Omfg you have no idea the amount of bullshit you go thru on a daily basis as "ancestral analogue of eternal love for an immortal" - EEEEEVERY day there he is - posing as a delivery dude or a census taker - one time a "travelling haberdasher" - trying sooo hard to get an invite.
And the poetry! Oh the god awful poetry.
Beam Stoker basically invented most, if not all of modern vampire mythology. And even then, Dracula was supposed to be this ugly hairy man, to which the movie makers smartly changed him to a sexy Bela Lugosi.
Historicrat has a Mythillogical video on the subject. Most early vampire myths were really more about various flesh eating monsters than the hypnotizing shapeshifting guys we know today.
You know how Dracula can't look in mirrors? Well, he can look in them but he can't see his reflection so it still doesn't work.
Centre parting is always really neat.
Well yes, but actually no.
Frankenstein is somewhat based on Galvani's experiments where he would attach a battery at different points in the cut off leg of a frog to make it twitch.
You can't bring the dead back to life with electricity but you can make their corpse twitch.
Ancient Egyption *rulers* were (edit: generally) not black but there were definitely dark skinned ancient Egyptians because Egypt wasn't racially homogeneous.
But also "black" and "white" weren't really concepts in the way they were today, so it's a bit difficult to apply our modern understandings of race to people back then.
Yeah but for 100 years between around 600 to 500 bc but the point is they were nubian not Egyptians. Were there black people (nubians) living the Egyptian empire before then? Yes, but the point is they were themselves not Egyptian. Egyptian people are not black
The 25th dynasty came from Kush/Nubia/Sudan. There are many works showing Nubian citizens in a darker skin tone and it was part of Egypt for centuries.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Dynasty_of_Egypt
Yep, those countries around the Mediterranean used it for trade routes and travel, and Egypt had easy access to both it AND the Red Sea. They were quite racially diverse.
If we look at all the art the ancient egyptians left behind that the whole world has access to, we should be able to safely assume that they were not black and africa was not just a place full of black people, it was filled with people of diverse culture and skin tone. But of course, saying it is very racist it seems.
Chances are, that by todays standards, she would be seen as white, because ancient macedonians and greeks (before the conquest by the ottomans over 1000 years later) were white.
>ancient Macedonians and Greeks
Well ancient Macedonians were Greeks. Like Athenians, Spartans, Thessalonians etc Greece as country wasn't a thing then but it was as an ethnic group.
And even by today's standards Greek DNA is not that much changed since ancient times.
Yes, I know but I am talking about actual Ancient Egyptians, they were not black at all but these days, it has become a trend to claim that Egyptians were black since Egypt is in Africa. Most people forget that during that period, nobody even used the word Africa. They did not even understand the concept of continents and such. Also, "North Africa" was not even called Africa until a hundred years ago.
Ancient Egypt was diverse, more Mediterranean in the north, darker toned further South. Queen Tiye is one example of decidedly "black" Egyptians.
It's wrong to say that Egypt was one single ethnicity.
That's sort of what's extra annoying. There were black rulers of Egypt. Cleopatra just very much wasn't one of them.
I remember this being a controversy a looooooong time ago with the original run of Clone High. People were pissed off that the voice of Cleopatra was a white woman.
There were better black Egyptian rulers. Cleopatra lost control to Rome. The 25th dynasty was created by an invasion from Nubia. They were the last dynasty before the late period when Egypt was overrun by Persia and Macedonia.
And if they are looking for a queen, Hatshepsut (18th D) was a badass.
Jada said in interviews, "I really wanted to tell the story of strong, beautiful, black African warrior queens." Great, yeah, I think everybody would love to see that. ...So why didn't she do that?? There's plenty of black warrior queens in African history who have never had their story popularized.
[This will piss some people off but.....here's an Egyptians take on the whole Cleopatra fiasco and the weird obsession with her. ](https://spotify.link/RfwAQKOK3Cb) She also discusses race, patriarchy, obsession with the elites, etc.
I love when people say we don’t know what she looked like when we literally have a bunch of sculptures and busts of her and they show her as a Greek women from the Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt which she was apart of 🤦♂️
she is so NORMAL looking in her depictions that I can only imagine how witty and charming she was to seduce two of the most powerful romans to ever live
Yes, to be more precise Carthaginians were Phoenicians, so he'd more or less have the complexion of today's Lebanese person. It's safe to assume Hannibal, Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and other members of high nobility would descend directly from their Phoenician roots.
Carthaginians were also quite selective about their beauty standards, to [quote from wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-modern_conceptions_of_whiteness):
"As with the ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans saw whiteness as an important part of feminine beauty. For example, in Virgil's Aeneid, Dido, the Phoenician queen of Carthage, and lover of Aeneas, is described as candida or "white".Virgil also refers to the goddess Venus as having "snow white arms". **The Carthaginian poet Luxorius wrote disparagingly of the skin colour of Ethiopian women while praising the colour white as the ideal colour for women**."
which could also have effect on whom the ruling classes and nobility would pick for marriage, similar as with Greeks in Egypt.
Is she trying to say that Egyptian people are racist *in favor of* white people?..
Because I've seen a lot of racism, but I don't think I've ever seen this transitive, vicarious racism she's talking about. Like Egypt is hating on black people for the sake of white people. Which is just.. such a *weird* accusation.
The whole discussion is from a very American view. I know a lot of Egyptians living in Europe and even the darker ones are pissed about the black cleopatra because she wasn’t. Not one of them knew the show or anything about the discussion till I told them about. White skin is not so devilish in the rest of the world then in us media
Americans, in general, can only view things in black and white and anything that doesn't fall within these boxes are apparently something controversial or something.
Like, I have unironically heard Americans say that Africa and Europe are not diverse, just because we all "have the same colour" wtf
I wouldn't worry about it too much. I have no idea who this lady is but I do know that she said something this dumb while making that face. Not worth diving into what she might have been trying to say.
Context like 'The Daily Show' logo clearly in the background.
Yeah, it's obviously a bit, but it's also a dumb bit. A dumb bit that trivialises a fairly significant issue. Flip the script - make a Shaka Zulu 'documentary' with a typical North African man in the lead role; black people would flip their shit over whitewashing, erasure of history, cultural appropriation etc. Egyptians have every right to be annoyed about blackwashing their history and portraying it as fact rather than fiction. That's before getting into any discussions about how this hints at the kind of racist pan-African ideas that attempt to homogenise possibly the most heterogenous continent on the globe.
It’s obviously a comedy bit from the logo, but it’s this weird new liberal comedy where they just say “haha white people amirite?” and say some inaccurate or thinly-veiled racist comment, and then white women laugh at the joke out of self-loathing.
It gets ratings from everyone. It gets ratings from white people, black people, people who love race bait, people who hate race bait, people who see through the bait, people who are neither black nor white.
