I do not want to write about this Netflix Cleopatra shit.
I do not want to write about this Netflix Cleopatra shit because it is a Bene Gesserit waste of time. This project makes me feel even more miserable because it appears to me how well-intending-but-irretrievably-indoctrinated young people misinterpret the words of wisdom from old Black scholars who spent their lives struggling to function as public intellectuals back in the 20th century. Y’all think y’all are helping but you are making the problem worse. The problem is this: our Black children do not know where they come from and they are defaulting to Indo-European impoverished values based on death and destruction—and not giving a fuck.
The project succeeds by doing the one thing most colored people with white money fail to do in the public eye: make products that are the result of multi-disciplinary collaboration. The ‘docu-drama’ genre is a celebration of bringing together academics, maybe some artists and outright entertainers to tell a story. Queen Cleopatra (2023) succeeds by doing this. In fact, it excels (for a few seconds) by deliberately and “unapologetically” opening the first episode with an elder Black woman professor of the classics, Shelly Haley.
When I saw Shelly Haley, Edward North Chair of Classics and Professor of Africana Studies Emerita, I was getting prepared to be blown away by her. My expectations come from experience. I was getting ready to be overwhelmed by a disciplined and soulful presentation from a set of dedicated Black filmmakers who were about to celebrate the life’s work of this Black woman through how she tells the story of Cleopatra. I was also prepared to castigate myself for preemptively not wanting to see this shit from jump because I had no idea that Jada Pinkett was capable of seeking out Black women who are actually educated.
Sadly, none of this shit happened.
The most important message left unsaid by anyone in this shit is this:
It is not traditional nor is it in any way considered “natural” for Black-African siblings of any social group to conspire to kill each other.
Not unpacking the statement above allows dumb-ass, young, self-described “black” people to assume they are of a heritage that is just as religiously murderous as any other Indo-European imperialist lineage, fueling the billionth viewing of Game of Thrones (2011). White people of all skin colors deliberately confuse ethnic Greek drama with universal “human nature.” So the story of Cain and Abel acted out by black women was just another day in Black Africa—and not a tragedy literally of Biblical proportions? This Bene Gesserit move allows the opportunity to be lost to see the apocalyptic impact of having the Greek-heritage Ptolemaic gentrification of the Nile Valley which followed that of the Hyksos of the legendary time of Joseph.
Cleopatra was a mixed chick born into a nightmare, post-apocalyptic world of patriarchal, imperial barbarism. But this is a world that is deliberately presented as the “normal” and “real” world because white people own this shit—it’s in a plastic box containing a Disney princess on sale at the Disney Store. To discover that Shelly Haley is authentically not aware of this Disney situation would be a discovery of profound blindness on the Clarence-Thomas scale of black-intellectual lifelong failure.
Cleopatra is the original tragic mulatta—an innovator of the youthful, urban fantasy that a bitch can fuck her way out of problems. To dare to place Cleopatra and Njinga Ana de Sousa Mbande next to each other is a serious pimp move in a bitch-made world. To get away from these foul words and my general player-hatin’, the righteously popular Home Team History channel has a pleasant surprise for us:
The African Queen Who Refused The Fate Of Cleopatra
My use of the term “mixed chick” is not careless. Real Black scholars understand that the real mixed marriage has nothing to do with “race”—race is a modern construct enshrined and canonized by the Scottish-American cinematic universe that runs the Hollywood from which Jada this way comes.
The real mixed marriage is the one between a patriarchal family and a matriarchal family. When this happened in the place we now call Africa, it was a tragedy literally of Biblical proportions. It changed the world forever for the worst …and the tragedy continues to this day as there are self-described black people on social media right now defending the Blackness of Cleopatra: it is a Bene Gesserit waste of time. Arguing over physical appearance instead of cultural content of character is a pimping trick I know y’all trick-ass ’ho’s are falling for…
Now here are some tidbits from Queen Cleopatra (2023) that I found interesting:
- the sister of Cleopatra was not killed like a dog in the streets of Rome (which suggests to me how much the ancient world revered the even-more-ancient mystique of African culture—but reverence from a barbarian is, of course, dangerous)
- the depiction of the influence of Cleopatra over Julius Caesar is a lesson of how reverence from a barbarian is, of course, dangerous because that influence led him toward becoming more autocratic—not more “African”
- the legal/official/formal non-recognition of the son of Julius Caesar by Julius Caesar should tell the world where the term “baby daddy” comes from—but it won’t
- the physical marriage of brother and sister as a Ptolemaic interpretation of ancient African “religious” tradition introduces two questions: (i) where are all of the deformed/inbred babies of ancient Africa when we assume that Ptolemaic interpretation was correct? and (ii) was this Ptolemaic interpretation a convenient way to prevent the indigenous population from taking back the throne through genetic domination?
- I did not know that “no one” knows who the mother of Cleopatra was… and there seems to be a rush to get over that and not speculate…
Dune: The Great Flaw in the Bene Gesserit Plan