother, and was most likely stitched by English artisans — possibly nuns — before being moved across the Channel to Normandy. It has resided in the northern French town of Bayeux for almost all of the past 1,000 years, only leaving for two brief displays at the Louvre in Paris.

As a cultural artifact, the tapestry stands as a symbol of the intertwined, often complex shared history of Britain and France. Securing the multi-year loan required years of high-level diplomatic negotiation, and the agreement was formally announced during French President Emmanuel Macron’s 2025 state visit to the United Kingdom. In exchange for the tapestry’s stay in London, the British Museum will loan treasures from the iconic Sutton Hoo Anglo-Saxon ship burial hoard and other British cultural artifacts to museums across Normandy.

Retired British diplomat Peter Ricketts, who served as the UK’s special envoy for the tapestry and helped finalize the loan agreement, called the arrangement “an extraordinary mark of friendship and confidence in the U.K. to entrust this object to us for two years. Macron understood when he offered the loan that it would have far greater resonance in the UK than in France, because 1066 is such a fundamental turning point in our national story. Everyone in Britain learns the date of the Norman Conquest.”

Beyond its political and historical significance, the tapestry offers an unparalleled intimate look at 11th-century life. It features 58 distinct narrative scenes packed with 626 human figures and 737 animals, full of vivid, sometimes brutal detail: hand-to-hand combat, fallen mutilated soldiers, and the iconic image of King Harold felled by an arrow through the eye.

Millie Horton-Insch, the lead curator for the British Museum’s Bayeux Tapestry exhibition, explained that the work brings medieval history to life in a way written records never can. “It has an emotional richness that is really difficult to get from written sources. It just brings people closer to this history than any other object can. You are looking at something that was handled by the people who lived through these events and felt compelled to record them in this way.”

Horton-Insch also noted that the tapestry’s 10-century survival against countless threats — including moths, rodents, mold, moisture, and fire — is nothing short of miraculous. Its humble materials may have helped it avoid destruction: “It’s not made of gold or silver, there wasn’t the same temptation to cut it up and repurpose it for vestments or other luxury items.”

The loan has not been without controversy: a number of French cultural figures have publicly opposed moving the artifact, arguing that even the most carefully planned trip poses too great a risk to the fragile embroidery. In response, Cullinan emphasized that expert teams took every possible precaution to protect the tapestry, including conducting two full trial runs of the entire cross-channel journey to confirm the transport would not put undue stress on the 1,000-year-old fabric.

“Such care has gone into it. I can’t think of a higher level of care for any other museum loan in history,” he said, adding that he understands the passion behind the concerns. “The tapestry arouses great interest and passion across both countries. Which is a wonderful thing.”

As record-breaking heatwave temperatures scorched Paris this July, the fashion world’s most exclusive annual event, Fall/Winter 2026-2027 Haute Couture Week, brought together A-list celebrities and legendary fashion houses to showcase hundreds of hours of handcrafted, one-of-a-kind design work. Held twice yearly and strictly regulated by France’s governing fashion body—only invited designers can present collections—the four-day event lived up to its reputation as a display of unrivaled creativity, drawing global headlines and star power from across entertainment and music.

One of the most talked-about showcases of the week came from Schiaparelli, where creative director Daniel Roseberry presented his collection titled *The Call of the Void*. Roseberry described the line as a deliberate departure from familiar creative processes, a full embrace of untested design experimentation. Standout celebrity guests included Bad Bunny, who paused the European leg of his ongoing world tour to make his first-ever haute couture week appearance in a head-turning creamy butter-yellow tailored suit. British actress Emma Corrin also turned heads in a soft pastel feathered jacket fitted with dramatic, sharp talon accents that embodied the collection’s bold, surrealist spirit. Rapper Cardi B was also among the high-profile attendees at opening shows, marking one of the most star-studded couture events in recent years.

Over at Balenciaga, Pierpaolo Piccioli—who recently left his long-time role at Valentino to lead the brand—delivered a highly anticipated debut couture collection that honored the house founder Cristóbal Balenciaga’s iconic silhouettes while adding modern sensibility. Supermodel Gigi Hadid closed out the outdoor runway show in a sweeping black feather cocoon garment that earned immediate viral attention. Unlike the structured, tight-fitting designs that dominated many recent collections, every look in Piccioli’s line featured loose, flowing cuts and a range of rich mixed textures—an especially welcome choice for attendees navigating the city’s sweltering heat. Stars including actor Hudson Williams also turned out to support the debut collection.

At Jean Paul Gaultier, Duran Lantink—appointed as the house’s permanent creative lead in April 2025—presented his first full haute couture collection to a crowd of eager industry insiders. Centered on the themes of transformation, playful theatricality, and reimagined history, the line drew inspiration from French queen Marie Antoinette, reinterpreting her iconic royal aesthetic for 21st-century audiences.

Chanel’s artistic director Matthieu Blazy leaned into soft whimsy and fairytale fantasy for his 2026 couture offering. The runway was transformed into an enchanted garden, lined with climbing vines and giant beanstalks, and one model walked the catwalk holding an original copy of the fairy tale collection once owned by Coco Chanel herself. Intricate hand-embroidered floral motifs and delicate, dreamy accessories made the entire line feel like an escape from everyday reality, evoking the quiet magic of classic storybook narratives.

The biggest surprise of the week came not from the Dior runway itself, but from an off-site reveal: creative director Jonathan Anderson confirmed he was the designer behind the bridal gowns for Taylor Swift’s recent high-profile wedding to NFL star Travis Kelce. While Anderson did include several bridal-inspired looks in his Dior couture collection, the designer has yet to share any details about whether those designs echo Swift’s actual wedding dress, which remains private. The collection itself paid homage to American sculptor Lynda Benglis, featuring innovative accordion-pleated dresses, skirts, and statement accessories that blended fine art with high fashion. Industry icon Anna Wintour, director Baz Luhrmann, and singer Sabrina Carpenter were among the front row guests at the Dior show.

Dutch designer Iris van Herpen, known for blending science and high fashion, presented a collection centered on invisible natural forces that shape daily life. Her most innovative design choice integrated charged plasma gas particles into sealed glass tubes, which were attached to gown silhouettes to create a subtle sparkling, glowing effect that moved with the model as they walked the runway. The collection grew increasingly elaborate throughout the show, culminating in gowns covered in intricate hand-beading and ethereal, flowing draping that blurred the line between fashion, art, and science.

Closing out the week, designer Alexis Mabille centered his collection on the theme of duality, leaning into a core design concept of transformative garments. What appeared to be a single finished look on the runway would shift dramatically in seconds, reorganizing into a completely separate garment with an entirely different texture and color palette. Mabille anchored the collection to a tight, cohesive palette of black, silver, and gold, emphasizing the stark contrast between each transformed look.

Despite the record-breaking heat, the 2026 Fall/Winter Haute Couture Week solidified Paris’s position as the global center of high fashion, blending innovative design work, star power, and decades of house heritage into one unforgettable four-day event.