People are venting because they're frustrated. I mean, some of it is the standard hyperbolic overreaction of internet people, trolling, or just angry racists or self-righteous progressives, but I think a lot of the chatter is frustration.
Some people - I'm going to use the term progressives, although I acknowledge that not all progressives would feel this way and not everybody who does this would call themselves that, but I need a word - who are insistent that whitewashing is a bad thing.
On this point, I agree. I think the idea of John Wayne as Genghis Khan was silly, and I don't think it was right that Emma Stone portrayed Allison Ng because Ng was a real-life person with an entirely different background. I also agree that whitewashing history - pretending every good idea or invention came from the West - is really stupid and should never happen either.
The frustration comes when this idea is apparently only applicable in one direction. 300 portrayed the Spartans as good, freedom loving people of honour going up against the treacherous, slave-driving Persians; progressives say this is bad. But when the trailer for The Woman King dropped, the progressives didn't care that the Dahomeys were getting the same "hero boost" that the Spartans got. I'm not going to comment on the film itself since I haven't seen it yet (although I enjoyed the trailer, and I do plan to watch the movie at some point). Likewise, Emma Stone as Allison Ng is a problem for progressives, but they don't mind Jodie Turner-Smith as Anne Boleyn.
For Queen Cleopatra, this frustration is compounded by the presentation of the series. It calls itself a docu-drama, but the documentary parts (in the trailer, anyway; I also haven't watched this programme) feature people affirming that Cleopatra was definitely black, "No matter what they tell you in school." Some "documentaries" are propaganda, and this appears to be propaganda.
Finally, it's anywhere from irritating to infuriating that a response to this documentary of, "The evidence shows that Cleopatra was descended primarily from Macedonian Greeks and was likely white," is met with hostile accusations of racism.
Personally, I find it troubling whenever orthodoxy cannot be questioned. Saying, "If you disagree with me, you're evil; now shut up!" isn't a way to investigate history. I'm down with a documentary (or docu-drama) presenting the case for black Cleopatra, but this smacks of propaganda, and gives the impression that it started with a conclusion and worked back from there. It's not a curious group of historians investigating history.
I will agree that a lot of the vitriol directed at this film is coming from trolls and/or racists, but that doesn't mean all, and that doesn't mean the complaints of unfair application of principles isn't legitimate.
When you boil it all down, erasure of history is a problem, presenting one side of a story is a problem, and trying to silence dissent in and of itself is a problem, and that is what detractors are responding to. Perhaps this is unfair (the series only *just* came out) but the trailer gave the perception that it would be participating in those three problem areas, and that's what a lot of people are angry about.
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FootOfDavros (7303)
a year ago
I don't disagree with what your saying re people venting because they're frustrated.
But whether you believe that mindset is valid or not - and not withstanding the fact that once the next non white casting comes up they'll abandon this board and going frothing off on that productions board instead - what I was trying to get at was the utter pointlessness of doing it for this particular production, which only exists to ask the question of whether she could have been black.
So it's kind of irrelevant and stupid to get angry seeing that she is shown as a woman of color as that literally is the only reason you can even see her as a woman of color to get angry about in the first place!
It's like getting angry at a moon landings were faked documentary because it is showing the proposition that the moon landings were faked... Well duh, what do you expect they are going to show in that particular documentary? What's the point in getting angry that the documentary even exists? That's the mindset at play here which I don't get.
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Ace_Spade (9458)
a year ago
Thank you for clarifying.
I'll go a little deeper and hopefully clarify some of what I was/am trying to get across.
Some of the upset is, I think, venting. There is this pattern of casting (Anne Boleyn, Queen Cleopatra) where mainstream sources (BBC, Netflix) are taking historical figures and casting against their race. People who object are labelled racists (I'm sure some of them are) and told to shut up.
The problem is that, if this continues, people will stop having an accurate view of history. It's a problem when somebody decides that they want to take history and re-write it to minimize or remove a racial group from history.
That is the frustration here: history presented as untrue can lead to people believing that untruth. You seem like you have a solid, rational grasp on this, so you and I both know that Queen Cleopatra is a "docu-drama," but I would bet that the majority of people who watch it without a preconception of what it will be will come away with the impression that Cleopatra was almost definitely black. Worse, any counter claim will be met with cries of "racism!"
I don't think it really matters if Cleopatra was black or not. It doesn't affect me. I don't care. But I do care about history and truth and the preservation of such things. While this might be a minor threat to the accuracy of history, it is a threat, and it is a problem.
And, coming back to your point about "why complain"? and about how useless it is to rant on Moviechat about all of this, yeah, you're right. But people who are frustrated by this and have no where else to vent need to vent.
Finally, to your point about how most of these people will move on to the next board, yeah, they will. And I also see a lot of racist or racist-adjacent (?) behaviours where people just complain about any black leads in movies. Just quickly: I don't see a problem with the casting in the live action Little Mermaid adaptation, for instance, and I thought The Woman King looked like a cool movie. My full thoughts on all of this are more complex, and if you want, I can get into them deeper. But I've already rambled past the character limit, so I'll pull the plug here, and if you want more, I'm happy to unpack some more.
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liscarkat (17123)
a year ago
It's neither racist nor "white washing" to acknowledge the historical fact that Cleopatra, a member of the very closely controlled breeding lineage of a Macedonian royal family, was a white woman. Making a documentary to seriously consider the possibility that she was black is just as asinine as making a documentary to explore the possibility that the earth is flat and supported by turtles, or that the moon is actually made of cheese.
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Ace_Spade (9458)
a year ago
I didn't say it was whitewashing to call Cleopatra white. I did say that some of the frustration around the documentary is because it looks like it is a propaganda piece, not really a documentary.
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