Surely there are still some live theater production that are not arm-twusting agitprop and woke propaganda. Surely.
The production is described on the Lincoln Center website as a “rethinking of the Rudyard Kipling classic ‘The Jungle Book'” that “updates the original’s colonizer-centric perspective.” More specifically, the New York Times review tells us,
“Instead of a boy raised by wolves, Mowgli is a refugee girl separated from her family as sea levels surge. She is adopted by animals who have formed a peaceable kingdom in a city that humans have left behind. Many familiar characters appear, slightly altered. Baloo the bear is now a bear who was forced to dance by humans before escaping the humiliation. The Bandar-log monkeys are now former lab specimens, still traumatized by being experimented on but longing to replace their former masters. Kaa the python is dangerous and hypnotizing but also hung up on memories of captivity in a zoo.”
And ignore facts, history common sense and reality. Like so much of the Hamas-Israel Ethics Trian Wreck, this car has value unrelated to the war itself. Now we can understand why the Times op-eds are the way they are.
The Times just published a column by a recent edition to its stable of extreme woke pundits. Lydia Polgreen opines, in “This Photograph Demands an Answer,” that the news media should bombard the public with photographs that will flood readers’ minds with emotion, making rational, objective analysis difficult or impossible.
Many people may want to look away, to see the world as they prefer to see it. But what should we see when we see war? What should war demand all of us to see and understand? Given my experience in war zones, it is a rare thing for a violent image to stop me in my tracks. But I believe that this is an image that demands to be seen….And so I ask you to look at these children. They are not asleep. They are dead. They will not be part of the future. But know this: The children in the morgue photo could be any children. They could be Sudanese children caught in the crossfire between two feuding generals in Khartoum. They could be Syrian children crushed under Bashar al-Assad’s bombs. They could be Turkish children who died in their beds when a shoddily constructed apartment block collapsed upon them in an earthquake. They could be Ukrainian children slain by Russian shells. They could be Israeli children slaughtered in a kibbutz by Hamas. They could be American schoolchildren gunned down in a mass shooting. These children are ours.
What an infuriating, despicable headline, though the story is equally bad. If abortion supporters—yes, it’s the Democratic Party exploiting the issue—weren’t “squeamish” about what they so indignantly and self-righteously support they wouldn’t have spent the past 70 years trying to figure out ways to avoid directly admitting what they are advocating. “Baby? What baby?”
The argument for abortion, that is, terminating a developing unique human life distinct from that of its mother before it can grow to be born and go on to experience life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, has been, and still is, deliberately clouded by misleadng rhetoric about “choice” and “reproductive care,” the current dodge. Wait, how is that other human life in the equation assisted with his or her “reproduction”? Is it “care” to have that life’s own chances of reproducing taken away from it?
And what choice does the victim of an abortion have?
If Democrats weren’t “squeamish” about having to deal with those questions, they wouldn’t be trying (and, tragically, thanks to the abysmal level of attention, critical thought and ethical competence of the average American, largely succeeding) to avoid them.
In HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” a character in the midst of trying to persuade his fiance to abort their unplanned pregnancy is visited in a nightmare by his three previous aborted offspring at the age they would have been if they had been permitted to live…
I have another abortion-related post gnawing on the inside of my skull, but just as I was about to get the thing down in print, I remembered Ryan Harkin’s deft comment from two days ago, responding to Here’s Johnny’s argument that “given that we concede to government the right, in limited circumstances, to end innocent human life when a greater good is perceived (by some), why cannot we cede that right to women, in limited circumstances when a greater good is perceived?“I had been prepared to point out that Kant (as usual, dismissing special circumstances) holds that it is never ethically acceptable to sacrifice a life “for the greater good,” and that the aborted human life would certainly have a different perspective on that conclusion. Ryan Harkins, however, had more and better to say, and did, in this Comment of the Day on “Regarding the Ohio Right to Abortion Amendment”:
[Notice of Correction: For some reason, I attributed this COTD to Null Pointer, who promptly alerted me to the mistake. My apologies to Ryan.]
***
In general, the answer to this is that government and individuals have different roles. Government exists to set the boundaries, enforce the boundaries, and exact penalties for the failure to comply with those boundaries regarding interpersonal interaction. Individuals cede that responsibility to the government so that there is an agreed upon entity to handle those interpersonal disputes, for otherwise everything becomes vigilante justice. Whoever is stronger wins.
The view of government we have is that because the strong and the powerful can impinge on the rights of weaker individuals, government intervenes to protect the rights of the weak. I know there are other forms of government out there, ones that favor the strong and crush the weak, or favor the clan at the expense of outsiders, and so on. But here we formed a government of the people, by the people, for the people, with the thought that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, which include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We profess that the government exists to ensure that the enumerated rights of the weak are protected against the strong. To turn and delegate the decision making to the individual returns the power to the strong to crush the weak as they see fit. It is anathema to what our nation stands for.
