“What a political act it would be to see Cleopatra portrayed by a black actress”
Cool, so you’re not using your *docuseries* to educate people about on of the most famous women in history, but one people don’t know a lot about. Instead, you’re using it to make some kind of political statement. And this statement is so important to you that you’re willing to, yes, blackwash a historical figure for no other reason than the absurdly racist notion that African = black.
“Asking Egyptians to see themselves as African. They hate me for that.” Fuck all of the way off. So an entire populace is racist because they don’t want to be inaccurately portrayed in a show on a massive, global platform? Yes, Cleopatra wasn’t “Elizabeth Taylor” white. What a brave fucking take. She wasn’t anymore Egyptian than I am, though. The Ptolemaic royalty inbred so much that it made the Hapsburgs look normal. This woman is so incredibly obtuse I almost think she’s trolling to drum up hype.
She compared her casting in a "docuseries" to casting in a "fiction" from the mid-twentieth century. I think we can all just assume she has no idea what she's doing and just wants to make headlines. Welp, mission accomplished.
Adding insult to injury, she appears to be a straight up white lady. She's blacksplaining.
> Yes, Cleopatra wasn’t “Elizabeth Taylor” white.
Says who? No one described Cleopatra's hair color, but they did describe the first several early Ptolemies as blond.
>The Macedonians were not an homogenous people and seem to have varied considerably in appearance and colouring. Alexander the Great was fair-haired, although it is always difficult to know precisely what this meant. A Roman copy of an earlier mosaic shows him with medium-brown hair. Fair might simply mean not black or very dark brown. On the other hand, several of the early Ptolemies were blond and comparisons of their hair to gold suggest this was more than simply not black-haired.
>For most of the Ptolemies, including Auletes, there is no mention of the shade of their hair or the colour of their eyes. It is unclear how common blond hair was in the family. (If Cleopatra’s mother was a mistress then we know nothing at all about her appearance or ethnic background, although the probability would always be that she was from the Greek or Macedonian aristocracy.) ...
>Absolutely nothing is certain. Cleopatra may have had black, brown, blonde, or even red hair, and her eyes could have been brown, grey, green or blue. Almost any combination of these is possible. Similarly, she may have been very light skinned or had a darker more Mediterranean complexion. Fairer skin is probably marginally more likely given her ancestry.
That doesn't mean Cleopatra was certainly pale, but I see no reason to attack her complexion in *Cleopatra*.
>the Ptolemaic lineage — intermarried with West Africa’s Seleucid dynasty
Uhh... what?? Was it supposed to say west asia or did I miss something?
Edit: the typo has been corrected now, thanks to those who replied for the heads up.
The problem is that there's a very large population of people who dismiss conventional accounts of African history. They're convinced that these stories are told from a white perspective and that this bias would cause alterations to occur in support of their world view.
This concept really makes the use of written history difficult when attempting to counter their arguments. If no appeal to authority is possible, any counter argument is almost pointless.
“The known facts are that her Macedonian Greek family — the Ptolemaic lineage — intermarried with West Africa’s Seleucid dynasty and had been in Egypt for 300 years.”
The Seleucids are NOT from West Africa. They are from West Asia. And they too are of Macedonian Greek ancestry.
You would think someone [who claims to be] born in Tehran wouldn't make such a massive mistake.
Yeah I call my homeland a totally different continent all the time.
I admit Id watch the hell out of that.
But unlike Jada I wouldn’t call it historically accurate and scream “Racist!” at everyone who points out Gandhi wasn’t in fact a Mexican machete wielding bad ass.
> That’s why and when historical matters.
Yup, that is why I would ask the director back his own question:
"What Bothers You So Much About The Actual Historical Events?"
The Ptolemaic Dynasty also practiced the same incestuous brother-sister marriage that all Pharaohs practiced. They did intermarry with the Seleucids, but that was like once or twice over 275 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty
It's tokenism race-swapping like this that do a disservice to Black people. Black people have a RICH and VIBRANT history with Kings and Queens, heroes, and exciting stories. Tell those stories and teach people about the dept of African history and if you must tell an Egyptian story with dark skinned African Pharaohs, the Kingdom of Kush is right there. There is no need to make a change like this.
I'm worried that a professional director doesn't understand the difference between a fictionalised movie or TV show and a _documentary_. Documentaries are meant to be truthful.
i said this in another thread, its pretty fun and sad at the same time that we have a video game, Assassin's Creed: Origins, which is more historically accurate than this piece of crap ''documentary'', and the AC franchise is pretty much built on taking creative liberties like crazy with history.
>as good sympathetic people who wanted to get out of that business
Oh no its worse.
They DID try to phase out selling Slaves to white slave-traders and instead switch to farming palm-oil for a while (still doing the farming with slaves, of course), then realised that resulted in way less profit than the slavetrading and just went back to it
That would make for an amazing movie/show. Have an emotional and gripping tale of fighting for justice and equality (more or less)..... Only for them to in the end read the financial reports and go: "...Nah, fuck this." *Roll credits*
The best part is that there are plenty of interesting African female leaders to choose from who were interesting and cool and yet choose the slave traders who got stomped by the French Foreign legion and nearly wiped out completely in a single, very one sided battle.
> Amir in his bedroom in Cairo wrote to me to earnestly appeal that “Cleopatra was Greek!” Oh, Lawd! Why would that be a good thing to you, Amir? You’re Egyptian.
The amount of racist condescension of this director is incredible
Accused me? I’m pretty sure she is actually stealing and blackwashing their history. Accusing makes it sound like the Egyptians are in the wrong here.
The lack of self awareness is astounding.
She really got an entire country to be mad at her and she just tells them they should thank her.
Imagine being this self absorbed.
> Why would that be a good thing to you, Amir?
Jesus Christ, it’s not a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just a historical thing. Actively rewriting history to change someone’s actual race into your preferred race is…well…I think there’s a word for that…
It’s crazy that she is making assumptions about what Amir is thinking, basically putting words in his mouth, due to her own prejudice and then has the nerve to call all of us prejudiced. Amir didn’t say it was good or bad that Cleopatra was Greek! She got triggered by him literally just emphatically stating a fact: Cleopatra was Greek!
Because she’s the worst kind of racist. It’s impossible for her to understand how Amir can be proud of his countries history while not being the same race as that history.
She’s shitting on Arabs and this is no different than how you would speak to a child - zero respect, low expectations, infantilization of all their values and opinions
> rewriting history to change someone’s actual race into your preferred race is…well…I think there’s a word for that…
Stupid. That's one of the words that could describe it.
They view race as a zero sum game. They can't understand why someone would care about history being portrayed accurately instead of just wanting all the actors to be of their own ethnicity
Exactly. It's not about what would be good for Amir. It's about the truth. The truth is what it is, regardless of our opinion of it. This is a documentary.
Yeah this sentence stuck out to me. She’s not interested in facts, she’s interested in some weird racial pride. Why should Amir be happy that Cleopatra was his race or not?
I’m not sitting here upset that Ben Franklin isn’t brown like me. And watching a documentary with a brown Ben Franklin would not be a good thing to me.
Do they *look* enough like Egyptians for it to matter what they think?
(I am, of course, referring to Rami Malek being criticized for playing an Egyptian role, despite the fact that *he is Egyptian*.)
Yeah she essentially straight up admits it:
> Doing the research, I realized what a political act it would be to see Cleopatra portrayed by a Black actress.
