Saturday, February 23, 2008
Worried About Guns? Ban a Campus Musical
Inside Higher Ed: "A student production of Assassins, the award-winning musical, was to have premiered Thursday night at Arkansas Tech University, but the administration banned it — and permitted a final dress rehearsal Wednesday night (so the cast could experience the play on which students have worked long hours) only on the condition that wooden stage guns were cut in half prior to the event and not used."
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15 comments:
I can see why a campus would be concerned with having guns on stage, but making people cut wooden guns in half before the show? That's going too far, this is turning into another violent video game debate, except this time if actually affects me. Think of doing "Blood Brothers" without the gun shot at the end, the rest of the play falls if the brothers don't die. I don't want to go around shooting my long lost twin brother now, so why keep the props locked up?
I think the problem with a lot of censorship in the arts and media is that it is often difficult for the "authorities" to recognize the difference between something violent, or graphic, or taboo that is being critical, making a commentary, and opening up issues for reevaluation and discussion versus a piece of art that is exploiting violence, or something, for the sake entertainment value and audience draw. Just because something is violent doesn't mean it encourages violence among students. That's part of the problem with censoship: if you stop art because of what's on the surface, you never expose people to what's underneath, to what they really need to hear and see.
This article makes me think about a long standing debate that went on at my high school about doing assassins in high achool theatre. The answer was always decidedly no, but always for reasons that were specific to the company at the time usually issues involving casting. If high school theatre, the home of stupid reasons for not doing certain shows can find assassins content appropriate for the stage, why is it inappropriate for a college company to express themselves in this powerful musical. In reading the article i found that the administration was finding silly and unjustified reasons to cancel the show. Gunshots could be heard from outside the auditorium? There is an easy way to test for that, shoot the stage effect inside while someone else listens for it outside. If the effect is problematically loud then tweak the show, not cancel it. At the end of the day this is an example of a paranoid administration wielding their power to crush anything that might be controversial or cause objection, which unfortunately in this case is also creative and academic freedom.
This is so unfortunate in so many ways. Firstly that this is even considered an issue of course. We all wish that this sort of worry were not an issue at all. Secondly its sad that such a smart musical which invokes so much thought and which could be very healing to college student right now should be called off. Thirdly that any play on a campus or not, should be called off. There are so many other ways to go about this production without this sort of ridiculous overreaction. Cutting wooden guns in half and not using them? Really? What exactly does that accomplish? Cutting a fake gun in half stops no one from using a real gun. I think that might be the stupidest thing I have ever heard of.
It seems that no legitimate reasons were given for why this was banned. I always find it interesting to see how far fetched and ridiculous an institution is willing to be when they don't want to deal with the POSSIBLE outcome of something. This happened many times in my high school. A script would get approved and as soon as someone saw a rehearsal or an actual PERFORMANCE they realized what they had allegedly read was "inappropriate."
Well, sticking with a one-sided opinion for the moment, I don't think this is necessary. As all instances such as this (virginia tech) are horrifying, at the same time, it cannot control and/or alter the entire world; this is not the first time a tragedy has struck, and unfortunately may not be the last. If real loaded guns were being tossed around on stage, that would be reason for concern. But I think if we try to be this sensitive and cautious with every situation that may arise, we should probably ban all movement from life as well. Living itself may be considered a hazard.
Infurating and ridiculous. I really can't handle this kind of censorship. When people start telling members of the arts what they can and can't do, it starts to just be a few steps away from true censorship. I really just don't see any logic in this. I hope CMU never tries to do anything like this to us... that would be so sad. I would...chain myself to something...or something...
I think it's ironic that the universities have to ban the stage weapons because the audience have difficulties distinguishing the drama and the reality. Then when would the audience ever ready to distinguish the differences? Are the artist always to protect the audience from what they are getting out of from the art forms? I understand since it is a private educational settings, but I wonder if it's the artists' responsible to what the audiences are interpreting the art work from.
They should go ahead and perform the show anyway with brightly colored water guns.
I dunno, with reports of organized violence against the school, I can see why they want to shy away from the whole thing. If there was no history at the school, then I'd be pissed, but I can see where the administration is coming from. Yeah, it sucks that students are being censored, but this is America: get used to it.
This gun restriction is absolute bullshit. The blatant hypocrisy here is sickening. If the representation of any “graphically violent scenes” is banned in the theatre by singing thespians, showing a mob movie to the student body destroys any credibility that the decision could have possibly had. Art is intrinsically geared towards bringing difficult subjects to light and the timing could not have been better for this specific show.
I would not be surprised if this article was about a high school production, but the fact that a college production needs to undergo these restrictive measures really surprises me. I would think that the college could find a way around having to close down the musical without taking away the artistic integrity of the show. I wouldn't think that this musical would really inspire violence, but I'm sure the people who made this decision aren't too familiar with musical theatre to begin with.
What's really displeasing is this lack of "academic freedom" most students would consider they have on campus. Events like these make people forget just how much freedom they have in this country. They may be allowed to perform a war play at the site of 9/11, but that doesn't mean they're not gonna get shut down by the cops 15 mins after starting. We need to distinguish what were allowed to do and what we shouldn't do, rather than being told this is wrong and this is right. And yeah, that's impossible.
Like everyone else, I think this is incredibly dumb. Stage props have never really been a problematic way of encouraging violence. The school authorities just want to seem like they are doing something without actually putting in time or money. They can now say they "stopped a show that encouraged violence." It's kind of disgusting.
To agree with the other 13 other people it is pretty stupid. There is no correlation between theatrical uses of guns and depressed suicidal people going and killing people on a school campus. This issue also bothers me because in high school I made a movie that featured a gun for about 1 second and it was barely even visible but because of that one shot I was unable to enter my film in a local film festival. I wonder how many things will be banned in 50 years...
Absolutely ridiculous.
It never has ceased to amaze me how quick people are to point fingers at artists of all brands as the catalysts of violence in our society.
Where is the mention of stricter gun laws? Maybe there would be fewer gun crimes if civilians couldn't own assault rifles. You don't hunt with an automatic weapon.
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