Gal Gadot defends Cleopatra casting after 'whitewashing' controversy

[Alyan]

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-55409187

Israeli film star Gal Gadot has defended her plan to play Cleopatra following accusations of whitewashing.



Critics say an Arab or African actress should play the ancient Egyptian queen.


"First of all if you want to be true to the facts then Cleopatra was Macedonian," the Wonder Woman actress told BBC Arabic's Sam Asi.


"We were looking for a Macedonian actress that could fit Cleopatra. She wasn't there, and I was very passionate about Cleopatra."




Too bad We Wuz Kangz history is at an all-time high. Blame America.

 

[Angela]

She's completely right, although I think Gal Gadot is far too pretty and the wrong type to play her.

 

[Alyan]

Her phenotype is fine for Cleopatra's pedigree (Balkans, Central Asian). Asking for an actress to both resemble Cleopatra and be marketable is setting yourself for disappointment.

More importantly the ones complaining about her on non-acting ability grounds are one of the following:

A. Black Nationalists/Hoteps/We WUZZZZ crowd who are so invested in Black Egypt.

B. Pan-Arabists/Pan-MENA/Pan-Islamists who appropriate Cleopatra/Ancient Egypt as one of them as belonging to one big "MENA/Arab/Muslim" civilization regardless of biological differences.

C. Woke/Cuck Enablers

D. Revisionists/Crackpots who peddle reconstructions making Cleopatra look like a Mulatta.

 

[Angela]

She's completely right, although I think Gal Gadot is far too pretty and the wrong type to play her.

Ioanna Meli looks pretty close to me, but as someone mentioned, she's not a big box office guarantee.

Cleopatra's "draw" was more about her intellect, her charm and wit, and most of all, her fabulous wealth.

 

[Alyan]

Gal Gadot matches Cleopatra's pedigree well enough being an Ashkenazi Jew. She hardly looks different from an actual inhabitant of the Balkans to an inhabitant of Samarkand range. Which is Cleopatra's actual pedigree.
This isn't a matter of debate when it comes to the queen's race and look. We have primary sources describing her ancestry, no sources mentioning her as having alien looks compared with a woman in Iron Age Italy to Iron Age Greece. No depictions from her era as showing her with different features from the range of South Europe to Central Asia.

I left out another set: The anti-Jews who just hide their disdain for Jews by framing it as just opposing Israel or hating "the White Jews."

 

[Angela]

^^I fail to see what any of that has to do with the fact that Cleopatra was not a beautiful woman. There are lots of representations of her, and in all of them none of her features are attractive, and in particular, she had a curved rather hooked nose.

Yes, I know people would rather watch a beautiful actress, but it just perpetuates a lie, i.e. that to be desirable a woman has to be classically beautiful. It's not true, as we can see in real life.

Prince Charles is just one example; he was married to a beautiful woman, or close to it, and yet rocked the foundations of the British monarchy for a middle aged woman who looked like a horse.

I'm not happy with the "woke" world where facts don't matter and they want to transform Cleopatra into an Arab or an African, but this sounds like it's just going to be a typical Hollywood lie pretending to be history.

 

[Ailchu]

what's Cleopatras descent actually? i thought it wasn't really clear, did they find out more?

 

[Alyan]

what's Cleopatras descent actually? i thought it wasn't really clear, did they find out more?

We have actual texts. They're actually easy to find. And more importantly, not a single depiction makes her look like she wouldn't pass in Italy to Samarkand..

 

[Ailchu]

We have actual texts. They're actually easy to find. And more importantly, not a single depiction makes her look like she wouldn't pass in Italy to Samarkand..

Strabon wrote that only the oldest child of Ptolemaios XII was from a legit marriage. that would mean Kleopatra wasn't together with her younger siblings.
as for her not passing in Italy to Samarkand how would you know? she could have been of full egyptian descent and she might still have passed in those regions and even more so if she was just half egyptian. and why should Kleopatra pass in Samarkand?

 

[Angela]

Strabon is the only ancient writer who ever even implies that Cleopatra was illegitimate. Had she been, given that the Romans wanted to steal Egypt, they would have uses it. They used everything else they could imagine, so obviously it wasn't anything that would be believed.

