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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36342 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Black Cleopatra Goes Mainstream or Netflix exploits the Toxoplasma of Rage?

So Netflix and Jada Pinkett-Smith worked on...a new version of the tale of Cleopatra that is deliberately designed to piss people off.

  1. Action Girl Cleopatra.

  2. Implying, of Caesar, that he was looking to rise to Cleopatra's level which is just...so wrong as to have either been deliberately malicious phrasing or born of only watching the 1963 Cleopatra film.

  3. And, of course, Cleopatra and her courtiers being black - not SSA-black but at least ambiguously so, with the called out curly hair. They make sure to insist, for a good chunk of the trailer, on discussing this fringe Hotep bullshit.

I've always thought that the black American focus on Egypt showed a deep insecurity at best (since Egypt is the one "African" state that's broadly respected and known in the West) or outright spite at worst - an attempt to seize and twist a European icon in Morgoth-like fashion so you can have an "aha!" gotcha.

That's why it made sense for it to be a fringe hotep thing.

Now...apparently it's going mainstream. I kind of missed out on history documentaries after I lost History Channel so I can't remember if they were always this bad. I'm pretty sure not though. This also doesn't just seem stupid in the way Ancient Aliens is stupid - the point seems to be division. On a naive level you'd expect people to fight over more than one Egyptian queen being black, if they wanted "'representation". Yet it all seems to center on like the one person you'd think would be unambiguously "white" by our standards.

I suppose that's a comfort - I don't have to worry about Aurelian suddenly becoming Desi. Clearly some figures are preferred.

And yes, I checked Netflix and it is under "Docuseries" and "Historical Documentary".

The center left is in a place where they can't push back against hotep type views. Hotep ideas aren't mainstream, but white Netflix employees certainly aren't allowed to criticize them.

Last year Netflix published the Graham Hancock archeology documentary. The year before that they published Buck Breaking.

Netflix definitely did not publish Buck Breaking, lol. That was an independent production by Tariq Nasheed and his supporters. No streaming service would produce or stream that.

This is like stumbling on a weird subculture. I’ve never really given the race of ancient Egyptians much thought. They were just…ambiguously Arab in every kid’s book or adaptation. In hindsight, anyone dealing with the Romans had to have some Mediterranean genes, but this has seriously never come up. I don’t think I’ve ever heard “hotep” used as a stand-alone word, despite the baggage which it apparently carries.

My guess would be that most people involved in the project also don’t give racial (or general) historicity much thought. If they thought the Woman King should have made bank, they probably wanted to get in on the supposed trend.

Morgoth

Eh, what’s the deal with Morgoth? I just reread the Silmarillion, and my only conclusion was that he’s a good namesake for a spiteful cat.

Eh, what’s the deal with Morgoth?

A central theme in the Silmarillion is that Morgoth is incapable of true creation - everything he creates is simply a twisted mockery of something made by Iluvatar.

Oh, so it’s the producers and writers who are Morgoth. I was trying to figure out how Morgoth was Problematic in the modern sense.

Interestingly, if they wanted a show about black pharaohs I think we assume the Kushite Empire leaders were black, at least they came by way of Sudan. A little bit earlier in time than Cleopatra though.

They could at least have done their homework and made a series about Septimus Severus instead. He was not sub-Saharan, but at least he was something like a Berber and was noticeably browner than his Arab wife.

At the very least, casting a Black man as Severus would solve the problem of having him talk about killing Gaius Pescennius Niger.

I've never actually understood why people are so obsessed with claiming Cleopatra. She was a puppet queen completely at the mercy of another nation. In fact, the entire reason she's known is due to the civil wars of the nation, her most important contribution being fleeing the field at actium.

Hardly someone worth fighting over.

Actually similar to Boudica in a way, although it stands out that the majority of people who are interested in Cleopatra are not Egyptian.

It's because she was female, supposedly hot, and relevant to the recorded history of the West.

She was a semi-important figure in the history of an empire that was the progenitor of Western civilization, thereby lending her a cultural prestige in the US and Europe that the likes of Nzinga Mbande will never have here. Hoteps have no interest in the culture of their ancestors because the West attaches no esteem to that culture; they latch on to the culture of ancient Egypt and its figures because the West's interest in it brings a chance of reflected glory.

Hoteps have no interest in the culture of their ancestors because the West attaches no esteem to that culture; they latch on to the culture of ancient Egypt and its figures because the West's interest in it brings a chance of reflected glory.

