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> Lupin show a clear tendency to override history fidelity toward a much more political narrative...

Lupin wasn't about recasting Lupin, it's about a modern person who is inspired by the stories. I'm not really sure what that has to do with historical fidelity? I really enjoyed it, it's a fun modern crime show that deals earnestly with issues of race in contemporary France.

Maybe Africa could follow the EU example and twist Netflix's arm to make some African centered content? I'm in Egypt at the moment and you could do quite a lot of interesting stuff beyond the usual mummies coming to life and attacking people that Hollywood seems to like.

Mummies with machine guns?

I really hoped that Black Panther (the Marvel movie) was going to be the start of a new era of mainstream Afro-futurist fiction. Such an amazing genre/setting/aesthetic (depending on how it's used) that is so tragically underexplored. I've yet to see that really manifest, although I know there are sort of rumblings at the fringes -- the newest Magic: The Gathering set is explicitly paying homage to African cultures and peoples, for example.

> New European laws are forcing governements to open those fundings to "Foreign Institutions", that's why they are making this move.

They're making this move because the EU mandated[1] that locally produced content comprise at least 30% of their catalog. The subsidy expansion is a byproduct of that regulation.

1. https://www.engadget.com/2018-09-04-netflix-amazon-european-...

> Lupin show a clear tendency to override history fidelity toward a much more political narrative.

As someone who is english, what am I missing? Its a modern day rebrand of a 30's crime novel no?

I imagine i'd understand more if I could differentiate french accents.

I haven't watched Lupin, what does it do? From a political point of view.

Well I tried, and half of each episode felt pretty fresh. Probably less Hollywood cliches. The action part, that is.

However, someone decided that half of each episode should be the main character's miserable childhood. He's a poor immigrant's child whose father is blamed by the local white rich for a crime he didn't commit and dies in prison, leaving our main character an orphan. We're getting shown that in excruciating detail.

They basically spliced together a pretty good action-ish/heist movie and a depressing festival movie designed to take golden globes or something.

At least for the first 4-5 episodes, because afterwards i simply stopped watching. It was either that or skip all childhood scenes, i.e. half of each episode.

My favorite synopsis of Napoleon is from the City of Men TV Series where the teacher explains European politics in terms of favela gangs to make it relevant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rByBefzeY98 the meat is at around 22:47

> As a French coming from African descent I'm absolutely terrified of what they are going to do with character like Napoleon or Charles de Gaulle

Could you elaborate on this?

They'll get cancelled, or worse, a modern-day makeover.

While I've read a bunch of critical media of de Gaulle, much of the media I've read of Napoleon seems to be tinged with his glory - I'd actually love a more critical review of historical Napoleon given his influence on modern Europe and the West at large.

Napoleon is kind of a.. controversial character in history. let's not forget that the late 18th century was a bloody period in european history with massive societal change. It saw the removal of old medieval systems and them being replaced by more modern ideas.

Oh, all the more reason for a more critical review of his legacy, I'm sure it'd be very interesting with a more objective/modern lens.

Absolutist monarchy is an (early) modern phenomenon, not a middle age one. Middle ages ended with the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans in 1453.

In fact, wouldn't Napoleon be part (and the end ?) of the absolutist monarch phenomenon?

Napoleon was ""cancelled"" within his lifetime by being sent into exile. In Britain, his name used to be used as a shorthand for dictatorial behaviour, especially from short men.

De Gaulle was again subject to what you might call the ""woke mob"" during his lifetime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_68

People have to learn to cope with accurate presentation of what historical figures did, a lot of which was very bad especially for the losing side.

What's with the double quotes? Of course we want an accurate portrayal of the character, the good and the bad. The worry is it won't be so accurate coming from a contemporary American perspective.

I think going to the barricades is a much older French tradition and labeling it with the modern "woke" label -does tend to indicate your politics.

That's what the sarcasm quotes were for.

You know, he is not celebrated in places where he brought destruction with him. As in outlook on foreign army in more informed by pillaging then by glory.

That is how countries typically interpret history - from their point of view.

White Frenchman perspective:

Napoleon and De Gaulle are characters that are usually viewed positively in France, they were important figures that did big things for the nation (such as freeing it from the nazis). But you don't need to scratch the surface very deep to see the dark side: imperialism, colonialism, racism, despotism...

I don't particularly trust Netflix not to whitewash these leaders. It'd be easy to gloss over the not-so-shiny stuff and present them as one-sided heros to the French people, who are not always taught the dark side of their own history.

For Napoleon, I suspect there's not _that_ much danger of that, because if Netflix is developing a show to be shown all over Europe... well, Napoleon is somewhat less popular elsewhere in Europe. Just a bit.

Of course, but not universally so. Eg. Napoleon's perception in Poland is very positive (including a favourable mention in the national anthem).

When I went to France first time, I was surprised Napolen was celebrated. I was around the time people start high school.

Here, he was basically mocked (over size etc). Because he went in, brought war with him, history books have people flying city when his army is comming and he blew the castle. So basically the history is only the negative, because foreign army matching through country means hunger and violence.

> he went in, brought war with him, history books have people flying city when his army is comming and he blew the castle. So basically the history is only the negative, because foreign army matching through country means hunger and violence.

Not just that, but you also gotta remember his failed invasion of Russian Empire.

He got cocky, went all-in, didn't realize how brutal winters there were, and didn't expect that Russian generals were more than willing to set their own cities/towns on fire just to not let Napoleon capture them. So in the end, he had to retreat back to France during winter. Which not only marked his invasion as a complete failure, but also humiliated him on top of it by making him lose a ton of his soldiers on the way back due to the weather.

Napoleon army lived off land (as historical armies often did). It means that everything soldiers eat was stolen from people living there. In those times, it meant starvation for locals - marching army eats basically everything there is to eat. It obviously also involved a lot of violence against them.

Not that Russian generals would care about people that they diaplaced. But emptying those places of supplies was not just preventing capture in abstract. It was meaningfully weakening ennemy army, the same way shooting at them does. Logistics makes it breaks wars in general.

In a way, it is interesting that these realities are mostly lost from contemporary stories about wars. We like to paint heroic fights in past, but don't like to show where the food soldiers eat comes from. When we do talk about it, we use euphemisms like "living off the land" as if they were hunting and collecting berries.

>Not that Russian generals would care about people that they diaplaced. But emptying those places of supplies was not just preventing capture in abstract. It was meaningfully weakening ennemy army, the same way shooting at them does. Logistics makes it breaks wars in general.

Absolutely agreed. My original reply wasn't meant to paint Russian generals as stupid for setting their cities/towns on fire. In fact, I believe that if it wasn't for that, then Napoleon would have been way more successful in his invasion, as he was pretty much stomping the Russian military up until it got to point of capturing major cities.

In fact, Mikhail Kutuzov[0] (Russian Empire commander-in-chief at the time who was responsible for coming up with the plan to burn down Russian cities rather than giving them to Napoleon) is remembered as an exceptional military commander and a hero to this day. He let Napoleon occupy burned down Moscow, so that Napoleon army could be starved and then driven out using guerilla warfare.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kutuzov

As an aside, he probably wasn't short for the period.

The French inch was longer than the English inch at the time and the press either didn't know this or knew it and thought it'd be funny to miss-characterize.

What do you think they might do? to De Gaul or Napoleon.

And which political agenda do you exactly mean