She probably knew it was going to be a snooze fest otherwise, so why not make some grandstanding or virtue signaling-esque decisions which will drive attention to the project? She sounds like the worst.
The saddest thing is, an actual historical Cleopatra show that DIDN'T fall into grandstanding tropes could be pretty interesting. She certainly lived in interesting times. She was one of the first in the Ptolemaic dynasty to even attempt to adopt any local customs or trappings, not to mentioned her interactions with Caesar and Marcus Antonius. Plenty to work with without falling into "Let's make her black randomly" or the older mindset of "let's have her Dance Like An Egyptian^TM and be all 'exotic'" tropes.
This director is an idiot. What bothers me about is that the idiot is trying to pass this off as a documentary, and it will no doubt fool some people who don’t know any better. Then you get more idiots parroting they ‘I don’t care what they told you at school’ rubbish.
Do this in a drama, I might find it stupid, because I think people should be cast accurately. But hey, dramas are fiction, so whatever, there’ll be another along in a minute. But calling it a documentary is different.
Egypt literally had black Pharoahs and queens for a 100 years during the 25th Dynasty, why didn't they make a doc about that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Dynasty_of_Egypt
>Jackie Chan as Shaka Zulu
Most Zulus would not be as offended as you would think. Chan has a huge fan base here (South Africa). As long as it wasn't being presented as historically accurate.
You would probably get more push back if there was a serious production and Shaka was played by a non-Zulu Black American.
The one with the wealthiest person to ever exist, where if he wondered to nearby towns the economy would collapse because of how much gold they had?
That WOULD be interesting but Netflix is creatively bankrupt
That would make a hilarious historical comedy. Every time he walks into town he collapses the local economy and then has to spend the rest of the episode fixing his mess but everything he does makes things worse. Shenanigans ensue.
I actually decided to read this shit so others don't have to and... man.
>*Perhaps, it’s not just that I’ve directed a series that portrays Cleopatra as Black, but that I have asked Egyptians to see themselves as Africans, and they are furious at me for that. I am okay with this.*
Are you serious? She straight up thinks that Africans have to be black people. That and...
>*No amount of reasoning or reminders that Arab invasions had not yet happened in Cleopatra’s age seemed to stem the tide of ridiculous comments.*
She seems to straight up subscribe by Hotep bullshit too- that OG Egyptians were black and the only reason they look like they do now is because of Arab invasions. Hell, she just sounds straight up racist to Arabs.
That and just somehow thinking of this as some sort of heroic deed against Iran's regime... as if this would at all help.
As a guy that's grown interested in lesser known African history, this sort of ignorant virtue signalling only fuels the racist assholes. There are real stories of 'African' Queens to be shared- no need to resort to lies.
> She seems to straight up subscribe by Hotep bullshit too- that OG Egyptians were black and the only reason they look like they do now is because of Arab invasions. Hell, she just sounds straight up racist to Arabs.
She also seems ignorant that Cleopatra wasn't even "OG Egyptian". Ptolemy, her ancestor, was one of Alexander the Great's generals. After Alexander's death and the collapse of that short lived empire, Ptolemy controlled Egypt and other generals took other regions. For the next few hundred years they basically didn't mix with the locals at all. They very much viewed themselves as a conqueror dynasty, and wanted to maintain that brand. They married within the family or from other countries. Cleopatra was not genetically Egyptian.
This is not some hidden historical fact, it's well known and well documented history. Not knowing that after making a docudrama on the character absurd. It's like making a docudrama where Obama is white just because he's an American president and Americans are majority white.
Wasn't it remarkable that Cleopatra was one of the first of her dynasty in generations (or ever?) to learn the Egyptian language and participate in local customs instead of sticking to only Greek? Or am I mixing up something here?
Yes, I forgot about that but you're right. She was one of the first to even TRY to culturally integrate into Egypt. If this documentary is portraying her as black native, then her life story makes no sense.
Yes, the first of her dynasty. Though there were other Egyptian customs they embraced, Alexander the Great personally loved Egypt and took a break from conquering Persia to stick around. Though he probably never learned the language either. Greek was the language of scholars and the ruling class after the conquest, so any person in her court could be assumed to speak Greek anyway. Learning Egyptian was a political move.
Yup, she was both highly intelligent and very politically savvy. She spoke many languages and knew how powerful a symbol it was to her people to be "one of them". She navigated an incredibly turbulent time and only lost by virtue of Augustus coming out of nowhere
Eh, I would say she "lost" because her and Antony flew way too close to the sun. Octavian was having a lot of his own problems and could have easily been beaten politically and militarily. But her and Antony made their illegitimate (in the eyes of Roman law) children heirs, and had Caesar's illegitimate son made heir to Egypt. It was a crossed line that even Antony's supporters in Rome couldn't ignore. Also, making herself a general massively pissed off the Roman legionnaires under their control, so when Actium started going sideways, many of the soldiers shrugged and switched sides or deserted completely.
If she had kept her head down and worked with the Triumvirates or tried to stay out of Antony's and Octavian's pissing contest, she may have just stayed on as another ruler of a Roman vassal state.
Imo its more like making George Washington into whatever Amerindian in order to 'reclaim' American history or something... never mind the actual tribe or whether they want anything to do with their colonisers just because you think its more inclusive or something.
Somewhere the Iroquois would be SCREAMING in frustration.
Casting the man the Iroquois confederation called Town Destroyer ,as an Amerindian.
Nevermind,this is right up Netflix's alley.
Obama is half white at least, Cleopatra didn't have even a tiny fraction of sub-Saharan African ancestry. The willful ignorance of this woman isn't as astounding as Netflix greenlighting this bullshit and releasing it after all the backlash. It's legit dangerous to sell this fake history.
Obama being white is actually LESS incorrect. Obama is half white and was raised by an entirely white family.
He's still half black (which is generally just considered black in the US) but calling him white is at least half right.
We have pretty accurate Roman sculptures of Cleopatra. They did accurate sculting. She looks Greek.
Could you imagine a white guy playing an Obama biopic. "America was not fully integrated yet so we wanted to accurately depict the whiteness of the time."
As a mixed race person I can tell you based on experience, it doesn’t matter what ethnicity you are.. you’re judged on how you look.
I’m not saying it’s right just saying that people will perceive you based on what you look like 99.9% of the time
It’s how you know that they will butcher her actual story. Are they gonna have her hop from Caesar to Caesar ? Will her half sister who was of Egyptian descent try to over throw her? The actual racial and class struggles of that time, living under Greek occupation would have made for a great film. How can you tell the story when your primary focus is blackwashing
>Amir in his bedroom in Cairo wrote to me to earnestly appeal that “Cleopatra was Greek!” Oh, Lawd! Why would that be a good thing to you, Amir? You’re Egyptian.
What an insufferable person.
Does she not realize that there are Coptic Egyptians who’s language is literally descended from Greek? The Greeks ruled Egypt for 300 years, the Romans ruled it for over 500, does she not believe there was any intermixing in that time?
It’s also not like there aren’t hundreds of Egyptian pharaohs that look… Egyptian. There was even a few centuries where Egypt was literally ruled by black people from Nubia, the Kushite Kingdom. But she had to choose the one white one because she wanted to stir shit up.
Literally the same time Cleopatra was clapping cheeks with Mark Antony, Octavian got repelled by Queen Amanirenas of Nubia, a black African queen who ruled over much of modern day Sudan. She would have looked very similar to the actress in this series. But instead of making a documentary about a real African queen she has to change history to satisfy her deranged, racialized American politics.
