Roald Dahl Can't Catch a Break

Roald Dahl (1916-90)
Suddenly controversial to left and right alike

When last we left Roald Dahl, he was being censored for such crimes against humanity as using “female” as a noun, referencing only male Oompa Loompas, and failing to mention that there are multiple good reasons to wear a wig. These objections, of course, came mostly if not exclusively from the Loony Left. Now the Ridiculous Right wants equal time. 

A couple of hours south of Curmie is Houston’s Main Street Theater, part of whose mission is to create “memorable theatrical experiences for audiences of all ages.” That means, among other things, a three-show season in their Theater for Youth series, which has been active for over four decades. One of this year’s offerings—the one currently playing—is a stage adaptation of James and the Giant Peach, probably Dahl’s best-known book. 

As might be expected, a lot of local schools bring their students to the theatre, and the company provides all manner of services: group rates, study guides in both English and Spanish, etc. Students in Spring Branch, about three hours to the west, were to have attended a recent performance. But you’ve already sussed where this story is going, haven’t you, Gentle Reader? 

Yes, the trip was cancelled, not because that’s a long time to expect little kids to sit in a bus, but because the show was alleged to be age-inappropriate. You see, the 19 roles in the play are performed by only seven actors, and sometimes that means that a male actor plays a female… insect. And that’s drag, and to allow kids to see that, to borrow a line from late, great George Carlin, will curve their spines, grow hair on their hands, and keep our side from winning the war. 

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that one of the actors is also, completely independently, a drag performer. Sigh. 

Anyway, someone under the soubriquet @htxkidsfirst posted this kind of drivel online, and the school district promptly capitulated to yet another bullshit heckler’s veto from the right. Curmie can’t find who actually made the decision—the superintendent? the school board? a collection of principals?—but if he’d done something this spectacularly stupid, he’d want to duck responsibility, too. 

Initially, of course, parents weren’t even told why the cancellation was going to happen. We can only guess that district officials feared the collapse of the telephone system under the weight of dozens of simultaneous phone calls all clustered around expressions like “It’s James and the Giant Peach. Are you fucking insane, or what?”. 

OK, there are two responses to this nonsense. The first, obviously, is that there is no legitimate complaint. As Main Street’s marketing director, Shannon Emerick, points out, this isn’t drag: “Drag is a different art form. There is a whole art form that is drag.” And here is where Curmie goes all professorial (forgive me). There is a difference between “drag” and “in drag.” The former is indeed a very specific performance style. Curmie, like many Spring Branch parents, apparently, would see no harm in having drag seen by little kids, but at least recognizes a weak but extant rationale for the objections. But that’s not what this is. 

The latter term, “in drag,” means simply the portrayal of a character by a performer of the opposite sex. This would include the original performances of literally every Greek tragedy, every play by Shakespeare (a show like As You Like it, in which a male actor played a female character who plays a male character who plays a female character is especially fun in this regard), and every Nō or Kabuki play. The list goes on, but you get the point, Gentle Reader. 

Every English pantomime, many of which feature not only a male actor as the “Dame,” but an attractive young woman as a boy—a character like Jack of beanstalk fame, for example—would also be on the list. And bringing the kids to the local panto is very much a Christmas-season tradition for thousands upon thousands of English families. Curmie has a friend and former student who is one of the best-known Dames in England; he is adamant that what he does is not drag. And he’s right.  (Of course.)

Virtually all performances of Peter Pan are also “in drag” shows: the most famous portrayals of the title character include Nina Boucicault, Maude Adams (not to be confused with two-time “Bond girl” Maud Adams), Mary Martin, and former gymnast Cathy Rigby. 

Plus, of course, dozens of films—the best known of which would have to be “Some Like It Hot,” “Mrs. Doubtfire,” and “Tootsie,” but there are many more—would also be on the list. Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, Benny Hill, Johnny Depp, Tom Hanks, John Travolta, and a host of others that Curmie can’t remember off the top of his head at the moment, all appeared “in drag.” The earliest performance by Laurence Olivier that Curmie knows about was when Lord Olivier was a teenager at school… and in drag. 

In the other direction, there’s Glenn Close, Barbra Streisand, Julie Andrews, Gwyneth Paltrow, Dame Judith Anderson, Fiona Shaw, Sarah Bernhardt, and, again, many more. 

The allegations of “grooming,” of course, are too inane to even bother to refute. If you want to complain about grooming of kids by men in floor-length gowns, come back when you’ve cleaned up the Catholic Church. 

So the objection is completely unfounded. But, just as Curmie suggested recently that Tommy Tuberville isn’t the problem, neither are the constipated parents who apparently are more interested in promoting a particularly noxious brand of puritanism than in allowing their kids to have a fun day at the theatre. No, responsibility for this foolishness falls squarely on the shoulders of the school administrators for whom stupidity and cowardice are in a death struggle to be their defining characteristic. 

If school officials want to let parents keep their own children from seeing James and the Giant Peach, Curmie is still going to think a little less of them, but it is at least a passable response. But that isn’t what happened here. Curmie refuses to believe that anything approaching a majority, or even a significant minority, of Spring Branch parents are insular, ignorant, and repressive enough to keep their sons and daughters from seeing the play. 

But what’s happening here is that everyone’s kids are prevented from doing so. Curmie considers it bad parenting to unilaterally and arbitrarily decide that one’s own progeny ought to be prevented from reading this book, watching that movie, or attending that play. But it’s understandable, and parents have a legal and indeed ethical right to do so, even if Curmie would do something different. 

Demanding that someone else’s kids be thus restricted, however, is arrogant, narcissistic, and unethical. (Curmie notes an exception for legal authorities.) That’s the point school officials who aren’t auditioning to be the Scarecrow or the Cowardly Lion in the community theatre production of The Wizard of Oz (which would also, no doubt, be boycotted by the yokels) ought to be making: keep your kids home if you want, but we’re going, and we’re going to have a great time. 

But that would require a modicum of common sense or courage, and those attributes are in increasingly short supply among today’s educational administrators. We have ample evidence that the next attack from the pathological do-gooders may come from the left or the right. We can be sure of two things, however: the perpetrators will have no doubts about the righteousness of their actions, and the rest of us must stand ready to defend free expression, access to works of art, and intellectual curiosity. 

Oh… One more thing. We can but hope that in whatever afterlife he inhabits, Roald Dahl is laughing at the idiots on both fringes.