Last night, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to abortion. The tally wasn’t close: 2,186, 962 favored the measure, or 56.6%, while only 1,675, 72, or 43%, opposed putting a right to abortions in the state constitution.
The first point to understand is that this is not a rejection of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs over-ruling Roe v. Wade, but the exact result the Supreme Court ruled the Constitution intended. It is and always whould have been the states’ call: abortion is not a federal issue, and the national Constitution is silent on it, despite the political and ideological dishonesty of Roe. What Ohio did is exactly what the Supreme Court ruled it should do: let voters, not courts, decide the issue.
Logically, this decision should take abortion out of the 2024 election in Ohio, and if Republicans are smart <cough> that’s what they should say. “It’s in the constitution now, and we’ll follow the law. I still believe abortion is wrong in most cases, and I will work toward making that clear enough that Ohioans change the law, but right now, the decision has been made.”
In Sherman, Texas, the local high school declared that senior Max Hightower, who has been a member of the school’s theater group all four years, is ineligible to play the part of Curley, the male lead in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical “Oklahoma!” despite the fact that he won the part in auditions fairly and squarely. The part is being taken away from him, or her, or “them,” because, as he was told by the principal (evidently an idiot miscast as an educator) that a new school policy dictates that student “actors and actresses could only play a role that was the same gender they were assigned at birth.” Max is a young trans male, a girl who “identifies” as male, and presumably has taken no steps to acquire male genitalia.
All aspects of this debacle are so stupid it makes my teeth hurt.
1. There is nothing about casting a female in a male role, a male in a female role, a heterosexual in a gay role (or vice-versa), a black actor as a white character…and so on, ad infinitum, that is inherently wrong or right, for that matter. If a school is going to have a drama program, it should be competent enough regarding theater to know, practice and teach that. A production does what its artistic directors believe is necessary to make the show work as drama, comedy, or entertainment.
2. A penis is not necessary equipment for playing the male lead in “Oklahoma!” Curley thinks with his penis, but he never shows it. A policy requiring any actor to actually possess features the character he or she portrays demonstrates abject ignorance of what drama is. Needless to say, except perhaps to the morons who run this school, Curley is also a lot older than a high school senior, lives in the Oklahoma territory, and ideally can sing like Gordon MacRae above. No high school performer is strictly well-cast as Curley by those criteria, or as a character in any classic musical with the exception of shows like “Grease,’ “West Side Story” and “Bye-Bye Birdie.” Without some version of so-called “non-traditional casting,” high school musicals, which have been a rich and beneficial part of the school experience for more than a century, would be impossible.
When the high school theater group in Arlington (Mass.) High School put on “Oliver!” in the early 1970s (my sister played Nancy, the tragic female lead), the part of the Artful Dodger, a male, pre-teen role, was taken by female senior. She was terrific. In Sherman, her casting would have violated policy.
3. There are potential copyright issues when a director actually tries to change the gender of a character as written by the author. That’s not what was being done here. By sheer coincidence, I saw a school production of “Romeo and Juliet” last week in which Romeo was played by a female. The show was not turned into a lesbian romance (though this has been done many times, and that works too): the part was played as male, and it worked just fine. The Rodgers and Hammerstein organization is appropriately flexible with casting variations: in recent Broadway revivals, the villain Judd, written as a white character, was played by a black man, and the comic female part of Ado Annie, the local flirt, was played by a woman in a wheelchair.
4. I could make an argument for a school policy requiring shows to be cast based on artistic considerations only, and not to make political points, but it would not be a good argument. It is impossible to separate art from politics and social commentary. High school actors need to learn that, too. Such a policy would also be impossible to enforce coherently—especially by fools like the Sherman high school principle, who can’t grok this theater thingy.
5. Also needless to say, except to people who run that high school and victims of closed head injuries, theater is not like athletic competitions. Being a female who identifies as a male or the other way around confers no unfair advantage on an actor. Presumably confusion on this rather basic point is what led to the ridiculous policy and the abuse of Max.
Oh, it gets worse. The Stupid is strong with this community. In a statement, the school district said the production is being postponed, writing,
….”It was brought to the District’s attention that the current production contained mature adult themes, profane language, and sexual content. Unfortunately, all aspects of the production need to be reviewed, including content, stage production/props, and casting to ensure that the production is appropriate for the high school stage.”because of “sexual content and profanity.”
Perfect. Some busy-body escapee from a Mennonite compound complained about the script to a bunch of illiterates who never have seen “Oklahoma!” Cultural illiterates should not be involved in educating children. “Oklahoma!” was judged G-rated fair when it premiered in 1943, and has been performed without controversy by high schools, colleges and community theaters ever since. The “sexual content” is called romance, like in “Romeo and Juliet”,” ” (which is a lot more sexually provocative than “Oklahoma!”) and if there’s profanity in the show, it consists of some cowboy saying “dang.” (All right, all right, Ado Annie’s song “I’m just a girl who can’t say no” is suggestive, but of nothing that a normal high school student isn’t very familiar with already.) Today, high schools have to worry about musicals containing words like “shit” and “fuck,” and these Neanderthals are investigating “Oklahoma!”?
