It’s the worst thing to happen to Cleopatra since that snake in the mausoleum. Queen Cleopatra is the second season of African Queens, a revisionist Netflix strand touting itself as a documentary series on black monarchs.
Produced and narrated by Jada Pinkett Smith, it is an attempt to repackage history for a contemporary audience. Queen Cleopatra purports to explore ‘the real woman’ and ‘her truth’ as a female warrior who ‘bowed to no man’. Cleopatra was a tenacious leader and a canny strategist but her reign ended in suicide after her defeat to Octavian at Actium destroyed the Ptolemaic dynasty. No doubt there’s an audience for kickass girlboss history but there’s a reason Plutarch’s Life of Antony is light on the ‘yaas, kween, slay!’.
In kicking the hornets’ nest of identity politics, producers know they can generate a reaction from cultural out-groups
Then again, maybe there’s not much of an audience. Queen Cleopatra has bombed with critics and viewers alike.
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