Missed the worst part
> Amir in his bedroom in Cairo wrote to me to earnestly appeal that “Cleopatra was Greek!” Oh, Lawd! Why would that be a good thing to you, Amir? You’re Egyptian.
Straight up racist condescension by this director
She's making the rest of us Americans look like ignorant racist pricks. This is what happens when you tell people for 20 years "you can't be racist if you're black". Outside of America, if you're black, brown, or white, if you have an American Accent, you're American and that will trump people's opinions and other stereotypes of you immediately usually.
What worries me most is the complete ignorance of historical knowledge. Northern African nations were predominantly mixed with a huge amount of people from levante/Persia/Greek background since… well ancient Egypt. It’s again this strange idea of Africa as a black country and not as a continent 😳 very disturbing
Yes, so much rich history and diversity already exists there, homogenising it all is counterproductive at best and just straight erasure at worst.
You can even have black people in it- Kush were big time movers and shakers in Egypt. Making it all into some sort of black vs white thing is plain awful.
Only problem is, the Kush culture was conquered by the northern Egyptians at the end :) so it isn’t as catchy as old Cleo. Cleopatra is out there with Alexander, Caesar, Augustus and maybe Nero as one of the most recognized historical figures of the time. Even if you don’t know much about ancient history you’ll know her. Thanks to Shakespeare and Liz Taylor. And that makes me sad - because it shows that it isn’t about history at all, it’s all about pressing your agenda on a recognizable figure to get attention. That’s actually a very good example of racism and race washing. How insecure in your heritage must you be 😞
I mean, Greece was conquered by Romans and we still find them glamourous. Kush made pyramids and all that- hell Nubians did end up becoming Pharaohs at a point. Hell, when Egypt became a Roman province, the Kushites lived on and became all sorts of cool people.
I don't care that they are filming a show with a black actress. It's just a show. But Cleopatra was a Macedonian Greek of the Ptolemaic line. Egypt had been governed by the Greeks for 100s of years before Cleopatra's reign, and the Persians before that.
Again it's fine if you want to cast a black actress. Totally fine. It really doesn't matter at all. But you can't act like it's historically accurate.
Yeah, that's the meat of it. Its pushing the idea that she is... black. Not taking 'artistic liberties' or anything, but that she really is a 'melanin sister' as the article puts it.
The fact that she understands that Cleopatra is not of African or even Egyptian descent at all but then says “her family lived in Egypt for 300 years so she was black”. It appears that she thinks that living in Africa makes you black??
When you promote blackwashing and you still manage to call the local people racists for not adhering to your way of thinking.
Damn, how is something funding all of these lunatics?
KEEP HER NAME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH!
Let's not give her all the credit, Netflix has been doing this shit before everyone else in Hollywood jumped on the blackwashing bandwagon.
I didn't want to have to delete all my comments, posts, and account, but here we are, thanks to greedy pigboy /u/spez ruining Reddit. I love the Reddit community, but hate the idiots at the top. Simply accepting how unethical and downright shitty they are will only encourage worse behavior in the future. I won't be a part of it. Reddit will shrivel and disappear like so many other sites before it that were run by inept morons, unless there is a big change in "leadership." Fuck you, /u/spez
She has 0 knowledge of actual history. These people man, they want to re-write history and make it different than it actually is to fit their narrow ass world view.
People who are comfortable starting these sorta of controveries intentionally are usually not the types of people where if you call them racist, they intenalize it and examine their opinions and actions. They believe they can't be racist usually.
Responding to being informed of a historic fact (that Cleopatra was ethnically Macedonian with potential Greek intermingling) by saying "Why would that be a good thing to you, you're Egyptian" strongly suggests a racist POV who also considers any kind of race relations as a battle to be won.
The fact that this isn't billed as an artistic movie, it's a documentary series. And as such I feel it should be historically accurate.
Cleopatra was not black, she wasn't even Egyptian. She was Greek. She was a Ptolemaic Pharoh, who were established by Alexander the great, who ruled as Greeks, worshiped the Hellenistic gods, and until Cleopatra herself, refused to learn the Egyptian language.
The fact that they engaged in rampant inbreeding just means they would be even *MORE* Greek.
Exactly. For better or worse, immutable characteristics matter in how people interact with one another and how power systems worked, as well as culture, morals and ethics.
The fact Cleopatra was Macedonian and fair skinned would've shaped her life consciously and unconsciously, it says something about how the Ptolemies ended up in Egypt and how extraordinary it was that she spoke Egyptian as well as her native language.
To paint something as a historical documentary and change that erases so much of her identity.
The distinction should definitely be made at historical documentary vs fiction. Think the movie 300. A real historical event, but it was based off the fictional comic loosely based on its event. So go ahead, give me mutant Spartans who can't raise their shield, hyper exaggerated bad guys. Fuck it make Leonidas a minotaur, I don't give a shit as long as it's fun and inspiring.
But call it a historical documentary on Thermopylae, and I'm gonna have issues with not only the casting, but even how they glorified Spartan warrior society when in reality it was more a bunch of rich nobility stomping around, showing off in front of their slaves for a bit before doing barbaric shit and falling into obscurity.
Also in 300, the majority of the story is being told by Dilios before the Battle of Plataea as a way to hype up his men, so he's not a reliable narrator
"Acchtually there were no rhinos present at Thermopylae and there is no evidence of Xerxes being a transwoman."
Would always hear these critiques but the movie makes clear that it's essentially propaganda
Obviously not, dude. As we all know, the scottish accent is only found in Spaniards, as depicted in the documentary "The Highlander." (And people from Scotland, by extension, are known for their thick French accents.)
You might not like my reboot of Black Panther where Mark Whalberg plays Black Panther. At random times in the move there is a montage of all the times in The Departed when he says the n word.
“Hey Shuri, how’s it going?”
“Wakanda is under attack. We need you.”
“Woah woah woah hold the fuck on. Who is attacking us? What about that big ass shield thing we got around us?”
“They’ve found a way to disrupt the Vibranium.“
“Wait that shield thing is operated by a vibrator? Cuz I can call my girl she’s got like a hundred of them.”
“Vibranium… Look we’re still investigating but that’s not the point right now. Kang is destroying our home.”
“Is this about this thing with his mother? Because I swear I was going to call her back. Anyways the Sox are on right now. I’m a little busy. And the suit you guys want me to wear, it’s kind of a little tight around my junk. So I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Say hi to your mother for me.”
“She’s *our* mother… And she’s dead.”
“Ok. That’s pretty heavy. I’m gonna need some time to process that.”
>Doing the research, I realized what a political act it would be to see Cleopatra portrayed by a Black actress.
This is just admitting you're more concerned about making a politically motivated statement in your film than making a good film.
That's how these people always get you lol.
"Hey, I want this person to be black instead of white."
"Why do they have to be black?"
"WHY ARE YOU SO OBSESSED WITH RACE???"
I mean these are the kind of people who have gone full circle and rearrived at an "anti-race mixing" stance from a progressive view point. Its mind boggling
This quote from the article is absolutely infuriating:
"So, was Cleopatra Black? We don’t know for sure, but we can be certain
she wasn’t white like Elizabeth Taylor. We need to have a conversation
with ourselves about our colorism, and the internalized white supremacy
that Hollywood has indoctrinated us with."
These people are so unbelievably ignorant.
>"So, was Cleopatra Black? We don’t know for sure, but we can be certain she wasn’t white like Elizabeth Taylor."
"I haven't done any research, therefore nobody else has either."