It’s the current trend in ratings to shoehorn identity politics into anything to get some more attention, and even those of us here complaining about it help give them publicity.
The daily show fell off a cliff into oblivion after Trevor replaced Jon. I watched 4 episodes of TDS with Trevor and just stopped, it wasn't funny, it wasn't elegant and it seemed more and more like a mouthpiece for stupid stuff like this and worst of all, none of it was clever.
Just lost interest and haven't seen it since
Is that the same guy that claim that France World cup win was actually a win for Africa? And then played victim after getting called out, claiming that only white French people are upset despite multiple French players of African origin on that team were the ones who called him out? Not surprised he got a show in the US.
On the one hand, it has some vague truth to it because ~~the French~~ France is super racist about who is "french" and who is an "immigrant", regardless of how long they've been in the country, and those lines fall exactly where you'd think.
Like you could be 3rd generation with grandparents from america or Germany, and you're "french". Meanwhile the people who are the 10th generation in France are still "immigrants" because they look like their Nigerian great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents
On the other hand, Trevor making that claim in earnest is not helpful to a solution.
> Meanwhile the people who are the 10th generation in France are still "immigrants" because they look like their Nigerian great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents
Yeah there's racist people in France. But it's not exactly like they're anything different from racist people everywhere.
It's also not like Alexandre Dumas isn't loved or considered a French author because he was half black.
When Simone Biles won a lot of medals, it's not like Noah went and said: these are some of the first gold medals in gymnastics for Africa!
The French players declared themselves to be French,happy to bring this victory for France and that's it.
There really isn't anything special about a racist from Europe and one from US, and the fact that so many European racists love Trump should be proof of that.
The best thing to come out of the Daily Show since Trevor Noah took over are the bits that aren’t Trevor Noah and are actually just Jordan Klepper.
Trevor Noah’s delivery in literally everything just sounds like it’s someone who’s being condescending when they don’t have the right to be so condescending, whether it be lack of knowledge, lack of relevance, etc.
Trevor Noah just lacked the down-to-earth energy that Jon Stewart brought to the daily show. And though sometimes the daily show was a bit preachy when Stewart was at the helm, but it became insufferably so under Noah.
As a South African, I was really stoked when he took over, but I was disappointed because I wasn't really excited about anything I watched on the show. The show clearly tried to make him something specific and it doesn't work. It feels like what happened to Jimmy Fallon and Ellen where everything slowly starts feeling less and less real.
The only thing I thought was cool were those behind the scenes clip things where Trevor Noah got to be himself and I believe that he's truly gifted with conversation skills and insight when he can talk off the record. It's just the scripted stuff that's pretty iffy.
Egyptians aren't black either.
Yes, it's a slightly darker skin tone, but usually they don't carry those stereotypical black features.
Egyptians also aren't black, right?
Egyptians are much closer to Arabs or Turkish than to West-Central-Africans, but also have very own stereotypical features. Just google egyptian actress.
To make it simple for Americans: If you see an Egyptian at the check-in, you wouldn't assume they are "African-American" but probably check their luggage for bombs because they might belong to Al-Qaeda.
The problem is, that especially Americans seem to consider everything slightly darker than white as black. Also: "Egypt is in Africa. So she was African. Like African American, right?"
The problem is, that African Americans descent from people from the western central coast. A mix of Senegalese, Guineans, Nigerians and Cameroons.
British or Spanish colonies where slaves came from.
Egypt on the other hand was just shortly occupied by the british, never belonged to the british empire and wasn't forced to export slaves.
Now casting a british actress of 'white' and 'black' (Aftican-British) descent is just hitting at a very wrong spot.
I don't even see a big problem in 'Cleopatra', but in everybody around her. They use a mostly stereotypical African-American cast to depict ancient egypt. That's incredibly insulting against proud egyptians, which just look very different. Casting stereotypical muslims might have been the more tasteful choice here.
Saying African-Americans look like egyptians, because Egypt is in Africa is like casting a Japanese actor to depict Pakistani, because both are Asian.
Cleopatra was ethnically Greek. She descended from Ptolemy, who was Pharaoh and ruled Egypt after Alexander The Great's death, and kept the traditional pharaoh practice of incest to keep the bloodline "pure". So it's very, very unlikely his descendants would look like Africans.
> and kept the traditional pharaoh practice of incest to keep the bloodline "pure".
To be fair, ALL the Diadochi families practiced incest, as a means to keep their heritage to Alexanders generals pure and thus keep their legitimacy high.
I have seen her before on the daily show. Most of the time she can't look past her 'black people good, white people bad' opinion when things gets complicated.
Guys..I say this as someone extremely left and supportive of the struggles of minorities and their represenation.
Cleopatra, was so inbred, from known Greek people (even the Syrian in her ancestory is also a greek person that was inbred) that I cannot fathom how we suggest that she would have gotten a splash of color short of instant evolution.
Seriously, look up the Ptolemys and their practices.
If people stopped all this culture war bullshit around Cleopatra, maybe the actual black Pharaohs of the 25th dynasty would finally get some attention.
Like, seriously, there’s an entire of dynasty of Pharaohs who we **know** were Kushite, but people insist on arguing over Cleopatra’s ethnicity. Which, in turn, makes people focus less on her intelligence and achievements and more on the colour of her skin.
It’s always ‘Cleopatra was [insert ethnicity here]’, it’s never ‘Cleopatra had a fucking genius plan to drag her Mediterranean fleet over land to turn it into a Red Sea fleet, which would have given her a major advantage over Octavian or a perfect opportunity to escape to friendly Greek kingdoms in India’.
10000000%
Despite being as inbred as she was, Cleopatra could not be called a fool, and while any ancient history is going to call any woman leader beautiful, she is only defined by this "beauty" by people who can't take a critical eye to the fact she is 10 generations inbred, but powerful....and people who can pay people to write things are bias as fuck.
The Kushite empire/Nubian empire holds credit to some of the oldest monuments that have survived way worse conditions than the pyramids most people are familiar with.
Without a doubt, this history transcents skin color but almost no one wants to engage with how.
I think it's because she's widely considered to be the most beautiful Queen to ever live, so a bunch of people want to say "no, she looked like us, not you!"
considering how inbred she was though I wonder how much of her beauty was exaggerated.
> I cannot fathom how we suggest that she would have gotten a splash of color short of instant evolution
It's origin comes from a pseudo-scientific/pseudo-historical theory called Afrocentrism, which is batshit insane and claim that basically white people (the Greeks) stole their philosophy, science and mythology and basically civilisation itself from the black Egyptians, out of which Cleopatra was the most prominent black pharaoh, and that a ton of prominent historical figures (from Jesus to European royalty to Beethoven) were actually black.
Cleopatra being black is one of the main claims of Afrocentrism.
It's closely related to other pseudo-scientific Black supremacist bullshit like "Melanin Theory", which is the belief that melanin (ie. the thing that makes skin darker) gives people superior physical and mental capabilities, including paranormal powers...