Plus, illegitimacy in their world is not illegitimacy in ours. The Ptolemys had many minor wives, but from remaining records they were sisters, cousins, and occasionally women from other noble houses. They believed in keeping it in the family.

Plus, we have numerous contemporaneous portraits, coins, and busts of her. There is no way in hell they depict an African woman, or even someone like a Saudi. Period. She looks exactly like what she was genetically. Had she looked "African", the Romans would have had an absolute field day with that too.

The Central Asian/Persian is so distant in her ancestry it would be impossible for it to "show".

Give it a rest. There's too much contemporaneous evidence. This is one time you "woke" people can't change history to suit your preferences for an African centrist Egyptian history. When you're wrong, you're wrong.

I hear Lady Gaga wanted to play her. That's far more realistic, and she's a far better actress too.

 

[Alyan]

Strabon wrote that only the oldest child of Ptolemaios XII was from a legit marriage. that would mean Kleopatra wasn't together with her younger siblings.

Irrelevant. The Ptolemies were among a wider community of Greek speakers that segregated themselves away from the indigenous inhabitants. Your claim that Cleopatra's father impregnated one of them is merely fantasy not reflected in sources.

as for her not passing in Italy to Samarkand how would you know?

Her depiction. Literally all of them give her the same features how women from Italy to somewhere like Persia were given in coinage and sculpture and paintings. And her pedigree mentions no non-Balkans ancestry that isn't from Persia to Bactria.

she could have been of full egyptian descent and she might still have passed in those regions and even more so if she was just half egyptian. and why should Kleopatra pass in Samarkand?

You're not going to find Egyptians with no outside non-indigenous mixture who pass in Italy or Greece. And nobody mentioned her having ancestry from Egypt proper.

 

[Yetos]

what's Cleopatras descent actually? i thought it wasn't really clear, did they find out more?

At least patriarchical she was Ptolemean,
matriarchical I can't centuries of Ptolemeans wifes.

the underground science say Ceasarion her brother was Jesus.

 

[Ailchu]

You're not going to find Egyptians with no outside non-indigenous mixture who pass in Italy or Greece. And nobody mentioned her having ancestry from Egypt proper.

why do you think so? and how would you know? it's always the same argument, someone who looks at least a bit like someone from europe must have european ancestry. the same people say every european who could pass outside of europe must have non-european ancestry. you completely ignore the fact, willfully probably, that a lot of ancestry is shared between all westeurasians, and the egyptians belonged to this group and still do for the larges part of their ancestry.

 

[Ailchu]

Strabon is the only ancient writer who ever even implies that Cleopatra was illegitimate. Had she been, given that the Romans wanted to steal Egypt, they would have uses it. They used everything else they could imagine, so obviously it wasn't anything that would be believed.

Plus, illegitimacy in their world is not illegitimacy in ours. The Ptolemys had many minor wives, but from remaining records they were sisters, cousins, and occasionally women from other noble houses. They believed in keeping it in the family.

Plus, we have numerous contemporaneous portraits, coins, and busts of her. There is no way in hell they depict an African woman, or even someone like a Saudi. Period. She looks exactly like what she was genetically. Had she looked "African", the Romans would have had an absolute field day with that too.

The Central Asian/Persian is so distant in her ancestry it would be impossible for it to "show".

Give it a rest. There's too much contemporaneous evidence. This is one time you "woke" people can't change history to suit your preferences for an African centrist Egyptian history. When you're wrong, you're wrong.

I hear Lady Gaga wanted to play her. That's far more realistic, and she's a far better actress too.

never said she was black african. but if she had egyptian ancestry i doubt it would have made her "alien" to southern europe or westasia. if she was fully macedonian i'm completely ok with that too. no need to call me afro-centrist. i actually hear about those afro-centrists mostly because of people who complain about them. i hear for the first time about "pan-arabists" though. there is no common ethnic identity in the near east
and i doubt people claim egyptians as a "mena" civlization. there is however a pan-europeanist group in the US that calls every civlization in europe a "white civilization". not sure if that's better.
for the looks of cleopatra i don't really care. there is a lot of variation that you can bring in here in the end nothing will be accurate. maybe she looked like Lady Gaga maybe more like Maria Callas. it seems she was often described as beautiful and not really ugly. when i look at greek or roman statues of women i find none of them look good with few exceptions. Cleopatras depiction doesn't really stand out here. but with so much incest i also doubt she was that good looking.

