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"Cleopatra" is the number one trending topic that sends my Classics major ass running for the hills lmao. Not today!
This is a particularly cursed iteration of the Cleopatra debate because the actress in this case has people doing race science about Jews in the trending tag. Great website lol
It& #39;s worth asking why other women rulers of Egypt — Hatshepsut in particular — rarely get biopics and Cleopatra gets a zillion. Based on the contemporary accounts I think casting white women as Cleopatra VII makes sense, but the fact that it makes sense should raise questions!
Anyway, I& #39;d like to see a Hatshepsut movie. I feel like Sophie Okonedo could grab an Oscar for that one.
Hollywood loves Cleopatra for the same reason Shakespeare did: she was the (most likely) white queen of Egypt. The ancients didn& #39;t regard race phenotypically that way, but she was a Greek imperialist who adopted Egyptian garb and customs. It& #39;s ~exotic but not TOO foreign.
She was also famously not very pretty, which I think would be interesting to actually see in one of these biopics if they& #39;re going to make a million of them. The ancient historians note that she was shockingly sexually charismatic despite being kind of homely.
She was also a ginger, fwiw. She wore the braided wig in part because it was the fashion for Egyptian nobility but also because her red hair really made her stand out in court!
