First they came for Aunt Jemima

[George K]

Then they came for Uncle Ben.

Then they came for Apu and Spongebob.

Now they're coming for Othello:

The Polish tenor Piotr Beczala, interviewed by Christian Berzins today in the Aargauer Zeitung:

Es ist lächerlich, dass man sich nicht mehr vorstellen kann, Otello in einem Theater schwarz zu schminken. Jemandem verbieten, sich schwarz anzumalen, wenn er Otello singt? Verbieten, einer Butterfly Schlitzaugen zu malen? Das ist schwach, selbst wenn es Gründe dafür gibt,…, Es gibt visuelle Reize, die aufs Publikum wirken, sie verdreifachen den Effekt. Dazu gehört die schwarze Haut Otellos. Das Visuelle entfacht den Zauber der Emotionen,…, Oper ist ein Gesamtkunstwerk, jedes Element zählt – auch der schwarze Titelheld.

It is ridiculous you can no longer imagine wearing make-up for Otello in a theater. Forbid anyone to paint themselves black to sing Otello? Forbid painting narrow eyes on Madam Butterfly? This is tough, even if there are reasons for it … There are visual stimuli that affect the audience, they triple the effect. That includes Otello’s black skin. The visual kindles the magic of emotions, …, opera is a total work of art, every element counts – even the black hero.

[Catseye3]

I am actually encouraged, the more extreme these developments become. It is more than probable, don't you suppose, that this whole movement will burn itself out as its childish ridiculousness becomes more flagrant?

[George K]

@Catseye3 said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

I am actually encouraged, the more extreme these developments become. It is more than probable, don't you suppose, that this whole movement will burn itself out as its childish ridiculousness becomes more flagrant?

That's what I like about you - ever the optimist, LOL.

[Catseye3]

Nice of you to say, but it's more that I consistently am unable to believe that the human race is as stupid as it acts sometimes.

As for optimism, wait til you read my post "A Shaky Future".

[Axtremus]

@George-K said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

(https://slippedisc.com/2020/07/piotr-beczala-its-absurd-we-cant-blacken-up-for-otello/

It is ridiculous you can no longer imagine wearing make-up for Otello in a theater. Forbid anyone to paint themselves black to sing Otello? Forbid painting narrow eyes on Madam Butterfly?

The protest movement will give you two easy answers:

1. Get a naturally dark-skinned opera singer/actor, perhaps even a Moor, to play Othello.
2. Get a Japanese opera singer/actor to play Madam Butterfly

Or better yet, go write and produce some new operas or some new art forms entirely that speak to the issues and sensibilities of today.

[George K]

@Axtremus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

@George-K said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

(https://slippedisc.com/2020/07/piotr-beczala-its-absurd-we-cant-blacken-up-for-otello/

It is ridiculous you can no longer imagine wearing make-up for Otello in a theater. Forbid anyone to paint themselves black to sing Otello? Forbid painting narrow eyes on Madam Butterfly?

The protest movement will give you two easy answers:

1. Get a naturally dark-skinned opera singer/actor, perhaps even a Moor, to play Othello.
2. Get a Japanese opera singer/actor to play Madam Butterfly

Or better yet, go write and produce some new operas or some new art forms entirely that speak to the issues and sensibilities of today.

So, we should do away with blind auditions, amirite?

[Axtremus]

@George-K said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

@Axtremus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

@George-K said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

(https://slippedisc.com/2020/07/piotr-beczala-its-absurd-we-cant-blacken-up-for-otello/

It is ridiculous you can no longer imagine wearing make-up for Otello in a theater. Forbid anyone to paint themselves black to sing Otello? Forbid painting narrow eyes on Madam Butterfly?

The protest movement will give you two easy answers:

1. Get a naturally dark-skinned opera singer/actor, perhaps even a Moor, to play Othello.
2. Get a Japanese opera singer/actor to play Madam Butterfly

Or better yet, go write and produce some new operas or some new art forms entirely that speak to the issues and sensibilities of today.

So, we should do away with blind auditions, amirite?

Regardless of whether the auditions are blind, the casting is never blind. Outward visual appearance is always a factor. Do you believe otherwise?