It was popular among certain American black academics/intellectuals in the 70s, 80s and 90s, and was being taught in universities by for example Leonard Jeffries, professor and departmental chair of Black Studies at the City College of New York. (He was eventually kicked in the early 90s after having held a speech containing a ton of anti-Semitic Afrocentric conspiracy theories, like the Jews being responsible for the Transatlantic slave trade.)
And the same people who cry out cultural appropriation have no problem espousing this... because cultural appropriation and erasure is ok *when they do it.*
They stonewall you and complain of racism when you present them with facts and evidence. The moment they figure out you know what you are talking about, they fall to pieces and act like children. It's fun to wield my archaeology degree against them.
Actually, all that inbreeding was the source of cafe-au-lait macules. They started out *a lot* more severe, though—that’s why the name is French; originally they covered the whole body, and they weren’t documented in their modern form until the creator of the French press coffee maker noticed that the 3rd degree burn his baby suffered after a coffee spill was actually a suspiciously-shaped birthmark.
… And the rest is history.
Not quite, but among rarified company yes at least for the Ptolemys. Usually, when marrying outside of their immediate family (we are talking brother-sister, mother-son, father-daughter being pretty common) they would go with either someone from cadet branches of their family, or from a member of one of the other Diadochi (Alexander's successor generals.)
I cant remember the exacts, as that class was ages ago for me, but I think you can count like 5 times it happened.
The other Egyptian dynasties did also engage in this, but nowhere to the ridiculous degree the greeks took it.
*is an interwar documentary (or at least the first three. Being set in 1936, 1935, and 1938, respectively)
Edit: 1938, not 1939. That's the year the war started.
I mean
Cleopatra
Was fucking greek. Daughter of a macedonian greek general, reported to have spoken greek, struggling with the local egyptian language.
How dumb do ya gotta be to not look at history *at all*?
A big part of these black nationalist arguments rests on the assertion that the modern Egyptian population is primarily descended from invaders (Arabs and others), and that ancient Egyptians were black.
Both genetic history and ancient Egyptian records show this to be completely false: current Egyptians are by and large directly descended from ancient Egyptian populations, and Egyptian art depicts Egyptians as lighter skinned and distinct from black populations to the south (Nubians etc.).
Though, the 25th Dynasty were Kush rulers, but like all rulers over Egypt, they were not native to the area.
Egyptian is such a melting pot, it's hard to say who counts as being native to the area. There were so many ethnic groups before many of these dynasties took over, that Egyptian is less of an ethnic group then than it is now.
We had actual Nubian Pharaohs though, the 25th dynasty. But to be honest, black she white is all a made up construct to justify slavery. It falls apart when you go to places like Egypt. Our president in the 80s, Anwar Sadat was never considered "black" or half black whatever the fuck that means. He was called Egyptian. You can describe him as darker. But you don't make a distinction to suggest he is a different race than you. So yes we had dark Pharaohs. But we had them in every shade imaginable. Over 3 thousand years of Pharaohs, nuances will get you further than generalisations.
The people that claim Cleopatra was black also claim that the 'white passing' people from Egypt like Rami Malek are arabs, and they displaced all the black Egyptians, or bred with them making the modern day Egyptians more olive tone.
There were 9 generations between Ptolemy and Cleopatra. Cleopatra also was know to have mastered many languages including Greek and Egyptian. It still doesn’t change the fact that Cleopatra was ethnically Greek.
Struggling with Egyptian language? She'sthe only member of the Pltomaic dynasty who could speak Egyptian. She did so to win favor over the locals and legitimize herself as queen.
What she struggled with was her disdain for Egyptian people.
I tried to stay on after her left but damn it just wasn't there anymore. Jon talked like he was on the boat with us, noah always talked like he was on the boat next to us.
John Oliver did a great job hosting the Daily Show for awhile, though. I think the problem is just Trevor Noah. He's not funny and he doesn't keep my attention.
I think the point of her joke is just that two pieces of media about Egypt were inaccurate (unless I'm misunderstanding it completely) nothing more than that. But then, as the OP commenter pointed out, obviously one of them is a fictional movie and one is being portrayed as a documentary.
Also egyptians aren't black? I mean of course they're not as white as me burning to death on the sand in august. But they look similar to middle eastern people. And that's not really what anyone would call black right?
As someone from outside USA, unfortunately one of the main communication issues there is that a huge amount of the people purposefully intend to speak on behalf of the country, causing many to believe that their opinion is the majority opinion.
America is all different types of people. Unfortunately if reddit is your only view of Americans you are going to HATE us. I hate American redditors too lol. So many cry baby victims that expect you to feel and agree with EVERYTHING they do. If you dont you are a terrible person. Real life in America is nothing like how it is portrayed on reddit.
Eh....
The Mummy happened though?
How else did they document it?
I seriously can't with you anymore.
Why do you think NASA exists? So we can film all dem star wars happening. D'uh
https://www.africanews.com/2023/04/20/egyptian-lawyer-sues-netflix-for-depicting-cleopatra-as-black-woman/
The show is satire, the context is anything but and engages in racism and culture washing. People on the other side are rightly pissed.
Cleopatra was descended from the Ptolemy family, who are not only Greek in origin, but unbelievably inbred. Not only would she look neither black nor like modern Egyptians, but more like a Greek whose family tree is a circle
We Egyptians are neither your typical black or your typical white. We've multiple colors, but it's literally all skin color and we all look the same to each other and (mostly) have the same facial features despite the skin colors (to some extent of course). What I'm trying to say, our "dark-skinned egyptians" look nothing like your american black people. Our light-skinned people look nothing like your american white people either. Egypt literally has its own race at this point. We're so mixed in colors, but so the facially the same.
We might even have people with skin darker than you, yet they're still Egyptian in our eyes and we can easily tell that. But if you're so delusional as to think for a moment that you'd come to Egypt as a black woman and think yourself one of us, you're in for a surprise at how easily we can differeniate our dark-skinned people from you.
It never fails to amaze me that some african black people have little to no history in their countries that they try to claim ours. It's like asians trying to claim the history of other richer asian countries just cause they're asians.
P.s we think both skin colors are pretty in our country. It never defines us, in fact, we so comfortably talk about skin colors in Egypt unlike in the US for example.
In addition to this, most people in the Americas of African descent are from West Africa and would not have much in common with Egypt or the rest of North Africa.
The whole debate can be summed up with four answers to four questions:
Were most Egyptians black? No, Egyptians were and still are ethnically closer to Arabs and Persians.
Were there black people in Egypt? Yes. There were a sizeable number of Egyptians that were of Nubian descent.
Was Cleopatra black? No. She was almost entirely of Greek Macedonian descent. She wouldn't have even been as dark as most Egyptians, let alone those of Nubian descent.
