#Cleopatra discourse

[gemsofgreece]

Those woke westerners are the same people who lie about how “North Africa was black until the Greeks and Arabs came in and mixed in with or replaced the native population” even though it’s so easy to disprove like there are literally Wikipedia articles on North African genetics citing gene studies that find that the modern population of North Africa is descendant from people who have been there for 16,000 years with very little mixing especially as far west as Morocco.

Then everyone’s like “then why are some North Africans lighter” (or more likely just “why are North Africans lighter” because they tend to ignore and erase those North Africans who are dark-skinned like… maybe because North Africa is… farther North. My friends. My comrades. It’s literally just farther from the equator. Of course you’re gonna get blond people in Kabylia.

Anyways my point is that when Americans claim the North African population was replaced or displaced by Arabs not only are they embarrassing themselves by spreading easily disproved misinformation but they’re actively contributing to the erasure of Amazighs, modern indigenous North African peoples / populations, who are heavily oppressed by their governments.

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[thepromiscuousfinger]

An Egyptian lawyer has filed a case with the Public Prosecutor to close the Netflix platform after the trailer of “Queen Cleopatra" was released, which depicts the Greek historical figure as a black-skinned woman.

According to Egypt Independent, Mahmoud al-Semary demanded that all legal measures be taken against those responsible for the documentary and the management of the streaming platform for its participation in “this crime.” He also called for an investigation and for Netflix to be blocked in Egypt.

The case said that the documentary promotes Afrocentrism that is widely spread on social media, which have slogans and writings aimed at distorting and obliterating the Egyptian identity.

The complaint continued addressing Public Prosecution: "In order to preserve the Egyptian national and cultural identity among Egyptians all over the world and take pride in it, and to consolidate the spirit of belonging to the homeland, and accordingly we ask and seek you to take the necessary legal measures against this platform."

It demanded stopping broadcasts showing all works aimed at obliterating and distorting the Egyptian identity, through films aimed at falsifying and distorting history in Egypt.

The complaint accused makers of the documentary and platform management of forgery.

A Netflix docudrama series that depicts Queen Cleopatra VII as a black African has sparked controversy in Egypt. A lawyer has filed a complaint that accuses African Queens: Queen Cleopatra of violating media laws and aiming to "erase the Egyptian identity". A top archaeologist insisted Cleopatra was "light-skinned, not black". But the producer said "her heritage is highly debated" and the actress playing her told critics: "If you don't like the casting, don't watch the show." Jada Pinkett Smith, the American actress who was executive producer and narrator, was meanwhile quoted as saying: "We don't often get to see or hear stories about black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them!" But when the trailer was released last week many Egyptians condemned the depiction of Cleopatra. (x)

[ellynneversweet]

Look the Disney live action remakes are, as a general rule, not even worth acknowledging, and there’s something wrong with adults who take the time to argue about them, but I didn’t expect Netflix to come out swinging with a steel chair.

[berenice509]

How hard is it to understand MENA as a geo-graphic sphere is different to sub-Sahara???

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Cleopatra race discourse is so genuinely insane because it's a historical question with a definitive answer (she was a heavily inbred Greek woman descended from a family of Greek colonizers who LARPed as pharaohs for clout) but it persists through the sheer inertia of people being stupid and projecting whatever racial/political anxieties they have onto a woman who died 2050 years ago

[skyeventide]

the amazon tolkien show was already pretty bad for a number of writing, characterisation, and thematic reasons, and profoundly mid the rest of the time.

then, in the last few weeks they proceeded to publish a magazine cover with barrow wights that are an orientalist caricature that looks like it came out of pre "don't dress up as sexy cleopatra for halloween" discourse. it's cursed wraiths bedecked in coin jewellery, sporting a belly-dancer outfit that is not sexy just because they're undead. that of course birthed the most insanely stupid discourse you can imagine. on one hand having the racists bemoan that the anglo-saxon-inspired burial sites magically transformed into middle-eastern-looking monsters because of woke. on the other hand, the "akshually the lore" people, trying to prove that, in the second age, these humans might well have been remnants of those who came from the east and not the shire-adjacent barrow wights we're all acquainted with, so, gotcha racists! par for the course for insanely stupid tolkien discourse. the point, as usual, being that it doesn't matter whether it's possible by lore. rather, what if we look at the reason why, in this day and age, a magazine SO ironically called "empire" puts on the front page the first glimpse of aesthetics/concept art that are markedly not western, and that art showcases a known orientalist look that doesn't even get the dubious dignity of being put on people and is instead sported by undead monsters? diversity win!

then yesterday they dropped a narvi look and a dwarf poster. we already knew they barely moved past the scottish dwarf stereotype set by peter jackson, a director with whom this series is continually in conversation. we already knew the prosthetic noses of the dwarves in the hobbit movies were silly at best. yet again, narvi is given a fake nose of such proportions that you might think he was about to play cyrano de bergerac. and then there's the poster, where a ring with a giant gem glinting gold in the foreground, in the company of the other rings, stands against a darkened background where a shadowy dwarf grasps forward with clawing, avid hands. of course, after doing some orientalism, it's time to throw some antisemitism in and make sure to hit every box in the bingo. if that poster hadn't appeared on the official account, I'd have thought it a parody.