[George K]

@Axtremus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

@George-K said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

@Axtremus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

@George-K said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

(https://slippedisc.com/2020/07/piotr-beczala-its-absurd-we-cant-blacken-up-for-otello/

It is ridiculous you can no longer imagine wearing make-up for Otello in a theater. Forbid anyone to paint themselves black to sing Otello? Forbid painting narrow eyes on Madam Butterfly?

The protest movement will give you two easy answers:

1. Get a naturally dark-skinned opera singer/actor, perhaps even a Moor, to play Othello.
2. Get a Japanese opera singer/actor to play Madam Butterfly

Or better yet, go write and produce some new operas or some new art forms entirely that speak to the issues and sensibilities of today.

So, we should do away with blind auditions, amirite?

Regardless of whether the auditions are blind, the casting is never blind. Outward visual appearance is always a factor. Do you believe otherwise?

Good point.

Do you think a shitty black actor should be cast instead of a talented white actor?

My comment about auditions references many statements I've seen by orchestras around the country talking about how they're going to "increase diversity."

[Jolly]

@Catseye3 said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

Nice of you to say, but it's more that I consistently am unable to believe that the human race is as stupid as it acts sometimes.

As for optimism, wait til you read my post "A Shaky Future".

Never underestimate the stupidity of people in large groups.

Individual people are smart. Groups are not.

[Klaus]

This is such a huge misunderstanding of what the term "actor" means.

Let's talk again when murderers can only be played by murderers.

[Catseye3]

Or the musical Cats can only be played by . . .

[Klaus]

@Axtremus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

Or better yet, go write and produce some new operas or some new art forms entirely that speak to the issues and sensibilities of today.

I can't comment on these particular operas, but I couldn't disagree more with the general sentiment of your statement. Great literature and great art transcends time and fashion. They concern the human nature and human condition, and that doesn't change within a few hundred years. It doesn't matter whether superficial aspects of the story/play/... relate to the time frame in which the piece was written. Love, hate, envy, greed, sacrifice, death - these are all human universals and there's infinite wisdom on those to be found in the canon of art and literature of the last 5000 years. It is both silly and narrow-minded to think that they are no longer relevant today.

[Jolly]

@Klaus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

@Axtremus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

Or better yet, go write and produce some new operas or some new art forms entirely that speak to the issues and sensibilities of today.

I can't comment on these particular operas, but I couldn't disagree more with the general sentiment of your statement. Great literature and great art transcends time and fashion. They concern the human nature and human condition, and that doesn't change within a few hundred years. It doesn't matter whether superficial aspects of the story/play/... relate to the time frame in which the piece was written. Love, hate, envy, greed, sacrifice, death - these are all human universals and there's infinite wisdom on those to be found in the canon of art and literature of the last 5000 years. It is both silly and narrow-minded to think that they are no longer relevant today.

I dunno...maybe Ax has a point. Maybe it's time to demand that Bach be only played German musicians, etc.....

[Axtremus]

@George-K said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

Do you think a shitty black actor should be cast instead of a talented white actor?

Why do you frame it such that the black actor is shitty and the white actor is talented? Certainly there are also talented black actors as well as shitty white actors, no?

Would you ask the question "do you think a shitty male actor should be cast instead a talented female actress?" Why or why not? Perhaps it never occurred to you that sometimes a male actor can play a female role better than a female actress? Or perhaps there's already an implicit assumption in your mind that there are enough male actors and female actresses that the producer/director should have no problem finding a male actor or a female actress sufficiently talented to play a particular male or female role?

If you can accept that a male actor should play a male role and a female actress should play a female role without overthinking which actor or actress is more talented, then why now also accept that a black actor should play a black role and a white actor should play a white role without overthinking whether a black actor is more or less talented than a white actor?

Talent has never been the sole determinant for who gets any particular job. It's just a matter of how we weigh other criteria against talent. Society changes how these different criteria are weighed over time. Sometimes certain criteria are explicitly articulated (e.g., religious doctrines, legal "protected classes", labor/immigration laws, Constitutionally defined qualifications), sometimes it's just zeitgeist (e.g., "outsider status" vs "experience/incumbency", "diversity" on different dimensions).

[Larry]

You have to be the dumbest human being on earth that can operate a computer.

[Axtremus]

@Klaus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

@Axtremus said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

Or better yet, go write and produce some new operas or some new art forms entirely that speak to the issues and sensibilities of today.

