Multi-million media company Netflix is at the heart of a lawsuit filed by Egyptians for allegedly erasing the true identity of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, in a soon-to-be-released documentary depicting her as a person of black descent.
Several people have created Twitter threads and TikToks to explain every contentious aspect they have discovered in Netflix’s “Queen Cleopatra” teaser, which was released eight days ago and has over two million views currently.
Netflix has disabled the comments underneath the video, following the mass hate wave it has received.
Among people speaking in the teaser is an old woman of color saying “I remember my grandmother telling me, I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black.”
This line in particular angered many, as they called out Netflix for trying to promote what a grandma said, as facts.
According to Indie Wire, Egyptian lawyer Mahmoud al-Semary filed a complaint with Egypt’s public prosecutor requesting that Netflix be restricted in Egypt owing to the promotion of “Afrocentric thinking,” which includes “slogans and writings aimed at distorting and erasing the Egyptian identity.
Twitter account “Amuse”, published a detailed thread on the late queen’s history, explaining that she was a Macedonian Greek woman, stating that experts believed that she was “European in appearance”.
The Afrocentrist documentary is produced by the American Jada Pinket Smith, whose daughter, Willow Smith, was previously criticized for her offensive portrayal of Amazigh tribes in her fantasy novel “Black Shield Maiden” as “savages,” and “dangerous on their best day.”
Youtube channel ENDYMIONtv posted a video called “How woke ideology transforms history”, in which it spoke about selective activism, reverse colorism, and how predominantly white historical figures are being played by black actors.
By referring to this film as a documentary, Netflix hopes to convey the idea that it is based on facts and official historical records, which erases what people know about Cleopatra’s history and origin, therefore sparking controversy.
There have been many petitions launched on Change.org to cancel the documentary for “falsifying” history, the first of which, which had the most signatures was deleted by the platform’s administration for “violating community guidelines.”
The petition launchers, Maha Shehata and Aikk Yasser posted a joint statement on Instagram as a reaction to Change pulling out their petition, saying “The outrage is NOT because they got a black actress, the outrage is because we know they’re trying to push the agenda of ‘modern-day Egyptians are colonizers.
Change still hasn’t provided any specifics on what community guidelines were breached, and the docuseries will premiere on May 10.
Netflix previously provoked outrage by ‘blackwashing’ Anne Boleyn, Queen of England and wife of Henry VIII, who was born of two white European royals, in its 2021 series about her, which starred Jodie Turner-Smith as the historical figure.
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