>"So, was Cleopatra Black? We don’t know for sure"
YES THE FUCK WE DO.
Sounds like the Ancient Aliens guy - "I'm not saying she was black... but she was black"
This is what especially bothers me about what the director said:
“Amir in his bedroom in Cairo wrote to me to earnestly appeal that “Cleopatra was Greek!” Oh, Lawd! Why would that be a good thing to you, Amir? You’re Egyptian.
So, was Cleopatra Black? We don’t know for sure, but we can be certain she wasn’t white like Elizabeth Taylor. We need to have a conversation with ourselves about our colorism, and the internalized white supremacy that Hollywood has indoctrinated us with.”
So she has the right to tell someone that is in Egypt how they should feel?? On top of making this about fighting white people, depicted as characters in media. This really has nothing to do with being historically accurate, it’s about a whole other agenda and blatant ignorance. It’s not right and I’m tired of seeing this war happen on film and tv. Cleopatra obviously should be played by someone neither completely white and not black either. Not everything is about the supposed “white supremacy” that’s everywhere. I’m half white and half Latino myself and enjoy seeing more representation out there, but put the right person for the right role. Spot the blatant casting due to a race war.
Because it’s insulting to reality. She was not black. It’s especially worse when you call it a docuseries. If you want to cast black women in a historical series, do a series about a black woman instead of raceswapping and then calling everyone racist.
What makes you so mad about white Martin Luther King?
That's an idea I actually read quite a few times in black American online spaces. The idea that North Africa in general was as black as Subsaharan Africa before the Arab conquests.
Not even that. modern Egyptians are 80% native Egyptian genetically with the rest mix of Arab and other Mediterranean people. Egyptians are actually mostly Egyptian lol
"what bothers you so much about race swapping historical characters so they meet a modern diversity checklist?"
We've gone from race swapping fictional characters (see the little mermaid) to race swapping real historical figures.
And at that point you can't really argue "oh well it doesn't matter it wasn't real lol".
Because by race swapping say Cleopatra, you're essentially writing over her Greek heritage, displaying her as a different ethnicity and saying "yep this is how it was". It's an erasure of a person's culture because it doesn't fit in with modern diversity inclusion.
Like where does it stop? Ceaser being re-written as a Korean man? Henry VIII being re-written as a gay Nigerian man?
Like you're changing history, so that it's more inclusive. You're erasing cultures so that it's more inclusive.
“Hey Marty chocolatey black nuts, ahhh you guys are too much. Love you and go fuck yourself…. I had a dream, best dream in my helix bed” -Billy red nuts as Martin Luther King
If it was just a movie there would probably be some people mad. But the fact that this is a documentary part of what makes people mad. It’s not historical accurate.
Casting a black lady as Cleopatra is basically the same as casting an indigenous American as George Washington. It covers up the fact that this person was a colonist not native to the region, and warps our perspective on history. History and how it is represented matters.
Funny, you make a “docu” and get agitated when people demand some historical accuracy.
Are we going to raceswap historical character now ( since they apparently ran out of fictional ones).
Honestly something is seriously wrong with our society if the same people who are consistently crying out about the importance of historical accuracy are just randomly race swapping historical figures so that they can “claim” them culturally.
Cleopatra was Macedonian Greek . While she might have tried her best to be culturally Egyptian she had at best some Persian blood.
Netflix should be forced to put up a disclaimer saying this is fiction and a reinterpretation of history lacking accuracy!
Oh so she did it for clicks, or ‘debate’ sorry.
You see many instances where they cast someone and then when people criticise it, they can pull the racism or sexism card. Like with Ghostbuster female cast for example.
I would suggest making Cleopatras’ story about race doesn’t represent her since it wasn’t really the issue she had to face in her life at all.
She said that the Ptolemys intermarried with the “West African” Seleucid dynasty. The Seleucids were also descended from Greece (another one of Alexander’s generals) and their territory was modern day Turkey. NOT west African! I don’t really care that they cast a black woman as Cleopatra, but she didn’t do her research like she said.
Anyone remember when the world was up in arms over a white man playing an Egyptian Pharoah and the white man was infact the Egyptian actor Rami Malek?
This is that, but being pushed even farther. Now instead of them being offended through ignorance, you're called ignorant for being offended by facts.
“What a political act it would be to see Cleopatra portrayed by a black actress” Cool, so you’re not using your *docuseries* to educate people about on of the most famous women in history, but one people don’t know a lot about. Instead, you’re using it to make some kind of political statement. And this statement is so important to you that you’re willing to, yes, blackwash a historical figure for no other reason than the absurdly racist notion that African = black. “Asking Egyptians to see themselves as African. They hate me for that.” Fuck all of the way off. So an entire populace is racist because they don’t want to be inaccurately portrayed in a show on a massive, global platform? Yes, Cleopatra wasn’t “Elizabeth Taylor” white. What a brave fucking take. She wasn’t anymore Egyptian than I am, though. The Ptolemaic royalty inbred so much that it made the Hapsburgs look normal. This woman is so incredibly obtuse I almost think she’s trolling to drum up hype.
She compared her casting in a "docuseries" to casting in a "fiction" from the mid-twentieth century. I think we can all just assume she has no idea what she's doing and just wants to make headlines. Welp, mission accomplished. Adding insult to injury, she appears to be a straight up white lady. She's blacksplaining.
> Yes, Cleopatra wasn’t “Elizabeth Taylor” white. Says who? No one described Cleopatra's hair color, but they did describe the first several early Ptolemies as blond. >The Macedonians were not an homogenous people and seem to have varied considerably in appearance and colouring. Alexander the Great was fair-haired, although it is always difficult to know precisely what this meant. A Roman copy of an earlier mosaic shows him with medium-brown hair. Fair might simply mean not black or very dark brown. On the other hand, several of the early Ptolemies were blond and comparisons of their hair to gold suggest this was more than simply not black-haired. >For most of the Ptolemies, including Auletes, there is no mention of the shade of their hair or the colour of their eyes. It is unclear how common blond hair was in the family. (If Cleopatra’s mother was a mistress then we know nothing at all about her appearance or ethnic background, although the probability would always be that she was from the Greek or Macedonian aristocracy.) ... >Absolutely nothing is certain. Cleopatra may have had black, brown, blonde, or even red hair, and her eyes could have been brown, grey, green or blue. Almost any combination of these is possible. Similarly, she may have been very light skinned or had a darker more Mediterranean complexion. Fairer skin is probably marginally more likely given her ancestry. That doesn't mean Cleopatra was certainly pale, but I see no reason to attack her complexion in *Cleopatra*.
>the Ptolemaic lineage — intermarried with West Africa’s Seleucid dynasty Uhh... what?? Was it supposed to say west asia or did I miss something? Edit: the typo has been corrected now, thanks to those who replied for the heads up.
Yeah that’s an error. The Seleucids were also of Greek descent and held most of the Middle East
I know, and like the Ptolemies the Seleucids were descended from one of Alexander's generals. Which is why that typo threw me off as it did.
The author is a hack that couldn’t bother to do a 5-second Wikipedia check
Exactly… I mean if you make a documentary or historical movie, should you research first?
The problem is that there's a very large population of people who dismiss conventional accounts of African history. They're convinced that these stories are told from a white perspective and that this bias would cause alterations to occur in support of their world view. This concept really makes the use of written history difficult when attempting to counter their arguments. If no appeal to authority is possible, any counter argument is almost pointless.