I can't comment on these particular operas, but I couldn't disagree more with the general sentiment of your statement. Great literature and great art transcends time and fashion. They concern the human nature and human condition, and that doesn't change within a few hundred years. It doesn't matter whether superficial aspects of the story/play/... relate to the time frame in which the piece was written. Love, hate, envy, greed, sacrifice, death - these are all human universals and there's infinite wisdom on those to be found in the canon of art and literature of the last 5000 years. It is both silly and narrow-minded to think that they are no longer relevant today.

It's somewhat tautological to say that great literature/art transcends time and fashion and concern human nature/condition. Human nature and condition change over time, so we're just going to stop calling certain pieces of literature/art that fail to reflect the relevant human nature/condition "great." The authors/composers themselves could not tell for how long their works would remain relevant. We can argue about whether any piece of art/literature is "relevant" today, but it's pretty much a forgone conclusion that any piece of art/literature will, given enough time, eventually become "irrelevant." It's "relevant" until it isn't. It's "great" until it isn't.

But that's not even what I meant to argue when I wrote to "go write and produce some new operas or some new art forms entirely that speak to the issues and sensibilities of today." Take, for examples:

• "Romeo and Juliet" ==> "West Side Story"
• "Madam Butterfly" ==> "Miss Saigon"
• [fairytale] ==> Disney's adaptation of [fairytale]

Go create some new material, and you can still reflect the same underlying human nature/condition in your new material. Don't just keep remaking the old stuff. You give Shakespeare or Puccini the audio/visual/SFX/CGI/3D technologies and the socio-economic realities we have today and Shakespeare/Puccini would have produced something very different that still reflects substantially the same underlying human nature/condition. So why limit yourself to the original Othello or the original Madam Butterfly?

[Axtremus]

@Larry said in First they came for Aunt Jemima:

dumbest human being on earth that can operate a computer.

Thanks to the late Mr. Steven Paul Jobs' guiding philosophy and much human-computer interface advancements made possible by the ingenuity and hard work of so many, I dare say that the computer people are quite proud of how much they have managed to lower the barrier to entry for those with lower intelligence to operate a computer, and rest assured that progress will continued to be made such that even dumber and dumber people will be able to operate a computer.

[Catseye3]

Ax, it seems as though your premise can be valid only if human nature actually does undergo change. But what if we find that human nature doesn't change, fundamentally? Then you're still faced with Klaus' themes of "love, hate, envy, greed, sacrifice, death", yes?

This is only little old me talking, but I've never seen any evidence that human nature has ever changed one iota. Condition, yes, (the human-computer interface) the nature of being human, no. (It's one of the truly comforting aspects of being alive, IMO.)

Then you've got a big problem: Drive. Where is the drive, the inspiration, in the soul of the artist to create new stuff? How impassioned can he be if he is haunted by "been there, done that"? That awareness has to be at least somewhat responsible for the fact that the great works are actually pretty scarce, don't you think? "If I can't have her, nobody can" fired audiences in the time of Othello's premiere, and it remains relevant today. How, really, can you hope to improve on Othello? And if you can't improve on it, why bother?

[Rainman]

Give 'em all Hell, Ax!
They are all so benighted, don't you agree? Like black guys playing country, or white guys playing soul. Let's get everyone in their intersectional corners, and the world will be a better place!

Outdated concepts e.g., the human condition etc., nothing is more important than race, ethnicity, gender, and other stuff, because "you don't know what it's like to be XYZ, because you don't look like XYZ, so you certainly can't act or play the part because, umm, not sure" (help me out here, bud). Black people play black parts, transgenders play transgender part(s), Basque people play Basque parts and NEVER Spanish parts, men sing like eunuchs and never are replaced by females. I could go on helping you make your points, but that's enough.

Next? Get all those Asians out of piano competitions. There is no reason they should be playing the music of western European dead men. Matter of fact, Asians didn't play that dead-guy music for centuries, and now all of a sudden, they think they have some sort of right to play it? Doesn't matter if they can play it better. If they want to play piano music, write your own music.

Ax and me. Don't f**k with us.
Are We Clear, forum?
ARE WE CLEAR!?

[Jolly]

Human nature does not change. One of the reasons the Bible is just a relevant today as it was when it was written, is because human nature has not changed one iota.