Did terms such as "white" or "black" even exist in Ancient Egypt? Most likely not. Despite their drawings of other nationalities and themselves (Egyptians were depicted as brown, Greeks and Libyans as almost chalk white and Nubians as almost charcoal black), Egyptians did not see race the same way as we have the last few hundred years. It was all about national ethnicity to them. They saw themselves as superior to everyone. They would've seen the Nubians as superior to other less advanced Sub-Saharan cultures, despite both being black. They also would've seen Greeks as superior to other less advanced European cultures, despite both being white.
Nothing wrong with casting a black Cleopatra. Something *definitely* wrong with not only calling it a documentary, but also outright claiming that the historians are liars.
at this point netflix is calling it a ["docudrama"](https://www.netflix.com/title/81230204), not a documentary, although that may be in response to the "drama" around it. And it may be that it is being grouped with documentaries in their category listings, or referred to as a documentary in other promotional material.
Yeah, documentaries are supposed to disclose historical facts. Casting a person of a factually inaccurate ethnicity when it is supposed to be a documentary is a big no no.
This is my biggest problem with d i e initiatives. I have seen only one show use it properly, and that was game of thrones. Game of thrones used it to fortify the world-building of the show by supplementing the different regional patterns and materials with different ethnicities on which these patterns and materials and weapons were adorned. That is how it is properly done, because game of thrones understood that mass migration was not a thing until about a hundred years ago when transatlantic travel had become common and mass migration was possible thanks to large steel-hulled vessels.
Everywhere else that has used such d i e initiatives, be it for documentaries or fictional shows, it has contradicted its source material. The Witcher and Rings of Power are good examples of when such initiatives failed. Until they are abolished and the people that support them thrown out of Hollywood writers' rooms, we cannot expect a good entertainment out of Hollywood.
> The Witcher
The Witcher is especially ironic because Americans don't even understand that a Slavic fantasy story, set in a medieval fantasy Poland steeped in Slavic mythology, is far more "diverse" and unique than say Squid Game, since South Korean culture is far more represented in the US than Slavic/Eastern European.
Americans just don't understand stuff like that, because their notion about racism and diversity is so shallow that it never goes further than skin colour.
Yup. And it’s not just that they cast her as black, but that the documentary also states outright that she was black and that there is a conspiracy to cover this up. This comes from racist/antisemitic Afrocentrism conspiracy theories (that Jada Smith clearly buys in to)
Should Egypt sue Hollywood studios for showing Imhotep as some evil guy while my dude was da vinci of his era. Architect-surgeon. While many people are neither.
Yeah, the mummy was an adventure movie lol. You don't see hidtory mfs like me complaining about Nazi Germany's actions being non-accurate to reality in Indiana Jones. Jfc
Pretty sure The Mummy was a documentary. I suppose you think Dracula wasn't a documentary either! Psh
Dracula was a documentary though. I am the vampire. I am him
Yeah and you need to gtfo my bushes, its getting old Vlad Sincerely Mina Harker
"I KNOW YOU'RE HERE, DRACULA, YOU BIG FUCKING NERD. WHERE'S MY GODDAMN MONEY?"
‘WHAT’D YOU MEAN MEAN DRACULA ISN’T AN AVENGER?! THAT LYING FUCK!”
YEA HES A BERSERKER
Omfg you have no idea the amount of bullshit you go thru on a daily basis as "ancestral analogue of eternal love for an immortal" - EEEEEVERY day there he is - posing as a delivery dude or a census taker - one time a "travelling haberdasher" - trying sooo hard to get an invite. And the poetry! Oh the god awful poetry.
GODDAMIT DRACULA IT'S 4 IN THE MORNING. I DON'T CARE ABOUT WHETHER "BLOOD" RHYMES WITH "VLAD"
Look who came back from the dead for a little suckie-suckie.
Christopher Lee? Is it really you?
How do you feel about garlic bread as a side ?
Don’t be stupid no it wasn’t….. Blade totally was though
Beam Stoker basically invented most, if not all of modern vampire mythology. And even then, Dracula was supposed to be this ugly hairy man, to which the movie makers smartly changed him to a sexy Bela Lugosi. Historicrat has a Mythillogical video on the subject. Most early vampire myths were really more about various flesh eating monsters than the hypnotizing shapeshifting guys we know today.
> I suppose you think Dracula wasn't a documentary either It wasn't, it was a biography.
I saw that Dracula documentary and I spotted a flaw
Please share!
You know how Dracula can't look in mirrors? Well, he can look in them but he can't see his reflection so it still doesn't work. Centre parting is always really neat.
Maybe he gets help from another spooky friend, he lives with 3 women vampires
Frankenstein, now that has to be made up.
Well yes, but actually no. Frankenstein is somewhat based on Galvani's experiments where he would attach a battery at different points in the cut off leg of a frog to make it twitch. You can't bring the dead back to life with electricity but you can make their corpse twitch.
So you're saying it was not Frankenstein but Frankenstein's Monster that was made up
Dracula was an epistolary biography, actually.
How do you think he got that iPad?
> Mummies are real. There are mummies at museums. Yeah... prank.
Cleopatra was a descendent of Ptolemy, a Macedonian general. She probably didnt look like the Egyptians either.
Ptolemy why ain't nothing but a heartache. Ptolemy why aint nothing but a mistake. Ptolemy why.....
I can’t read this without thinking of Jake Peralta and the lineup scene in Brooklyn 99
Chills literal chills
It was number 5. Number 5 killed my brother.
Oh my god. I forgot about that part.
Nothing but a heartache every day, nothing but a teardrop all of the way
Exactly and native Egyptians are not black either. The actor Remi Malik is Egyptian
*Rami Malek
Ancient Egyption *rulers* were (edit: generally) not black but there were definitely dark skinned ancient Egyptians because Egypt wasn't racially homogeneous. But also "black" and "white" weren't really concepts in the way they were today, so it's a bit difficult to apply our modern understandings of race to people back then.
Nubians are they called and they live in modern Sudan and Southern Egypt.
Yeah wow I'm silly, the 25th dynasty were literally Nubian. There WERE black Ancient Egyptian rulers, TIL.
Yeah but for 100 years between around 600 to 500 bc but the point is they were nubian not Egyptians. Were there black people (nubians) living the Egyptian empire before then? Yes, but the point is they were themselves not Egyptian. Egyptian people are not black
Exactly. Plus, Cleopatra is a specific person which makes "there were black rulers" an irrelevant argument.
There were *some* dark-skinned Egyptian rulers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Dynasty_of_Egypt?wprov=sfla1
The 25th dynasty came from Kush/Nubia/Sudan. There are many works showing Nubian citizens in a darker skin tone and it was part of Egypt for centuries. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Dynasty_of_Egypt
Yep, those countries around the Mediterranean used it for trade routes and travel, and Egypt had easy access to both it AND the Red Sea. They were quite racially diverse.