It makes me really sad, because I can't exactly blame them - all the hoteps I've seen were ADOS, so they don't know who their ancestors were and have no way of finding out. They could use DNA testing to find out what tribe their ancestors were, but they have no link to the culture and traditions of those people, and no sense of belonging. Sadly it doesn't work however, by latching onto Egypt they are only disrespecting actual Egyptians, although actual Egyptians don't seem to mind (I only know one Egyptian chick irl though).

Of course you can blame them. In 2023, it requires no effort whatsoever to flip open a book and read about west Africa if one chooses, and at some cost you can get a DNA analysis to find out where your ancestors came from.

I do occasionally see online Egyptians pointing out that claiming the pharaohs were black implies that they are themselves foreign invaders or colonialists, a charge they resent.

Also, not to invoke Godwin's Law, but this whole business reminds me a bit of prewar Germany's obsession with Aryans, as they were ashamed of their own ancestors' lack of sophistication at the same time the Greeks and Romans were building great empires and so had to find historical validation through an imagined descent from a comparable civilization that had nothing to do with them, in this case the Indo-Iranians.

While I can understand the impulse to find belonging in the great achievements of one's ancestors, such validation is ultimately hollow if the traditions being venerated are museum pieces rather than living and breathing culture. The wiser course if one lacks illustrious ancestors is to try to become one, and to make one's people thereby worthy of remembrance. Many scoff at "made-up holidays" like Kwanzaa and various other attempts to create a unifying black American culture from scratch, but culture is all made-up in the end and at those people are trying to build something new.

I do occasionally see online Egyptians pointing out that claiming the pharaohs were black implies that they are themselves foreign invaders or colonialists, a charge they resent.

I wonder how that plays with their Arab identification.

Many Arabs take some pride in their pre-Islamic ancestors in the same superficial sort of way that the French call themselves Gauls or the English commemorate King Arthur despite him being a Briton rather than a Saxon, though with the exception of a few Lebanese Christians all of them would still claim to be Arabs first and foremost.

The people making this stuff up know nothing about history except for a few names they've stumbled across in pop culture. How many people can name another African woman from the ancient world? If any were famous enough that C- students knew their names I'm sure they would get claimed as well.

Does Miriam count?

I’m confident that people could name Nefertiti, mostly because of her world-famous bust, and additionally because the second half of her name sounds hilariously like a certain word for, well, her… bust.

Might be falling into a history average familiarity trap. I don't people are going to be naming even second-rate pharaohs

Hatshepsut!

I only know her from edutainment, and can’t name any feats, so…half credit?

I recognize her from Civ 4 lol. But I don't know anything about her and I bet very few people would even recognize the name. Not enough to make it worth a Netflix documentary.

I bet very few people would even recognize the name

Which also doesn't code as probably female for US viewers.

deleted

Because Shakespeare wrote a play about her and Elizabeth Taylor played her in a popular movie. That being said, I've seen neither the play nor the film, and the subject was not covered when I was in school, so that's the best I can do considering I know nothing else about her.

I've never actually understood why people are so obsessed with claiming Cleopatra.

Now that all historical men are unsafe to use as role models (because some SJW will inevitably find an example of their being slavers or sexists or homophobes or Did A Racism once, leading to Cancellation) the historical-revisionism battle to claim historical women for one's cause will only pick up pace.

Now that all historical men are unsafe to use as role models (because some SJW will inevitably find an example of their being slavers or sexists or homophobes or Did A Racism once, leading to Cancellation)

The racism thing can be handled by choosing non-white figures or raceswapping them ("Why do you care?") the homophobia thing can just be glossed over, and the slavery thing can be either downplayed or one can add something like "And he questioned the institution of slavery," or "He treated his slaves like family - slavery was different in Africa/the Islamic world."

And that's just for the very woke.

No way.

The first new biopic which comes to mind is Oppenheimer. It’s getting a little flack on Twitter for being too white, and that’s it. Nothing about how the father of the atom bomb is Problematic. I find it unlikely that the race accusations will have any meaningful effect on cancelling Nolan, for that matter. Clearly there are still historical men available.

She rejected a power-hungry suitor. She outmaneuvered a wicked prince to become sole queen. She dunked on her annoying little brother constantly (same guy). She wrapped the most powerful man in the world around her... finger, twice. She nearly put her kids on the thrones of the entire east. Perhaps even rome, although that kid likely wasn't long for this world in any scenario.

