Review of The Woman King (2022) by Errantbelle — 19 Sep 2022

Imagine, if you will, a world in which the descendants of slaves making a film exalting and covering for the very people who captured, mutilated, enslaved, and then sold their ancestors.

That is the Woman King.

It's hard to imagine a more offensive movie.

For anyone who knows anything about West African history, this film will be extremely difficult to watch.

While a slight tweaking of facts is understandable in a dramatization of actual events, the Woman King is a wholesale fabrication.

Put another way, there is significantly more outright lies than accurate representations of the Dahomey dynasty.

What makes that so unforgivable is that they are trying to exalt as heroes the inner circle of a kingdom that was built entirely on slavery.

Alas, they do not stop there.

The makers of this movie ignore the fact that Guezo created female assassins because all the men under his rule were sent to capture him more slaves he could sell to increase his wealth and power.

Moreover, the actual Dahomey female guard were not true warriors; their job was to slaughter anyone who got close to their not well liked leader.

This reality was illustrated when the women "warriors" had to deal with French soldiers, who easily killed the vast majority of them with ease.

No one should watch this film because it is seriously a very offensive and warped misrepresentation of basic truths.

With so little being known about West African history outside the region, this was a beautiful opportunity to share it will the world.

Instead, they churned out a despicable piece of propaganda that seeks to rewrite history, which is a grotesquely offensive thing to do to all the ancestors of individuals who were enslaved by King Guezo and his minions.