Theater
Jul 23, 2014
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Plus when minorities imitate white people, it honors the principle of 'comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable' which is another noble mission for art. This helps to emphasize the fact that it is monstrous for the powerful to mock the weak.
But in this case, Asians are really not weak, they are not really being mocked, the whites doing it are not powerful, and it is all rather silly and innocent. I say we all try to lighten up a little...maybe my racism detector isn't set sensitively enough, but my bullshit detector is going off.
I recently looked at the mission and goals of the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society and was struck by this sentence in relation to the current controversy:
"We are proud of the fact that grandparents may take their grandchildren to our shows and they can all laugh at the same jokes and hum the same tunes."
What struck me is the fact that Sharon Pian Chan, Jeff Yang, and Erin Quill represent a generation of Asian Americans whose grandparents grew up in a time, some 12 years before the society’s founding, when they might have experienced extreme (even race-bating) caricatures in popular culture, discriminatory practices in relation to attending live theatre, or worse, internment during WWII. So that the experience, as adult grandchildren, of watching a predominantly white cast perform Gilbert & Sullivan’s "The Mikado" in 2014 would be less to laugh at the same jokes and hum the same tunes, but more to laugh to keep from crying and the desire to hum a different tune by speaking out against the caricature and speaking up for the character of their respective communities.
The society’s mission also states that it provides “the highest quality musical theater productions to a broad Pacific Northwest audience at an affordable price.” No doubt an honorable endeavor, but if the responses by Mike Storie, Dave Ross, and Pam Kelley Elend are any indication of how they have and will continue to handle this issue going forward, then the society’s officers and trustees might need to change one important word in the mission statement – from the ideal of “broad” to the reality of “narrow.”
Creatively,
Tyrone Brown
Theatre Director and Producer
Brownbox Theatre: Re-Imagined Black Theatre
I recently looked at the mission and goals of the Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society and was struck by this sentence in relation to the current controversy:
"We are proud of the fact that grandparents may take their grandchildren to our shows and they can all laugh at the same jokes and hum the same tunes."
What struck me is the fact that Sharon Pian Chan, Jeff Yang, and Erin Quill represent a generation of Asian Americans whose grandparents grew up in a time, some 12 years before the society’s founding, when they might have experienced extreme (even race-bating) caricatures in popular culture, discriminatory practices in relation to attending live theatre, or worse, internment during WWII. So that the experience of their grandchildren watching a predominantly white cast perform Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado in 2014 would be less to laugh at the same jokes and hum the same tunes, but more to laugh to keep from crying and the desire to hum a different tune by speaking out against the caricature and speaking up for the character of their respective communities.
The society’s mission also states that it provides “the highest quality musical theater productions to a broad Pacific Northwest audience at an affordable price.” No doubt an honorable endeavor, but if the responses by Mike Storie, Dave Ross, and Pam Kelley Elend are any indication of how they have and will continue to handle this issue going forward, then the society’s officers and trustees might need to change one important word in the mission statement – from the ideal of “broad” to the reality of “narrow.”
Creatively,
Tyrone Brown
Theatre Director and Producer
Brownbox Theatre: Re-Imagined Black Theatre
The issue with white people dressing up as minorities has a long history in showbiz. One of the most misrepresented minority groups in Hollywood has been the Native American. A good movie about the subject is the documentary 'Reel Injun' by Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond (yes that's his real name)
While it doesn't have anything to do with the Mikado it does offer an insight into how many in Showbiz have a habit of misrepresenting minorities (specifically Natives) often in an offensive manner. Reel Injun also shows how these offensive misrepresentations can affect the people - young and old- they are "imitating"
If anything it's a great documentary and instead of white people fending off the issues with "red herrings" and what not it may help ease the ignorance of some.
She admits that up-front in her op-ed. So why should any of us take her criticisms and complaints seriously? An open, honest debate about racism and ethnic representation is fine, but Chan's rant holds little weight for me since she's conducting it in a vacuum.
Mr. Kiley, you wouldn't review a play you haven't seen, would you? That's grounds for firing at most publications. So why are we letting Chan off the hook just because she's hiding under the op-ed page?
Her anger is from the same mentality that leads to banning books. Or burning them.
