The Patriot Post® · In Brief: It Matters if a Black Actress Plays Cleopatra
There’s a lot of hubbub over the newest Netflix docu-drama titled Queen Cleopatra because the titular character is played by a black actress, Adele James. Jada Pinkett Smith, the open-marriage wife of Will Smith, is the executive producer. Commentator Mark Tapson begins with a review of the obvious double standard:
Imagine, if you will, that Netflix produced a miniseries based on the life of the 19th century Zulu warrior-king Shaka Zulu, and cast white actor Matt Damon in the lead role. Or what if the woke streaming giant made a movie based on Rosa Parks’ refusal in 1955 to give up her seat on the bus — a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement — and hired blonde actress Charlize Theron to play Parks? How about if Netflix aired a bio-pic of black abolitionist, orator, and statesman Frederick Douglass (a great idea, by the way; let’s talk, Netflix) and gave Hugh Jackman the part?
Imagine the apoplexy from the hypersensitive culture scolds, the cultural appropriation police, of the Left. “You can’t cast Matt Damon as Shaka Zulu!” they would scream. “Shaka Zulu was black!” “Charlize Theron as Rosa Parks?! Are you insane, Netflix?!” “Jackman as Douglass?! Talk about white privilege!”
And they would be absolutely correct to condemn these inexplicable casting choices. Why? Because as capable and world-famous as Damon, Theron, and Jackman might be, they are white and would be historically inaccurate and therefore jarringly inappropriate playing famous black figures. …
Scholarly debates and investigations into the heritage of Cleopatra VII are legion, but the consensus is that the Queen of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC was of Macedonian descent, with the prominent aquiline nose common among the Romans and Greeks, and may have had an olive skin tone. No serious scholar argues that she was a black African.
So why is it so en vogue to add minority characters — or even replace leading Caucasian ones with minorities — in traditional or historical stories? Not for faithfulness to stories or history, that’s for sure. Part of it is simply to be provocative, to stir up attention because of all the suddenly “racist” response. It’s not just the internet population objecting this time, however. Even Egyptian authorities are opposed. To the filmmakers, however, this is about an agenda:
The actress James herself told the BBC, “We don’t often get to see or hear stories about black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them!”
Then why not tell those stories? Instead, Tapson notes, “the Queen Cleopatra filmmakers felt compelled to ‘blackwash’ an Egyptian queen of Greek heritage.” Director Tina Gharavi even explained that it was a “political act” meant to “bring Cleopatra into the 21st century.” After all, “Why do some people need Cleopatra to be white?”
Uh, because she was white, not because “some people” are racist. In fact, Tapson says, “The controversy arose not because ‘some people’ need for Cleopatra to be portrayed as white, but that some other people need for an historical figure who was almost certainly Greek, and ‘possibly’ Egyptian, to be a black African.” He cites Gharavi’s essay arguing about people “fearing the complexity” of her portrayal before saying:
This is manipulative hogwash. Nobody “fears” the “complexity” of the depiction of historical figures, whatever that means; audiences simply have the right to expect some broad conformity to truth in a project that purports to be a docu-drama. What the Queen Cleopatra filmmakers themselves fear is the complexity of historical truth, because that undermines propaganda. And the insistence that Cleopatra is a black African queen is identity politics propaganda.
He also noted Gharavi’s statement that “we need to realize that Cleopatra’s story is less about her than it is about who we are.” [emphasis added] Tapson concludes:
And that’s the real problem with casting actors in an historical drama based on a contemporary ideological goal: you’re not letting history speak for itself and allowing your audience to learn from it; instead of centering your project on the truth, you are appropriating what you want from history and conforming it to your worldview in order to push propaganda. The story suffers, our understanding and appreciation of history suffer, and flesh-and-blood historical movers and shakers are reduced to cardboard vehicles for the promotion of a political agenda.
History is not served, truth is not served, and no one in the audience is served when filmmakers “boldly re-imagine” the past to spread the lies of today.