Cleopatra was Greek. Basic historic fact. But we live in an exciting era where actual history has been turned over to be rewritten by the wokes who think that Black Panther’s Wakanda and the 1619 Project are actual history.
So when Netflix decided to cast Gal Gadot, who’s Israeli and thus Mediterranean and at least has some relationship to the role, the BLM crowd protested and she was recast as black. Because everyone who has watched 70s blaxploitation movies knows that Cleopatra was black.
Egyptian Arabs are none too happy with the idea. How unhappy? Really, really unhappy.
An Egyptian lawyer has filed a lawsuit against streaming giant Netflix for depicting Pharoh Cleopatra as a Black woman in a new documentary.
Lawyer Mahmoud al-Semary filed the lawsuit with a public prosecutor with the intention of having Netflix banned in Egypt for what he claimed was a distortion of history.
Al-Semary claimed that the Netflix documentary distorts Egypt’s history in favor of promoting Afrocentrism. He also complained of warped standards, stating in the lawsuit that “most of what Netflix platform displays do not conform to Islamic and societal values and principles, especially Egyptian ones.”
Not knowing the Egyptian legal system, I couldn’t tell you if he has a case, but there has been plenty of outrage in Egypt where this is a longstanding issue.
Egypt’s Arab Muslims have used their physical ownership to claim that they are the successors of the ancient civilization that their ancestors invaded and occupied. But black nationalists invented an imaginary past in which they were the rulers of Egypt and had advanced technology that was stolen by the Greeks and the Romans. (This isn’t some crank idea limited to NBA players, you’ll find that to be a popular belief even outside the Nation of Islam.)
Netflix, as a company run by California wokes, is obviously far more interested in pandering to the black nationalist who now dominate the Democrats than in caring what Egyptian Arab Muslims think. And it decided to step into the middle of an ongoing battle. That’s not new. Woke universities began trying to invent fictional renderings of dead Egyptian pharaohs that made them look African. Egyptians responded by banning them from having access to the original artifacts. So this is just the latest shot fired in the mummy wars.
Jada Pinkett Smith, the American actress who was executive producer and narrator, was meanwhile quoted as saying: “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!”
Egyptian Arabs feel the same way.
Everyone can’t have their own Cleopatra. Or can they? Just make a dozen versions with every possible race or ethnicity.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/black-nationalists-fight-arab-muslims-over-cleopatra/