Cleopatra is once again getting the big screen treatment, this time courtesy of Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins and the DC heroine herself, Gal Gadot. But even with a female director, and female screenwriter in Laeta Kalogridis on board, the casting of an Israeli actor with Ashkenazi Jewish heritage as the legendary Queen of Egypt has led to a not unfounded debate about Hollywood whitewashing.
In recent years historians, such as Hilke Thuer of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, have questioned the long-held belief that Cleopatra VII was white. Scholars agree that there’s no doubt that Cleo was Macedonian-Greek on her father Ptolemy XII’s side, potentially Persian or Syrian too, but because the ethnic origin of her mother remains unverified it has strengthened the idea that the Egyptian ruler was of mixed heritage. “The mother of Cleopatra has been suggested to have been from the family of the priests of Memphis,” Betsy M Bryan, Alexander Badawy professor of Egyptian art and archaeology at Johns Hopkins University, told Newsweek. “If this were the case, then Cleopatra could have been at least 50% Egyptian in origin.”
With that in mind, the criticism of Gadot’s casting is understandable. The film industry has long had a frustrating habit of whitewashing history and movies about Cleopatra – thanks to white actors such as Elizabeth Taylor, Hildegard Neil, Claudette Colbert and Vivien Leigh – have cemented her western appearance on screen. Gadot in the role continues this trend, but it’s not as clear-cut as that.
The actor does tick the box for Middle Eastern and north African (MENA) representation, so she’s not as western a choice as either Angelina Jolie or Lady Gaga would have been - who had both previously been linked to the role. But it still perpetuates a white standard of foreignness. It’s a situation similar to that of Naomi Scott, an actor of mixed English and Indian ancestry who was cast as Jasmine in the recent Aladdin remake. Scott is just “other” enough to mean that the film-makers could not be accused of whitewashing (though it’s still unclear which ethnicity anyone is meant to be in Disney’s orientalist fantasy), but it’s still an example of cultural ventriloquism that sees the continued bias towards light-skinned minorities who adhere to a western aesthetic.
It wouldn’t be as tough a pill to swallow for the north African diaspora if Hollywood didn’t repeatedly use the region as a simple backdrop for white actors. From The Ten Commandments to Star Wars, The English Patient to The Red Sea Diving Resort, and nearly every movie in The Mummy franchise, north Africans are either sidelined, underwritten, negatively portrayed or erased to centre white characters and – especially – to champion white saviours.
One can infer that Gadot’s version of Cleopatra will exhibit heroism of a more subtle variety than her Wonder Woman alter ego; but what are the chances it won’t fall into the trap of white saviourism where, if cast, Egyptian and north African actors are simply present to prop up her narrative? It’s an unfortunate coincidence that Gadot will be next seen in Death on the Nile, a film with an Egyptian setting also which, like its 1978 predecessor, fails to include any north African actors in the main cast – and is yet another example of how cinema colonises foreign regions for its own white-centric purpose.
All this is galling considering recent steps have been to taken to diversify historical storytelling on screen. New precedents were set by the likes of Armando Iannucci’s multicultural Dickens adaptation, with Dev Patel playing David Copperfield. Soon Constance Wu and Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù will play romantic leads in the English-set 19th century period comedy Mr Malcolm’s List. The actor Sophie Okonedo played the tragic queen of Egypt in the National Theatre production of Anthony and Cleopatra in 2018.
Gal Gadot has proved herself that a “nobody” can become an A-lister when given the chance to play a massive role. So given what we now understand about the Queen of Egypt’s heritage, and while the battle for better representation for ethnic minorities continues, it seems like a missed opportunity that Cleopatra’s next appearance will be more representative of Hollywood’s past than north Africa’s present.
