A lot of people seem to be upset with Angelina Jolie being cast as Cleopatra in an upcoming movie. Most of this criticism seems to be about Jolie’s skin color, that she is not black enough to play Cleopatra. I am sympathetic to issues of accurately portraying cultural heritage, and the appropriation of black roles by white actors. The controversy about the whiteness of the actors in The Last Airbender, for example, seems to be somewhat justified. Leading minority roles are rare enough in Hollywood that they should be given to culturally appropriate actors, and the default for movie characters should not be white.
Dr. Ashton's Cleopatra vs. Angelina Jolie
The trouble with the Cleopatra issue is that I just don’t believe she was very dark-skinned. Jezebel, for example, bases this argument on a computer-generated image historical project done for a TV miniseries. Dr. Ashton says of Cleopatra, “She probably wasn’t just completely European. You’ve got to remember that her family had actually lived in Egypt for 300 years by the time she came to power.” Based on this assumption and some other sources, Dr. Ashton’s computer image (of which I am always skeptical) of Cleopatra is very dark-skinned.
Fayum mummy portrait
The problem with this argument is that the Ptolemaic dynasty were non-native rulers of Egypt of Greek origin, and did not mix with the local population much. Egyptian society was stratified under the Ptolemies with Greeks as the ruling class and native Egyptians as an underclass. Additionally, the Ptolemaic rulers usually married their own sisters, so it is unlikely that there was much, if any, Egyptian blood in the mix. Egyptians of the time were likely lighter skinned than what Dr. Ashton portrays, and given that Cleopatra had Greek heritage, she was probably lighter still. For contrast, here’s an example of a Roman era painting of an Egyptian, dated about 200 years after Cleopatra’s time. While Cleopatra was likely not white, she also was not as dark-skinned as many seem to be arguing. And while Jolie, who is of Czech, German, and French Canadian descent, is likely whiter than the historical Cleopatra, I don’t think this is as large an issue as some people want it to be.
