Wait so. Elliot Page’s role in The Odyssey is to be unwillingly sacrificed within the first five minutes of his appearance and THAT’S the “complex and interesting” role that people have claimed was personally gifted to him by Nolan for transitioning into a man?? Five minutes of screen time where he’s immediately killed?? Are we actually fucking serious right now. I’ve had to deal with post after post on every social media platform telling me that The Odyssey is proof that Elliot Page transitioned into privilege and the role in question is the most insulting, transphobic, nothingburger I’ve ever seen in my life. Am I missing something here because I feel like I’m losing my mind.
These people think a trans man existing in public is proof of privilege. These people think a trans man being allowed to live and breathe is proof of privilege. These people don’t want trans men to exist btw call it out for what it is at this point.
Sinon is a very important character in The Aeneid. He pretty much singlehandedly brought the downfall of Troy.
This is about Christopher Nolan’s movie adaptation of the Odyssey, not The Aeneid book.
I get that Sinon is an important and complex character, but when we’re discussing the context of Elliot Page playing him and how his character was handled in Nolan’s adaptation:
1) His character doesn’t exist in Homer’s Odyssey and was taken from Virgil’s Aeneid and given to him instead of giving him an actual character in the Odyssey. If someone were to visit the original source material, his role will not even be there.
2) He is essentially the dead wife of the plot, and is also one of the youngest characters. He haunts the narrative, which is a pretty common role given to women so as to not actually write them into the plot, but please do keep telling me that there is absolutely no transphobic or misogynistic biases towards why Elliot Page was specifically selected to play Sinon.
3) He still only gets a combined amount of about five minutes of screentime, and considering this is the most notable role he’s recieved since coming out 5+ years ago… I don’t think this is proof that transitioning has benefited his career. Every time Elliot Page is even mentioned by name, the internet goes on a horrifically transphobic crusade for months until he’s forced back into obscurity. His acting career has objectively tanked since coming out.
4) Elliot Page has already worked with Chrisopher Nolan and was given a (noteably) bigger role in Inception pre-transition. Christopher Nolan did not “wait” for Elliot Page to transition (whatever the fuck that means), the two already knew each other from previous projects.
Edit: Personally, the only real win to me is that a trans man got to play a cis man without his transness being considered an issue, but the way in which Nolan went about it felt more like throwing Elliot Page a bone while benefiting from the outrage caused by Elliot Page simply existing, and instead of celebrating the small win that trans men received, every single side of the internet decided to rip into him and either call him a mentally ill woman or a privileged man benefiting from misogyny.