 

[Alyan]

why do you think so? and how would you know? it's always the same argument, someone who looks at least a bit like someone from europe must have european ancestry. the same people say every european who could pass outside of europe must have non-european ancestry. you completely ignore the fact, willfully probably, that a lot of ancestry is shared between all westeurasians, and the egyptians belonged to this group and still do for the larges part of their ancestry.

Egyptians have no core mixtures shared with Europeans outside of Anatolian Farmer. Egyptians are Anatolian+Iranian+Levant. Greeks circa Mycenae are Anatolian Farmer with Steppe Nomad/Conqueror.

never said she was black african. but if she had egyptian ancestry i doubt it would have made her "alien" to southern europe or westasia.

Yes it would since the Romans were transparent ethnic chauvinists/supremacists. They saw other Europeans (Gauls, Germanic) as barbarians to be conquered even when all of them had Indo-European heritage. The Egyptians had no Indo-European heritage in its foundations.

for the looks of cleopatra i actually don't care. there is a lot of variation that you can bring in here in the end nothing will be accurate. it could be someone like Lady Gaga or also someone like Maria Callas. if you follow some of her depictions she was ugly if you follow others she was beautiful.

There is no difference in appearance between sculptures, coinage, and one painting. She always has her nose, her hair texture, and the painting gives much lighter skin than the bulk of Egyptians.

 

[Ailchu]

Egyptians have no core mixtures shared with Europeans outside of Anatolian Farmer. Egyptians are Anatolian+Iranian+Levant. Greeks circa Mycenae are Anatolian Farmer with Steppe Nomad/Conqueror.

Steppe Nomad/Conqueror consists out of "iranian related" too. seems pretty hard to accept when even now people ignore that the whole time. and the "Levant" is also a close relative.

 

[Salento]

... who said ... Let my people go ... to the Pharaoh ?
... Who were those people?

Could It be that some of Gal Gadot’s ancestors took part in the Exodus?

What if her people left genetic traces in Egypt, ... and if in the remote case Cleopatra’s ancestry was mixed, she could have also carry some of Moses DNA.

... either way its a win win for Gal Gadot and she would make a great Cleopatra,

... imho Cleopatra would totally agree with that, I think,

... Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Let my people go, ... But if you refuse to let them go, behold, I will Plague all your country ...

yep !

... Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go ...

 

[Salento]

I think a Salentino should play Anthony with Gal Gadot, ❤ .... I’m not busy

 

[Jovialis]

Steppe Nomad/Conqueror consists out of "iranian related" too. seems pretty hard to accept when even now people ignore that the whole time. and the "Levant" is also a close relative.

A significant portion Natufian admixture distinguishes Levantine populations from Anatolian_N, ChL, and BA populations. This can be illustrated when using a 3D PCA, they most differ on the Z axis.

CHG/IN are also very much distinguished by the Z axis, from Natufian, they are at opposite ends of the West Eurasian continuum. Levantine populations are basically between CHG/IN, and Natufian, with a slight shift toward Anatolian_N.

All in all, I would say Middle Eastern Populations are truly distinguished by a critical mass of Natufian admixture, which would have been absent in Greeks.

 

[Jovialis]

A significant portion Natufian admixture distinguishes Levantine populations from Anatolian_N, ChL, and BA populations. This can be illustrated when using a 3D PCA, they most differ on the Z axis.

CHG/IN are also very much distinguished by the Z axis, from Natufian, they are at opposite ends of the West Eurasian continuum. Levantine populations are basically between CHG/IN, and Natufian, with a slight shift toward Anatolian_N.

All in all, I would say Middle Eastern Populations are truly distinguished by a critical mass of Natufian admixture, which would have been absent in Greeks.

Here is what I am talking about: