The Woman King Doesn't Tell the Whole Story, But Should It Have To?

Images furnished by Sony Pictures. Originally published in AphroChic magazine Issue 10, Fall 2022.

History is a tricky beast to nail down. The result of a mixture that’s equal parts objective science, subjective perspective, political power, and good old fashioned belief, history is a feat, the attempt of which leaves scholars and students alike with the same inevitable paradox: on one hand, an unwilling acceptance of the fact that we will never be able to recount with complete accuracy or objectivity exactly what happened; and on the other hand a grim understanding of the consequences of getting it too wrong or worse yet, not trying at all.

It is impossible to overstate the importance of history because of the concrete relationship it has with the present. Fully one half of the present moment is made up of the consequences of things that happened in the past. The rest is made up of how we choose to see that past and those things. The fight for control of how we see history is currently at a fever pitch as lawmakers and school boards, concerned parents and billionaires with dreams of social-engineering all weigh in on what history we will teach and who will or won’t be included in it. But history, certainly our understanding of it, is not made up entirely of textbooks and classrooms. Pop culture will also have its say through the countless TV shows, movies, and other forms of content that shape our perspectives of both our daily lives and the lives that came before.

Into this fraught landscape steps the recent film, The Woman King, headlined by producer and star Viola Davis. The ambitious film purports to wring a story of African sovereignty, female political and military power, and an image of a once flourishing society out of a moment in history which has almost exclusively been represented cinematically by male-dominated tropes of the suffering and misery of Black primitives and the Europeans who — however unjustly — dominated them. A good goal to have. Yet, from the moment it was released, The Woman King garnered a wave of backlash. Accusations of bad history and half-truths, infantilizing tropes, and catering to the guilt-ridden sensibilities of white elites, all created an air of questionability around the value of the film and the intentions of those responsible for its creation.

At the heart of the controversy around this tale of the Agojie, the powerful female warriors of Dahomey, is the setting of Dahomey itself. One of the most powerful polities of West Africa at the time, Dahomey was a major participant in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the violent conflicts that fueled it. The portrayal of this participation and of the Dahomean characters’ attitudes towards it, most notably King Ghezo — played by John Boyega — differs significantly from what is recorded in history.

It is important to note at this point that the authors of this article have not yet seen the film, though we have every intention to do so once it becomes available to stream. So we will not go into detail here about what the film gets right or wrong. There are already numerous articles that go into great detail about the content of the film versus the actual history of the kingdom, including Ghezo’s commitment to continuing the trade, his conspiracy with famed Brazilian slave trader Francisco Felix de Sousa to overthrow his brother (the former king), and the brutality of the Agojie’s raids.

We encourage readers to explore further. Dahomey is one of the most complex examples of an extremely complex time and doing justice to its history is more than any one article can reasonably be expected to do. In this article, the question is not whether the accusations of historical inaccuracy leveled against the film are correct, but why they are being leveled so vehemently and whether they’re being directed at where they will do the most good.

The Woman King is not the first film to depict the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade — and it’s far from the first to get that history wrong. Amistad, Django Unchained, Harriet, and even Roots have all left something to be desired in their depiction of events, whether by inventing characters (a necessary storytelling maneuver) or by misinterpreting or reinterpreting the point, process, or impact of events. And in the process, these errors or omissions often present events in ways that are more in keeping with generally accepted assumptions — or just wishful thinking — about the power dynamics and ethics of the time.

Roots’ famous depiction of white men leading bands of Africans on slave-catching raids, for example, misses the fact that, historically, military enslavement through warfare between African nations accounted for the vast majority of people enslaved. Arguably, this version also minimizes African agency by depicting the slave-catchers themselves as little more than the tools of Europeans — a generally accepted though incorrect perspective.

Similarly, historian Eric Foner takes issue with Amistad’s presentment of the court case on which the film is based and the historical impact of the verdict that concluded it. “The film gives the distinct impression,” he states, “that the Supreme Court was convinced by Adams' plea to repudiate slavery in favor of the natural rights of man, thus taking a major step on the road to abolition. In fact, the Amistad case revolved around the Atlantic slave trade — by 1840 outlawed by international treaty — and had nothing whatever to do with slavery as a domestic institution.”

Just as Roots downplays African agency, and therefore culpability, in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Amistad reinterprets the case with the wishful thinking that it marked a significant shift in the American attitude towards the institution of slavery. Conversely, Foner reports that, “Incongruous as it may seem, it was perfectly possible in the nineteenth century to condemn the importation of slaves from Africa while simultaneously defending slavery and the flourishing slave trade within the United States.”

These types of historical errors are in no way unique to movies about slavery or the slave trade. While Kevin Costner’s fictional Robin Hood might be forgiven for lacking a proper accent, not only was the historical King Richard I not Scottish, he barely spoke English at all, spending only a few months of his 10-year reign in the country. So if this sort of thing happens in movies all the time, why are we so upset with The Woman King?

Unlike the stories of Robin Hood and the history of King Richard, the characters that make up the history of the African Diaspora, from the Agojie of Dahomey to Touissaint L’Ouverture, rarely find themselves the subject of films. Telling the story correctly, or at least completely, is important simply because we know we may not get the chance to tell it again. Moreover the tropes that mass media events like movies create and reinforce impact the lives of Black Americans far more than is typically the case for white Americans. So while getting King Richard’s accent wrong isn’t likely to affect the life chances of the average white American, for a movie like The Woman King, whether it leans towards diminishing African agency by minimizing African complicity in the slave trade or blaming them completely for its atrocities — neither of which would be accurate — the prevailing themes to come out of it will interact with the complex web of stories, tropes and stereotypes that surround Black people in America and which do impact our lives in concrete ways every day. So yes, a detailed, nuanced and accurate depiction of events would be preferable. If nothing else, it has often shown to make for better movies. But the problem that The Woman King raises ultimately is not that it, or any other movie, fails to represent history accurately — it’s the extent to which we get our history from movies.