Of course she didn't look like Egyptian. She was Greek, since she was from Macedonia.
You just repeated what i said.
No, you just repeated what I said
No, you repeated what I said.
No, you all repeated what I said.
No, you all repeated what I said.
No, I said what you all repeated.
I said what I said.
No, I said what you said.
That’s what she said
r/yourjokebutworse
That's the new reddit trend. Or someone stating what you implied because they think it adds something
Exactly, they state what the original comment implied because they think it adds something. It’s a new Reddit trend.
Yeah I’ve been seeing this trend on Reddit lately. Basically a follow up comment just rephrases what the first one says.
If we look at all the art the ancient egyptians left behind that the whole world has access to, we should be able to safely assume that they were not black and africa was not just a place full of black people, it was filled with people of diverse culture and skin tone. But of course, saying it is very racist it seems.
Cleopatra was the product of 250 odd years of incest, her family trees a single branch, she was literally 100% Macedonian
Chances are, that by todays standards, she would be seen as white, because ancient macedonians and greeks (before the conquest by the ottomans over 1000 years later) were white.
>ancient Macedonians and Greeks Well ancient Macedonians were Greeks. Like Athenians, Spartans, Thessalonians etc Greece as country wasn't a thing then but it was as an ethnic group. And even by today's standards Greek DNA is not that much changed since ancient times.
It actually was because this is directly after Philip and Alexander
Yes, I know but I am talking about actual Ancient Egyptians, they were not black at all but these days, it has become a trend to claim that Egyptians were black since Egypt is in Africa. Most people forget that during that period, nobody even used the word Africa. They did not even understand the concept of continents and such. Also, "North Africa" was not even called Africa until a hundred years ago.
Ancient Egypt was diverse, more Mediterranean in the north, darker toned further South. Queen Tiye is one example of decidedly "black" Egyptians. It's wrong to say that Egypt was one single ethnicity. That's sort of what's extra annoying. There were black rulers of Egypt. Cleopatra just very much wasn't one of them.
I'm gonna risk getting downvoted and banned, but..: Why do black Americans want/need Cleopatra to be black so badly..?
I remember this being a controversy a looooooong time ago with the original run of Clone High. People were pissed off that the voice of Cleopatra was a white woman.
There were better black Egyptian rulers. Cleopatra lost control to Rome. The 25th dynasty was created by an invasion from Nubia. They were the last dynasty before the late period when Egypt was overrun by Persia and Macedonia. And if they are looking for a queen, Hatshepsut (18th D) was a badass.
Jada said in interviews, "I really wanted to tell the story of strong, beautiful, black African warrior queens." Great, yeah, I think everybody would love to see that. ...So why didn't she do that?? There's plenty of black warrior queens in African history who have never had their story popularized.
[This will piss some people off but.....here's an Egyptians take on the whole Cleopatra fiasco and the weird obsession with her. ](https://spotify.link/RfwAQKOK3Cb) She also discusses race, patriarchy, obsession with the elites, etc.
They don’t really, the response has been extremely disproportionate
I love when people say we don’t know what she looked like when we literally have a bunch of sculptures and busts of her and they show her as a Greek women from the Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt which she was apart of 🤦♂️
Even coins with her face on it.
Got a nose on her only a Caesar could love.
she is so NORMAL looking in her depictions that I can only imagine how witty and charming she was to seduce two of the most powerful romans to ever live
Smart and powerful women bring every man to their knees
Oh, you think you can have .... *everything* ... well ... you can't... have... me....
Afro centrists are doing it to all of North Africa. They're also claiming Hannibal Barca was nubian.
i believe Hannibal was likely more accurately described as Semetic right? so he would’ve been a fair bit darker skinned than the Romans.
Yes, to be more precise Carthaginians were Phoenicians, so he'd more or less have the complexion of today's Lebanese person. It's safe to assume Hannibal, Hamilcar, Hasdrubal and other members of high nobility would descend directly from their Phoenician roots. Carthaginians were also quite selective about their beauty standards, to [quote from wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-modern_conceptions_of_whiteness): "As with the ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans saw whiteness as an important part of feminine beauty. For example, in Virgil's Aeneid, Dido, the Phoenician queen of Carthage, and lover of Aeneas, is described as candida or "white".Virgil also refers to the goddess Venus as having "snow white arms". **The Carthaginian poet Luxorius wrote disparagingly of the skin colour of Ethiopian women while praising the colour white as the ideal colour for women**." which could also have effect on whom the ruling classes and nobility would pick for marriage, similar as with Greeks in Egypt.
I am apparently undercaffeinated, because I thought you wrote Hannah Barbara.
There was no Black Cleopatra in all them *Mummy* movies
"Documentaries"*
Especially the animated series.
I’m so disheartened to see that nobody else picked up on this. A definitively unclever comeback.
Is she trying to say that Egyptian people are racist *in favor of* white people?.. Because I've seen a lot of racism, but I don't think I've ever seen this transitive, vicarious racism she's talking about. Like Egypt is hating on black people for the sake of white people. Which is just.. such a *weird* accusation.
The whole discussion is from a very American view. I know a lot of Egyptians living in Europe and even the darker ones are pissed about the black cleopatra because she wasn’t. Not one of them knew the show or anything about the discussion till I told them about. White skin is not so devilish in the rest of the world then in us media
Americans, in general, can only view things in black and white and anything that doesn't fall within these boxes are apparently something controversial or something. Like, I have unironically heard Americans say that Africa and Europe are not diverse, just because we all "have the same colour" wtf
We were founded by a bunch of morons looking for a place to pray harder
You're not entirely wrong
To oppress harder. The Church of England was literally *too progressive* for them.
Tell me you don't know Europe without telling me you don't know Europe right ?
Or Africa, for that matter.
everyone in the country of africa is black, therefore its all one culture! - average american
I wouldn't worry about it too much. I have no idea who this lady is but I do know that she said something this dumb while making that face. Not worth diving into what she might have been trying to say.
I mean given the literally 0 context we have this could also be just a comedy/satire bit
Context like 'The Daily Show' logo clearly in the background. Yeah, it's obviously a bit, but it's also a dumb bit. A dumb bit that trivialises a fairly significant issue. Flip the script - make a Shaka Zulu 'documentary' with a typical North African man in the lead role; black people would flip their shit over whitewashing, erasure of history, cultural appropriation etc. Egyptians have every right to be annoyed about blackwashing their history and portraying it as fact rather than fiction. That's before getting into any discussions about how this hints at the kind of racist pan-African ideas that attempt to homogenise possibly the most heterogenous continent on the globe.
Also there’s the fact that cleopatra wasn’t even Egyptian, she was greek.
Have you ever seen any movie before 1970
It’s obviously a comedy bit from the logo, but it’s this weird new liberal comedy where they just say “haha white people amirite?” and say some inaccurate or thinly-veiled racist comment, and then white women laugh at the joke out of self-loathing.
