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“Get a Life”: Exodus Director Ridley Scott to Race-Baiting Boycotters
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On December 8, 2014 @ 8:14 pm In The Point | 19 Comments
Get a brain would have been more apt. Exodus: Gods and Kings looks like the same bland mediocre film every studio is churning out, but Scott is up against idiots who think that the Egyptians needed to be African because Louis Farrakhan said so.
The biblical film ‘Exodus: Gods and Kings’ has come under fire for white actors being cast in the main roles as Egyptians.
But director Ridley Scott has a message for those trying to boycott the movie: ‘I say, ‘Get a life.”
One Twitter user said: ‘I’ll be boycotting Exodus and so should everyone else to tell Hollywood that whitewashing is sick and unacceptable’, while another called the casting of Oscar-winner Bale as ‘offensive’.
At Medium, writer David Dennis Jr. called the film ‘racist.’
‘Not only are these characters who are supposed to be Africans White, they’re not even remotely tan. They’re pearly White,’ he writes.
If only they had gotten a tan first then it would be okay.
They’re not supposed to be Africans. They’re supposed to be Egyptians.
While this isn’t as bad as the even bigger idiots who insist that Cleopatra needs to be played by a black actress (Nope) the Afro-Centric idea of ancient Egyptians doesn’t hold up all that well either. The topic has been endlessly debated and is particularly poisonous since Egyptian Arabs and African nationalists began battling it out in the 20th century. It’s one of those arguments where both sides are wrong.
They’re quarreling over the legacy of a vanished civilization that would have had no use for either group.
Finally the Egyptians are the villains of the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. What is the point of campaigning to make slave owners black?
Casting Christian Bale rather than a Jewish actor had obvious box appeal reasons, but the actor cast as the pharaoh is hardly a major movie star. If Scott had cast a black actor, he would be denounced for making a racist movie.
Worse still if the movie had depicted a black race as slavers and oppressors, the outrage would have been tremendous and far more devastating. Scott knows it. So do his critics. A movie like that would never have been made.
So it’s a catch 22 with no right answer. Or business as usual with political correct trolling.
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