I’d be surprised if Ms. Chan hasn’t read the piece. (She doesn’t say.) Does she have to see the production—any production of the silly little operetta—in order to criticize the play? I think that all depends. There are plenty of people bored shitless by the ever-popular Shakespeare who’ve never seen an actual production—excepting perhaps some lame-ass film version. (Hell, I’ve listened to people bellyache about the Theatre in general who’ve never seen a play. But that’s a discussion for another time…)
While they are much more substantial plays to be certain, there are nonetheless a goodly number of religionists who won’t deign to see Kushner’s Angels in America, or McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion!—to name just two—condemning them as godless garbage, or worse. And you know what? They don’t have to. I get it. I may not agree with their assessment—even find laughable—but I grok their issue(s) with the plays. I fully get the fact they find it offensive, for very personal reasons.
In fact, I know how they feel: I don’t need to see the “innocent merriment” of a minstrel show in order to find the entire concept excretable. Do I really have to see one of these racist ditties to condemn them? Don’t think so.
Which brings us back to Ms. Chan. Perhaps the biggest take-away in all of the media coverage (and copious comments) were people telling Ms. Chan what she may or may not find objectionable or even disrespectful to her own upbringing and heritage. People failing to take into account a simple rubric: Tribe A does not get to tell Tribe B how Tribe B feels or should feel or should or shouldn’t respect on matters directly related to Tribe B.
Like Mr. Kiley, and a number of others, I find the conclusion drawn in the WSJ to effectively hit the proverbial nail on the head.
It is critical and inexcusable that Ms. Chan has not seen it, because no one who has actually seen it thinks it is making fun of Japanese people.
Where is the outrage about the Seattle Opera's production of Madame Butterfly?
@7 and others: I am one of those grandchildren, and we did laugh. The 'little list song' is perfect; it mocks the actors (who happen to be mostly full-blooded euro-crackers) in a way that appears to have been designed to answer critiques post-Sharon-Chan-op-ed, yet in truth it's original text - it was the same line when grandpa and I saw this operetta in 2008. It's not unlike Puck's apology to his audience (paraphrase); "if we shadows have offended, be fucking REALISTIC about the fact it's theatre."
For what it's worth, the sets were actually beautiful homages to East Asian architecture and design. (MUCH Better than the same homages given in media franchises with MILLIONS of fans/viewers, such as 'The Last Airbender' or 'Kung Fu').
Is there room for improvement ? Oh sure, yeah. Isn't there always?
That's the definition of why remounts are remounted.
For one: SG&S could get the black editor pen out and not name the foreign nation as "Japan", the way that Star Trek used to - using all kinds of 'aliens & planets' as analogs for race/nation/culture. Not sure why SG&S didn't.
Can I appreciate the art and its echoes of racist tones in the context of how much better we've come, and how Impossible it is that we'll ever backslide to 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' type acting/directing? Yup, I savor that.
Can I appreciate in context of a living museum piece? Yes, especially since I've seen other G&S shows, plus other versions of Mikado. The bumbling, marriage-obsessed, buffooning, officious, violence-threatening airheads are STOCK in EVERY G&S show, so it's all about the context.
Can I appreciate it in the context of being theatre, and therefore reflecting truths about the audience, both positive and negative, easy and hard? YOU BET YOUR SWEET WHATEVER-COLORED ASS I CAN.
Please.
See the show. Have the credibility and the actual evidence, then form your opinions, everyone. I look forward to the pow-wow hosted by the Rep.
(Oh shit, I bet a hapa using 'powwow' is going to be seen as racist, too, right?)
;|
Well fuck that. White people do know what racism is. White people have met racists. White people see the results of real institutional racism in the markets. Those are real problems but they are almost never overt and are very difficult to trace back to an individual racist white person. The real problems will take years and years to overcome while our children and grandchildren interbreed.
So when a Dave Ross comes along in a kimono as a flesh and blood white person, these ridiculous “white fragility” issues crop up as a surrogate to the real problems and delay progress because it puts people on the defensive and forces people to draw lines in sand the keep us separated.
One of the things I love about the Internet is that the veil of supposed anonymity causes people to loosen the reins on their hatred, and out comes the truth. It's even more delightful when people are foolish enough to put their full names behind their false righteousness.
Don't be shy; tell us how you really feel. Show us how proud you are to belittle the experiences of the marginalised!
But remember, the measure of compassion is not our behaviour toward those who are more fortunate than we, but our behaviour toward those over whom we enjoy advantage.