Then the district makes things as clear as mud by adding, “There is no policy on how students are assigned to roles. As it relates to this particular production, the sex of the role as identified in the script will be used when casting. Because the nature and subject matter of productions vary, the District is not inclined to apply this criteria to all future productions.”
Oh.
WHAT???
Meanwhile, Max’s parents say they are going to fight to get Max back into the role. Good. But if this fiasco is sufficient to turn off Max and a lot of his fellow students to theater generally, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Discussing the last Ethics Alarms post about the totally botched live -remake of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” one of the most influential and ground-breaking (and popular, and profitable) films in Hollywood history, I told my wife, “If I were in charge of Disney, I’d just re-release the original in a restored version.”
And that’s exactly what the company is doing.
The best part about the move is that it implicitly rebukes Rachael Zeigler, the current Snow Of Color who foolishly trashed her own vehicle by calling the original dated and “weird.” It also commits the company to the ultimate version of the live-action rip-off emerging as an homage to its predecessor, not a rejection of it: all those kids who see Walt’s movie and love it are not going to like a live-version that defames Snow and her friends. Even Disney’s not that stupid. (Are they?)
Anyway, there is hope: the profit motive and the instinct to survive may have overwhelmed toxic wokism. Disney may have rediscovered the ethical virtues of competence, responsibility, and respect.
Subhead: “Four progressive teachers in Washington’s Mukilteo School District wanted to protect students from a book they saw as outdated and harmful. The blowback was fierce.”
To begin with, read it all, and to the extent you can stand it, the comments. I included some trenchant quotes below, however.
Now the takeaways:
1. If there is a more vivid and depressing illustration of how far public education, teacher competence and race relations have declined since, oh, let’s say 2008, I don’t know what it could be.
2. The episode was triggered, a black student told the Post, when a white teen read “nigger” while reading “Mockingbird” to the class. The student disobeyed the teacher’s instructions to skip the slur, and “the kid looked at every Black person — there’s three Black people in that class — and smiled.” Well: a) Asking a student to read a passage of any book to the class when she feels part of the text must be skipped is incompetent. b) Of all the passages to have a student read from “Mockingbird,” choosing one that includes “nigger” smacks of deliberate sabotage. c) Presumed facial expression racism? At this rate, we should be back to “separate but equal” in no time.
3. “Freeman-Miller wondered: Did the school really have to teach Harper Lee’s classic but polarizing novel, as was mandatory for all freshmen?” There is no reason for any novel to be regarded as “polarizing,” except to those who regard literature as indoctrination tools. The educational process is to read the novel, discuss its literary merit, its context, its cultural significance, the ideas it communicates, and it why it works (or not) for a particular reader.
I know, I know...this might have been staged. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t staged, but just a single group of assholes after other trick-or-treaters used the communal candy basket as it was designed to be used. Maybe this video has no larger significance at all.
I hope it doesn’t.
But I suspect it does.
ADDED: I see that Ann Althouse also posted this video. Her focus is a bit different. She writes,
Why are we doing handouts anyway? To show what human beings are like? If you answer the door and dispense the handout personally, you can maintain a system of one portion per person, and you might even get a smile or a thank you. If you put out a big bowl of multiple portions because you don’t want to monitor the process and impose single portions, then people will serve their own interests and take all they want. You knew that. The kids who took it all also knew that if they didn’t take it all, the next group of kids would take it all. It’s a state of nature without supervision and enforcement. Don’t pretend you trusted people and you had some sort of admirable “hope” that now I’m supposed to feel bad got crushed. No, you lazy bastard. Answer the damned door next time. Or have the courage to turn off the porch light and huddle in a back room and celebrate the end of the holiday you no longer believe in.
Well, in the past, I have known people who did this (put out baskets of candy to be used with the honor system) not because they were lazy or didn’t want to participate in Halloween, but because they were not going to be home, or had mobility issues for one reason or another. Ann just assumes that the natural tendency is to act badly and just take it all. I don’t.
But she lives in uber-progressive Madison, Wisconsin, so there’s that…
Trick-or-treaters over 14 in Chesapeake, Virginia can be charged with a misdemeanor. Norfolk, Suffolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach nearby bar kids over 12 from trick-or-treating. Rayne, Louisiana, and Jacksonville, Illinois, also ban teenage trick-or-treaters. An ordinance in Belleville, Illinois, slaps insufficiently immature door bell-ringers with a $1,000 fine.
Morons. The same communities don’t punish juvenile adults who have spoiled the kids holiday by expropriating it. The theory these silly places have adopted is, we are told, that they are trying to reduce teenage crime. I believe there are already laws against teenage crime. Most of the same elected officials who are pushing these laws also wanted to force teens to wear masks not too long ago.
Ethics Alarms 