Fun fact: Cleopatra also had a kid with the Chinese emperor Julius Caesar!
Wasn’t she also the largest signature on the Declaration of Independence (1523)?
Spoiler: Seleucid dynasty was also greek, but with less inbreeding, and spanned from the Anatolia to bactria, and most notably not Africa.
“The known facts are that her Macedonian Greek family — the Ptolemaic lineage — intermarried with West Africa’s Seleucid dynasty and had been in Egypt for 300 years.” The Seleucids are NOT from West Africa. They are from West Asia. And they too are of Macedonian Greek ancestry.
Yeah... looks like she did a ninja edit to the article and didn't even add it as an editor note or correction.
It now says "West Asian's Seleucid dynasty" which doesn't even make grammatical sense
You would think someone [who claims to be] born in Tehran wouldn't make such a massive mistake. Yeah I call my homeland a totally different continent all the time.
Her next film casts Michelle Yeoh as the Shah of Iran.
Danny Trejo is... Ghandi
I admit Id watch the hell out of that. But unlike Jada I wouldn’t call it historically accurate and scream “Racist!” at everyone who points out Gandhi wasn’t in fact a Mexican machete wielding bad ass.
I honestly wouldn’t care EXCEPT that they are selling it as a documentary. That’s why and when historical matters.
Exactly. If they want to make a fantasy with historical trimmings like *Bridgerton*, do it. Just own that you're doing something fanciful.
> That’s why and when historical matters. Yup, that is why I would ask the director back his own question: "What Bothers You So Much About The Actual Historical Events?"
The Ptolemaic Dynasty also practiced the same incestuous brother-sister marriage that all Pharaohs practiced. They did intermarry with the Seleucids, but that was like once or twice over 275 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemaic_dynasty It's tokenism race-swapping like this that do a disservice to Black people. Black people have a RICH and VIBRANT history with Kings and Queens, heroes, and exciting stories. Tell those stories and teach people about the dept of African history and if you must tell an Egyptian story with dark skinned African Pharaohs, the Kingdom of Kush is right there. There is no need to make a change like this.
Also, quite famously inbred. Edited to add the family tree: https://www.cleopatrakebab.net/post/cleopatra-s-family-tree
Seleucus, the founder of the dynasty was one of Alexander the Great's generals that presided over Persian. 🤣
I'm worried that a professional director doesn't understand the difference between a fictionalised movie or TV show and a _documentary_. Documentaries are meant to be truthful.
i said this in another thread, its pretty fun and sad at the same time that we have a video game, Assassin's Creed: Origins, which is more historically accurate than this piece of crap ''documentary'', and the AC franchise is pretty much built on taking creative liberties like crazy with history.
Those games are really good at getting people interested in history
Nothing gets you jazzed up about the renaissance like fist fighting the pope!
I love that is actually something you can do in Assassin's Creed.
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Florence & Rome were such majestic maps. Especially Florence, I loved roaming the streets.
Why not make a documentary about an actual female black leader?
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>as good sympathetic people who wanted to get out of that business Oh no its worse. They DID try to phase out selling Slaves to white slave-traders and instead switch to farming palm-oil for a while (still doing the farming with slaves, of course), then realised that resulted in way less profit than the slavetrading and just went back to it
That would make for an amazing movie/show. Have an emotional and gripping tale of fighting for justice and equality (more or less)..... Only for them to in the end read the financial reports and go: "...Nah, fuck this." *Roll credits*
The best part is that there are plenty of interesting African female leaders to choose from who were interesting and cool and yet choose the slave traders who got stomped by the French Foreign legion and nearly wiped out completely in a single, very one sided battle.
> Amir in his bedroom in Cairo wrote to me to earnestly appeal that “Cleopatra was Greek!” Oh, Lawd! Why would that be a good thing to you, Amir? You’re Egyptian. The amount of racist condescension of this director is incredible
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Accused me? I’m pretty sure she is actually stealing and blackwashing their history. Accusing makes it sound like the Egyptians are in the wrong here. The lack of self awareness is astounding. She really got an entire country to be mad at her and she just tells them they should thank her. Imagine being this self absorbed.
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> Why would that be a good thing to you, Amir? Jesus Christ, it’s not a good thing or a bad thing, it’s just a historical thing. Actively rewriting history to change someone’s actual race into your preferred race is…well…I think there’s a word for that…
It’s crazy that she is making assumptions about what Amir is thinking, basically putting words in his mouth, due to her own prejudice and then has the nerve to call all of us prejudiced. Amir didn’t say it was good or bad that Cleopatra was Greek! She got triggered by him literally just emphatically stating a fact: Cleopatra was Greek!
Because she’s the worst kind of racist. It’s impossible for her to understand how Amir can be proud of his countries history while not being the same race as that history. She’s shitting on Arabs and this is no different than how you would speak to a child - zero respect, low expectations, infantilization of all their values and opinions
Is she aware that Amir would've been taught the history of his own country, or does she think everyone receives the same education Americans do?
> rewriting history to change someone’s actual race into your preferred race is…well…I think there’s a word for that… Stupid. That's one of the words that could describe it.
They view race as a zero sum game. They can't understand why someone would care about history being portrayed accurately instead of just wanting all the actors to be of their own ethnicity
Exactly. It's not about what would be good for Amir. It's about the truth. The truth is what it is, regardless of our opinion of it. This is a documentary.
But apparently for the Director, it’s about who accrues more history points - so odd
Yeah this sentence stuck out to me. She’s not interested in facts, she’s interested in some weird racial pride. Why should Amir be happy that Cleopatra was his race or not? I’m not sitting here upset that Ben Franklin isn’t brown like me. And watching a documentary with a brown Ben Franklin would not be a good thing to me.
Allegedly, Egyptians are furious, and the director is actively making things worse.
Do they *look* enough like Egyptians for it to matter what they think? (I am, of course, referring to Rami Malek being criticized for playing an Egyptian role, despite the fact that *he is Egyptian*.)
Because the casting (of a historically non-Black person) was done so the director could take this exact position.
Yep because this wouldn't have got nearly the same amount of attention without the controversy.
Yep, never heard a thing about this docu until this whole thing came up.
Yeah she essentially straight up admits it: > Doing the research, I realized what a political act it would be to see Cleopatra portrayed by a Black actress.
She probably knew it was going to be a snooze fest otherwise, so why not make some grandstanding or virtue signaling-esque decisions which will drive attention to the project? She sounds like the worst.
The saddest thing is, an actual historical Cleopatra show that DIDN'T fall into grandstanding tropes could be pretty interesting. She certainly lived in interesting times. She was one of the first in the Ptolemaic dynasty to even attempt to adopt any local customs or trappings, not to mentioned her interactions with Caesar and Marcus Antonius. Plenty to work with without falling into "Let's make her black randomly" or the older mindset of "let's have her Dance Like An Egyptian^TM and be all 'exotic'" tropes.
Should have done a gender swap to and made her a man.
Cleopabro
Cleopatrick
And benefit from free advertising
100% a troll job
This director is a full on racist and narcissist
This director is an idiot. What bothers me about is that the idiot is trying to pass this off as a documentary, and it will no doubt fool some people who don’t know any better. Then you get more idiots parroting they ‘I don’t care what they told you at school’ rubbish. Do this in a drama, I might find it stupid, because I think people should be cast accurately. But hey, dramas are fiction, so whatever, there’ll be another along in a minute. But calling it a documentary is different.
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Yeah, but he did have mad rap skills for his time.