I've never posted about the show because as a rule I don't feel like wasting too much time on things I think are bad. I sure hope I never will again. I'm also not looking forward to the next bit of corporate diversity we'll certainly be graced with soon enough.

[heyho-simonrussellbeale]

“He has extraordinary empathy with outsiders, the wounded, the foolish, the warped and the lonely. He hears their music, and can sing it.”

With a new memoir out soon, the Shakespearean star talks mortality, Tom Holland’s Romeo – and ‘skulking around’ in House of the Dragon

Simon Russell Beale is talking about “To be or not to be”, one minute sharing his bemusement at actors who pause around the “or” in that line (“You think, what other option could there be? Sometimes simple is best, don’t chew it too much”), the next reflecting on the rare, rapt mood that sometimes settled on him as he delivered that soliloquy at the National. “It was to do with the beat of the verse. It became a supremely calm meditation, like handing over a gift, going ‘This is what we all think’.”

It’s a joy to hear one of our most eminent Shakespeareans – whose beady cerebral presence combined with a painstaking care for the language, thinkingly feeling his way to the truth, is in a league of its own – discourse on his specialist subject. Although Beale isn’t performing in a Shakespeare this year, his fascinating new memoir about his life and Bard-centric career, A Piece of Work, affords a welcome chance to imbibe his wisdoms. He has tackled 18 roles since he was cast as the Young Shepherd in The Winter’s Tale at the RSC in 1985. That grants him no little authority. In his informative survey of great Shakespearean players, Stanley Wells observed: “Conforming to no theatrical stereotype [Beale] has… won success in a wider range of Shakespearean roles than perhaps any actor since Richard Burbage.”

As he sits in the auditorium at the Donmar Warehouse (scene of past triumphs including an Olivier-winning Uncle Vanya and a Malvolio hailed by the Telegraph as “hilarious, ridiculous [and] heart-wrenchingly sad”), he says, unbidden: “I thought your article was absolutely accurate,” referring to my recent think-piece lamenting the fact that today’s younger stage-actors are not cutting their teeth on Shakespeare.

“It has changed in my lifetime. I hate sounding like an old man, but when I started out, film and TV [jobs] were rare and it was assumed you’d start in theatre, and would continue to do that. That’s not true now – there are so many more options for young actors.”

That’s not to say that he dismisses the have-a-go star or disapproves of Tom Holland’s West End Shakespearean debut as Romeo: “I have no problem with that. But it’s safer to earn your spurs and obviously, practice is a good thing. Still, I have to be careful about going, ‘This is how it was and how it should be.’ Is it really necessary for a young actor to know how to do Restoration comedy? I’m not sure it is and that might apply to Shakespeare soon.”

Of course, he’s an old romantic when it comes to tradition – “I love the idea of people coming to see what a particular actor will do with a role, and even camping out in Stratford to see them. I’d love that to come back”. But he’s realistic. For all its touted capacity to stretch actors, he argues that “What you learn from playing Shakespeare really is how to do verse drama – is it really important if people don’t know how to do that?” If Shakespeare became a less dominant feature of the cultural landscape, he sounds remarkably sanguine about that: “I have confidence in his staying power even if it’s in reduced circumstances. There might be less of him for a while, but I don’t think he’ll go away.”

Some things have changed for the better since he started out – “When I did Hamlet, ‘bigger’ people didn’t do Hamlet. Perhaps I helped pave the way.” Indeed, his “portly” appearance was a focus of critical comment – even giving rise to the headline “Tubby or not tubby, fat is the question”. “Nowadays that wouldn’t be acceptable but I was used to people writing about my weight,” he shrugs. “If it had been a bad review I would have been more upset.”

Those hoping to learn the “tricks” of the trade from his book may be as disappointed as those scavenging for gossip. It’s an engaging unpacking of the choices that defined his approach to characters in particular productions (ranging from Iago, Richard III and Macbeth, past comic breeds like Malvolio and Benedick, to the mighty challenges of Hamlet and Lear). I was moved to be reminded that his Hamlet followed soon after the death of his mother (a picture of whom was in the wings to console him during the first performance) and to learn that his Lear, also at the National, was shaped on the decline of that NT titan director Peter Hall who was suffering from dementia; he shrank during the show “just as Peter had”.

