{"id":81578,"date":"2020-10-13T17:05:14","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T15:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=81578"},"modified":"2020-10-13T14:30:48","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T12:30:48","slug":"22-05-58","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=81578","title":{"rendered":"The woke world goes to war against \u2018Wonder Woman\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>The woke world goes to war against \u2018Wonder Woman\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

JONATHAN S. TOBIN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Israeli actress Gal Gadot (right) with Patty Jenkins, who is directing a new \u201cCleopatra\u201d film. Source: Screenshot.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The backlash against the casting of Israeli star Gal Gadot as Cleopatra illustrates the insidious nature of the myths spawned by critical race theory and intersectionalism.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure the world needed another movie about Cleopatra. And the career arc of Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who became an international superstar with her \u201cWonder Woman\u201d films, isn\u2019t something that matters all that much in the general scheme of things. Still, the\u00a0announcement<\/a>\u00a0that Gadot would team up with Patty Jenkins, the director of her hit comic-book movie, to do a film produced by Paramount Pictures (with Gadot\u2019s production company also playing a part) about the legendary queen of Egypt sent Twitter into a tizzy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The buzz on social media about the project revealed that a lot of people think Gadot has no business stepping in the footsteps of Hollywood legends Claudette Colbert and Elizabeth Taylor in playing the ultimate vamp role. They think it\u2019s wrong that someone who isn\u2019t black or Arab\u2014or at least brown-skinned\u2014is getting the part.<\/span><\/ins><\/ins><\/p>\n

A lot of those who spoke out on this issue simply resent Gadot for being Israeli, a veteran of the Israel Defense Force and that her family immigrated to the Jewish state from Eastern Europe (her maternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors, though her father is a sixth-generation sabra). But their beef isn\u2019t just rooted in hatred for Jews and Israelis. Speaking in the language of race theory and intersectionalism, critics say the film is yet another act of cultural appropriation by colonizers in which the heritage of indigenous peoples of Africa and the Middle East are being stolen by whites.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why this dustup isn\u2019t just the usual nonsensical hype coming out of the entertainment world about a movie that is still in the planning stages. It matters because the debate about the prospective film illustrates the way ideological myths about race have distorted our public discourse and, more importantly, the way popular culture operates. The point being if studio heads and their sources of funding fear being \u201ccanceled\u201d for casting a white Jewish woman as Cleopatra because the woke world demands a \u201cperson of color\u201d in that role so much that they dumped Gadot, then it will be an important turning point not just for Hollywood but for so much else, too. It would be one more indication of how broken our culture has become because of the growing dominance of far-left ideologues that peddle lies about both the past and the present.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first point to be made about the film is that, contrary to the nonsense we\u2019re hearing from Gadot\u2019s critics, the real Cleopatra was neither black nor Arab. She and the other members of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt were descendants of the first Ptolemy, who was one of Alexander the Great\u2019s companions and generals. He and his successors were Macedonian Greeks. Over the course of the 250 years during which his family ruled Egypt, they almost always married their siblings or cousins. That produced a lot of the usual problems with incest but it also, despite attempts to try and justify the depiction of Cleopatra as a black woman, ensured that the last of the Ptolemys was as European as the first.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nor was Cleopatra a figure from the period before the writing of history. We know a great deal about the details of her life. She was one of the most famous persons in the world at the time and, via her romances (with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony) and political intrigues that led to her death and the end of the Egyptian monarchy, right at the center of the Roman civil war that determined the fate of the Mediterranean for centuries. There are coins with her portrait, and though they are not the same thing as a photo, they make it obvious that speculation about her ancestry is foolish. All of which is to say that having a native Israeli or any other white woman from a Mediterranean background is entirely in keeping with a desire to tell her story in a way that doesn\u2019t entirely contradict history.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, the entertainment world rarely lets facts get in the way of a good story or a twist on a historic tale that they think might be a box-office blockbuster. So it\u2019s a testament to Gadot\u2019s enormous popularity that a major studio would dare to contradict those who spew Afrocentric myths about Cleopatra being black or those who claim she is an Arab. Indeed, although Twitter storms of outrage may routinely impact the decisions made by film and TV executives, the prospect of being able to cast the \u201cWonder Woman\u201d star means more to them.<\/span><\/p>\n

As such, Gadot is something of a symbol of the general failure of the BDS movement. Though the woke that dominate academia have made inroads in mainstream journalism, Israel\u2019s enormously successful \u201cstartup nation\u201d and booming economy have shown itself impervious to the efforts of those who wish to wage economic war on the Jewish state.<\/span><\/p>\n

And as much as Gadot\u2019s earning power may be enough to defeat her detractors, we shouldn\u2019t underestimate the influence of those who propagate the myths that demanded the cancelation of her film project.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no way to know whether Gadot\u2019s Cleopatra will have any artistic merit. Still, we should cheer her ability to withstand her critics\u2019 abuse and play a role for which the glamorous actress is eminently qualified.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the distorted mindset of intersectionalism, Jews are not an indigenous people in the Middle East or of Israel, but foreign white colonial oppressors, regardless of the fact that the majority of them are of Middle Eastern origin. Demanding that only \u201cpeople of color\u201d be depicted in historical epics isn\u2019t a form of affirmative action for black or brown actors, but a measure aimed at silencing accurate narratives in favor of falsified history. The aim of such efforts\u2014and related attacks on scholars and authors\u2014isn\u2019t diversity; it\u2019s revisionism based on the false premises of critical race theory that seeks to divide us in a bigoted manner that contradicts attempts to bridge the divide between groups and to spread tolerance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Jonathan S. Tobin<\/strong> is editor in chief of JNS\u2014Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em>
\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion’68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.
\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:
\n<\/em>webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The woke world goes to war against \u2018Wonder Woman\u2019 JONATHAN S. TOBIN Israeli actress Gal Gadot (right) with Patty Jenkins, who is directing a new \u201cCleopatra\u201d film. Source: Screenshot. The backlash against the casting of Israeli star Gal Gadot as Cleopatra illustrates the insidious nature of the myths spawned by critical race theory and intersectionalism. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81578"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81578"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81595,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81578\/revisions\/81595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}