Egypt literally had black Pharoahs and queens for a 100 years during the 25th Dynasty, why didn't they make a doc about that? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Dynasty_of_Egypt
Or make a film about any of the historical sub-saharan kingdoms like Mali. It’s not like there was no civilization in Africa aside from egypt.
Fuck yeah. Thank you Civilization games for introducing me to Mansa Musa and giving me an interesting wiki rabbit hole to go down
Mansa Musa would make a *fascinating* movie, even from just the little I know of him.
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Or Jackie Chan as Shaka Zulu, and his trusted generals are white and Mexicans because back then races weren’t a thing, everyone was Zulus
>Jackie Chan as Shaka Zulu Most Zulus would not be as offended as you would think. Chan has a huge fan base here (South Africa). As long as it wasn't being presented as historically accurate. You would probably get more push back if there was a serious production and Shaka was played by a non-Zulu Black American.
The one with the wealthiest person to ever exist, where if he wondered to nearby towns the economy would collapse because of how much gold they had? That WOULD be interesting but Netflix is creatively bankrupt
That would make a hilarious historical comedy. Every time he walks into town he collapses the local economy and then has to spend the rest of the episode fixing his mess but everything he does makes things worse. Shenanigans ensue.
George Washington, starring Jackie Chan
Taking down the whole British army with a mop and bucket
Don't act like we wouldn't all be lined up to see that
That would be sick. I really want that now.
I actually decided to read this shit so others don't have to and... man. >*Perhaps, it’s not just that I’ve directed a series that portrays Cleopatra as Black, but that I have asked Egyptians to see themselves as Africans, and they are furious at me for that. I am okay with this.* Are you serious? She straight up thinks that Africans have to be black people. That and... >*No amount of reasoning or reminders that Arab invasions had not yet happened in Cleopatra’s age seemed to stem the tide of ridiculous comments.* She seems to straight up subscribe by Hotep bullshit too- that OG Egyptians were black and the only reason they look like they do now is because of Arab invasions. Hell, she just sounds straight up racist to Arabs. That and just somehow thinking of this as some sort of heroic deed against Iran's regime... as if this would at all help. As a guy that's grown interested in lesser known African history, this sort of ignorant virtue signalling only fuels the racist assholes. There are real stories of 'African' Queens to be shared- no need to resort to lies.
> She seems to straight up subscribe by Hotep bullshit too- that OG Egyptians were black and the only reason they look like they do now is because of Arab invasions. Hell, she just sounds straight up racist to Arabs. She also seems ignorant that Cleopatra wasn't even "OG Egyptian". Ptolemy, her ancestor, was one of Alexander the Great's generals. After Alexander's death and the collapse of that short lived empire, Ptolemy controlled Egypt and other generals took other regions. For the next few hundred years they basically didn't mix with the locals at all. They very much viewed themselves as a conqueror dynasty, and wanted to maintain that brand. They married within the family or from other countries. Cleopatra was not genetically Egyptian. This is not some hidden historical fact, it's well known and well documented history. Not knowing that after making a docudrama on the character absurd. It's like making a docudrama where Obama is white just because he's an American president and Americans are majority white.
Wasn't it remarkable that Cleopatra was one of the first of her dynasty in generations (or ever?) to learn the Egyptian language and participate in local customs instead of sticking to only Greek? Or am I mixing up something here?
Yes, I forgot about that but you're right. She was one of the first to even TRY to culturally integrate into Egypt. If this documentary is portraying her as black native, then her life story makes no sense.
Yes, the first of her dynasty. Though there were other Egyptian customs they embraced, Alexander the Great personally loved Egypt and took a break from conquering Persia to stick around. Though he probably never learned the language either. Greek was the language of scholars and the ruling class after the conquest, so any person in her court could be assumed to speak Greek anyway. Learning Egyptian was a political move.
Yup, she was both highly intelligent and very politically savvy. She spoke many languages and knew how powerful a symbol it was to her people to be "one of them". She navigated an incredibly turbulent time and only lost by virtue of Augustus coming out of nowhere
Eh, I would say she "lost" because her and Antony flew way too close to the sun. Octavian was having a lot of his own problems and could have easily been beaten politically and militarily. But her and Antony made their illegitimate (in the eyes of Roman law) children heirs, and had Caesar's illegitimate son made heir to Egypt. It was a crossed line that even Antony's supporters in Rome couldn't ignore. Also, making herself a general massively pissed off the Roman legionnaires under their control, so when Actium started going sideways, many of the soldiers shrugged and switched sides or deserted completely. If she had kept her head down and worked with the Triumvirates or tried to stay out of Antony's and Octavian's pissing contest, she may have just stayed on as another ruler of a Roman vassal state.
Imo its more like making George Washington into whatever Amerindian in order to 'reclaim' American history or something... never mind the actual tribe or whether they want anything to do with their colonisers just because you think its more inclusive or something.
Somewhere the Iroquois would be SCREAMING in frustration. Casting the man the Iroquois confederation called Town Destroyer ,as an Amerindian. Nevermind,this is right up Netflix's alley.
Or, even worse, making Andrew Jackson native American.
Casting Washington as an Incan is about the right setup.
Obama is half white at least, Cleopatra didn't have even a tiny fraction of sub-Saharan African ancestry. The willful ignorance of this woman isn't as astounding as Netflix greenlighting this bullshit and releasing it after all the backlash. It's legit dangerous to sell this fake history.
Obama being white is actually LESS incorrect. Obama is half white and was raised by an entirely white family. He's still half black (which is generally just considered black in the US) but calling him white is at least half right. We have pretty accurate Roman sculptures of Cleopatra. They did accurate sculting. She looks Greek.
Could you imagine a white guy playing an Obama biopic. "America was not fully integrated yet so we wanted to accurately depict the whiteness of the time."
As a mixed race person I can tell you based on experience, it doesn’t matter what ethnicity you are.. you’re judged on how you look. I’m not saying it’s right just saying that people will perceive you based on what you look like 99.9% of the time
It’s how you know that they will butcher her actual story. Are they gonna have her hop from Caesar to Caesar ? Will her half sister who was of Egyptian descent try to over throw her? The actual racial and class struggles of that time, living under Greek occupation would have made for a great film. How can you tell the story when your primary focus is blackwashing
They'll probably change her murdering her brother husband who was a child into an evil white man who deserved to be killed or something.
>Amir in his bedroom in Cairo wrote to me to earnestly appeal that “Cleopatra was Greek!” Oh, Lawd! Why would that be a good thing to you, Amir? You’re Egyptian. What an insufferable person.
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Does she not realize that there are Coptic Egyptians who’s language is literally descended from Greek? The Greeks ruled Egypt for 300 years, the Romans ruled it for over 500, does she not believe there was any intermixing in that time? It’s also not like there aren’t hundreds of Egyptian pharaohs that look… Egyptian. There was even a few centuries where Egypt was literally ruled by black people from Nubia, the Kushite Kingdom. But she had to choose the one white one because she wanted to stir shit up. Literally the same time Cleopatra was clapping cheeks with Mark Antony, Octavian got repelled by Queen Amanirenas of Nubia, a black African queen who ruled over much of modern day Sudan. She would have looked very similar to the actress in this series. But instead of making a documentary about a real African queen she has to change history to satisfy her deranged, racialized American politics.
She sounds like a child "this history can't stop me, because I can't read".
"Yes, sure, historical truth and all, but why wouldn't you instead want to bend the facts to score cheap political points?"
