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CLeopatra gets the big screen treatment again, this time courtesy of Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins and DC hero Gal Gadot. But even with a director and screenwriter in Laeta Kalogridis on board, the casting of an Israeli actor with Ashkenazi Jewish heritage as the legendary Queen of Egypt has led to an unsubstantiated debate about whitewashing Hollywood.
In recent years, historians, such as Hilke Thuer of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, have questioned the belief that Cleopatra VII was white. Scholars agree that there is no doubt that Cleo was Macedonian-Greek on her father’s side Ptolemy XII, potentially Persian or Syrian as well, but because her mother’s ethnicity remains unverified, she has strengthened the idea of that the Egyptian ruler was of mixed heritage. “It has been suggested that Cleopatra’s mother was from the Memphis priest family,” Betsy M Bryan, Alexander Badawy’s professor of Egyptian art and archeology at Johns Hopkins University, told Newsweek. “If this was the case, then Cleopatra could have been at least 50% Egyptian in origin.”
With that in mind, the criticisms of Gadot’s casting are understandable. The film industry has long had a frustrating habit of whitewashing history, and Cleopatra movies, thanks to white actors like Elizabeth Taylor, Hildegard Neil, Claudette Colbert, and Vivien Leigh, cementing her western appearance on screen. Gadot on paper continues this trend, but it is not as clear cut as that.
The actor checks the box for representation of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), so it is not as western an option as Angelina Jolie or Lady Gaga, who had previously been linked to the role, would have been. But it still perpetuates a white standard of immigration. It’s a similar situation to Naomi Scott, an actress of mixed English and Indian descent who was cast as Jasmine in the recent Aladdin remake. Scott is “other” enough to mean that the filmmakers could not be accused of whitewashing (although it is not yet clear what ethnicity someone should be in Disney’s orientalist fantasy), but he is still an example of cultural ventriloquism that sees the continued bias towards light-skinned minorities who adhere to a western aesthetic.
It wouldn’t be such a hard pill for the North African diaspora to swallow if Hollywood didn’t repeatedly use the region as a simple backdrop for white actors. From The Ten Commandments to Star Wars, The English Patient to The Red Sea Diving Resort, and almost every movie in The Mummy franchise, North Africans are marginalized, endorsed, negatively portrayed, or erased to center the white characters and especially to defend the whites. saviors.
It can be inferred that Gadot’s version of Cleopatra will exhibit heroism of a more subtle variety than her Wonder Woman alter ego; But what are the chances that you won’t fall into the white savior trap where, if chosen, Egyptian and North African actors are simply present to prop up your narrative? It is an unfortunate coincidence that Gadot is next seen in Death on the Nile, an Egyptian-themed film that, like its 1978 predecessor, does not include any North African actors in the main cast, and is yet another example of how cinema colonizes. foreign regions for their own white-centered purpose.
All of this is irritating considering that recent steps have been taken to diversify the historical narrative on screen. The likes of Armando Iannucci’s multicultural adaptation of Dickens set new precedents, with Dev Patel playing David Copperfield. Soon Constance Wu and Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù will be playing romantic roles in the 19th century English-set comedy, Mr. Malcolm’s List. Actress Sophie Okonedo played the tragic Queen of Egypt in the National Theater’s production of Anthony and Cleopatra in 2018.
Gal Gadot has shown herself that a “nobody” can become an A-lister when given the opportunity to play an important role. So given what we now understand about the Queen of Egypt’s heritage, and as the battle for better representation of ethnic minorities continues, it seems like a missed opportunity that Cleopatra’s next appearance will be more representative of Hollywood’s past than the present. North Africa.