Last time we met face to face, in 2016, Beale worried that reaching Prospero in The Tempest at the RSC sounded an elegiac note. But now he seems intent to open up new territory, whether fresh or already trodden terrain, opportunity and fate permitting. “I want to go on as long as it’s humanly possible – as long as I can remember the lines,” he says.

He lets slip he will play Titus Andronicus at the RSC next year, and says he would like to return to Macbeth, having felt he didn’t quite get the measure of the part at the Almeida in 2005. Despite his pride in his Lear, he’d like another go and throws me the curve-ball of Cleopatra – “I’d love to play her. It’s the greatest female part. In principle, why not?” If he did, and survived the slings and arrows of possibly outraged opinion, that would be a full-circle moment: at Clifton College, in Bristol, where he went after early years as a boarding St Paul’s Cathedral School chorister, his first full Shakespearean role was Desdemona, aged 14.

Just as Beale observes that it’s sometimes what Shakespeare omits that matters, what’s striking about the memoir is how little ado there is about his sexuality. Though his acting career started in the homophobic 1980s, there’s no angst expressed. “I was lucky. There never was an issue – not at school, or at university or professionally. I came out to my mother when I was in my early twenties. I said, “Mum, I’m gay”. She blushed and said ‘yeah’.” Strikingly, the passion that comes across most forcefully in the book is for work.

“Work has always been enormously emotionally satisfying,” he tells me. “And I love to see work on stage, too. In Janet Suzman’s production of Antony and Cleopatra, at one point Kim Cattrall put on her glasses and sat at her desk. And I thought, yes, of course, she has a kingdom to run.”

Beale has never particularly chased screen success, though he has had his moments of renown, not least his Bafta-winning turn as the grasping Kenneth Widmerpool in the 1997 adaptation of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. Now he’s much in demand. He has just finished filming his contribution to the latest Alan Bennett film (he plays Elgar) and will star in a film adaptation of Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree as well as the next Downton Abbey film (“I play the man who runs the local county show”).

More prominently, he has a salient role in the Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, as Ser Simon, who runs the castle of Harrenhal. One reviewer sniffed that his talent was wasted shuffling around “Harrenhal, peeping into keyholes”. “I do shuffle around but that’s the reason I find him fun – he’s absolutely unlike anybody else because he wants nothing to do with all this nonsense about fighting for kingdoms and fighting for crowns. He just wants to be left alone.”

Those inclined to look for patterns in Beale’s work will note that loners and the isolated are a running theme. He was born on an island – the Malaysian island of Penang in 1961, his father an army doctor (his mother a doctor by training too), and thus was required to cope from an early age as a boarder in London. The director Nicholas Hytner – who, like Sam Mendes, has worked with him a lot – says of Beale: “He has extraordinary empathy with outsiders, the wounded, the foolish, the warped and the lonely. He hears their music, and can sing it.” Still, Beale advises against projecting too much insularity on him per se. He lives alone, but insists “I don’t sit there going ‘I’m by myself’ – I like my own company actually. I’ve never felt like an outsider, but for some reason they must interest me, otherwise I wouldn’t go back to it so often.”

Beale’s next role is as the poet AE Housman in a revival of The Invention of Love at the Hampstead Theatre. In Stoppard’s depiction, Housman carries an implicit dying sense of regret for a life not fully expressed.

Beale says he feels acutely conscious of mortality: “I feel it very keenly. I think about not being here quite a lot. And there are moments when you think maybe you should have explored other avenues. But my feeling is that I might be happy to die if I can just say to myself “You made a mark”. I don’t mean being rich or famous – but to have made a mark. That’s all I can hope for.”

A Piece of Work is published by Abacus Books on Sept 5; the book tie-in tour begins at the RSC on Sept 1

The Invention of Love runs at Hampstead Theatre from Dec 4

Dominic Cavendish

[all-weneed]