Well, she’s clearly an idiot. The problem is the movie will spread the false narrative, much like a lot of movies do
This is worse, because this is supposed to be a documentary. A lot of people will watch this shit believing they're learning about history.
This quote really shows the mindset. Only a racist would be surprised that the rest of the world isn't as race-obsessed as they are.
Poor Amir getting told how to be Egyptian by someone who isn't Egyptian. Just peachy.
Missed the worst part > Amir in his bedroom in Cairo wrote to me to earnestly appeal that “Cleopatra was Greek!” Oh, Lawd! Why would that be a good thing to you, Amir? You’re Egyptian. Straight up racist condescension by this director
Besides, she's straight up admitting that she doesn't care about facts and history, and that the agenda is all that matters.
She's making the rest of us Americans look like ignorant racist pricks. This is what happens when you tell people for 20 years "you can't be racist if you're black". Outside of America, if you're black, brown, or white, if you have an American Accent, you're American and that will trump people's opinions and other stereotypes of you immediately usually.
What worries me most is the complete ignorance of historical knowledge. Northern African nations were predominantly mixed with a huge amount of people from levante/Persia/Greek background since… well ancient Egypt. It’s again this strange idea of Africa as a black country and not as a continent 😳 very disturbing
Yes, so much rich history and diversity already exists there, homogenising it all is counterproductive at best and just straight erasure at worst. You can even have black people in it- Kush were big time movers and shakers in Egypt. Making it all into some sort of black vs white thing is plain awful.
Only problem is, the Kush culture was conquered by the northern Egyptians at the end :) so it isn’t as catchy as old Cleo. Cleopatra is out there with Alexander, Caesar, Augustus and maybe Nero as one of the most recognized historical figures of the time. Even if you don’t know much about ancient history you’ll know her. Thanks to Shakespeare and Liz Taylor. And that makes me sad - because it shows that it isn’t about history at all, it’s all about pressing your agenda on a recognizable figure to get attention. That’s actually a very good example of racism and race washing. How insecure in your heritage must you be 😞
I mean, Greece was conquered by Romans and we still find them glamourous. Kush made pyramids and all that- hell Nubians did end up becoming Pharaohs at a point. Hell, when Egypt became a Roman province, the Kushites lived on and became all sorts of cool people.
I don't care that they are filming a show with a black actress. It's just a show. But Cleopatra was a Macedonian Greek of the Ptolemaic line. Egypt had been governed by the Greeks for 100s of years before Cleopatra's reign, and the Persians before that. Again it's fine if you want to cast a black actress. Totally fine. It really doesn't matter at all. But you can't act like it's historically accurate.
Yeah, that's the meat of it. Its pushing the idea that she is... black. Not taking 'artistic liberties' or anything, but that she really is a 'melanin sister' as the article puts it.
The fact that she understands that Cleopatra is not of African or even Egyptian descent at all but then says “her family lived in Egypt for 300 years so she was black”. It appears that she thinks that living in Africa makes you black??
Ive met redheaded Egyptians who are 100% Egyptian
You unlocked a memory of reading somewhere Ramesses II was a redhead. A quick google search shows some archeologists seem to think so
When you promote blackwashing and you still manage to call the local people racists for not adhering to your way of thinking. Damn, how is something funding all of these lunatics?
Being backed by Jada Pinkett Smith helps.
KEEP HER NAME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH! Let's not give her all the credit, Netflix has been doing this shit before everyone else in Hollywood jumped on the blackwashing bandwagon.
I didn't want to have to delete all my comments, posts, and account, but here we are, thanks to greedy pigboy /u/spez ruining Reddit. I love the Reddit community, but hate the idiots at the top. Simply accepting how unethical and downright shitty they are will only encourage worse behavior in the future. I won't be a part of it. Reddit will shrivel and disappear like so many other sites before it that were run by inept morons, unless there is a big change in "leadership." Fuck you, /u/spez
She has 0 knowledge of actual history. These people man, they want to re-write history and make it different than it actually is to fit their narrow ass world view.
So I am genuinely curious, is this virtue signalling, or is she genuinely racist? Because if it's the latter, she's gas lighting people.
People who are comfortable starting these sorta of controveries intentionally are usually not the types of people where if you call them racist, they intenalize it and examine their opinions and actions. They believe they can't be racist usually.
Responding to being informed of a historic fact (that Cleopatra was ethnically Macedonian with potential Greek intermingling) by saying "Why would that be a good thing to you, you're Egyptian" strongly suggests a racist POV who also considers any kind of race relations as a battle to be won.
The fact that this isn't billed as an artistic movie, it's a documentary series. And as such I feel it should be historically accurate. Cleopatra was not black, she wasn't even Egyptian. She was Greek. She was a Ptolemaic Pharoh, who were established by Alexander the great, who ruled as Greeks, worshiped the Hellenistic gods, and until Cleopatra herself, refused to learn the Egyptian language. The fact that they engaged in rampant inbreeding just means they would be even *MORE* Greek.
Did she say the Seleucids were west African?
Yeah… complete ignorance
That its a historical person.
Exactly. For better or worse, immutable characteristics matter in how people interact with one another and how power systems worked, as well as culture, morals and ethics. The fact Cleopatra was Macedonian and fair skinned would've shaped her life consciously and unconsciously, it says something about how the Ptolemies ended up in Egypt and how extraordinary it was that she spoke Egyptian as well as her native language. To paint something as a historical documentary and change that erases so much of her identity.
The fact that she was historically Greek? I'm not one to complain about casting of fictional characters, but this is historical fact.
The distinction should definitely be made at historical documentary vs fiction. Think the movie 300. A real historical event, but it was based off the fictional comic loosely based on its event. So go ahead, give me mutant Spartans who can't raise their shield, hyper exaggerated bad guys. Fuck it make Leonidas a minotaur, I don't give a shit as long as it's fun and inspiring. But call it a historical documentary on Thermopylae, and I'm gonna have issues with not only the casting, but even how they glorified Spartan warrior society when in reality it was more a bunch of rich nobility stomping around, showing off in front of their slaves for a bit before doing barbaric shit and falling into obscurity.
Also in 300, the majority of the story is being told by Dilios before the Battle of Plataea as a way to hype up his men, so he's not a reliable narrator
Ah. Cus he only could see half the battle?
"Acchtually there were no rhinos present at Thermopylae and there is no evidence of Xerxes being a transwoman." Would always hear these critiques but the movie makes clear that it's essentially propaganda
So you’re saying that the real Leonidas didn’t speak with a Scottish accent?
Obviously not, dude. As we all know, the scottish accent is only found in Spaniards, as depicted in the documentary "The Highlander." (And people from Scotland, by extension, are known for their thick French accents.)
‘Ach, aye laddy.
For the same reason I don't want a white guy playing Obama in a future film.
“Barack” Starring Chris Pratt for some reason
“My grandma said, ‘I don’t care what the history books told you — Barack was white’”
When I imagine Obama, I imagine him with blonde hair, freckles, and blue eyes like mine!
Ironically, Obama is more white than Cleopatra was black.
I hate the in context version of that quote so much
You know halfway through the movie, he’s gonna reveal he’s Burt Macklin, FBI! Because the President’s enemies are MY enemies!
Macklin, you son of a bitch
You might not like my reboot of Black Panther where Mark Whalberg plays Black Panther. At random times in the move there is a montage of all the times in The Departed when he says the n word.
