Helen of Troy hatched from an egg, you chode

[h/t to ahashemi on Bluesky for the headline improvement.]

The mucus of several kinds of snails contains an organic compound of bromine. If you crush up a lot of these snails, you can turn the mush into a fabric dye — apparently, 12,000 snails yield about a gram and a half of dye, or enough to color the “trim of a single garment.”

The color produced by that dye is purple. But, because purple dye production was such a labor-intensive ordeal (to say nothing of the sheer quantity of snail murder), purple fabric was wildly expensive and the people who could afford it were rich. Like, Emperor-rich or High Priest-rich. While it’s most well-known from the Mediterranean region, the exact same family of snails was used to make purple dye in ancient Mesoamerica where purple was also associated with Aztec royalty. (Fun fact, the dye apparently stinks like fish so bad that the Talmud says a woman can divorce her husband if he becomes a dyer after they get married.)

Purple fabric was so intrinsic to the office that becoming a Roman emperor was called “donning the purple.”

The first US president to wear a flag pin was Richard Nixon. It was a show of patriotism in reaction to the protests against the Vietnam War. After Nixon resigned in disgrace, the flag pin fell out of fashion. Reagan didn’t wear one. Bush 1 didn’t wear one. Clinton didn’t wear one. You can even look at the pictures from the debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000 and neither of them are wearing one. Looking back on it, it’s off-putting.

But the American flag lapel pin was brought back by President George W. Bush after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and, more importantly, during the Iraq War. It quickly became a show of support, both of the president and of the war.

Six years later, presidential candidate Obama did not always wear his flag pin. Him not wearing it was a national headline. It was a talking point. It came up during town halls. The lack of pin on his suit was taken as a political statement. He tried to point out that it had become empty symbolism that had replaced true patriotism, but that argument didn’t last long.

A quarter century later, it’s just part of the uniform.

These small things — stylistic choices like a color and a lapel pin — are messages. They are political. Because everything is political.

There’s a refrain that comes up from time to time covering gaming that says “leave politics out of video games.” I’ve been accused of bringing politics into reviews. I think almost everyone who covers games has. But it comes up in almost all art.

This week, it’s about Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. I haven’t seen it yet, but I did watch that one episode of Wishbone and I really liked O Brother, Where Art Thou? Nolan’s version of The Odyssey has been a culture war talking point ever since the casting was announced. And the talking points and controversy have been the same exhaustingly predictable nonsense.

Stormtroopers can’t be Black. Mermaids can’t be Black. And, now, Helen of Troy can’t be Black. The fact that she’s the daughter of Zeus and was hatched out of an egg, presumably, is fine, though. She’s just supposed to be the most beautiful woman in the world and racists can’t allow beauty to be non-white. (Also, interestingly, Helen of Troy has been played by Black actors before — once in Xena: Warrior Princess and once in a stage performance by the best Catwoman, Eartha Kitt.)

Throw in Elliot Page and Travis Scott — a, gasp, second Black actor — and you had the perfect recipe for Fox News to declare the movie a disaster before the first frame was shot. And totally-not-a-racist Elon Musk echoed the baseless criticisms every time. Now, he has decided he’s going to let his plagiarism and CSAM machine, Grok, make a “historically accurate” version of The Odyssey. Obviously, this will mean that Odysseus will wear a story-accurate pig tooth hat instead of that silly thing Matt Damon is wearing in this version.

The thing is, The Odyssey is a myth. It’s a fairy tale. Odysseus wasn’t real. Cyclopses aren’t real. Helen of Troy wasn’t real. The Trojan Horse wasn’t real. Hell, the Trojan War — the thing Odysseus is odyssey-ing his way home from — wasn’t real.

The controversy about Nolan’s The Odyssey was never about the story or the historical accuracy. It's about the presentation. It's about the signals. Because everything is political.

Roman emperors didn’t all independently decide they loved purple robes. It was to signal how much money they had (and how much they hated snails). Nixon didn’t start wearing a lapel pin because he just loved America so darn much. He wore it to signal (fake) patriotism. Matt Walsh and the other fascists don’t give a shit about Helen of Troy. They care about signaling their racism. Their supremacy. Their politics.

Every act — what color toga you wear, how big your lapel pin is, who you cast in your movie, the video game you make, your scarf, your car — is political. Even when you don’t mean it to be and even when you don’t understand what you’re signaling. Especially in the Because Fuck You, That’s Why economy, where you choose to participate matters. Because everything is political.

Less than a month ago, the Supreme Court finally, a year and a half later, decided to uphold the Constitution and protect birthright citizenship (for now) because where your parents were born is political. Over 800 bills have been introduced this year alone to legislate the existence of gender non-conforming people because pronouns are political. Wearing a dress while reading to children is political. Who you love is political. The color of your skin is political.

This week, ICE and CBP released their latest statistics and they're bad. Federal agents arrested over 43,000 people in June. There are more people without criminal histories than with them in federal detention. More than twenty people have died in detention centers this year. Over half a million people have been deported since January of last year. ICE agents murdered two (more) people this week, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerro.

There’s no such thing as leaving politics out of anything. Because existence is political.