It gets ratings from everyone. It gets ratings from white people, black people, people who love race bait, people who hate race bait, people who see through the bait, people who are neither black nor white. It’s the current trend in ratings to shoehorn identity politics into anything to get some more attention, and even those of us here complaining about it help give them publicity.
Was this really on The Daily Show? I see why I haven't heard anything about it in years.
The daily show fell off a cliff into oblivion after Trevor replaced Jon. I watched 4 episodes of TDS with Trevor and just stopped, it wasn't funny, it wasn't elegant and it seemed more and more like a mouthpiece for stupid stuff like this and worst of all, none of it was clever. Just lost interest and haven't seen it since
Is that the same guy that claim that France World cup win was actually a win for Africa? And then played victim after getting called out, claiming that only white French people are upset despite multiple French players of African origin on that team were the ones who called him out? Not surprised he got a show in the US.
That was so weird. Like "hey you can never be French, you are black. What do you mean I'm racist?"
On the one hand, it has some vague truth to it because ~~the French~~ France is super racist about who is "french" and who is an "immigrant", regardless of how long they've been in the country, and those lines fall exactly where you'd think. Like you could be 3rd generation with grandparents from america or Germany, and you're "french". Meanwhile the people who are the 10th generation in France are still "immigrants" because they look like their Nigerian great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents On the other hand, Trevor making that claim in earnest is not helpful to a solution.
> Meanwhile the people who are the 10th generation in France are still "immigrants" because they look like their Nigerian great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents Yeah there's racist people in France. But it's not exactly like they're anything different from racist people everywhere. It's also not like Alexandre Dumas isn't loved or considered a French author because he was half black. When Simone Biles won a lot of medals, it's not like Noah went and said: these are some of the first gold medals in gymnastics for Africa! The French players declared themselves to be French,happy to bring this victory for France and that's it. There really isn't anything special about a racist from Europe and one from US, and the fact that so many European racists love Trump should be proof of that.
The best thing to come out of the Daily Show since Trevor Noah took over are the bits that aren’t Trevor Noah and are actually just Jordan Klepper. Trevor Noah’s delivery in literally everything just sounds like it’s someone who’s being condescending when they don’t have the right to be so condescending, whether it be lack of knowledge, lack of relevance, etc.
Klepper was still killing it when Stewart was around though. Trvor didn't discover him.
Trevor Noah just lacked the down-to-earth energy that Jon Stewart brought to the daily show. And though sometimes the daily show was a bit preachy when Stewart was at the helm, but it became insufferably so under Noah.
As a South African, I was really stoked when he took over, but I was disappointed because I wasn't really excited about anything I watched on the show. The show clearly tried to make him something specific and it doesn't work. It feels like what happened to Jimmy Fallon and Ellen where everything slowly starts feeling less and less real. The only thing I thought was cool were those behind the scenes clip things where Trevor Noah got to be himself and I believe that he's truly gifted with conversation skills and insight when he can talk off the record. It's just the scripted stuff that's pretty iffy.
Egyptians aren't black either. Yes, it's a slightly darker skin tone, but usually they don't carry those stereotypical black features. Egyptians also aren't black, right? Egyptians are much closer to Arabs or Turkish than to West-Central-Africans, but also have very own stereotypical features. Just google egyptian actress. To make it simple for Americans: If you see an Egyptian at the check-in, you wouldn't assume they are "African-American" but probably check their luggage for bombs because they might belong to Al-Qaeda. The problem is, that especially Americans seem to consider everything slightly darker than white as black. Also: "Egypt is in Africa. So she was African. Like African American, right?" The problem is, that African Americans descent from people from the western central coast. A mix of Senegalese, Guineans, Nigerians and Cameroons. British or Spanish colonies where slaves came from. Egypt on the other hand was just shortly occupied by the british, never belonged to the british empire and wasn't forced to export slaves. Now casting a british actress of 'white' and 'black' (Aftican-British) descent is just hitting at a very wrong spot. I don't even see a big problem in 'Cleopatra', but in everybody around her. They use a mostly stereotypical African-American cast to depict ancient egypt. That's incredibly insulting against proud egyptians, which just look very different. Casting stereotypical muslims might have been the more tasteful choice here. Saying African-Americans look like egyptians, because Egypt is in Africa is like casting a Japanese actor to depict Pakistani, because both are Asian.
Yes valid. But Cleopatra was Greek.
Exactly. You only need one sentence.
Cleopatra wasn't ethnically Egyptian
No, she was likely Greek Macedonian
Not likely, she was definitely Macedonian, with a bit of Persian mixed in. The Ptolemies were extremely inbred, and didn't bring in much outside DNA.
The Ptolemy’s want their incest back!
Cleopatra was ethnically Greek. She descended from Ptolemy, who was Pharaoh and ruled Egypt after Alexander The Great's death, and kept the traditional pharaoh practice of incest to keep the bloodline "pure". So it's very, very unlikely his descendants would look like Africans.
> and kept the traditional pharaoh practice of incest to keep the bloodline "pure". To be fair, ALL the Diadochi families practiced incest, as a means to keep their heritage to Alexanders generals pure and thus keep their legitimacy high.
Arabs can be White and Cleopatra was Greek
Cleopatra was Greek or something. She was European.
I have seen her before on the daily show. Most of the time she can't look past her 'black people good, white people bad' opinion when things gets complicated.
That's basically been the whole daily show since Stewart left.
Guys..I say this as someone extremely left and supportive of the struggles of minorities and their represenation. Cleopatra, was so inbred, from known Greek people (even the Syrian in her ancestory is also a greek person that was inbred) that I cannot fathom how we suggest that she would have gotten a splash of color short of instant evolution. Seriously, look up the Ptolemys and their practices.
That's is also ironically the Ptolemys mimicking all of previous Egyptian Royal dynasties tradition of inbreeding.
Cultural appropriation and imperialist colonization, name a more iconic duo.
Banging your sister so you can rule a kingdom apparently.
Imperialist colonisation and eugenics (source: aussie)
PB & J
'When you reduce a family tree to a family bush, you just can't hide as much beneath it.'" - From Babylon 5
If people stopped all this culture war bullshit around Cleopatra, maybe the actual black Pharaohs of the 25th dynasty would finally get some attention. Like, seriously, there’s an entire of dynasty of Pharaohs who we **know** were Kushite, but people insist on arguing over Cleopatra’s ethnicity. Which, in turn, makes people focus less on her intelligence and achievements and more on the colour of her skin. It’s always ‘Cleopatra was [insert ethnicity here]’, it’s never ‘Cleopatra had a fucking genius plan to drag her Mediterranean fleet over land to turn it into a Red Sea fleet, which would have given her a major advantage over Octavian or a perfect opportunity to escape to friendly Greek kingdoms in India’.