The idea that Cleopatra had Mark Antony wrapped around her little finger was literally a lie that Augustus made up to justify starting yet another civil war. It was important to frame it as a war against that foreign seductress, Cleopatra, rather than what it actually was, a civil war between the two most powerful men in Rome for control of the whole empire (again).

The plan to put Cleopatra's children on the thrones of the East (the "donations of Alexandria") was an administrative strategy that Antony came up with to stabilize the eastern empire by centralizing power in Egypt. It wasn't some wicked scheme of Cleopatra's to usurp Rome.

Whatever, it happened. Let's assume this was entirely mark anthony's idea and decision. It's still a massive win for her egypt to become the eastern dominant kingdom he apparently needed, and to provide 50% of the genes of those kings. And again, it happened twice. Caesar made some questionable decisions for rome that ended up benefitting Cleopatra greatly. How does the saying go? Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, well okay she missed the third time but only because octavian was as cold as they come.

Cleopatra was greek, not egyptian. She was a Lagid, descended from the subordinate of Alexander the Great who claimed Egypt after the great conqueror kicked the bucket at 33. Even the name "Cleopatra" is greek, which means "Father's Glory" ("Kleos" = glory, and "Pater" = father). The people she ruled were Egyptian.

I said 'her egypt', as in, egypt was her posession. Anyway, when you've ruled a country for 10 generations, they give you a passport, it's in the UN charter.

well okay she missed the third time but only because octavian was as cold as they come.

Or, more cynically, because the position of "woman who got romantically involved with Octavian to insure success for herself and her son" was already filled -- by Livia.

They were other impediments too: Augustus framed himself as the restorer of traditional Roman virtues, including sexual ones.

And then - as mentioned - he demonized Cleopatra as the opposite.

It was never really viable.

Marrying a Roman consul to their queen and putting Mark Antony's children on the thrones of all the neighbouring kingdoms would have solidified Roman rule over Egypt. If Egypt had become the lynchpin of Roman rule over the East as Antony intended, that would have meant that Rome would have controlled the East by controlling Egypt - note the part where Egypt gets to be controlled by Rome, not rise to become a co-equal partner. I don't think cementing your overlord's control over your kingdom is normally characterized as "[becoming] the eastern dominant kingdom." The dominant power was Rome. There are no points for being best-in-your-category.

Cleopatra's brother Ptolemy ('s scheming advisors) tried to pull away from Rome and exercise more independence - or at least more obstinance. Cleopatra smuggled herself into the palace and presented herself to Caesar as a more pliable alternative ruler, if he would just put her on the throne. Caesar had Ptolemy put to death and installed Cleopatra as queen. After Caesar died she picked up where she left off with Mark Antony, but that ended in disaster and she was deposed and committed suicide, after which Rome not only annexed Egypt but took it as the personal possession of the Emperor.

Every step she took led to less power for Egypt and more for Rome. Her path ended in the annexation of her kingdom and the end of her dynasty. Again, not seeing it.

Every step she took led to less power for Egypt and more for Rome. Her path ended in the annexation of her kingdom and the end of her dynasty. Again, not seeing it.

It was probably inevitable.

Dynastic conflict may have accelerated it but that was already happening: as you say she was already in the middle of a struggle for Egypt and Caesar had already showed up. One she probably would have lost. Getting out of that jam alone was a success.

Cleopatra lost in the end but it's hard to imagine predicting the deaths and losses of both Antony and Caesar. Especially since Caesar appeared to have tamed all opposition.

There's a very different but equally conceivable timeline where she stays the favored vassal/paramour of the leader of Rome or at least a Triumvir.

In a sense, marking her as particularly foolish would be reinforcing the Augustan propaganda that she was more of a protagonist than she probably was. She was probably savvy. It's more her fate wasn't in her hands.

I didn’t say she was an egyptian patriot who worked tirelessly for the good of the country. It’s her interests she advanced, and egypt's with it.

You can always find a reason why supporting her against her brother, giving away cyprus, subordinating the other client kingdoms to egypt etc makes sense for them somehow, but you’ve got to admit that caesar and anthony’s behaviour is unusual. The last time caesar went to a client kingdom, the king bequeated it to rome and it was incorporated as a province. I guess Cleopatra gave better head than Caesar.

The romans already controlled the east. A wily ruler would present himself as pliable, amass power and then do as he pleases once his greater power made him capable of challenging his overlord. Getting egypt from a client kingdom among many (slowly absorbed) to the junior partner in a dominating roman alliance is an upgrade. And the consequences of her and antony’s defeat can hardly be called a ‘step she took’.

