Have you seen The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s Iron Age blockbuster? I haven’t. Have you read it in the Greek original? Me neither. Petty details like that shouldn’t stop us from joining the culture-war combat about the movie. This is a democracy, not Odysseus’s Greece. Not that Odysseus called it Greece. But enough with the nitpicking.

Even before the film’s release, conservatives were picking Nolan’s nits. They complained about the “woke casting” of non-whites, especially Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy. They complained about the historical accuracy of Odysseus’s boat. They complained about Nolan’s fealty to Homer’s original script. They complained that Matt Damon plays Odysseus with a Boston accent: “Have you come faah?” After the movie’s launch on July 17, conservatives shifted from attacking Hollywood to attacking each other.