Somewhere on the press tour for “The Odyssey,” director Christopher Nolan appeared with Jimmy Fallon and watched his cast play Cyclops beer pong. Then he went to Beijing, sat down with a political philosophy Ph.D. student named Zhong Shu, and was asked a series of questions about his interpretation of Homer and whether he was a “bard for a civilization at dusk.”
The viral Beijing interview was so much more than a well-read academic finally giving Nolan an intellectual challenge. It was a snapshot of the new story “arms race” that’s been quietly brewing between the U.S. and China — a narrative cold war where each civilization is grappling with its relationship to the guiding stories of the past in an effort to determine which culture will lead the world in the future.
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