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Fact-check: Did RFK Jr say Nolan's Odyssey was marketed towards ‘gay men and cowards’?
A video of Robert F Kennedy Jr has gone viral where he allegedly says Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey was marketed towards ‘gay men and cowards’.
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has opened to critical and commercial acclaim, but some Americans have not received it too well. There has been controversy over the casting with Elon Musk saying Nolan ‘desecrated Homer and groveled on his knees just to meet the woke requirements for an Oscar.’ Now, an alleged video of Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has gone viral where he allegedly says the producers of the movie marketed it towards ‘gay men and cowards’.
“RFK goes off on Nolan’s Odyssey: ‘You might want to sit down for this.’ Unreal,” the person sharing the clip wrote.
In the alleged video, RFK Jr says “If you liked the Odyssey, I have news for you and you might want to sit down for this.” He further allegedly said “We did some research and found out the producers marketed it towards gay men and cowards specifically.”
“So, if you ended up liking it, there's no easy way to say this but go ahead and call your dad and let him you're a bigger fruit loop than Toucan Sam,” the Health Secretary alleged adds.
“As we all know Hollywood exists so clinically insane people and big gay wads can congratulate each other for producing increasingly bizarre anti western propaganda,” he alleged continues. The clip was shared multiple times by other accounts.
One said “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services had this to say about “men” who like the Nolan adaptation of the Odyssey,” followed with a laughing emoticon. Another added “RFK Jr., definitely not AI, releases a new study that people who liked Nolan's The Odyssey have a 100% higher likelihood of being gay and cowardly.” Yet another said “RFK JR knows.”
Fact checking RFK Jr's video on The Odyssey
No, RFK Jr did not make any remarks about Nolan's Odyssey. Maverick Alexander, the X account which originally shared the video, clearly notes it is a satire account.
Further, for those who made it to the end of RFK Jr's alleged video, it is clearly written “Unreal: Lacking in reality, substance, or genuineness,” indicating that the video is fabricated. Further, there is no coverage at all of RFK Jr going off on Nolan's new movie.
Nonetheless, the fake video comes amid conservative backlash towards The Odyssey. In Nolan's movie, Matt Damon who plays Odysseus reveals his guilt over sacking Troy to Penelope, portrayed by Anne Hathaway. This vulnerability along with the implied PTSD has not gone down well with conservatives, The Independent reported.
“The main struggle for Nolan and his producer wife is that they can't make the ancient Greeks too heroic, masculine, iconic because that would uphold the Euro-supremacist roots of all Western Civilization ... So you cast a woke manlet as the King,” a right-wing cultural commentator shared on X.
Matt Walsh, another right-wing commentator wrote “Just saw The Odyssey. Despite what you may have heard, literally all of the criticisms by conservatives were entirely correct. The movie is just as woke as you fear, if not more so. The DEI casting is atrocious. Completely takes you out of the story right from the beginning. But even worse than that is Nolan’s decision to turn Odysseus into an anachronistic whiney, solemn shell of a man plagued by “trauma” and guilt. It’s impossible to overlook these flaws because the film itself is not terribly entertaining or well constructed.”
He added, “For the most part it is disjointed, dull, self-serious, disenchanted, somehow feeling both verbose and overly rushed at the same time. The dialogue is some of the worst I’ve ever heard in a “critically acclaimed” film. “On the nose” and “clunky” are descriptions that can’t even begin to describe this script. At no point in the story does Nolan ever transport the audience to the ancient world. You never feel like you’re 3,000 years in the past. You feel like you’re watching modern Americans put on a pageant, because you are. Nobody would be calling this thing a masterpiece if it was made by a director not named Christopher Nolan.”
