Social justice bores are in a tizzy over the latest reports that certain actresses are being considered to reprise the role of Egyptian queen Cleopatra, not because one of them is the woefully overhyped Lady Gaga and the other is the hopelessly contrived Angelina Jolie, but rather that both of the celebrities are white.
Here’s the thing: Cleopatra was white. In fact, as the same social justice bores might put it, she exemplified white privilege. A product of centuries of inbreeding, Cleopatra inherited her prestige and slept her way up to the top. In practice, she lacked the political acumen, and her real beauty must have paled in comparison to that of the iconic Liz Taylor, who infamously took on the role in her heyday.
The Ptolemaic dynasty of which Cleopatra was one, was all Macedonian Greeks. How did they maintain that racial makeup while ruling Egypt for generations? Inbreeding.
While well-meaning Internet warriors may beg for the likes of Rihanna to play the failed queen, they make their case by hearkening back to a photoshoot that seems to invoke the imagery of Queen Nefertiti, who ruled a full century prior to Cleopatra.
Cleopatra was a feminine hero of another age, one who used her sexual wiles to seduce men, but not a terribly feminist one who knew what to do with conquered fools. She died a disgrace, committing suicide following the defeat of the forces of her mistress du jour Marc Antony — the best friend of her previous baby daddy Julius Caesar — effectively ceding the autonomous Egypt to Roman rule, all because of her weakness and ineptitude as a monarch.
Royal monarchs and mistresses from Eleanor of Aquitaine to her grandmother and infamous royal courtesan Countess Dangerosa are ripe for the picking by Hollywood screenwriters. But for passionate women of color to demand racial justice by attempting to embrace a petty princess who embodied the worst of white privilege, well, they ought to crack open the history books and find another hero.
