It's The Whole Industry, Not Just Cleopatra

The realities of being wrong in pursuit of personal fulfillment

Before Rami Malek played a hacker in Mr. Robot, won the Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody or even played a vampire in Breaking Dawn Pt. 2, he was best known as a character actor in Night at the Museum. His mummified, magical McGuffin was the impetus for the whole story. A mysterious, mystical Egyptian thing that someone haphazardly took and now there are consequences…or something.It’s a little predictable but I didn’t know his wholesome, lispy iteration of an Egyptian wax statue would be my only chance to actually see myself on screen and not have a whole identity crisis. The next time was when Stephenie Meyer decided to pen her overly long conclusion to The Twilight Saga that I would see acceptable representation again featuring Rami Malek of all people being the Avatar. (Mind you, the Egyptians in that book make me laugh quite a lot. I never said it was any good.)

People being interested in Ancient Egyptian history is not at all a new thing. It’s the world's pastime and the basis of an entire economy. But it also means a lot of people are very misguided about how things are now and how Egyptian civilization could have possibly progressed after Cleopatra fell to the Romans. Recently we are seeing stories being told and truth be told it’s more misses than hits. The truest story we can point to about this weird American-Egyptian experience is in Ramy on Hulu and cringe comedy was never quite my cup of tea. The most respectful is in Moon Knight on Disney+ and all of the Egyptians in that are relegated to supporting roles (but bonus points for having Mohamed Diab directing).

Now compound all of that with whatever the hell Gods of Egypt or X-Men: Apocalypse were, Ridley Scott not being “able to mount a movie with Mohamed so-and-so from such-and-such” to make Exodus: Gods and Kings a commercial success and the British Museum utterly unwilling to give up what they see as the best lobby decor anyone could ever ask for (never give up, Zahi Hawass!). All of this on a landmark year with Everything Everywhere All at Once absolutely crushing it for quality, well-deserved East Asian representation right now. The questions need to be asked. What is stopping casting directors, producers and directors from actually going to Egypt and finding someone to actually play the part? They speak perfect English anyway and they probably already have a foreign passport to begin with. They come with very vocal fanbases so it’s been proven that these performers are marketable. Why can’t executives translate that to western mainstream success? Why can’t they actually do their jobs? Are they bad at them or something? The laziness is inexcusable.

The reclamation of Cleopatra from gullible temptress to empty but bankable “feminist” figure started during the pandemic. Patty Jenkins, who directed Wonder Woman, wanted to replicate her success with, her muse, Gal Gadot playing the lead role. That announcement didn’t go down well with Egyptians for obvious reasons and Jenkins no longer has Hollywood’s favor for completely unrelated reasons. The uproar wasn’t loud enough to get Gadot recast even though it’s never going to stop being insulting. Then we move onto this year’s politically motivated slaps in the face. Under the assumption that an Alexandrian of Macedonian Greek (but still born and bred Egyptian) descent was actually made in the image of arrogant lord and savior Jada Pinkett Smith. And further under the assumption that the Arabs came and genocided all the poor native Egyptians with the quick spread of the Islamic Empire. We just didn’t know about it until now. But the news blew up like wildfire and that’s on everyone else for that little double standard.

The pharaohs didn’t vanish into thin air. Time passed and empires lived out their life cycles and the local population mixed with military camps of foreign powers and eventually assimilated into the ever changing culture. Whenever we try to tell people what the reality of our history was we get scoffs and sneers. Surely it can’t be true. We have the American entertainer to set us straight, right? Why would we lie? And then there’s Ernest Owens’ lack of a pokerface.

By now, you know where I’m going with all of this. The problem with green-lighting endless Cleopatra controversies, I’m sorry, productions goes deeper than her heritage and her likeness. The problem is that this woman was boring. Really really boring. And so she’s a perfect cipher. No one needs to look at a single Egyptian because that ruins the fantasy of seeing themselves in the whole project. Love for the people or even the historical figure is not at the root of any of this. So she’s a boss and a seductress, and a stateswoman and blah blah blah, etc. As a result there isn’t any room for us to have the attention that we should be getting from something like this. People go on and on about how good of a ruler she was but learning Coptic and being generally empathic doesn’t mean she was a good, effective ruler. She miscalculated in a really big way at the Battle of Actium. And then she gave herself a snake bite when she got cornered and orphaned her three children. Hearing the story yet another time but from this myopic, self-centered perspective isn’t going to make the thing any more particularly compelling.

Maybe it’s time to look somewhere else. No? But for that to happen, we would actually have to learn Egyptian history listen to Egyptians who've, to put it mildly, been annoyed enough. And who wants to do all of that homework? Next we’re going to ask entertainment industry professionals to care about the art they make. Or, God forbid, ask audiences to get used to subtitles and/or an accent if there really is a hunger for Egyptian stories.