fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #5958 ]

[ SECRET POST #5958 ]

⌈ Secret Post #5958 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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03.

[Succession, Roman Roy]

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04.

[minecraft youtube?]

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05.

[Green Hell]

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06.

[Lost Ruins]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 30 secrets from Secret Submission Post #852.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I honestly don't get what the kerfluffle with Netflix' Cleopatra casting is. She's hardly the first black Cleo out there (for example, my first onscreen Cleopatra was Gina Torres on Xena) and there've been other nonwhite depictions of her as well, especially if you add non live action works to the mix.
Imho, they'd have to do something really out the left field for the casting to raise an eyebrow. Like cast a male asian actor or something.

It's because a lot of people actually believe that Cleopatra was historically black, and she was not.

This. She was Macedonian, which is closer to Greek than anything else. Yeah, she could have had some Middle Eastern ancestry on her mother's side (because that's still a pretty big unknown), but she most definitely wasn't black.

It's a combo of White Supremacists doing their thing - only more loudly now than the 90s - colorist North Africans doing their thing - only more heard than in the 90s - and a somewhat legit beef from Egyptians about American Black nationalists contorting and talking over actual African history for American political purposes (which has also been getting louder lately; people working on the movie have been saying that of course the historical Cleopatra was Black, in defiance of a lot of actual evidence.)

Apparently, someone on the cast said something along the line of "forget what anyone told you. Cleopatra was black" which, eh...
Personally, I wouldn't have cared if they had simply just cast the black actress, it's the fact that apparently Cleo being black is some sort of gotcha for them? I'll have to watch it before being able to judge what they're really doing.

Meh, it's generally mostly racist black Americans trying to claim historical people who never were black and then cry racism when they get criticised for it. Which is esepcially dumb because... come on, there are actual black African queens who have little to no bigger documentaries about them, Cleopatra has been done far too often anyway, why would you do this other than to create outrage?

"Everything good about Ancient Egypt was black Nubians and White people are hiding the evidence" is an article of religious faith (sometimes literally, in the case of some BHI groups) for some strains of American Black Nationalism, going back at least 150 years. It's very deeply rooted conspiracy theory that's pretty much mainstream belief in some Black communities. They do that because they honestly believe that Cleopatra (and pretty much all the other Pharaohs) were Black and you won't be able to convince them otherwise.

Actual Egyptians generally hate this even more than they hate the "pyramids are magic" ones. Partly because of colorism, partly because it's actually pretty racist against Egyptian people.

But don't count out the plain white supremacists who just hate that Cleopatra is being played by a black person, they're still in it.

the last one of these really bothers me - because of the way american culture tends to dominate so much of the sociopolitical discourse, other countries end up trying to interpret racial issues through an american lens when, more often than not, the issues are very very different

so we end up with nonsense like diane abbott

The difference is that the Netflix show is claiming to be a docuseries. And I think a docuseries should not have blatantly false information added to it intentionally. The whole "Cleopetra was absolutely black, you whitewashing racists!" is just incorrect.

Xena never claimed historical accuracy.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #5958 ]

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