Julio E. López

Mientras tanto en la cdmx

Let’s stop lying to ourselves. Helen of Troy was Greek. Aegean. Mycenaean. Bronze Age Mediterranean. Not African. Not “reimagined”. Not “updated”. Her beauty was the cause of the Trojan War. Not a footnote. Not symbolism. The engine of the myth. If that makes you uncomfortable — good. Myths are supposed to be uncomfortable. What we’re seeing now isn’t bold storytelling. It’s the same tired studio reflex: change the optics, avoid the ideas. They don’t rewrite because they’ve found something deeper. They rewrite because they’re afraid of: • beauty as unequal power • desire as destructive force • men as catastrophically fallible So they flatten it. Sanitise it. Lecture instead of tell. And don’t pretend this is a one-off. It’s a pattern. • Anne Boleyn — race-swapped Tudor England, played by Jodie Turner-Smith. History reduced to a statement piece. • Cleopatra — a Macedonian Greek ruler rebranded, played by Adele James. Egypt had to issue corrections. That should’ve been humiliating. • Vikings: Valhalla — medieval Scandinavia rewritten to suit a modern HR handbook. Now it’s Helen’s turn. And notice the rule they never break: 👉 They never do this to African mythology 👉 They never do this to Asian history 👉 They never do this to Indigenous stories They only “reinterpret” Greek, Roman, British, Norse myths. Why? Because those cultures are treated as safe to vandalise. As public clay. As tools for modern ideology. That’s not inclusion. That’s creative cowardice. If you want African stories — there are extraordinary African myths. Tell those. Fund those. Respect those. But hijacking Greek mythology and calling it progress isn’t brave. It’s bankrupt. Helen of Troy does not need correcting. She needs respect. And audiences are sick of being gaslit into applauding ahistorical nonsense just because it comes wrapped in prestige language. Myths don’t need updating. They need understanding. And if that scares modern studios — they shouldn’t be anywhere near history or myth in the first place.