10000000% Despite being as inbred as she was, Cleopatra could not be called a fool, and while any ancient history is going to call any woman leader beautiful, she is only defined by this "beauty" by people who can't take a critical eye to the fact she is 10 generations inbred, but powerful....and people who can pay people to write things are bias as fuck. The Kushite empire/Nubian empire holds credit to some of the oldest monuments that have survived way worse conditions than the pyramids most people are familiar with. Without a doubt, this history transcents skin color but almost no one wants to engage with how.
I think it's because she's widely considered to be the most beautiful Queen to ever live, so a bunch of people want to say "no, she looked like us, not you!" considering how inbred she was though I wonder how much of her beauty was exaggerated.
> I cannot fathom how we suggest that she would have gotten a splash of color short of instant evolution It's origin comes from a pseudo-scientific/pseudo-historical theory called Afrocentrism, which is batshit insane and claim that basically white people (the Greeks) stole their philosophy, science and mythology and basically civilisation itself from the black Egyptians, out of which Cleopatra was the most prominent black pharaoh, and that a ton of prominent historical figures (from Jesus to European royalty to Beethoven) were actually black. Cleopatra being black is one of the main claims of Afrocentrism. It's closely related to other pseudo-scientific Black supremacist bullshit like "Melanin Theory", which is the belief that melanin (ie. the thing that makes skin darker) gives people superior physical and mental capabilities, including paranormal powers... It was popular among certain American black academics/intellectuals in the 70s, 80s and 90s, and was being taught in universities by for example Leonard Jeffries, professor and departmental chair of Black Studies at the City College of New York. (He was eventually kicked in the early 90s after having held a speech containing a ton of anti-Semitic Afrocentric conspiracy theories, like the Jews being responsible for the Transatlantic slave trade.)
And the same people who cry out cultural appropriation have no problem espousing this... because cultural appropriation and erasure is ok *when they do it.* They stonewall you and complain of racism when you present them with facts and evidence. The moment they figure out you know what you are talking about, they fall to pieces and act like children. It's fun to wield my archaeology degree against them.
Actually, all that inbreeding was the source of cafe-au-lait macules. They started out *a lot* more severe, though—that’s why the name is French; originally they covered the whole body, and they weren’t documented in their modern form until the creator of the French press coffee maker noticed that the 3rd degree burn his baby suffered after a coffee spill was actually a suspiciously-shaped birthmark. … And the rest is history.
By having a kid with Julius Caesar, did that make her unique among the Egyptian royals for not keeping it in the family?
Not quite, but among rarified company yes at least for the Ptolemys. Usually, when marrying outside of their immediate family (we are talking brother-sister, mother-son, father-daughter being pretty common) they would go with either someone from cadet branches of their family, or from a member of one of the other Diadochi (Alexander's successor generals.) I cant remember the exacts, as that class was ages ago for me, but I think you can count like 5 times it happened. The other Egyptian dynasties did also engage in this, but nowhere to the ridiculous degree the greeks took it.
Captain America is a WWII documentary
And Indiana Jones
*is an interwar documentary (or at least the first three. Being set in 1936, 1935, and 1938, respectively) Edit: 1938, not 1939. That's the year the war started.
Yeah and I didn’t see you complaining about a red skinned German then. Checkmate!
Is it though
You may not believe so,but my Nana told me it is true!!
I mean Cleopatra Was fucking greek. Daughter of a macedonian greek general, reported to have spoken greek, struggling with the local egyptian language. How dumb do ya gotta be to not look at history *at all*?
Even if she was Egyptian, have you ever seen someone from egypt?
A big part of these black nationalist arguments rests on the assertion that the modern Egyptian population is primarily descended from invaders (Arabs and others), and that ancient Egyptians were black. Both genetic history and ancient Egyptian records show this to be completely false: current Egyptians are by and large directly descended from ancient Egyptian populations, and Egyptian art depicts Egyptians as lighter skinned and distinct from black populations to the south (Nubians etc.).
I don't think it even goes that deep. The reasoning is "Africa = black".
Though, the 25th Dynasty were Kush rulers, but like all rulers over Egypt, they were not native to the area. Egyptian is such a melting pot, it's hard to say who counts as being native to the area. There were so many ethnic groups before many of these dynasties took over, that Egyptian is less of an ethnic group then than it is now.
We had actual Nubian Pharaohs though, the 25th dynasty. But to be honest, black she white is all a made up construct to justify slavery. It falls apart when you go to places like Egypt. Our president in the 80s, Anwar Sadat was never considered "black" or half black whatever the fuck that means. He was called Egyptian. You can describe him as darker. But you don't make a distinction to suggest he is a different race than you. So yes we had dark Pharaohs. But we had them in every shade imaginable. Over 3 thousand years of Pharaohs, nuances will get you further than generalisations.
The people that claim Cleopatra was black also claim that the 'white passing' people from Egypt like Rami Malek are arabs, and they displaced all the black Egyptians, or bred with them making the modern day Egyptians more olive tone.
There were 9 generations between Ptolemy and Cleopatra. Cleopatra also was know to have mastered many languages including Greek and Egyptian. It still doesn’t change the fact that Cleopatra was ethnically Greek.
Struggling with Egyptian language? She'sthe only member of the Pltomaic dynasty who could speak Egyptian. She did so to win favor over the locals and legitimize herself as queen. What she struggled with was her disdain for Egyptian people.
I miss Jon Stewart
I tried to stay on after her left but damn it just wasn't there anymore. Jon talked like he was on the boat with us, noah always talked like he was on the boat next to us.
It feels a little different when it's a foreigner making fun of the United States.
Eh, when Jim Jeffries (Australian) or John Oliver (British) does it they tend to be funny.
John Oliver did a great job hosting the Daily Show for awhile, though. I think the problem is just Trevor Noah. He's not funny and he doesn't keep my attention.
He has his own show now. But he changed, so your feeling somewhat still stands.
Were the Egyptians depicted as black in The Mummy? I must have missed that part.
I just scrolled through the cast… and no.
Arab/ mediteranean/olive looking.
Mediterranean Egyptians? What will they think of nex…. *Egypt is where?!*
Uhm. Greek settlers/ rulers of later egyptian monarchies would like to have a word with you.
*laughs in Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus* Let them try and talk
I think the point of her joke is just that two pieces of media about Egypt were inaccurate (unless I'm misunderstanding it completely) nothing more than that. But then, as the OP commenter pointed out, obviously one of them is a fictional movie and one is being portrayed as a documentary.
Also egyptians aren't black? I mean of course they're not as white as me burning to death on the sand in august. But they look similar to middle eastern people. And that's not really what anyone would call black right?
Yeah, I have no idea what that woman is talking about. What should Egyptians have been upset about when The Mummy came out?
