I saw your post about Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, and as a Greek person I wanted to share some context that many people outside Greece may not know.
The Greek government allocated €6.5 million of taxpayers' money to help fund the production, but Greek taxpayers had no say in that decision and were not aware their money was being used for it. Not a single Greek actor participated in this movie, and yet they filmed it in Greek land.
The country whose history, mythology, taxpayer money and landscapes were used for this film, was left out of the main cast's promotional premiere tour, despite being heavily used in the film's production and marketing.
For many Greeks, the casting, narrative choices, and some of the statements surrounding the project regarding Homer feel deeply offensive and disrespectful.
Where is the line between artistic interpretation and cultural appropriation?
Damn, that's so fucked up. I had no idea about the taxpayer dollars being used to fund this, that's so insane especially considering it all went into a Western-produced Hollywood film that doesn't at all contribute to Greek arts and culture. Surely that money could have gone towards something more beneficial for Greece, whether it be entertainment or healthcare or literally ANYTHING else that isn't paying for Christopher Nolan's fanfiction project 😒 I'm so sorry you're all being subjected to this shit.
To go on a bit of a tangent, I suppose it's a grim but necessary reminder that cultural appropriation and colonization doesn't just affect POC communities - it comes for any and all cultures that the Western colonist amoeba can stand to leech off of for their own gain.
It really sucks because something like this should be invigorating for Greek culture and Greece's economy, like any culturally-specific film should be. But instead it often just results in exactly this, private foreign corporations taking advantage of government money, while the individuals beneath them get screwed by outsider influences, appropriation, and tourism culture that takes advantage and doesn't respect the land these stories and resources came from, much less that land's people.
Not to compare or change the subject, but it brings to mind what's been done to Hawaii and its people for decades, becoming just token stereotypes and cliches for Hollywood to play with instead of being treated with the respect and dignity they deserve (see also: the Quileute tribe depicted in Twilight - they are in fact a real tribe, and public perception of them was severely harmed by the rhetoric in that movie).
While Greece has fortunately stood strong as one of our oldest nations, that doesn't make the country itself any less prone to having its stories and culture appropriated and twisted to fit Western norms and ideals. If anything it almost has the opposite effect - because Greek stories and art have become so globally recognized and popularized, people outside of Greece tend to take it for granted and forget / don't realize that it's not just fairy tales for them to take from and use without thought towards the history and culture that created them in the first place. Sort of the opposite problem from those aforementioned countries and tribes - the nation is still there, it's not under threat of disappearing overnight, but Westerners forget / don't care that it's an actual nation with people still alive and living in it who are being blatantly ignored and passed over in favor of Western actors and artists roleplaying as them.
I know it's probably a rhetorical question, but I don't want to think the line is so thin as to be rendered invisible and walked over completely. Problem is the answer to that question and solution to this problem is 'it begins and ends with respect' and there's never really been any of that in these industries or in the consumers who keep them alive. Just exploitation and profit.
