City Safari: Insanity, when Mary Poppins went black face.
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Wed, Feb 06, 2019
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Last week proved to be another high
voltage social issue week. The topic once again was race, when the
governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, was accused of appearing in
blackface 35 years ago in his medical school yearbook. Northam,
unfortunately, created a public relations disaster for himself when he
apologized for the photo and then promptly changed course and denied
that the person in the photo was him. Northam’s change of mind created
some confusion—did he or didn’t he? - even though he was already in the
"There ain’t no forgiveness” hothouse when the allegation surfaced.
In today’s world, an allegation is all that’s needed to set up a national chorus of "Let’s Hang the Man (or Woman).” It’s the way we do things in America now. This set of new operatives started with the #MeToo movement and is now making its way into every hot issue narrative. Hanging people on allegations certainly does not bode well for the future, if only because the range and depth of the Orwellian Fault Finding Machine will be ten times as powerful in 2025, meaning that things that are not considered offensive today will be considered offensive tomorrow. The upshot of all this is that you had better be careful what you say or do (or write or draw) in your private or professional life today because that invisible recorder of misdeeds is working overtime to accuse you twenty or thirty years from now, and probably when you least expect it.
In short, no one seems safe from this new Salem Witch Hunt mentality that’s currently sweeping America.
I’m reminded of something I read in The Spectator: "These days, throwing insults often just means ‘I disagree with you.’”
As for the ever popular label, "racist,” Tucker Carlson’s piece in The Daily Caller listed the most far flung definitions.
1. The 2017 film The Little Mermaid is racist because of Sebastian Ariel’s exaggerated Jamaican accent.
2. Milk is a symbol of the alt right
3. The report that some South African students called science racist because it cannot explain "black magic.”
4. One university professor stated that mathematics itself operates as ‘Whiteness.’
5. Military camouflage is frowned upon because the soldiers who wear it often paint their faces when they sneak around in the jungle.
6. Some college professors maintain you shouldn’t expect students to show up on time because that’s not being sensitive to "cultural differences.”
7. Some researchers are working on solutions to stop newborns from showing preference to adults of their own race.
8. The vintage Mary Poppins film has been labeled ‘racist’ by a U.S. academic because Dame Julie Andrews is blackened up with soot in the famous rooftop chimney sweep scene.
Mary Poppins, which I saw 200 times as a teenage theater usher, caused one writer for The New York Times to state: "When the magical nanny (played by Julie Andrews) accompanies her young charges, Michael and Jane Banks, up their chimney, her face gets covered in soot, but instead of wiping it off, she gamely powders her nose and cheeks even blacker.”
What is this if not insanity? Or clearly, the first step on the road to insanity.
The better option is to do the hard work of getting to know one another, like the characters in Hype Man,and to leave the labels on a shelf in Staples.
In today’s world, an allegation is all that’s needed to set up a national chorus of "Let’s Hang the Man (or Woman).” It’s the way we do things in America now. This set of new operatives started with the #MeToo movement and is now making its way into every hot issue narrative. Hanging people on allegations certainly does not bode well for the future, if only because the range and depth of the Orwellian Fault Finding Machine will be ten times as powerful in 2025, meaning that things that are not considered offensive today will be considered offensive tomorrow. The upshot of all this is that you had better be careful what you say or do (or write or draw) in your private or professional life today because that invisible recorder of misdeeds is working overtime to accuse you twenty or thirty years from now, and probably when you least expect it.
In short, no one seems safe from this new Salem Witch Hunt mentality that’s currently sweeping America.
In past articles, I’ve offered my
own theories as to why this might be, so but I don’t mind restating them
here. Even people who have little or no religion or who do not practice
a faith of any sort, often put the energy they might have put into a
transcendent God, into a secular ideology of ideas. This ideology,
whether left or right, becomes a kind of infallible church of its own.
It becomes a remorseless secular crutch by which to judge all things
(and people), social and political. A better word for this might be
idolatry, because for believers of this type any transgression is
considered unforgivable. In politics, generally, there is no redemption
or forgiveness; there is only eternal damnation ("His career is over”)
whereas in religion, minus the bitter fanatical "faiths,” there’s a
knowledge that God does not hold a grudge like the petty mortals who
rule this planet. .