A Codywan Playlist

or, songs that feel like the sun

55 songs, 3 hours 40 minutes

Free - Florence + the Machine

My Tears Are Becoming a Sea - M83

About You - The 1975

Sanctuary - Joji

Chemical - Post Malone

The Archer - Taylor Swift

mirrorball - Taylor Swift

Us And The Rest - M83

You’re On Your Own, Kid - Taylor Swift

Evergreen - Richy Mitch & The Coal Miners

Prosthetic Love - Typhoon

Would That I - Hozier

right where you left me - Taylor Swift

Ophelia - The Lumineers

Almost (Sweet Music) - Hozier

From Eden - Hozier

Cleopatra - The Lumineers

Beige - Yoke Lore

Sunshine Baby - The Japanese House

Venus - Sleeping at Last

Mystery of Love - Sufjan Stevens

Sunlight - Hozier

When the Night is Over - Lord Huron

The Night We Met - Lord Huron

Stubborn Love - The Lumineers

Heat Above - Greta Van Fleet

Real Love Baby - Father John Misty

Light My Love - Greta Van Fleet

Hello My Old Heart - The Oh Hello’s

Sun - Sleeping at Last

Jupiter - Sleeping at Last

Visions of Gideon - Sufjan Stevens

Dog Days Are Over - Florence + the Machine

Daylight - Taylor Swift

Clean - Taylor Swift

REPRISE - The Lumineers

Orange Juice - Noah Kahan

Little Lion Man - Mumford & Sons

this is me trying - Taylor Swift

Gale Song - The Lumineers

Sparks - Coldplay

Work Song - Hozier

Second Chances - Gregory Alan Isakov

Graceland Too - Phoebe Bridgers

Like Real People Do - Hozier

Not Strong Enough - boygenius

The Gold - Manchester Orchestra & Phoebe Bridgers

The Fall - Gregory Alan Isakov

Lover, You Should’ve Come Over - Jeff Buckley

Everywhere, Everything - Noah Kahan

Before the Sun - Gregory Alan Isakov

No Complaints - Noah Kahan

Fine Line - Harry Styles

Unknown / Nth - Hozier

Outro - M83

i have only recently entered the codywan/sw discourse, but i am a dedicated music lover and i love exploring themes and feelings through music. some of these are more literal codywan than others, and some of these are more of a feeling/theme. if you have any other recs, i’d love to hear them <3

[destinyc1020]

I would love to see Z working with Denis again outside of Dune, but I'm not sure if the inevitable racist discourse that would come with that movie would be worth it :( give me the Ronnie biopic instead

I kind of agree with you Anon. While I would be excited for Z regardless just because it's a new role for her, I'm not sure if that would be the film I'd want her to work with Denis again on. 🤔 It would cause a stir for sure. 👀

Plus, adding Timmy to the cast as well would kinda seem like a bit much since they've already worked so closely together already on a 2-film franchise that's still so new and current. Maybe 10 years from now I'd have them work together again on another film or smthg. But now? Idk.... 🥴

Anyway, whatever is gonna happen is going to happen. 🤷🏾‍♀️

I'm kind of curious what's going on with Gal Gadot's Cleopatra filming project and whether that's still happening. 🤔 I'm honestly fine with just having Gal's version tbh. 👀🫣

I personally wouldn't look fwd to all the think pieces, racist discourse, and fan-war comparisons that would ensue if both Gal AND Zendaya are each both doing two separate Cleopatra films. 🙄😫

[gemsofgreece]

One host in a American show dared to compare the fantasy/ action movie the Mummy with Cleopatra about "diversity".

Bruh please understand the differences between a work of fiction about a group of historians and archeologists set in 1920s, to a misinformative "documentary" about a REAL HISTORICAL FIGURE who it's proven to be of GREEK descent.

Trying to change history to fit a narrative it's interestingly enough similar with dictators trying to change history for their own gain and be in power. Just saying 🤷🏻‍♀️...

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[inyourwildestdreams22]

She’s gonna get whacked for playing Cleopatra the same way that Netflix Cleopatra was. We don’t need the discourse.

Yeah it just sounds like a bad idea but oh well, it’a a rumor that’s been going for ages so again hoping its fake, I will stop thw discourse here

[memecucker]

I think one of the reasons why “was Cleopatra Egyptian or was Cleopatra Greek” is such a stupid discourse is that it’s really fucking obvious that “both” can be an answer like there was a Roman emperor named “Phillip the Arab” and people back then could very easily comprehend “He’s Roman and he’s Arab”

[rudjedet]

Hello hello, I was wondering if you had any opinions on the Cleopatra netflix show

I consider it a testament to my ability to avoid Cleopatra discourse that I didn't even know there was a Cleopatra Netflix show until this very second

so nope no opinions other than ugh find a new subject i'm begging

[real-total-drama-takes]

here's some kin discourse™

heather kins jennifer (jennifer's body), envy adams, and cleopatra (clone high and monster high), and she of course kins heather chandler and regina george (her character was inspired by them)

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[adhoption]

Casting Gal Gadot in Cleopatra is almost perfectly weighted for Tumblr discourse. You've got the usual polemics against whitewashing and broader debates about casting and race, but you get to add the Tumblr classic 'was Cleopatra black' discourse and an added dose of Arab/Israeli conflict. I can't believe I've hardly seen it mentioned.

[minetteskvareninova]

24 and 25 for the history asks?

24. Maria Theresa. Now I don't care that she's basically an icon in all the lands of the former monarchy, I want the rest of the world to worship her too. Also Bajza and Hattala do not get enough credit for their contributions to the Slovak language, but that's a bit more niche kind of discourse.

25. Cleopatra VII. of course! Also I am going to kick a hornet's nest and say every single one of the Henry VIII. wives. Like just in terms of raw historical importance vs how much they are talked about in here (I say, while obsessing over the most random Habsburgs lol).