-------------------- It's not my burden to disabuse the ignorant of their wrong opinions Posts: 2699 | From: New York | Registered: Jun 2015
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The character Hippolyta, a mid-Jim Crow Era ADOS woman, gets portaled to a Fon volunteer King's Wives squad for training. Just happens Hippolyta's the name of a Greek myth Amazon queen (perhaps explaining the end scene armour and lack of guns?).
Dahomey, Benin: Seh Dong Hong Beh, a leader of the Ahosi/Mino (aka the Dahomey Amazons). Frederick Forbes (1851) Dahomey and the Dahomans.
Named after HP Lovecraft of Cthuhlu etc. occult mythos fame, Lovecraft Country episodes move kinda slow. So it needed more than one season. Excellent soliloquy/dialog moments throughout the season. Like the very telling one ending the Josephine Baker segment.
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I saw this movie a few days ago and had a good time with it. It does cast the Dahomeans as the protagonists against other Africans (and their European collaborators) seeking to enslave them, but it does call out Dahomey's own dependence on the slave trade on more than one occasion as well. I understand why the idea of lionizing the Dahomean Agojie might rub people the wrong way, but it isn't like the movie turns a total blind eye to that facet of Dahomean history.
Unfortunately, most conflicts between West African states during that time period would not have been simple "good guys versus bad guys" stories since they were almost all trying to acquire enslaved people for European "customers". Even some of the people who got enslaved probably participated in slave raids themselves before ending up on the receiving end. History has a way of being messy and complicated like that.
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Misha Green is a writer and executive producer.
Shannon Houston is a writer and producer.
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