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The Woman King - Peak Hollywood Tone-Deafness

Damar

Damar

Well-known member


So basically this is a movie with a big name cast about the Kingdom of Dahomey and their infamous female warriors fighting off smelly Frenchmen and celebrate how strong and empowered African women were...and seeming to absolutely ignoring Dahomey was a brutal slaver society who sold off countless fellow Africans to European slave traffickers, the ones they didn't human sacrifice at least.

Given how many across the Internet seem to go 'YASS WARRIOR QUEEN!', this is gonna be a social media shitshow.
 
Eliar said:
Movies celebrating one particular aspect of an otherwise crapsuck historical shithole is nothing new or unique.
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Exhibit A

1024px-Roman_Empire_Trajan_117AD.png
 
Indeed.

Or the Crusader States or the Caliphate Golden Era slave pits or the Mongol Empire...

Like sure the Mongols killed half the people in Eurasia BUT they had really good postal services! Oh and paper money!

And so on and so forth...
 
Eliar said:
Indeed.

Or the Crusader States or the Caliphate Golden Era slave pits or the Mongol Empire...

Like sure the Mongols killed half the people in Eurasia BUT they had really good postal services! Oh and paper money!

And so on and so forth...
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The comparison that jumped to my mind is all the Robin Hood stuff with Richard I as "the big good" who will come and make everything right again.
 
Terra Novan said:
And, well, the intended audience is the Westerners who either won't know or care.
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Which is odd. Dahomey is such an unknown thing in US common knowledge that I'd have assumed the target audience would be history nerds
 
I think that the best historical "black empowerment" should've been about the Haitian revolution: slaves suffering one of the worst slave system in history achieving possibly the only successful slave revolt ever attempted. The problem is Americans doesn't like radical revolutions in general (see how critical Americans often are about the French revolution, or the various postcoloni revolutions for that matter), and the other also really love "enlightened" monarchies in their media.
 
"The Woman King"

Pretty sure there's a word for that m8
 
They probably hope for a similar effect with Pope Joan for a non tongue in cheek reply.

Bet there will be some sort of in movie explanation on how there can be no Queen in Dahomey so King it is.
 
Eliar said:
They probably hope for a similar effect with Pope Joan for a non tongue in cheek reply.

Bet there will be some sort of in movie explanation on how there can be no Queen in Dahomey so King it is.
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You do know that there's actually been a number of female "kings", right? Jadwiga of Poland, Christina of Sweden, Tamar of Georgia, Maria Theresa of Hungary, Cleopatra VII, etc…
 
Ravan said:
You do know that there's actually been a number of female "kings", right? Jadwiga of Poland, Christina of Sweden, Tamar of Georgia, Maria Theresa of Hungary, Cleopatra VII, etc…
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Yeah, they're ruling queens. But unlike Hatshephut of Egypt they can rule without being called a king.
 
t-dugong said:
Yeah, they're ruling queens. But unlike Hatshephut of Egypt they can rule without being called a king.
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No, I mean they were literally crowned as kings rather than queens. Their official title was "King" (in the appropriate languages)
 
Ravan said:
No, I mean they were literally crowned as kings rather than queens. Their official title was "King" (in the appropriate languages)
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I'm guessing that the word used did not have the exact some set of meanings as the English word "king". In English, a female sovereign can be called a "queen" without implying any less authority than if she were male.


giphy.gif
 
Scottty said:
I'm guessing that the word used did not have the exact some set of meanings as the English word "king". In English, a female sovereign can be called a "queen" without implying any less authority than if she were male.


giphy.gif
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Oddly enough, there was at least one English monarch who disagreed with you. Elizabeth I who officially styled herself Elizabeth Rex, rather than Regina as the current Queen does, as she felt that she was too mighty to accept a feminine title.

But no, it's because the ruler in those countries was The King. The queen was the female spouse of the ruler. So as rulers, they were kings. The laws of the countries didn't allow for ruling queens, but didn't prohibit female kings, so female kings was what happened.
 
Ravan said:
Oddly enough, there was at least one English monarch who disagreed with you. Elizabeth I who officially styled herself Elizabeth Rex, rather than Regina as the current Queen does, as she felt that she was too mighty to accept a feminine title.
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Well... there was the context there of her father, Henry VIII, having 8 different wives in an attempt to find one who could bear him a son, because the worthies of England at the tine did not believe that a woman would do as a monarch.

And he'd put her mother to death, let's not forget that part.
So calling herself Rex looks like it had an element of "take that, dad!" to it.
 
Scottty said:
Well... there was the context there of her father, Henry VIII, having 8 different wives in an attempt to find one who could bear him a son, because the worthies of England at the tine did not believe that a woman would do as a monarch.

And he'd put her mother to death, let's not forget that part.
So calling herself Rex looks like it had an element of "take that, dad!" to it.
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I always wondered how he'd have turned out if it wasn't for that jousting accident.
 
Ravan said:
I always wondered how he'd have turned out if it wasn't for that jousting accident.
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I'm imaging a modern US president wanting to take part in a jousting match, and the Secret Service refusing to let him do that.
 
The AA girls on reddit seem to be defending it. So I think we can guess the intended audience. Black Americans, or rather the females.

Let's see how well it performs. I don't expect such a controversial film to flop.
 
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