The Romans were fascinated with her, so we all are.

But you're right: part of their fascination was almost certainly inflated by Augustan propaganda to hide his killing of other Romans behind combating the spectre of Greek degeneracy (which of course Antony was weak to succumb to). She needed to be bigger to sell the win.

We're all living in the shadow of highly successful imperial propaganda.

She's a cool historical figure who has a lot of cultural cachet and mystique (even in her time). It's not really anymore complicated than that.

Also she's a woman, which is rare enough among those circles and of particular interest to the obvious people who would care.

If one wanted to make an argument for theoretically having a (very light-skinned) black Cleopatra, it would probably be that, while the Ptolemies adopted Egyptian ruling-class customs like pharaonic incest, it seems extremely implausible that Cleopatra - a vivacious, intelligent woman who was at least attractive enought to get Caesar's attention - was actually the product of multiple generations of brother-sister incest, as she would theoretically be. This would mean that there would be (frequent) extramarital infusions of other genetic material to the pool, and since Pharaonic Egypt contained all sorts of people, it would not be impossible for some of that material to come from Sub-Saharan African courtiers. Of course, it still seems likeliest that the "other" genetic material would primarily come from other Macedonians - but this is a plausibility argument, not a probability argument.

(Pharaonic incest, in general, seems to me to be something that was more a theory than practice, since we know what happens when you have multiple generations of brother-sister incest, and it's not pretty. That doesn't mean it never happened, just that there must have been a fair amount of children sired by someone else than the actual Pharaoh.)

we know what happens when you have multiple generations of brother-sister incest, and it's not pretty

The idea that extreme inbreeding will invariably produce horrible deformities is a myth. The island of Pingelap was repopulated starting from a population bottleneck of 20, most of which belonged to the royal family. Despite this, and despite the fact that the population does suffer from a rare genetic disorder (achromatopsia) they look normal.

Even so, it is said that King Tut was fucked-up thanks to being inbred.

Inbreeding does increase the risk of weird genetic stuff but it's not a certainty.

it seems extremely implausible that Cleopatra - a vivacious, intelligent woman who was at least attractive enought to get Caesar's attention - was actually the product of multiple generations of brother-sister incest

While I agree that some false paternity was likely at work in the Ptolemies, it is possible for extensive inbreeding to produce healthy individuals if it goes on for so long that all the deleterious mutations are selected out. This seems to happen in dog breeding, and we can see some breeds that are quite healthy while others have the type of severe health problems we would normally expect from incest. It also applies to theoretical cases such as iterated embryo selection, where you would create sperm and eggs from embryonic stem cells and cross them until you got whatever combination of traits that you wanted, the petri dish equivalent of many generations of full sibling incest where all the unhealthy children are tossed out.

just that there must have been a fair amount of children sired by someone else than the actual Pharaoh.

Epistemic status: half-remembered stuff I read long ago

I recall reading that the paternity of royal children in Egypt was relatively unimportant compared to similar civilizations, because the "true" father of the Pharaoh was always the god Ra, with his physical sire at best acting as a vessel, and therefore the mother being a lot more relevant to establish lineage. Indeed, I believe that the main reason for a pharaoh to marry his sisters as a habit was to acquire legitimacy from them, if not for himself at least for his heirs.

Maybe, but this sounds suspiciously like things I've heard from well-schooled (but not necessarily well-educated) left-wing women on Facebook, e.g. "In the early 20th century, IQ tests were changed to be more favourable to men to stop women doing better on them; not that IQ measures intelligence, of course, but if it did..."

I'm willing to give the creators the benefit of the doubt here. Many Americans really are just that ignorant about basic history. In communities like The Motte or 4chan or internet forums and history twitter there will be a few smart guys who know everything about Rome. We have a background literacy, even if most posters don't know much or care. Pop culture doesn't have this. The average person doesn't know much and doesn't care much.

While it's more than a little silly, and it's clearly in one sense mainstream insofar as it's on Netflix, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone defending this outside the program-makers, actual Hoteps and miniscule minority of others. Plus, I think most people moaning about it are getting outrage-baited pretty effectively; the people who work at Netflix are not morons, and except for perhaps a few true believers among those most intimately involved with the show they doubtless knew that this would ruffle plenty of feathers

Sounds like it's about as Egyptian as the Marvel Universe Asgardians are Norse. Which would be fine if they didn't bill it as a documentary series.

