Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Race & Theatre: That Awkward Moment When You Realize Your Show is Racist
OnStage: One of theatre’s most wonderful features is its ability to breathe new life into old works. The downside is that sometimes these older works represent outmoded ideas and prejudices, particularly concerning race. As modern artists, how are we to respond when faced with potentially being affiliated with a show which contains racist content due to being produced at a time when such attitudes were common?
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This article has portrayed the great conflict between casting roles not written for the specified race and not wanting to be limited by location and available people. Thoroughly Modern Millie is a perfect example, as I also did a production of it my freshman year of high school and we also had two predominantly white men play the roles of Ching Ho and Bun Foo. And all of us thought it was hilarious. My town had a reasonable population of Asian people, however none of them auditioned for the show, so the casting pool was limited to those who had. This article makes a very concise argument about how “Cutting out a word here or there is unlikely to really change whatever undertones the play may contain.” And I find this so important because so many directors I’ve had think it will be all better if we just don’t use “that” word in production. What is never comprehended, however, is that the themes and most actions are left intact.
I think one of the most important points made in this article is the idea that individual theater artists need to know where the line is for them about what they feel they will or won’t do for ethical reasons. For example, a white actor deciding that they won’t accept any roles written for a person of color. To me, the important thing about that is not drawing that line specifically (though I do think that is a good line to draw) but the idea of having decided in advance, before any role is ever offered, that you simply won’t do that. If someone hasn’t already decided what they would do in that situation, they might get caught up in the excitement of a potentially really cool role and make a choice they will ultimately regret/ feel was unethical. In general, I think it is a good idea to consider what projects you do not consider morally okay, and already know at what point you will say no so that you are prepared when such a situation comes.
It is really interesting and kind of scary when you realize the amount of racism in older shows and how no one really saw it as an issue before. Characters of a certain race were often the butt of the joke or a stereotypical character of that race. They were rarely treated as just a normal character. It is really crazy to think about people putting on black face or yellow face to pretend to be someone of a different race. If you needed someone of a certain race then you should cast someone who is actually that race instead of getting a white person to pretend. There are many actors of color who struggle to get jobs because there are not enough parts for them and the few that are for them are being given to white people who pretend to be like them. I think we are getting better as a society and doing black face and yellow face less and less, but there is still definitely more room for improvement.
I agree with Sam as far as the idea that we don't always realize just how racist old shows were. Shows that are even still performed/revived to this day, like Porgy and Bess, were rooted in incredibly racist views and traditions that the theatre industry was happy to disregard. Even minstrel shows are still sort of studied instead of vilified, because they changed theatre, but we rarely discuss precisely how negative boiling people down to stereotypes can be for the marginalized race in question. White people naturally can never understand what it is to be marginalized, so the only way theatre can actually be a force for change in regards to helping out these marginalized groups is by having the conversation with the groups in question and ask what needs to be done in the portrayal of the race to further the dialogue in a respectful and honest way. I think that morals have a lot to do with it, but so does checking your privilege at the door and putting yourself in the shoes of someone of a different race, imagining the hardship and the issues and going from there.
I’m in a very similar boat to Kim. One of the first shows I was really involved in in high school was our production of Thoroughly Modern Millie. For a tiny private school we actually had a decent sized Asian population but ended up with an entirely white cast because none of them auditioned. The actor playing Bun Foo actually had to dye his blonde hair black for the role. However, looking back the most uncomfortable part about this experience for me was that we DID get complaints about the show from our larger community and our director, an incredibly sweet man, not wanting his young performers to feel bad, said that these were just a few people and that everyone he had talked to loved the show. We all laughed all the criticism instead of taking it to heart because we knew we weren’t bad or racist people and we were just putting on a show. Whatever prejudice there might be in the text, it was okay because we had good intentions. This kind of thinking is harmful and dangerous because it teaches these young privileged white kids to ignore the voices of minorities and to believe that if they don’t feel like they are being racist they can’t possibly act in a racist way. If directors of young children want to keep doing shows like Millie they have to be ready to talk about this uncomfortable subjects openly and critically.
Especially lately, I’ve been very bothered by the excuse of “that’s the way things were back then!” in reference to why we continue to do shows with rampant racism, sexism, etc without any level of awareness or adaptation. In high school I did Thoroughly Modern Millie, and while there were plenty of asian students at my school, there weren’t many in the drama guild. The brothers were played by an asian girl and a white guy, and Mrs. Meyers was played by a white guy as well, and they used eyeliner to accentuate his features and make him more “asian-looking”. In this way, the production had both written-in yellow face (with Mrs. Meyers) and yellow face done for the sake of casting (with the white brother). Even though I am asian at the time I didn't see the problematic nature of this because we had had similar casting issues in other shows that had seemed unavoidable. I think it’s so important that even when we do classic shows, we are aware of the circumstances of the time and are making statements about how far we’ve come and make sure that we’re not repeating history’s mistakes.
This is a real (awkward) struggle, and not just in plays. There have been debates on the value of plays, novels, movies, even laws that contain discriminatory or racist or sexist or xenophobic content which is not considered problematic at all back when they were first written down or produced. What makes the situation more challenging is that some of them were regarded as breakthroughs then, like the example in this article, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a historically significant novel that “helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War”, but it contains racial stereotypes and the stage production even had minstrel acts. The Rover that I worked on was also considered ground breaking in the 17th centaury, because it was featuring women as leading characters written by a woman. But still, the play is so sexist in today’s world that the design team and the cast have been struggling to make sense of and deal with the fact that they are working on this production.
I’ve never seen the Thoroughly Modern Millie, but the cover photo made me frown already before I started the read. Plus, Ching Ho and Bun Foo are not even real Chinese names. They are pronounced wrong and spelled wrong. They are literally the weird sounds Americans make when they try to say a Chinese name. Like, if you want to write a Chinese character, at least get the name right. I honestly do not know what to say. The whole concept of minstrel acts or white actors putting colors on their faces to pretend to be non-whites is super humiliating to the race they are playing. And even if the correct race is casted to play those roles, the situation would just be as annoying because the content is racist. And they are reinforcing the stereotypes. I agree it should be a personal choice to draw a line somewhere for both white people and non-whites, for performers, designers, managers and directors, especially in this day and age when being politically correct, which is the bare minimum of respect to diversity, is trashed by the future government.
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