As the vast majority of people nowadays learn history mainly (often only) through the prism of fictionalised media, it is scandalous and unforgivable that films like the newly released “The Woman King” ignore real African history altogether, and instead cater to the white, progressive demand for one-dimensional caricatures of black victimhood.
The complexities of the slave trade do not fit neatly into the simplistic worldview of Western cultural elites. For them, black people are victims of history rather than participants in it. ”The Woman King” reflects this worldview by erasing the fact that vast numbers of slaves were held by Africans long before Europeans arrived, and that nearly four million slaves were sold by Africans to European traders between 1801 and 1866.
For the truth about the slave trade, I recommend Hugh Thomas’s classic history “The Slave Trade”, rather than the simplistic fiction peddled by travesties like this film, where all available real history, including first-hand written accounts, is erased. In its place, the film aims to reinforce the most superficial aspects of modern identity politics, with black female heroes and white European villains.
“The Woman King” is an inversion of history. It portrays violent African slave-traders as freedom-fighting abolitionists. It shows all black people as the righteous oppressed, and all white people as evil oppressors. It is perverse, and it is dangerous.
“Blonde”, the recently released biopic of Marilyn Monroe, is yet another Hollywood travesty. Marilyn’s life should not be defined merely by her supposed ‘victimhood’, and she was most certainly no ‘dumb blonde’. She was an avid reader with an extensive personal library, and embraced radical left-wing politics throughout her short life, which was terminated when she threatened to expose secrets she had learned through her affairs with the Kennedy brothers. She was a rare beauty inside and out and deserves better than this exploitative Hollywood trash.
*Orbis Non Sufficit* 