“If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, the whole face of the Earth would have changed”, said Blaise Pascal, about these details which have profound effects on the course of history. And History with a capital H is sometimes the stories we tell ourselves. For example, we all know that if the Sphinx does not have a nose, it is the fault of the big Obelix who broke it while climbing on it.
What if Cleopatra’s skin had been black? No doubt the face of the world would have changed too, but advancing it as is the case in the documentary series Queen Cleopatra which just came out on Netflix is causing a diplomatic incident with Egypt. In these new installments of the franchise African queensproduced by Jada Pinkett Smith, we take up a theory that few Egyptologists support according to which the most famous queen of Egypt was black, because there would be a mystery about her origins on the maternal side.
This is the only audacity in this series where we learn nothing new about Cleopatra, made in the same mold as tons of others where guests talk between lame historical re-enactments. It’s often very cheesy, historical re-enactments, but it makes for an attractive visual for the average spectator.
Nevertheless, the Egyptians are outraged that an American production tampers with their history. A petition collected thousands of signatures, up to the famous archaeologist Zahi Hawass who went to the front. Because if we recognize that Hollywood cinema has “whitewashed” the great characters of the past (Jesus was certainly not a blonde with blue eyes), we wonder if this production is not “blackwashing” the lineage of the Ptolemies by entrusting the role of Cleopatra to Adele James, a British actress of mixed origin.
Some wonder if, by the global tentacles of Netflix, the country is not being sandwiched in the American racial squabbles.
On TV and in the movies, Cleopatra has been played by Elizabeth Taylor, Monica Bellucci, Lindsay Marshall or Marion Cotillard, without being so upset, and now by Adele James, which could be seen as progressive if we had not presented it’s like a documentary that pushes a controversial thesis, but it might be fun if it were sometimes played by an Egyptian actress…
Maybe it’s a combination of my interest in history and my never-ending childhood dream of dressing up as a princess, but I love costume movies that make my boyfriend bawl with boredom. . I watch them all, from the worst turnip to the greatest masterpiece. But I have a lot of difficulty getting rid of my psycho-rigid side concerning historical facts. For example, I wince when the actors don’t have the exact age of the characters they play. And I howl with an entire nation when a rare French Canadian in foreign fiction is portrayed as a moron played by an actor who doesn’t have the accent. It is important, the representation. For everyone.
On this subject, I recommend the essay published by Boréal by the Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan, In the Shadow of the Sun – Reflections on Race and Stories. A fascinating reading, which questions the gaze of European museums, or, in our country, the absence of Aboriginal people even in our ghost stories. Among other things, she talks about the artist Kehinde Wiley who made a portrait of Napoleon as a young black man. “Some might see Wiley’s work itself as a form of erasure, that by replacing the white faces of European and American history with black faces, the artist seeks to demolish a legacy that , although marked by exclusion, is nonetheless authentic, she writes. This argument is misdirected, because Wiley’s paintings are not to be taken literally. Rather, they invite us to reflect on the many existences that mainstream narratives and discourses have dismissed. »
Recently, American comedian Kevin Hart had his show canceled in Egypt after claiming that the pharaohs were all black. Remember also that there are many people who think that the pyramids were built by extraterrestrials, while we are struggling to maintain our bridges built not even a century ago.
Of course, there is a difference between wanting to illuminate parts of history that have been overshadowed by official history and wanting to rewrite the past.
History is an ever-evolving discipline, and I can watch black-and-white YouTube videos for hours of historian Henri Guillemin tearing down Napoleon and defending Robespierre.
In fiction, on the other hand, we can have fun and give ourselves the freedom to explore the potentialities of uchronia as we do with science fiction. Why should we limit ourselves to just imagining the future on the pretext that it has not yet happened? The best example of this is the series The Bridgerton Chronicleextremely popular, in which the British monarchy opened up to diversity in the 18the century in a parallel past – but not on social classes, obviously. The psychorigid in me frowned, then I devoured the three seasons saying to myself “and why not? “. And why not The little Mermaid darker? And why not Denzel Washington in Macbeth rather than in the role of Othello?
Everything that culture produces is always in the present, and when we watch a costume film, it speaks much more about us than the characters of the past, disguised by our contemporary gaze. It has not finished brewing in all areas of the arts on the issue of diversity, that’s for sure. But it seems to me that there is an infinite possibility of play (and endless debate). If, of course, we continue at the same time to respect the work of true specialists.