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| Bright Sheng |
Amidst the indignation from the Woke Folk and the
indignation at the indignation from civil libertarians and conservatives,
Curmie hereby attempts to make some sense of it all.
Sheng has impeccable credentials, including a MacArthur
“genius” fellowship, a fact which may or may not complicate things. Does this mean Sheng is inherently blameless? Or does it make the offense more grievous, or
at least more problematic, because students were afraid to come forward with
legitimate complaints? Curmie doesn’t
attract a lot of idiots to his page, so he will take on faith that you, Gentle
Reader, will know that the answer to both these questions is “of course not.” Needless to say, however, this does little if
anything to prevent the more foam-flecked on either side of the issue to assert
otherwise.
Let’s start with the initial outcry. The reaction of freshman Olivia Cook, quoted
in The Michigan Daily (the
student newspaper), may be seen as exemplary: “I was stunned. In such a school that preaches diversity and
making sure that they understand the history of POC in America, I was shocked
that [Sheng] would show something like this in something that’s supposed to be
a safe space.”
If Ms. Cook believes herself to have been unsafe in any sort
of physical sense because she watched a 56-year-old movie starring one of the
most acclaimed actors of his century, she has some mental health issues and
needs counseling, stat. If, as is more
likely, the safety in question is more mental, then she doesn’t belong at a
university; having one’s ideas and perceptions challenged is, or at the very
least ought to be, a major element of what higher education is about. But she is a college freshman, and can be
forgiven a lack of larger perspective.
It’s difficult to establish a precise timeline of what
happened after the showing. What is
clear is that Sheng, with or without prompting, sent the class an apologetic
e-mail soon afterwards, acknowledging (if that is the correct word) that the
film was “was racially insensitive and outdated.”
A second apology to students and departmental colleagues a few days later actually exacerbated the situation. Sheng cites his own failure to realize the
“depth of racism” in past and present American culture (isn’t gaining such
cognition what we’re supposed to do?), and cites his own experience of
discrimination “[a]s an Asian American living in a primarily white society for
the last 40 years.” He notes, for
example, that about 90% of singers of Madama Butterfly are white. This experience, quite reasonably, makes him
simultaneously more and less culpable: less because he’d “accepted it as a
given,” more because he of all people ought to have empathy for others
similarly excluded.
It’s also important that Sheng’s background is in opera
rather than theatre. The look of opera
singers, unlike actors, is almost if not entirely irrelevant. Curmie’s own sole experience as a performer
in opera was as a narrator (literally no one wants to hear him sing) in a
university production of an abridged (hence the need for a narrator) version of
Offenbach’s La Pèrichole. To
avoid putting too much strain on young voices and to provide opportunities for
more students, there were two different casts: the leads on Thursday and
Saturday were in the chorus on Friday, and vice versa. I’m willing to bet the Thursday/Saturday male
lead outweighed his Friday counterpart by a ratio of more than 2:1. What they had in common: they were both
really good tenors, and that is literally all the mattered to the casting director.
Although Sheng explicitly states that he is not making
excuses but rather “[realizing] how it happened,” his comments were perceived
as “shallow” and insufficiently cognizant of the alleged harm the incident did
to students. Particularly problematic to
his critics was a section in which Sheng comments on his work with BIPOC
students and artists. A letter signed by
18 undergraduate composition students, 15 graduate composition students and
nine SMTD staff and faculty members asserts that Sheng’s apology “implies that
it is thanks to him that many of them have achieved success in their careers.” Two responses: 1). it does no such
thing. 2). if it did, it would be
accurate, at least to some degree.
We can also understand that Sheng thought it relevant that
he has consistently, throughout his career, provided opportunities for BIPOC
artists. It sort of clouds the issue,
and seems to be a variation on “but some of my best friends are Jewish,” of
course. But in the world of the
ultra-aggrieved, it’s worse than that: a single misstep is grounds for
character assassination, and any apology short of seppuku is
“inflammatory.”