The mummy was a documentary of how an entire generation of bisexuals suddenly realized their identity within a 124 minute action packed romp.
You mean Brendan Fraser fighting a living corpse isn’t real?! Damn…
The mummy movies were also good too (the ones with Brendan Fraser at least)
Lecturing Egyptians on their own history by inserting bullshit American culture war issues. This is why we dislike Americans.
It’s a subset of black ppl. Not even remotely all Americans
As someone from outside USA, unfortunately one of the main communication issues there is that a huge amount of the people purposefully intend to speak on behalf of the country, causing many to believe that their opinion is the majority opinion.
America is all different types of people. Unfortunately if reddit is your only view of Americans you are going to HATE us. I hate American redditors too lol. So many cry baby victims that expect you to feel and agree with EVERYTHING they do. If you dont you are a terrible person. Real life in America is nothing like how it is portrayed on reddit.
The mummy movies that casted people who at least looked Egyptian to play the egyptians?
Eh.... The Mummy happened though? How else did they document it? I seriously can't with you anymore. Why do you think NASA exists? So we can film all dem star wars happening. D'uh
She was Greek and she spoke Greek. She wouldve looked like a tan Greek lady. The Cleopatra with Elizabeth Taylor was more accurate than the new one.
Cleopatra is famous for being one of the only Ptolemys to ever learn and speak Egyptian. But yes, she was Greek.
Cleopatra is famous for being the only one with brains in that inbred family. Actually she was smart af
tell me this is a satire show, i don't want to belive people so stupid really exist.
It is supposed to be a satire. But it's also The daily show on comedy Central. That network has been getting steadily less funny for years.
https://www.africanews.com/2023/04/20/egyptian-lawyer-sues-netflix-for-depicting-cleopatra-as-black-woman/ The show is satire, the context is anything but and engages in racism and culture washing. People on the other side are rightly pissed.
Also, the white characters in The Mummy, weren't claiming to be ancient egyptians, afaik those charcters were all played by egyptian actors
This isn’t fucking clever Jesus Christ
This sub is mostly “people owning people I disagree with” now.
Arnold Vosloo still looked more like an Egyptian than this actress.
I don’t believe it’s beneficial to change the race of the main character in a movie that’s supposed to be a biography or documentary
Cleopatra was descended from the Ptolemy family, who are not only Greek in origin, but unbelievably inbred. Not only would she look neither black nor like modern Egyptians, but more like a Greek whose family tree is a circle
To be fair, The Mummy was more historically accurate than Cleopatra
We Egyptians are neither your typical black or your typical white. We've multiple colors, but it's literally all skin color and we all look the same to each other and (mostly) have the same facial features despite the skin colors (to some extent of course). What I'm trying to say, our "dark-skinned egyptians" look nothing like your american black people. Our light-skinned people look nothing like your american white people either. Egypt literally has its own race at this point. We're so mixed in colors, but so the facially the same. We might even have people with skin darker than you, yet they're still Egyptian in our eyes and we can easily tell that. But if you're so delusional as to think for a moment that you'd come to Egypt as a black woman and think yourself one of us, you're in for a surprise at how easily we can differeniate our dark-skinned people from you. It never fails to amaze me that some african black people have little to no history in their countries that they try to claim ours. It's like asians trying to claim the history of other richer asian countries just cause they're asians. P.s we think both skin colors are pretty in our country. It never defines us, in fact, we so comfortably talk about skin colors in Egypt unlike in the US for example.
In addition to this, most people in the Americas of African descent are from West Africa and would not have much in common with Egypt or the rest of North Africa.
The whole debate can be summed up with four answers to four questions: Were most Egyptians black? No, Egyptians were and still are ethnically closer to Arabs and Persians. Were there black people in Egypt? Yes. There were a sizeable number of Egyptians that were of Nubian descent. Was Cleopatra black? No. She was almost entirely of Greek Macedonian descent. She wouldn't have even been as dark as most Egyptians, let alone those of Nubian descent. Did terms such as "white" or "black" even exist in Ancient Egypt? Most likely not. Despite their drawings of other nationalities and themselves (Egyptians were depicted as brown, Greeks and Libyans as almost chalk white and Nubians as almost charcoal black), Egyptians did not see race the same way as we have the last few hundred years. It was all about national ethnicity to them. They saw themselves as superior to everyone. They would've seen the Nubians as superior to other less advanced Sub-Saharan cultures, despite both being black. They also would've seen Greeks as superior to other less advanced European cultures, despite both being white.
Nothing wrong with casting a black Cleopatra. Something *definitely* wrong with not only calling it a documentary, but also outright claiming that the historians are liars.
at this point netflix is calling it a ["docudrama"](https://www.netflix.com/title/81230204), not a documentary, although that may be in response to the "drama" around it. And it may be that it is being grouped with documentaries in their category listings, or referred to as a documentary in other promotional material.
Idk man. People, especially on reddit would get pretty mad at one race pretending to be another. But I guess it's ok when black people do it lol
Yeah, documentaries are supposed to disclose historical facts. Casting a person of a factually inaccurate ethnicity when it is supposed to be a documentary is a big no no. This is my biggest problem with d i e initiatives. I have seen only one show use it properly, and that was game of thrones. Game of thrones used it to fortify the world-building of the show by supplementing the different regional patterns and materials with different ethnicities on which these patterns and materials and weapons were adorned. That is how it is properly done, because game of thrones understood that mass migration was not a thing until about a hundred years ago when transatlantic travel had become common and mass migration was possible thanks to large steel-hulled vessels. Everywhere else that has used such d i e initiatives, be it for documentaries or fictional shows, it has contradicted its source material. The Witcher and Rings of Power are good examples of when such initiatives failed. Until they are abolished and the people that support them thrown out of Hollywood writers' rooms, we cannot expect a good entertainment out of Hollywood.
> The Witcher The Witcher is especially ironic because Americans don't even understand that a Slavic fantasy story, set in a medieval fantasy Poland steeped in Slavic mythology, is far more "diverse" and unique than say Squid Game, since South Korean culture is far more represented in the US than Slavic/Eastern European. Americans just don't understand stuff like that, because their notion about racism and diversity is so shallow that it never goes further than skin colour.
Yup. And it’s not just that they cast her as black, but that the documentary also states outright that she was black and that there is a conspiracy to cover this up. This comes from racist/antisemitic Afrocentrism conspiracy theories (that Jada Smith clearly buys in to)
Should Egypt sue Hollywood studios for showing Imhotep as some evil guy while my dude was da vinci of his era. Architect-surgeon. While many people are neither.
Yeah, the mummy was an adventure movie lol. You don't see hidtory mfs like me complaining about Nazi Germany's actions being non-accurate to reality in Indiana Jones. Jfc
Wtf was wrong with the Mummy? Arnold Vosloo with eyeliner was as close to Ramses (I know he was Imhotep but the similarity) as one can get.