It is possible to somewhat excuse the Gilbert & Sullivan of 1885 by understanding history. Not entirely, but as a relic of history, we can let bygones be bygones, provided it isn't continually revived and thrown in our faces. It is not possible to wave away the fact that we now understand The Mikado to be racist in its very nature. The play should not "be banned", but it should "be ignored", and allowed to die out.
Misha Berson's article from the other day is extremely insulting to Asian-American students of the Theatre. It positions yet another white person as the expert explaining to a benighted minority why we shouldn't be offended, and erases the long history of Asian expertise in the dramatic arts. "Oh, if only you had *seen* it!" cries Berson, "only *then* could you possibly have anything valid to say about 'The Mikado'!" As if there is no possibility that we could have actually seen the play at any point in our lives, much less studied the libretto and history of Gilbert & Sullivan in one of the most prestigious drama schools in the world. I went to Carnegie-Mellon University for Theatre. CMU is one of the top 10 professional drama schools in the world. And I'm Asian-American.
There are many works of art from the past which are widely regarded now as racist or at the very least highly insensitive to marginalised people, and which are no longer celebrated, even if they are still studied for their historical context. Berson also committed the fallacious error of assuming that one Japanese woman's bemusement with The Mikado production in Tokyo is sufficient stand-in for the feelings of anyone else, at all, let alone Asian-Americans who exist in a far different context than the till relatively isolationist Japan.
At what point are white people going to give up on justifying their racism?
It's unprofessional for her to hand down judgment against something she admits she knew little about and made little-to-no effort to educate herself on.
Since then, she's seen the show, so good for her. (Spoiler alert: She still thinks it's racist.) But Chan's demerits for the initial piece stand. She stirred up a race debate by shouting her opinion, based solely on a photograph and, I'm guessing, a quick glance at some G&S Society promotional materials.
Besides, to use your A/B rubric: As comment 18 points out, isn't that precisely what Chan was doing with her initial op-ed?
The operetta was originally set in Japan; the opening song announces "we are gentlemen of Japan". This was simply a traditional staging of the operetta, as it was originally conceived. The set shows a painted screen, a form of art perfected in Asia and a wonder to the rest of the world. Painted Japanese screens adorn some of our local museums, I believe. It wasn't chosen as part of the set to be pejorative, it was chosen because it was admirable. I believe the motivation Gilbert and Sullivan had for setting it in Japan was to also showcase Japanese fashion and art, which were growing in popularity in England at the time. The text of the show certainly shows no disrespect to Japan, its people or its culture.
It is hard to know why Ms Chan saw this as yellowface, rather than simply as imitation: imitation is, after all, the most sincere form of flattery.
Well put. I couldn't have said it better myself.
Gary Ross is a dipshit though. No argument there.
BUT remember to really pick your battles because there are some big ones out there......and by the time a stodgy, satire filters it's way down to a production at the Seattle Rep-----there is no chance in hell that we are pointing a finger at real racism......it's out there....just not there. Keep looking.....sigh.....it's free for the taking...everywhere..don't gotta buy a ticket....................it's free........forest for trees................
And yes, minstrel shows often had great music. And they were considered just silly fun. Shall we bring those back, DaisyB? I bet you'd love them.
I've seen the Mikado twice. The first time I was disgusted. The second time I was dragged to it by a white friend who promised me that if I went in the right spirit, I'd enjoy it. He was wrong. This friend, who was gay, had to reconsider his position: how would he feel if a show, written and performed entirely by straight people, used gay people as jokes? If the gay-ness itself was a point of fun? If the satire amounted to: "Our society is so ridiculous, it's just like being gay!"
Guess what? The Mikado hurt. Both times. But the G & S theater nuts REFUSE to listen to why. Maybe when you put it on, you're innocent. But when people of Asian descent tell you - please, this is horrible. This hurts. And then you keep doing it, and dismiss their concerns? That's racism.
Names like "Nanki-Poo" are certainly silly. But every Asian American has childhood memories of hearing nonsense gibberish spoken at them - "Your mom talks like this!" The rendering of our languages as gibberish means something different to us. It carries pain with it.
What's so disgusting is that our cultures are just used as ornament, as punchline, as just another tool for white people's entertainment.
Some white people get so angry when you take away their good clean racist fun.
And it's also part of a pattern. A pattern where Asian faces are excluded from movies, where Asian men are never rendered as full human beings, where the supposedly liberal theater world casts a classic like the Orphan of Zhao with entirely Caucasian actors, and then uses as its excuse, "Asian actors just weren't talented enough to be in our production!"