Anyway, Sheng has been removed from the course because department
chair David Gier is a weenie “it was the correct thing to do” and it will “allow
for a positive learning environment.” He will remain as a tenured faculty
member.
The furor isn’t over, as a group called the International Youth and Students for Social Equality at the University of Michigan, whose
page on the university website calls for “a socialist transformation of society,” has posted on the World Socialist Web Site a demand that Professor Sheng be re-instated, and that officials at Michigan “apologize
to Professor Sheng and publicly repudiate all slanderous attacks on Sheng for
being ‘racist’ or for carrying out a ‘racist act.’” The authors of this piece are just as fervent
as Sheng’s detractors, and they’ve done more homework.
Here’s an example:
The actions taken against Professor
Sheng, a world-renowned scholar, may well rank as the most shameful episode in
the University’s history. It exposes the extent to which the unrelenting
promotion of racialist ideologies—fraudulently legitimized with pretentious
postmodernist jargon—has created a thoroughly toxic environment on university
campuses.
Any serious examination of
Shakespeare’s play and the career of one of the 20th century’s greatest actors
demolishes the charges of racism leveled against Olivier and the 1965 production.
Comparisons to the racist depictions of African Americans in blackface are
ignorant. The denunciation of Olivier’s performance is particularly
preposterous in that the actor was attempting to take on the timid, semi-racist
approaches to the Othello character that had prevailed for a century and a
half.
OK. There’s a
legitimate argument here. In an
oft-cited essay on race and film versions of Othello, Laura Reitz-Wilson argues that Olivier’s performance, directed by Stuart Burge, is
“revolutionary,” in that he plays a “very black Othello” and references the
character’s race “as Shakespeare intended.”
Calling attention to Othello’s race makes it impossible for an audience
to forget his outsider status, which is central to the character. Indeed, although Othello is certainly a
flawed character, he does elicit empathy from the audience, and underscoring
his blackness thus becomes an anti-racist act.
Reitz-Wilson notes, however, that Olivier’s depiction “does
border on a stereotypical portrait of a black man,” and that absolutely
matters. Still, actor Hugh Quarshie, who
is black, wrote in 1998:
I am left with a nagging doubt: if
a black actor plays Othello does he not risk making racial stereotypes seem
legitimate and even true. When a black actor plays a role written for a white
actor in black make-up and for a predominantly white audience, does he not
encourage the white way, or rather the wrong way, of looking at black men,
namely that black men, or “Moors,” are over-emotional, excitable and unstable… Of all the parts in the canon, perhaps Othello is the one which should most
definitely not be played by a black actor.
In other words, Quarshie argues that the character per se, independent of the
portrayal, is by modern standards racially problematic—the same way Shylock is
in terms of religion. Therefore any
actor of any ethnicity risks reinforcing racial stereotypes. For the record, Quarshie later changed his
mind and played the role in 2015.
But this brings us around to the question of
“tradition.” Even the National Review,
in its predictable response to events in Ann Arbor, notes that the role “has
traditionally been played by a black actor in stage productions.” Well, that depends on what “traditionally”
means.
Curmie fancies himself a reasonably good theatre historian,
and as far as he can tell, the listing of black actors playing Othello opposite
a white Desdemona in a significant professional production in the first three
and a quarter centuries of the play’s existence reads like this: Ira
Aldridge. That’s it. (I presume that although James Hewlett played
the role in the African Company’s short tenure in the 1820s, the Desdemona was
also black.) It was therefore a Big Damned Deal
when Paul Robeson played Othello in London opposite Peggy Ashcroft in 1930, and
again in New York opposite Uta Hagen in 1943.
Since the 1940s, however, virtually all productions of the
play do indeed feature a black actor in the title role. The title roles in the only two Broadway
productions since then were played by Moses Gunn and James Earl Jones, both of them outstanding black actors. Similarly, any production in the last three and a half centuries
featuring a male actor as Desdemona will rightly be regarded as a gimmick,
albeit the role was originally written to be performed by a male. Times change, and the structures and
strictures of society would do well to change, as well.
