Truth is in the Eye of the Producer
When I was a kid, the Spanish illustrator Maria Pascual was big in my corner of the woods due to a beloved series of fairytale books for children. They were so popular that most kids I was friends with had them and I like to think it contributed to their literacy later in life in more ways than one.
In the meantime our generation grew up, some have their own kids so the Fairytales became heirlooms. In fact, so much so that I created a Facebook group for its readers, and it exploded overnight against all odds. Now it works as some sort of a thrift shop where people buy, sell and exchange Millenial childhood books. However Pascual was also behind a slightly controversial Bible for kids that I still have somewhere on my bookshelves. The tricky part of the story is that in her vision everyone is blond and white. Adam, Eve, Jesus himself: a peroxide flood of Biblical proportions.
Even if there was no sinister agenda behind it, it bore a strong visual resemblance to cultural propaganda in Nazi Germany, where they had posters of blue-eyed babies that embodied the Aryan ideal of pure German breed. As if it were a dog instead of a baby.
On the other hand, Hitler allowed for poison to be tested on his dog Blondi before he commited suicide so nothing surprises me anymore. But kids don’t overthink things and sometimes I envy them for it. Don’t get me wrong, Pascual was hardly a nasty, still she distorted facts albeit in a time where it wasn’t a big deal.
White, blond Palestinians are historically as accurate as Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra with her lavishly bejeweled bosom. Since archeologists started finding coins with her face on it, we established that the myth of her beauty has been slightly overexxagerated, to put it mildly.
But her story is what made her so remarkable and memorable, seductively feminine and fierce in her fight against the Roman empire. Then again, nothing particularly feminist about using your body as a political tool. It was a matter of time when someone would try to put a new angle on an all-too-familiar story and, no surprise, Netflix stepped up and delivered. If they thought everyone would be impressed, it’s safe to say they were wrong.
Egyptian expert Zahi Hawass accused the producers of distorting history since Cleopatra is the last descendant of the Ptolomeic dynasty that goes back to the Macedonian Alexander the Great. By new it’s common knowlege how the whole thing ended yet the veil of myth is still there and as alluring as ever.
The actress Adele James who plays the leading role quipped that those who don’t like the casting shouldn’t watch the show. Darling, that’s not really how it works, not that it ever stopped Hollywood from rearranging history to their own tastes. What the producers call “her truth” is a willful dispersion of lies because it’s clearly not just a movie.
Taylor is still the first thing that comes up when we imagine Cleopatra, and it’s all thanks to Truman Capote’s still relevant maxima about not letting the truth get in the way of a good story. That’s also why the Parthenon marbles are dubbed after Lord Elgin. It’s due to him that they’re still held hostage at the British Museum in London after all.
Jada Pinkett-Smith produced this attempt to visualise world history as an American theme park. Treating it as a docuseries further emphasizes her delusion that might even lead to finding the philosopher’s stone that turns a flop into a hit. Lord knows she needs it after her husband proved to be a smash hit at last year’s Oscars. Pun intended? You betcha.
There are few political figures I dislike more than the Wicked witch of the West known as Hillary Clinton. But I got to hand it to her- saying you’re entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts perfectly applies to this piece of blackwashed history. The whole epidemic of fake facts is rooted in the habit to source your knowledge from podcasts and opinion makers instead from boring stuff like, you know, actual education.
If Joe Rogan started a private school, it would attract more attention than all the Ivy League combined. Don’t believe me? Why else would things like Masterclass be so popular? A woman in Serbia said that to get a decent job she needed a membership in the leading nationalist party and only two blowjobs. If that’s not a masterclass in reality check, I don’t know what is.
In essence, her experience wasn’t that different than Cleopatra’s: she did what she had to do in order to survive. If it means allowing men to treat her like a prize, so be it. Like Hillary, she too was too proud to concede defeat. It remains to be seen if Netflix will have to concede after all the bad press the documentary trailer stirred.
Maybe it’s wrong to accuse them as if their primary goal wasn’t profit but something beautifully insightful. The biggest mistake is to ignore it because streaming services insist on educating us too. You believe them when they say a flamingo is pink. But judging by Queen Cleopatra, accuracy should be on the list of endangered species too.
There’s a poignant scene in the docuseries trailer, where a woman proudly points out “my grandmother said, whatever they tell you at school Cleopatra was black.” This isn’t really endemic, quite the opposite. In many countries, teachers are secretly treated as untrustworthy by parents who mistake education for brainwash. So they take it upon themselves to set the record straight at home. That’s how Antifascists occasionally got rebranded as irredeemable villains in World War II. If Netflix wants to calm down this shitstorm of their own making, they’ll redo the trailer and leave out the infamous granny. But it’s no use to cry over spilled milk.
When you insist on diversity so much that you hire, say, Meryl Streep to play Michelle Obama, you not only do something that’s ridiculous but insulting to everyone, including the cast. I don’t think we’ll ever see that because black actors now get to play whoever they want, including God himself. Octavia Spencer actually did it in The Shack. Skip it because even the worst romcoms on the Hallmark channel look like The Godfather in comparison to it. If I want to be lectured on equality I prefer books.
Since the internet is so overpowered by anglophone culture, a big part of it is designed to appeal to their audiences, from politics to entertainment. Which is why the apalled reactions to the new Netflix creation are so encouraging. Even Anne Boleyn turned black in the tv show Black Tudors.
Black actress Jodie Turner-Smith plays one of the most famous women in English history, which the creators called “identity-conscious” approach. What a load of utter bollocks. Her co-star Mark Stanley said she was the right person for the job. In the politically paranoid bubble these people are stuck in, you’d easily be labeled as a racist for being offended by this.
In one of the many satyrical memes that followed when creative license got swapped for blantant blackwash, a poster announced a fictional biopic in which Anthony Hopkins plays Nelson Mandela. A mere suggestion of this in real life would be met with an outrage.
Since we’re already letting go of reason, go big or go home. Let a Jewish actor play Yasser Arafat. In Hollywood there are enough to choose from anyway. I bet that at the premiere the red carpet would be equally crowded with armed guards as with the cast, journalists and celebrity guests.
If you venture into the teritory where fiction and history cross paths on the way to the truth, the rule of agreeing to disagree is no more. This misjudged project will certainly be raising more eyebrows in the future. The very fact that a petition to cancel it on the website change.org was removed shows this is no longer a game and that we might as well prepare for more of this. Let’s hope this embarrassing story proves that there is indeed something like bad press. If it leads to losing subscribers, we won’t need a petition for Netflix to axe this. Money is the oldest motive in the book, after all.
