Controversial patchwork history
There is an absolute past – a closed book with no connection to the present – that is mainly known to us through legends. But other forms of the past also exist. In the complete past, everything that happened is completely known, while the course of the incomplete past – which is usually closer to us in time – rests on contingencies and change.
But in the age of identities and extreme media penetration, the boundaries of these past tenses are beginning to blur. When historical events are drawn into present-day controversies and legends become the football of politically-motivated history writing, then the complete becomes incomplete, and the incomplete becomes absolute.
Recent weeks have seen uproar over a documentary series that no one had yet watched, and which is only now becoming available on Netflix. A scene from the first episode appeared in the trailer and caught the attention of numerous critics. In it, an expert recalls her grandmother's words: "I don't care what they tell you in school. Cleopatra was Black."
This introductory statement contains an empty promise, which is quickly unmasked: the instruction to disregard the school narrative springs from efforts to write an alternative history designed to emancipate itself from established and well-known narratives. But contrary to what they would have us believe, no new story emerges from this Netflix series.
All we get is a questionable assertion about the colour of Cleopatra's skin from the mouth of an "expert", though with no hard evidence to back this up – aside from the conviction of the expert's grandmother, which is something akin to a belief in the supernatural. So are we seriously to assume that Cleopatra might have been Black?
Elsewhere, the makers of the series point out that the historical identity of Cleopatra's mother is unknown, and speculate that her mother may have been Egyptian. Nor is there any historical evidence regarding the identity of her grandmother on her father's side – she could have been Egyptian, too.
It therefore follows that Cleopatra was at least half Egyptian. This hypothesis comes not only from ethnicity; it has a cultural and emotional underpinning: as the first female Ptolemaic leader, Cleopatra learned the Egyptian language, while her connection to the Egyptian people is emphasised.
Egyptians complain over Netflix depiction of Cleopatra as black https://t.co/a8nAoNwFvb
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 19, 2023
But the series itself doesn't claim that Cleopatra was Black. There is also no attempt at cultural appropriation of Egyptian history, as some have feared. On the contrary, Cleopatra's Egyptian identity is emphasised – even exaggerated – through speculations and possibly a little wishful thinking.
Nor does anyone claim that all ancient Egyptians were Black. In fact, another expert gives a detailed explanation of the ethnic plurality among the Egyptian people, who included a mixture of indigenous, Greek and Jewish people, with skin tones ranging from light to dark.
First in a line of patchwork-history projects?
The portrayal of Cleopatra as an Egyptian and thereby an African ruler is in part aimed at her historical rehabilitation. The Netflix Cleopatra is not the dissolute woman depicted in the Roman chronicles. Nor is she Hollywood's seductive femme fatale or the tyrannical queen from Bernard Shaw's play Caesar and Cleopatra (1898).
Instead, she is portrayed as educated and hungry for knowledge, as in the opening scene when we see her in a library. We learn that she was not only a wily politician but also well-versed in science and linguistics. Later, the Ptolemaic ruler becomes entangled in a bloody family power struggle that ultimately develops into open civil war.
The creators of the series, however, seem intent on taking the edge off the sometimes deadly conspiracies, battles and palace intrigues, justifying them – albeit implicitly – as the usual fate of Ptolemaic heirs to the throne.
The Cleopatra series could be just the beginning of further efforts at patchwork history. It shows great weaknesses and modest filmic possibilities, and essentially has two aims: the portrayal of Cleopatra as a great African ruler is intended to compensate for the relative absence of women from written history. At the same time, the makers of the series hope to shake up Eurocentrism and the European monopoly on heroism.
But good intentions don't always produce good results. What Netflix is giving us here is not a new perspective on history. The series actually reproduces those traditional views that celebrate and legitimise people in power. It doesn't take the trouble to deconstruct that masculine and Eurocentric view of the past and cast it in a different light. Quite the opposite: it sits within this tradition, yet with the moral legitimation of placing a "woman of colour" at the top.
© Qantara.de 2023
Translated from the German by Ruth Martin