LogFAQs > #973435851

I mean it's more complex than that. I think in many ways modern people are obsessed with skin color more so than anything else. People laser focus when an actor with dark skin plays a character people perceive to be "white" or so. A good example of this was the controversy with Mary Beard and the BBC and people accusing them of distorting history for portraying people with dark skin in the past, in particular in Roman Britian. But by and large that's the thing people bitch about the most. Not the inaccurate portrayal of culture or costume but the physical appearance of the actors. I'm playing Expeditions: Rome and the game's portrayal of Kleopatra and Hellenistic Egypt is pretty bad. Kleopatra acts like a brat but according to Ploutarkhos of Khaironeia it was her wit and persuasiveness that Caesar and Anthony found attractive which isn't found here. Not only in her attitude but also her dress which plays up orientalists stereotypes of a seductress foreign queen and Egyptian soldiers are not dressed at all for the period instead sporting very archaic looking gear.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/5/1/AALLlEAAEeDD.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/5/2/AALLlEAAEeDE.jpg
The game was torn apart by the Roman historian Bret Devereaux but nevertheless as he notes in his blog entry of the game it was praised for it's perceived historical accuracy which on the surface "looks" right but very much isn't. It shows that orientalists depiction of Hellenistic Egypt are very much alive and even "appear" right to people, or at least people aren't bitching about things like that as much as casting a darker skinned actor which I think speaks magnitude of volumes over what the issue is actually about under the thin veneer of bitching about historical accuracy.