Bouncing off Tanista's comment quoting a British writer, maybe we could get an MCCU - the Morally Correct Cinematic Universe - in contrast to the MCU. A whole series of historical docudramas showing us the "imaginary, better version of the world" with consistent actors playing the same historical figures in multiple films and all that.

I’ve been mulling over a top-level post about how I expect advances in AI art and photo/video manipulation technology to make it easier for activist “historians” and media creators to comprehensively alter future generations’ perception of history, such that people in 200 years will sincerely believe that every important society in history was racially-cosmopolitan and involved numerous sub-Saharan blacks in positions of power and prestige.

What we think of as “fringe Hotep shit” will be the mainstream consensus, but turned up to 11. Maybe a small core of archaeologists and anthropologists with access to otherwise-tightly-controlled information about archaeogenetics will know “the truth”, but it will be considered uncouth - even career-killing - to mention anything in public which would threaten this consensus. This Netflix production is just one more early salvo in what could easily become a full war on the past, and I’m sadly not confident that the past will emerge victorious.

The interesting thing to consider, is that this has already happened.

You will live to see events you were personally involved in portrayed in completely inaccurate ways. And there's very little one can do to know which parts of the past are victims of this same veil of lies.

Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra seems equally outlandish. Time for the flip-side I guess...

Curiously, when I googled Netflix Cleopatra the first story appears critical, at least at a glance: https://greekcitytimes.com/2023/04/13/queen-cleopatra-netflix/?amp

Article can't get enough of the turn "blackwashed" like some kind of anti-woke SEO strategy.

Why is Elizabeth Taylor outlandish? Remember Cleopatra was of Macedonian descent, the Egyptian ruling class all were the heirs of Alexander the Great's generals. To the untrained eye, Elizabeth Taylor doesn't look all that different than a Macedonian woman

Ah, I see what you mean.

Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra seems equally outlandish. Time for the flip-side I guess...

In what sense? Yes, I agree that based on contemporary reports about Cleopatra’s appearance, Elizabeth Taylor is considerably hotter than Cleopatra was, and probably a shade less swarthy, but Taylor looks far more like Cleopatra than any sub-Saharan does. It’s not even close.

I’ve met Greeks (and Turks even) who look like Elizabeth Taylor - I’ve yet to meet an ethnic Greek who looked like they were of Sub-Saharan descent.

Ultimately I find this innocuous, as it has no impact on how historians see Egypt (yet). But it will be interesting to see if this documentary leads to any historian or anthropologist speaking out as they did for Graham Hancock’s innocuous (and possibly more evidence-filled) documentary series.

Well what's the point of historians if the general public or political leaders see things a different way? Say astronomers somehow uncovered rock-solid evidence of nuclear war on Mars (there has been some debate about this, as to whether the isotopes we find are from a natural nuclear explosion or from airbursts). This would have implications for our place in the universe, the Fermi Paradox, on modelling UFOs and alien life. But it has no usefulness unless people know about it and act on it. If the facts just exist in scientific papers that nobody or very few people read, do they matter at all?

These intuitions are then taken into account when voting and making policy.

This has been explicitly stated as the plan by probably the most prominent British TV writer around:

Moffat even talks about the idea he mentions above — the excuse of “historical accuracy” that some people often give to justify an all-white cast — “[W]e’ve kind of got to tell a lie: we’ll go back into history and there will be black people where, historically, there wouldn’t have been, and we won’t dwell on that. We’ll say, ‘To hell with it, this is the imaginary, better version of the world. By believing in it, we’ll summon it forth.’”

https://www.themarysue.com/steven-moffat-on-doctor-who-diversity/

But it will be interesting to see if this documentary leads to any historian or anthropologist speaking out as they did for Graham Hancock’s innocuous (and possibly more evidence-filled) documentary series.

It'll be interesting if they do. Not counting on much

On topics like this even respected scholars like Mary Beard seem to...be biased in the direction of the take that's defending the more cosmopolitan viewpoint, to be as charitable as I can manage.

As another article puts it:

Is there even one high-profile Classicist or ancient historian in Britain today who has the courage and intellectual honesty to state that the BBC’s video was an outrageous travesty of history? Is there any such Classicist or ancient historian capable of saying publicly that “of course it is ridiculous and politically correct nonsense to state, as the BBC did, that a family headed by a sub-Saharan African (or indigenous North African) was a “typical family” in Roman Britain in the sense of being average.”

But I guess we can run the experiment again

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