A black Cleopatra is “rewriting history” in the same way an English speaking Cleopatra is.

Oh man, a production with historically-accurate Latin, Egyptian, and Greek would be so awesome.

How do you think a Cleopatra which didn’t “rewrite history” would look?

Like someone who's 3/4 Greek and 1/4 Egyptian. Not that most people are genuine about it anyway. I have doubts the people angry about whitewashing in Aloha, Dr. Strange, Lone Ranger, and Ghost in the Shell are the same set angry about blackwashing in Cleopatra, Little Mermaid, and Anne Boleyn.

Agree on everything else you said, but Cleopatra is different from the other 6 you mentioned, because it's not presented as fiction.

It's not "a show about Cleopatra, where the actor happens to be black". That's fine, whatever, artistic license.

It's "a show that presents itself as historically accurate, and makes the specific claim that you, the viewer, were mistaught in school and they are historically accurate in claiming Cleopatra was in fact black".

When something presents itself as an accurate documentary and then holds up something false as truth, that's a huge difference and is held to a different standard.

Imagine if James Watson funded a documentary saying "actually I discovered DNA alone, Rosalind Franklin had nothing to do with it". It would be rightfully criticized, because it's made up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_King:_Birth_of_an_Em...

Yeah, but how should her nose look? Should she be beautiful or ugly? How old?

So you'd be fine with Rami Malek playing Mansa Musa in a documentary or the next black panther?

This is a longstanding Hollywood tradition, arguably it goes back to Shakespeare.

The problem is people have come to accept that fictional works can perfectly describe reality as it is or was. That has never been the case and never will be. One should not believe what one sees on tv, outside of news and documentaries (and even there, a lot of critical thinking should be applied).