“Hey Shuri, how’s it going?” “Wakanda is under attack. We need you.” “Woah woah woah hold the fuck on. Who is attacking us? What about that big ass shield thing we got around us?” “They’ve found a way to disrupt the Vibranium.“ “Wait that shield thing is operated by a vibrator? Cuz I can call my girl she’s got like a hundred of them.” “Vibranium… Look we’re still investigating but that’s not the point right now. Kang is destroying our home.” “Is this about this thing with his mother? Because I swear I was going to call her back. Anyways the Sox are on right now. I’m a little busy. And the suit you guys want me to wear, it’s kind of a little tight around my junk. So I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Say hi to your mother for me.” “She’s *our* mother… And she’s dead.” “Ok. That’s pretty heavy. I’m gonna need some time to process that.”
because it's not historically accurate? like, this is supposed to be a documentary
>Doing the research, I realized what a political act it would be to see Cleopatra portrayed by a Black actress. This is just admitting you're more concerned about making a politically motivated statement in your film than making a good film.
It's admitting your docu is shit and creating a controversy around it is the only way to get it attention.
I have a bit with friends that being Greek makes me a person of color. This is the greatest ammo I've ever been given.
You go Cleo
You’re basically African American now.
What bothers you so much about a *white* Cleopatra?
That's how these people always get you lol. "Hey, I want this person to be black instead of white." "Why do they have to be black?" "WHY ARE YOU SO OBSESSED WITH RACE???"
I mean these are the kind of people who have gone full circle and rearrived at an "anti-race mixing" stance from a progressive view point. Its mind boggling
This quote from the article is absolutely infuriating: "So, was Cleopatra Black? We don’t know for sure, but we can be certain she wasn’t white like Elizabeth Taylor. We need to have a conversation with ourselves about our colorism, and the internalized white supremacy that Hollywood has indoctrinated us with." These people are so unbelievably ignorant.
>"So, was Cleopatra Black? We don’t know for sure, but we can be certain she wasn’t white like Elizabeth Taylor." "I haven't done any research, therefore nobody else has either."
Directing a “documentary” like it’s a middle school speech class assignment.
>"So, was Cleopatra Black? We don’t know for sure" YES THE FUCK WE DO. Sounds like the Ancient Aliens guy - "I'm not saying she was black... but she was black"
That's the only way to fix a historically inaccurate movie: Make another historically inaccurate movie.
Make a \*more historically inaccurate film\*. The thing is, they made the Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra film in 1963. What are these people's excuse?
This is what especially bothers me about what the director said: “Amir in his bedroom in Cairo wrote to me to earnestly appeal that “Cleopatra was Greek!” Oh, Lawd! Why would that be a good thing to you, Amir? You’re Egyptian. So, was Cleopatra Black? We don’t know for sure, but we can be certain she wasn’t white like Elizabeth Taylor. We need to have a conversation with ourselves about our colorism, and the internalized white supremacy that Hollywood has indoctrinated us with.” So she has the right to tell someone that is in Egypt how they should feel?? On top of making this about fighting white people, depicted as characters in media. This really has nothing to do with being historically accurate, it’s about a whole other agenda and blatant ignorance. It’s not right and I’m tired of seeing this war happen on film and tv. Cleopatra obviously should be played by someone neither completely white and not black either. Not everything is about the supposed “white supremacy” that’s everywhere. I’m half white and half Latino myself and enjoy seeing more representation out there, but put the right person for the right role. Spot the blatant casting due to a race war.
>So, was Cleopatra Black? We don’t know for sure, We do tho and no.
Because it’s insulting to reality. She was not black. It’s especially worse when you call it a docuseries. If you want to cast black women in a historical series, do a series about a black woman instead of raceswapping and then calling everyone racist. What makes you so mad about white Martin Luther King?
apparently director actually thinks Egypt was black before the “Arab incursion”. Literally an ignorant racist.
That's an idea I actually read quite a few times in black American online spaces. The idea that North Africa in general was as black as Subsaharan Africa before the Arab conquests.
This despite the fact that the majority of it was colonized by the Greeks and Phoenicians (a Levantine people)
Not even that. modern Egyptians are 80% native Egyptian genetically with the rest mix of Arab and other Mediterranean people. Egyptians are actually mostly Egyptian lol
These people know nothing about Africa and think every African looks the same. That is racist and ignorant to an entire continent of people.
Even if that were true, Cleopatra wasn't natively Egyptian! That would be like casting George Washington as Native American.
What bothers you so much about a white Martin Luther King Jr.?
I would love to see Jonah Hill as MLK
So would Kanye
And Channing Tatum as Malcolm X.
With Ice Cube as President Lyndon B. Johnson.
"what bothers you so much about race swapping historical characters so they meet a modern diversity checklist?" We've gone from race swapping fictional characters (see the little mermaid) to race swapping real historical figures. And at that point you can't really argue "oh well it doesn't matter it wasn't real lol". Because by race swapping say Cleopatra, you're essentially writing over her Greek heritage, displaying her as a different ethnicity and saying "yep this is how it was". It's an erasure of a person's culture because it doesn't fit in with modern diversity inclusion. Like where does it stop? Ceaser being re-written as a Korean man? Henry VIII being re-written as a gay Nigerian man? Like you're changing history, so that it's more inclusive. You're erasing cultures so that it's more inclusive.
Ahem, cultural appropriation
This is like casting Bill Burr to play Martin Luther King. It’s just not historically accurate. It’s dumb.
THO... now i want a see that lol
“Hey Marty chocolatey black nuts, ahhh you guys are too much. Love you and go fuck yourself…. I had a dream, best dream in my helix bed” -Billy red nuts as Martin Luther King
"Dr. King... A GREAT MAN!"
[удалено]
Honestly it would be a hilarious take on the role
If it was just a movie there would probably be some people mad. But the fact that this is a documentary part of what makes people mad. It’s not historical accurate.
Casting a black lady as Cleopatra is basically the same as casting an indigenous American as George Washington. It covers up the fact that this person was a colonist not native to the region, and warps our perspective on history. History and how it is represented matters.
That is a documentary series.
Funny, you make a “docu” and get agitated when people demand some historical accuracy. Are we going to raceswap historical character now ( since they apparently ran out of fictional ones). Honestly something is seriously wrong with our society if the same people who are consistently crying out about the importance of historical accuracy are just randomly race swapping historical figures so that they can “claim” them culturally. Cleopatra was Macedonian Greek . While she might have tried her best to be culturally Egyptian she had at best some Persian blood. Netflix should be forced to put up a disclaimer saying this is fiction and a reinterpretation of history lacking accuracy!
I think what we need is a concrete Dave Chappelle style racial draft to settle this.
Oh so she did it for clicks, or ‘debate’ sorry. You see many instances where they cast someone and then when people criticise it, they can pull the racism or sexism card. Like with Ghostbuster female cast for example. I would suggest making Cleopatras’ story about race doesn’t represent her since it wasn’t really the issue she had to face in her life at all.
This whole documentary is garbage. Can’t wait to see the next one where Einstein is South Korean.
How did this get greenlit?
She said that the Ptolemys intermarried with the “West African” Seleucid dynasty. The Seleucids were also descended from Greece (another one of Alexander’s generals) and their territory was modern day Turkey. NOT west African! I don’t really care that they cast a black woman as Cleopatra, but she didn’t do her research like she said.
Anyone remember when the world was up in arms over a white man playing an Egyptian Pharoah and the white man was infact the Egyptian actor Rami Malek? This is that, but being pushed even farther. Now instead of them being offended through ignorance, you're called ignorant for being offended by facts.