So where does that leave us?
For one thing, the dominant philosophical paradigm under which we operate
is now in question. In Judeo-Christian
thought, intentions matter. No one that
Curmie can find believes Professor Sheng was consciously and intentionally
racist in his choice of cinematic Othellos.
Even a virtue-signaling jerk like Evan Chambers, who oh-so-coincidentally
gets to take over the prestigious seminar now, feels compelled to include “regardless
of the professor’s intentions” in accusing Sheng of “a racist act.”
There are cultures in which pollution trumps volition: the
two Curmie knows the most about are Ancient Greece and Shinto. According to these world views, if you cause
harm to another person, even if you not only intended no harm but took active
steps to protect the victim, you bear responsibility. My favorite example is from the Greek orator
Antiphon, who describes an athlete practicing the javelin. Before releasing the projectile, the young
man made certain the spectators in the area weren’t in the line of fire, and ensured that they knew he was
about to throw. The javelin went
straight down the middle of the field, but while it was already in the air,
a little boy ran out into its path and was impaled. Although he was cleared of any charges of
homicide, the young athlete was nonetheless charged with the boy’s death and
threatened with exile.
Our society doesn’t work like that, or at least it
shouldn’t. Acknowledging harm is
appropriate (but seriously, what actual harm was done here?), but
intentionality matters. Sheng’s initial
apology was both timely and apparently sincere.
Learning to do better is the stated purpose of all those insufferably
smug diversity seminars the professoriate endures. It clearly isn’t the real motive, however, as
precisely such a result has generated even more grief for Professor Sheng.
Don’t get me wrong.
Curmie doesn’t believe for a moment that either Sheng or Olivier
committed a racist act. But Sheng’s showing
the Olivier film without context was an instance of remarkably poor
pedagogy. Sheng may have been born in
China, but he’s lived in this country for 40 years. Presumably he reads the newspaper
occasionally. Whether or not his
students are hypersensitive, he needs to meet them where they are. This doesn’t mean they should be coddled;
their parochial mindset does indeed need to be challenged. But in this instance patience truly is a
virtue.
More to the point, when the Metropolitan Opera decided
several years ago to drop what NPR timorously describes as “blackface-style makeup” for… wait for it…Giuseppe
Verdi’s Otello, it’s your job, Professor Sheng, to know that and
react. Agree with that choice, disagree
with it, Curmie doesn’t care. But if
you’re opening a seminar on musical adaptations of Shakespeare with Otello,
you’d better demonstrate comprehension of the way staging has changed in the
past half-century.
So here’s what do. You show the Laurence Fishburne or Hugh Quarshie versions, or you preface the Olivier film, thus:
“Giuseppe Verdi lived in the 19th century, when
stereotypical portrayals of black characters were the norm. If we’re going to examine the interpretations
of the text that existed in Verdi’s world, a world in which in both opera and
theatre the title character was always played by a white man in blackface, we
need to approximate as closely as we can those conditions.
“The opera was written in 1887; we’re now in 2021. Roughly halfway between those two dates was
the release of what remains the best-known film adaptation of the play, that of
Laurence Olivier. Whereas he’s not in
blackface per se, as his depiction was intended to be respectful, you
will be seeing a white man in exaggerated makeup playing a black man. This may be unsettling, even disturbing, to
some of you. But I think it’s important
that you know the kind of production Verdi saw in his day, and this is the closest I can
come. I understand if you aren’t able to
get past what you perceive as a racist production, but I hope you will try to
examine the characterizations, the themes, and the language, as well. Some of these may lead you back to your
initial response. That’s OK, but let’s
see what else we can find.”
Providing context for virtually any in-class film-viewing is
important. When it’s something like
this, it’s especially mandatory.
Short version of all of the above: Sheng underwent far too much criticism for offenses he didn’t intend. His initial apology should have been accepted. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t necessary.
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