In a recent decision of casting legendary black actor Denzel Washington as the ancient Carthaginian general Hannibal in an upcoming Netflix film has sparked a firey debate in Tunisia, the legendary general’s birthplace.
Hannibal, one of the greatest generals humanity has stood witness to had led his troops and African war elephants across a high pass in the Alps to strike at his adversaries who happened to be the mighty Romans from the north. This feat of his not only changed the course of history but also engraved his name in books with golden letters.
Hannibal’s home, Carthage belongs to the nation of Tunisia, which despite being the northernmost state in Africa is still considered to be a part of the Arabic World and the nation has now accused this casting as an act of ‘falsifying history’.
While Hannibal’s skin color is not known, most historians agree he was of Phoenician descent, a region encompassing modern Lebanon and Syria. For this, the historical figure being played by a black man certainly strikes the wrong chords.
It has also been seen a lot recently, especially in Hollywood that a lot of black people are being casted just for the sake of it, so as to not offend a strata of the American Population. People have also raised their voices against popular and well acclaimed works like Godfather for simply not having casted a person of colour even though it was a logical and not a racist move by the producers.
This trend has also been seen in the more recent Disney films which had lackluster performances in the Box Office. A very fine example of this is the latest casting of Halle Bailey in the movie, The Little Mermaid in which not once did her presence on the screen not feel off.
This however, doesn’t mean that all castings of people of colour in roles which have previously been dominated by white humans are doomed as was seen by Denzel’s performance as Macbeth, who was earlier played by mostly white males.
His performance was appreciated around the globe but we also must not forget the existence of racists who cannot bear to see a black actor’s on screen, as even in such a legendary performance they had pointed out a felony, which was obviously his colour.
Since Netflix’s announcement of Denzel’s casting for the role of Hannibal people took to various social platforms, especially X and Reddit to express their opinions.
One Reddit user said that the main issue isn’t Denzelle being black but him being a 68 year old man, while Hannibal, at the time of the battle against the Romans, Hannibal was just 28; a tremendously big gap which will be hard to cover up even for Washington. Another user took to X to voice out his opinion which stated that Afrocentrism demands everyone to be made black and that Whites and Northern Africans are no longer allowed to have their own history and heritage.
