netflix released the trailer for the upcoming four-episode docudrama Queen Cleopatra last week – to the absolute confusion of many. Available to stream May 10 Queen Cleopatrawhich is part of executive producer and narrator Jada Pinkett Smith’s extended production African queens series, has black British actress Adele James as the historically Macedonian-Greek Ptolemaic ruler. Social media users and historians were stunned by the trailer’s repeated claims that Cleopatra was actually a black Egyptian woman, criticizing both Pinkett Smith and the streaming platform for rewriting history instead. to center the stories of historical black women in positions of power.
Pinkett Smith threw it African queens mass production with the intention of learning and educating others about Africa’s legendary black queens. “As the mother of a young black woman, it’s important to me that she learns the lessons of the African queens who paved the way for success for generations of black women,” Pinkett-Smith said. said of his effort in 2021.
The trailer’s dramatic music and generic talking points on female empowerment were complemented by James’ very English accent and three snippets of cutaway interviews from anonymous contributors speculating or outright asserting that Cleopatra was black and/or Egyptian.
“I remember my grandmother telling me, ‘I don’t care what they tell you at school, Cleopatra was black,'” one of the interviewees said. Unsurprisingly, not everyone agrees.
A flood of replies piled under Netflix’s ‘Strong Black Lead’ Twitter account poster with promotional poster for the docuseries, ranging from utter confusion, outrage, and slapstick if not downright offensive memes from other historical figures with a fondness for race. Many have pointed out that the docuseries’ revision of history is offensive to Egyptians and Greeks and that the “blackwashing” of historical figures is not the antidote to the lack of representation of people of color in the world. entertainment industry.
“They could have focused on real African queens, like Amina from Nigeria, Ana [Njinga] from Angola, or Nandi from the Zulu nation,” TikTok user Jianna Ewuresi said in a video. (It should be noted that the first season of African queenswhich premiered on February 15, focused on Njinga, the queen of Ndongo and Matamba.)
Cleopatra and her siblings were born in Egypt to the reigning pharaoh Ptolemy XI Auletes, a member of the Ptolemaic Macedonian-Greek dynasty who ruled the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Ancient Egypt between 305 and 30 BCE during the Hellenistic period. There is some discourse surrounding the ethnic makeup of the Ptolemaic line – most scholars refer to the dynasty as Macedonian-Greek with sons of Persian and Sogdian Iranian through intermarriage with the Seleucid dynasty which once controlled the Western Asia. The identity of Cleopatra’s mother also remains a mystery, further stimulating discourse on the pharaoh’s ethnic makeup.
Cleopatra was the last queen of the Ptolemaic dynasty and was known for her political-romantic trysts with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony during her attempts to gain full control of the Kingdom of Egypt with the support of the Roman Empire.
Criticism of the upcoming docuseries has been making waves across Egypt as former antiquities minister and Egyptian nationalist Zahi Hawass has also thrown in his two cents. Hawass said Independent Egypt that Cleopatra was Greek, “meaning she was blond, not black”, and that this mischaracterization of the Ptolemaic lineage was advanced by proponents of Afrocentrism who argue, among other things, that the ancient Egyptians were a black civilization. “Netflix is trying to confuse people to spread false information that the origin of Egyptian civilization is black,” Hawass continued. Independent Egypt last week. Diaspora Egyptians Maha Shehata, a model, and Aikk Yasser, a musician, even created a Change.org petition calling on Netflix to cancel the release of the docuseries because they ‘tampered with history’, garnering nearly 85,000 likes. signatures in two days until the the platform removed it.
And while the views of Egyptian nationalists are not representative of everyone in the nation, writes Mahmoud Salem for New lines, “Not a single self-respecting Egyptologist has ventured into the Black Cleopatra debate, because they know Cleopatra wasn’t even Egyptian, let alone African.”
Adele James has limited comments on her social media at the moment as negative comments regarding the production are pouring in, telling amateur reviewers that if they don’t like the cast they shouldn’t watch the show. “Anyway, I’m GAZED and will continue to be,” James wrote on Twitter last Thursday alongside some screenshots of negative comments.
