Eine Intrige folgt auf die nächste - am Ende geht es den einzelnen Parteien aber stets um die Macht und wie sie diese am schnellsten erlangen können. In the month before Fall of a City was released there were a number of tweets and YouTube comments expressing outrage at Gyasi’s casting. "#Netflix so you're going to black wash troy fall of city the new show. They didn’t see themselves in those terms. And this inclusive new landscape – with its black Stormtroopers and mixed-race Asgardian heroines – is bound to cause some friction, some reckoning with our own deeply held preconceptions. I don’t think there’s any reason to doubt they were Mediterranean in skin type (lighter than some and darker than other Europeans), with a fair amount of inter-mixing,” says Whitmarsh. How accurate was Troy: Fall of a City episode 1 compared to the original myths. Already have an account with us? But it makes sense to truly consider why a surprising casting decision, whatever it is, makes you bridle. Another blockbuster (albeit a small-screen one) depicting Homer's mythical tale of war, gods and doomed love. But occasionally we need to encounter something that makes us realise there’s another way of seeing. That isn’t happening. Our best wishes for a productive day. Is there any basis to the ‘blackwashing’ conspiracy? Am Ende des Tages wird Troja in Flammen stehen. As Whitmarsh says: “Asking if a thunderbolt is a white thunderbolt or a black thunderbolt might be taking this too far.”. The Iliad only covers a few days in the last weeks of the war and the Odyssey deals with the aftermath of the fighting. Thanks! All of our categories – black and white, for instance – are formed by a very modern set of historical circumstance.”, Whitmarsh isn’t alone in this argument, either. Doch bis es so weit ist, muss jede Menge Blut vergossen werden. In Troy: Fall of a City, this spectrum of skin colours isn’t really portrayed. They’re not designed to be set in stone and it’s not blasphemous to change them. “The Greeks had a concept of people being different skin colours, but they wouldn’t put black people on one side and white people on another.”. We earn a commission for products purchased through some links in this article. WWE Hell in a Cell 2020: Matches and predictions, DIGITAL SPY, PART OF THE HEARST UK ENTERTAINMENT NETWORK. Troy: Fall of a City is a British-American miniseries based on the Trojan War and the love affair between Paris and Helen. “And the thing about the Gods,” explains Whitmarsh, “is that when they reveal themselves to people they have to take on a different form.”. “There was a lot of travel in that period – people were moving from Egypt to Greece, east to west. Joseph Mawle as Odysseus in Troy: Fall of a City “In the Odyssey, Odysseus is said to be ‘black-skinned and woolly-haired’ – at one point we’re told that Athena makes him … Love. That seems, to me, another powerful form of appropriation and an equally misleading depiction.”, No offense to David Gyasi. Kommentare zu Troja - Untergang einer Stadt werden geladen... Lost in Space - Verschollen zwischen fremden Welten, Historische & Mittelalterliche Fantasy RPG/Pen and Paper Serien & Filme, Star Wars: Neuer The Mandalorian-Trailer bringt unerwartete Figur zurück, Harter Schlag für Sci-Fi-Fans: Netflix setzt Serie nach nur einer Staffel ab, The Walking Dead: Schockierende Details zu Ricks Aufenthaltsort verraten. 26. Good actor… but… This is Achilles? What if he was mixed race, would that be acceptable? And it should be noted that the theatre, where Farr made his name, has been casting performers of all races in supposedly white classical roles for a long, long time. And to make sure they were on the ‘right’ side of this dividing line, Europeans began to see themselves as ‘whiter’. Not a single person raised the issue. "Homer in the Iliad repeatedly describes Achilles as 'blonde' and 'golden-haired'," whined one definite non-racist. It's a reminder that these arguments can't withstand even the tiniest scrutiny. Even if you ignore the ever-changing nature of myth and still think it would be inaccurate for Gyasi to play Achilles, then how about this: at one point Homer describes Odysseus – played by Joseph Mawle in Fall of a City and Sean Bean in the 2004 Troy film – as dark-skinned. The paint didn’t survive the test of time: the marble did. Want up-to-the-minute entertainment and tech news? Cue an enormous sigh. You can unsubscribe at any time. War. Survey the footage trailing Troy: Fall of a City – bearded men in togas, battles on horseback, the kind of candlelit sex scenes that will make watching episodes on public transport particularly tricky – and you'd be forgiven for thinking it was business as usual. The actual term he uses, xanthē, could mean ‘golden’ or a variety of words – “Greek colour terms are quite strange and don’t map out well on ours,” says Whitmarsh. Like Achilles’ ‘blonde’ hair, it’s difficult for modern readers to understand exactly what Homer meant by Odysseus’s ‘black’ skin. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing: they help to focus and make sense of everything. “We don’t definitely know what ancient Greeks would look like, but they sure as hell wouldn’t look like the ‘white’ actors we normally see either,” says Whitmarsh. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io, Call Me By Your Name 2: All you need to know, Fast & Furious 9: Everything you need to know, Pitch Perfect 4: Everything you need to know, The Conjuring 3: Everything you need to know, New on Netflix this week: TV shows to watch NOW, Top Gun: Maverick – Everything you need to know, Doctor Strange 2: Everything you need to know, New on Netflix this week: Movies you can watch NOW. Slightly problematic: Zeus’s is a lightning bolt. Die Historienserie Troja - Untergang einer Stadt entführt ins antike Griechenland. Es soll nicht lange dauern, bis unzählige Schiffe des Feindes an der Küste vor Troja landen und alles und jeden vernichten, der sich ihnen in den Weg stellt. The Mortuary - Jeder Tod hat eine Geschichte. zeus, achilles wasn't black and more. The blonde haired Achilles as described by homer? chipped in one more. Die Historienserie Troja - Untergang einer Stadt entführt ins antike Griechenland. Not exactly. It was all interconnected,” says Whitmarsh. Gods. And so it is that the character of Achilles, last embodied on screen by a lank-haired Brad Pitt in 2004's Troy, will this time be played by British-Ghanaian actor David Gyasi. In a bit longer: we chatted with Tim Whitmarsh, Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge, to answer any questions you might have on the ethnicity of Troy – starting with the big one…. Starts Saturday 17th February at 9.10pm on @BBCOne. Meanwhile in a video posted on YouTube, a user claimed that the BBC was “blackwashing” Greek myth to “deprive Europeans of their culture and history to make them more susceptible to their globalist aims”. If you want to tell the story you have to rely on scraps of poems, oral history or vase paintings – the myth is malleable. Die Gefahr lauert allerdings nicht nur von außerhalb der trojanischen Mauern. So why no online campaign to have him played by The Mountain from Game Of Thrones or Andy Serkis in a mo-cap suit? Picture this: to celebrate a hundred years since the birth of Nelson Mandela this July, the BBC commissions an eight-part biopic to celebrate the life and times of the beloved anti-apartheid revolutionary. Nein, auch im Herzen der Stadt sorgen böse Zungen dafür, dass großes Misstrauen gegenüber den Herrschenden entsteht. No wonder your imdb rating in 1.2/10.#TroyFallOfACity #Αχιλλέας #hellas #achilles #DoubleStandards pic.twitter.com/PPESSnfey2, — Phillip P (@fghtrpltf16) January 4, 2018. Then there's the notion that it's simply Gyasi's obvious lack of Greek heritage, not his race, that's an issue. Troy: Fall of a City begins tonight at 9.10pm on BBC One. Turkish, prince), this is basically nonsense. Zeus, King of the Gods, is… well… a God. Not only were the historical Greeks unlikely to be uniformly pale-skinned, but their world was also home to ‘Ethiopians’, a vague term for dark-skinned North Africans. Homer's mythical tale of war, gods and doomed love, There's "potential" for Troy: Fall of a City series 2, Achilles is what's saving Troy: Fall of a City, Troy FINALLY delivers the moment we've been waiting for, Troy: Fall of a City review: Suck it, purists. He’s not saying that Odysseus is in a group of people that are all united by a skin colour.”. What those who object to Gyasi's casting are really saying – beyond the handwringing about cultural authenticity – is, essentially, that they want to go back to the old days when you could get away with an all-white cast. Archived. However, you can see its equivalent on Troy: Fall of a City – well, at least according to furious Twitter commenters berating the BBC for casting black actors to play Achilles and Zeus. However, it’s telling that while some viewers have been quick to argue that a black actor could never play a blonde Achilles, nothing has been said about a white actor playing a ‘black-skinned’ Odysseus. Why has the casting of David Gyasi and Hakeem Kae-Kazim as Achilles and Zeus proved so controversial? Modern racial categories aren’t always helpful in looking at the ancient world, but there were certainly people we today might think of as both ‘black’ and ‘white’ in the ancient Mediterranean, and many variations of colour and identity in between”. “All the way through antiquity people updated it, changed the angle and brought in people that weren’t in Homer’s original. In fact, this world (of black Hamlets, Macbeths and Henry Vs) may point to where film and television is steadily heading. To put it another way, we see the world through certain lenses. “Homer’s poems are merely one version and the Greeks themselves understood the story could change,” explains Whitmarsh. Doesn’t exist. Historienserie von David Farr mit Louis Hunter und Bella Dayne. Maybe bad is too strong a criticism, it's more like an "ehh..ok" LIGHT SPOILERS: But this was just beyond ridiculous. “There’s never been an authentic retelling of the Iliad and the Odyssey – they’ve always been fluid texts. This also meant depicting the Greeks – perceived as the ancestors of modern European civilisation – as white too. The slave trade drew a line between slavers and slaves, black and white. But here’s the thing: the question of whether ‘black people’ lived in Ancient Greece is itself flawed. This is just a taste of the comments surrounding the BBC drama following the debuts of David Gyasi and Hakeem Kae-Kazim. That’s much more interesting: it’s the same reason that can explain why Jesus tends to be a European in Western people’s minds, and why Cleopatra has been played by Elizabeth Taylor and Achilles by Brad Pitt. The Greek world – one they saw as a circular disk surrounded by a constantly moving stream of ocean – was far more ‘fluid’ than our own. Ultimately, Gyasi – a commanding performer with impressive turns in the likes of Interstellar on his CV – is more than qualified for the part of Achilles. Why are people so angry about the BBC’s decision? Difficult translations aside, Homer’s work don’t give us the full story of Troy. For instance, the Germans in the 1800s were adamant that the Greeks were actually Germans who had wandered down the peninsula.”, As for British and American audiences, “The transatlantic slave trade made it so black and white are the categories in which we see people,” argues Whitmarsh.