Race has been on my mind lately for another reason. Recently I attended the Inter Act Theatre production of Hype Man: A Break Playby
Idris Goodwin and directed by Ozzie Jones at the Prodcerium Theater
(till February 17) at the Drake. Hype Man concerns a small Hip Hop group
about to make their national debut on The Tonight Show.
Verb, the black rapper (played by Carlo Campbell) is often at odds with
his childhood friend, Pinnacle (Kyle Glenn), a white Irish rapper more
or less molded in the style of a latter day Emeinen. The female member,
Peep One (Blanca Sanchez) acts as a bridge between the two friends,
especially when Verb wants to go political after he hears news of how
the local police shot a 13 year old black boy to death afterthe boy held his hands up in a gesture of surrender.
Verb
wants the group to work on a ‘Justice for Jerrod’ statement for their
Tonight Show debut but Pinnacle insists that as musical entertainers
they must stay neutral. Pinnacle fears that a radical political
statement on national TV will destroy their big break and everything
they’ve worked for. Unconvinced, Verb wants the group to go full social
justice warrior regardless of the consequences. His willingness to
sacrifice money and fame creates tension and some pretty compelling
onstage moments.
Both Verb and Pinnacle take extreme views in this "all or nothing” world: Will it be blatant bullhorn tactics or only the kick ass lyrics of "fun rap?’ What about something in-between that combines the entertaining elements of good rap (some would argue that good rap is an oxymoron) with well placed references to a troubling social issue? It can be done, of course—and this play shows how it can be done-- without either Verb or Pinnacle having to go off alone and live on another planet. It takes compromise and dialogue, not an outright dismissal that has both men walking away from one another while hurling insults and labels.
As I see it, there can be no progress in race relations when one party throws out labels and insults and then walks away, as if the label, in this case, racist, were a steel casket that entraps one forever. When everything is considered racist, in the end, nothing is racist, and this cannot be good for society.
Both Verb and Pinnacle take extreme views in this "all or nothing” world: Will it be blatant bullhorn tactics or only the kick ass lyrics of "fun rap?’ What about something in-between that combines the entertaining elements of good rap (some would argue that good rap is an oxymoron) with well placed references to a troubling social issue? It can be done, of course—and this play shows how it can be done-- without either Verb or Pinnacle having to go off alone and live on another planet. It takes compromise and dialogue, not an outright dismissal that has both men walking away from one another while hurling insults and labels.
As I see it, there can be no progress in race relations when one party throws out labels and insults and then walks away, as if the label, in this case, racist, were a steel casket that entraps one forever. When everything is considered racist, in the end, nothing is racist, and this cannot be good for society.
I’m reminded of something I read in The Spectator: "These days, throwing insults often just means ‘I disagree with you.’”
As for the ever popular label, "racist,” Tucker Carlson’s piece in The Daily Caller listed the most far flung definitions.
1. The 2017 film The Little Mermaid is racist because of Sebastian Ariel’s exaggerated Jamaican accent.
2. Milk is a symbol of the alt right
3. The report that some South African students called science racist because it cannot explain "black magic.”
4. One university professor stated that mathematics itself operates as ‘Whiteness.’
5. Military camouflage is frowned upon because the soldiers who wear it often paint their faces when they sneak around in the jungle.
6. Some college professors maintain you shouldn’t expect students to show up on time because that’s not being sensitive to "cultural differences.”
7. Some researchers are working on solutions to stop newborns from showing preference to adults of their own race.
8. The vintage Mary Poppins film has been labeled ‘racist’ by a U.S. academic because Dame Julie Andrews is blackened up with soot in the famous rooftop chimney sweep scene.
Mary Poppins, which I saw 200 times as a teenage theater usher, caused one writer for The New York Times to state: "When the magical nanny (played by Julie Andrews) accompanies her young charges, Michael and Jane Banks, up their chimney, her face gets covered in soot, but instead of wiping it off, she gamely powders her nose and cheeks even blacker.”
What is this if not insanity? Or clearly, the first step on the road to insanity.
The better option is to do the hard work of getting to know one another, like the characters in Hype Man,and to leave the labels on a shelf in Staples.
