I saw this a while ago and meant to comment, as requested at the end of the show. First of all, the actress playing Cleopatra was physically very beautiful. When films or docs depict her that way, they're kind of missing the point of her power. It wasn't phyical beauty that made her magnetic. Very few ancient coins depict her face, though a handful survive. It is thought that these images were very accurate representations of the subjects. Here is Cleopatra's:
From what I've read, many believe she was merely average. I think it belittles her power to attempt to over dramatize her appearance. Let's face it, more average looking women could use a job here in the business anyway.
Secondly, I was disturbed by the over dramatization of the CGI snakes. Not so much those used to show the women using them for the suicide that probably never happened, but by the ones just thrown in jumping at the screen for freak out factor. The job of documentaries is to be as factual as possible. Snakes are at the top of many people's list of phobias and those that fear or even adore snakes do not need to be reminded that they can be poisonous, dangerous and unpredictable creatures. Most people with deep seated phobias are very abused people that couldn't put their real fears into words and thusly used real life things to represent them. Dramatic music, camera angles and other such things create and reinfoce phobias. In my opinion, it's best to be very cautious and restrictive when choosing how to represent something that commonly sparks fear. It's irresponsible not to consider how people will react to such things. I understand the need to sell a show, but for me, I viewed this because I wanted to know the facts, not to avert my eyes every time my 55 inch screen had a giant cobra leaping at me.
Other than these two concerns, I thought the doc was amazing. I had long thought it ridiculous that anyone could let a cobra kill them, much less 3 women, one after the other. I'm still surprised when I see sites that still claim she comitted suicide now.
Thanks for your time.
