Well, this has blown up. The beautiful actress Gal Gadot of ‘Wonder Woman’ fame is facing backlash over her casting in the new upcoming biopic about ‘Cleopatra’. The actress is being criticized, as well as the rest of the film crew for “whitewashing” ancient history.
Whitewashing has been a controversial topic for several years, where characters of color are cast by Caucasians. On the surface, this seems like something that could and should be addressed, it makes sense. What we’re not sure makes sense is the backlash over Gadot being cast as ‘Cleopatra’, and we’re going to go over BOTH SIDES.
Gal Gadot Facing Backlash Over ‘Cleopatra’ Casting – Is It A Big Deal, Or Blown Out Of Proportion?
Starting with some of the outrage stirring (of course, coming from Twitter), several people have commented on the casting saying, “Historically, Cleopatra would’ve been black. I feel like if you have respect for this role you should step down”, and “Yup,… ANOTHER WHITE WASHED Movie Filmed in Africa w/ ALL WHITE CASTS. The darker-skinned as the underlings. CLEOPATRA WAS “BLACK”‼️. Didn’t we get enough of Hwood WHITEWASHING MOVIES? Tom Cruise, the LAST samurai, Prince of Persia, Gods of Egypt, all thru WHITE washed EYES.”
While there has been gross whitewashing in films like ‘Gods of Egypt’, for people who have watched the film, ‘The Last Samurai’, the casting makes sense, as it’s an American soldier who is captured by the samurai and adapts to their customs, but I digress.
The argument against is definitely there, and for other films, it makes sense. However, there is some good historical evidence that supports Gadot’s casting, and not just because of how gorgeous she is.
One person who even doesn’t care for the actress defended her saying, “hell i hate gal gadot too but y’all do realize cleopatra wasn’t ethnically egyptian….. she was from macedonian greece and just because she was the pharaoh of ancient egypt doesn’t mean she has egyptian ancestry” while another wrote, “I’m going to say this once and I’m not going to say it again, Cleopatra was Greek. Yes, she was in Egyptian ruler but she was Greek with Persian and Syrian ancestry. The people who are reacting negatively that to this are uneducated and uninformed. Gal Gadot deserves this role.“.
There’s historical reasoning that Cleopatra was Greek, and Gadot is actually Israeli, making this a lot closer than we were led to believe.
Whichever way you lean after presented with both sides of the argument, I believe it’s important to remember that these are actors and actresses. They are paid to pretend to be other people. Maybe we shouldn’t get too fired up and look into the background a bit more in situations like this. While I understand the issue of whitewashing in films like ‘Gods of Egypt’ and ‘Prince of Persia’, I believe Gadot is a wonderful pick for Cleopatra. What’s your opinion?
What do you think? What do you think of the controversy? Let us know in the comments below.
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