Friday, February 21, 2020
The Great White Way. A Book of Woke Supremacy about Broadway’s White Supremacy
New York Theater: Are Broadway musicals covert vehicles for white supremacy? That’s more or less the argument that theater writer Warren Hoffman made in his 2014 book. The title apparently proved popular enough to allow a just-published second edition of The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical (Rutgers University Press, 285 pages), which adds a chapter on “The Book of Mormon” and “Hamilton.”
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I am currently taking a class called the Roots of Rock and Roll, in which we study the origins of music throughout American history. To begin the course we studied the ways in which the history minstrel shows and blackface impact our entertainment industry today. While we recognize that these performances were extremely racist, it is important to keep in mind that the first-ever Broadway shows were minstrel shows. This article also explores classic, iconic shows that have a history of racism such as Hello Dolly!, that "contribute significantly to the whiteness of this country". Overall, I agree that even in modern musical theatre we tend to get very caught up in the stories of white people. For example, one of the most popular musicals in the past couple of years was Dear Evan Hansen, however, in terms of representation, the entire cast was white excluding one character of color, and the show covered a very white focused storyline. Granted, shows like Hamilton are attempting to shift this narrative, but there is still a very long way to go.
As Elena pointed out above, musical theater is quite literally rooted in white supremacy. Everything about the modern musical is derived from minstrel shows. Today’s musicals still hold onto this with their plots and morals which, as the article points out, center around the American dream. The American dream is simply a myth which does not apply to any marginalized group. That said, I agree with this article that this book quickly crosses over into Woke Supremacy. For instance, the criticism of Hamilton seems extremely unfair. Sure, it could have gone even more radical than it did, but Hamilton was serving a very specific purpose. One that it served very well. Hamilton wanted to tell the story of America, but tell it using the people who actually built America. Additionally, the criticism of Book of Mormon essentially claims that satire cannot be used as an effective way of exposing white supremacy.
The theatre industry, as well as it’s history, unfortunately caters to the white artist and to white stories. This does not mean efforts are not being made to decolonize the theatre/musical theatre industry, but it is important regardless to recognize the roots of the industry we are participating to and contributing to. As young artists, we are frankly the future of the musical theatre world, and we can push the shift in a more diverse direction where privilege is recognized and talked about. This of course doesn't mean everything will change overnight, or even in a few years, but I think it is still important that we make the effort and bring awareness. As a person of color looking to enter the theatre and/or film industry, I have come to realize how critical it is we start to put more diverse stories and storytellers out to the world.
While I think it's pretty well established that there is historically a lack of people of color in the theatre industry, I feel the book discussed may be picking and choosing the examples to support their thesis. I understand that that is typically how you write an argument, through picking the examples that demonstrate the issue you've identified, but it's also important to acknowledge the exceptions to the rules you are trying to prove exist. The points about Hamilton not addressing slavery and the moral ambiguity of the founding fathers bothered me to a certain degree. While it is important to not mark that out of our history, we also have to understand that Hamilton is a musical and not every important issue of that time period could be or should be expected, to be included. Remembering that theatre is also a work of art it should also be up to the playwright to include what they feel is necessary to tell the story they choose to display. I'm not disputing that the issue exists, but I also don't think we should expect every production to conquer the big underlying issues of the industry.
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