As much as we would like to see Bass Reeves and Jim Beckwourth blazing across the screen in a Western, witness Pharaohs Taharqa and Shoshenq intervening in events recorded in the Bible, see Queen Nzinga display her legendary battle prowess or hear the masterpieces of composition from Joseph Boulogne that overshadowed contemporaries like Mozart — movies, even these movies, should not be the first place that we hear of these people, or supply the majority of what we know about them. That’s what schools are for. Unfortunately, the current fight over American education means that if we don’t act, soon it will be harder for us to find accurate and inclusive history in our schools than in our movie theaters and streaming queues.

For the past several years there has been continual conflict over inclusive histories (often mislabeled as Critical Race Theory, see issue 7) and their place in American schools. The New York Times reports attempts to ban 1,651 books as of mid-September in 2022 alone, while the century-old literary activist group PEN America lists more than 2,500 titles banned or in danger of being banned between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022. These attacks are specifically against the inclusion of people of color, LGBTQ+ identity, and women, as authors or subjects of texts in schools and local libraries. Groups of angry parents have stormed school board meetings around the country backed by right wing non-profit organizations, conservative media outlets, coalitions of lawyers and billionaires with conservative agendas and often, direct connections to the GOP.

One of the largest of these groups, No Left Turn in Education, was founded by a suburban mother near Philadelphia. Incensed by the school board’s attempts to provide students with lessons on racism and “white privilege,” following the George Floyd protests, she started the organization to save her children and others from what she called, a “plan to indoctrinate the children into the 'woke’ culture.” Boosted by an appearance on Tucker Carlson, the group grew to have as many as 30 chapters in 23 states as of June of last year. With strategies and legislative agendas being devised by conservative think tanks such as the Manhattan Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council, organizations like No Left Turn and the Washington DC-based Parents Defending Education are turning conservative parents into weapons, inundating school boards with protests, information requests and lawsuits while anti-CRT and anti-LGBTQ+ laws are proposed and passed in state legislatures. As a result, 8 states currently have some form of anti-CRT laws on their books with at least 15 more with bills in process.

Of course, there’s money in this fight. NBC News reports more than $215,000 raised by Southlake Families PAC, “around a school board battle in a wealthy Dallas-Fort Worth suburb.” An additional $100,000 was raised by school board candidates running on a promise to stop the district's cultural diversity plan. The candidates won with 70% of the vote as did two city council members and a mayoral candidate backed by the same PAC. Though perhaps even more interesting than the money to be found in this game is the money that’s backing it. In Texas, oil and fracking billionaires have put tens of millions of dollars into financing the state’s massive fall to the right in recent years through donations to political action committees and candidates for state offices as well as funding a series of conservative activist groups.

On the federal end of the spectrum of billionaire conservatives sits the shadowy figure of Barre Seid, who, despite being almost completely unheard of by the general public until recently, gave nearly $2 billion in a so-far-largely-successful venture to force the American judicial system to the right — beginning with the Supreme Court. The donation, an example of what Seid has termed “attack philanthropy,” went to the Marble Freedom Trust, headed by former Trump advisor Leonard Leo and was reportedly instrumental in the overturning of federal abortion rights. And all of it, from billionaires bankrolling a nation’s nightmares, to angry parents shouting down cultural inclusion in history classes is all part of a continuing GOP strategy of focusing on power grabs at local levels to facilitate social and political control at higher levels.

So what does any of this have to do with a movie about women soldiers supporting the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 19th century West Africa? Almost nothing, and that’s the point. As Black people — as any people — we have the right to demand that our stories be told with all the fullness, nuance and accuracy that they deserve, as much as any other story of any other people; perhaps even moreso because we understand exactly what’s at stake for us in the telling of these stories. But neither Viola Davis nor Hollywood in general, is solely or specifically responsible for providing us with our history. Nor is Davis the only or largest culprit behind their continual absence and general lack of depth. The visibility of her fame and the social realities of her race and gender might make her an easy, even acceptable target for our anger over these issues, but not an effective one.

We need change in our schools and our school boards, our city councils, governor’s mansions and in several congressional seats. Getting it will require that we take the fire we feel over this movie and a dozen other issues and use it to educate ourselves, encourage each other, take action and vote. And in the meantime, if we want to be mad at someone let’s be mad at Leonard Leo and Barre Seid, or Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks — the Texas billionaires — or the hoards of conservative parents screaming that their children’s futures depend on them remaining totally ignorant of our past — and theirs. Or, if you’re in the New York area, maybe mayor Eric Adams who recently stripped $300 million from city schools while increasing the budget for police.

Movies are a terrible place to learn history. But they can be an excellent place to spark a historical interest, provided that that interest inspires us to take the initiative, go further and learn more. The Woman King has generated a spark. More people are now aware of the chequered history of Dahomey and the Agojie than were before. And if the ire over the clear flaws in its telling of history inspire us to fight harder to have that history taught — in all of its vast and problematic detail — accurately, along with all of the rest of our histories in schools and texts that combine to include not just our story but the whole story, then this movie with all its flaws (along with a profitable box office showing, good social media scores and Oscar buzz) can only be considered a success.