"I Mourned the Loss of Magic."
I have lived most of my life within
eyeshot of the Manhattan skyline. In my hometown, I had to climb to the highest
point on a wooded trail, but there it was. Culture, sophistication, and power
splayed across the horizon and incarnated as distant, vertical, rectangles. Gershwin's
"Rhapsody in Blue" would play inside my head.
Lately I haven't been going into the
city much. I was there in autumn, 2022, to see a play. As I purchased my subway
ticket, a smelly, muttering man hovered close as a toxic cloud. I had to focus
on not allowing fear or rage to cause me to fumble. I'm a woman alone and even
seeing David Strathairn, a movie star I adore, live onstage, was not enough to
compensate. The lesser mortals, the New Jerseyans I live among, may never be as
sophisticated as Manhattanites, but they do not push women onto subway tracks.
The other day I heard an ad on the radio for Lincoln Center's new production of Camelot. I rushed to the internet, determined to overcome any hesitation and purchase a ticket.
I grew up listening to my mom's LP of Richard
Burton as King Arthur reciting, "Each evening from December to December,
before you drift to sleep upon your cot, think back on all the tales that you
remember of Camelot … for one brief shining moment there was a fleeting wisp of
glory." Burton sings this at the close of the play, after his dreams and
his life have been shattered. Burton somehow manages to sound both gigantic and
utterly flattened – appropriate since King Arthur, The Once and Future King,
is often interpreted as a Christ figure. For this archetype, catastrophe and
triumph can cohabit. Burton evoked in me a spiritual experience. The ache of
lost Edens quivered in my veins. Theater critic Kenneth Tynan remarked that
Richard Burton brought his own cathedral with him. I am in that cathedral when
I listen, for the hundredth time to Camelot.
Camelot's plot is rooted in the rich, contested, ancient
folklore of Arthur. Arthur is a legendary British king who is said to have
lived in the fifth and sixth centuries and fought against invading
Anglo-Saxons. The ninth-century Historia Brittonum, or History
of the Britons, contains the first known written mention of Arthur. The
author was possibly the Welsh monk Nennius.
In a wonderful comment on the constancy of our four-footed friends, the Historia
Brittonum author "relates that a stone in Wales that bears the
footprint of Arthur's dog always returns to the same place if moved."
Arthur was not "British" in
the 21st-century sense of the word "British." Arthur was not British
in the same way as current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is of
Punjabi-African descent. Nor was Arthur "British" in the same sense
as the current King Charles. Charles is a descendant of William the Conqueror,
who invaded Anglo-Saxon-dominated England in 1066. William was born in France,
and he spoke a French dialect, but he was himself a descendant of Rollo, a Viking.
No. Arthur was a Briton, one of the people who lived in Great Britain beginning
at least with the Iron Age. A modern English speaker would not understand a
single word Arthur spoke, if Arthur were a real person, and his historicity is
debated.
Arthur's people, the Britons, were
invaded by Romans, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans. These invasions, and
those less well chronicled, repeatedly replaced the language, culture, and DNA
of Great Britain. Ten to forty percent of modern Brits have Anglo-Saxon DNA – that is the DNA of the
invaders Arthur fought against. One study revealed that "60% of men in
northern Scottish islands have Norwegian Viking ancestry … the majority of men
in some parts of east and central England show some Danish Viking or
Anglo-Saxon ancestry."
Scientists now argue that, 4,500 years ago,
before the Britons, the Vikings or the Normans, the ancient peoples who built
Stonehenge were almost completely replaced by the Beaker people, whose ancestry
was "from nomadic groups originating on the Pontic Steppe, a grassland
region extending from Ukraine to Kazakhstan." In a possibly non-violent,
long, slow migration, the Beaker people "replaced 90% of the British gene
pool in a few hundred years." How? Climate change may have stressed the
natives' anachronistic Stone-Age agricultural techniques. The Beaker people had
advanced to the Bronze Age, and their new technology offered a survival
advantage. It's also possible that the Beaker people brought plague, a pathogen
the Stone Age natives could not fight off.
Whoever the Stone Age people were who
erected Stonehenge, they could not digest raw milk, and they were
replaced by people who could. About 2,500 years ago, in Great Britain, there
was a "massive increase" in the lactase
persistence gene, a gene that allows adults to consume milk that hasn't been processed
into yogurt or cheese. Without this gene, people are lactose intolerant and can't
handle drinking milk. "In order for it to have gone from nothing to almost
everybody in that period of time, your ability to digest raw milk must have
been life or death," says scientist Tom Booth. In other words, their
inability to digest raw milk may have contributed to the genetic fade of the
Stonehenge builders. The new arrivals who brought the lactase persistence gene
may have also brought the Celtic languages that King Arthur would eventually
speak.
Further back, 15,000 years ago, folks
living in today's England were reindeer hunters who "etched designs
onto human bones and drank out of carved human skulls." These Magdalenian
people may have been cannibals. Hundreds of years later, they disappeared
because of climate change. Reindeer moved north; so did the humans hunting
them. As the Ice Age retreated and climate warmed, forest replaced tundra. That
forest was more conducive to another population's culture. Newcomers, called
Western Hunter-Gatherers, came up from the south, replaced the local skull drinkers
and established new language, culture, diets, and hunting strategies. Their
artifacts show no sign of cannibalism. "In a short time frame, you can see
a complete population replacement in the British Isles," geneticist Cosimo
Posth observes.
We know more about the Norman Conquest
than about earlier invasions. What we know is horrific. By 1066, when William the
Conqueror had arrived, the Anglo-Saxons dominated what is now England. William
would not have that. The twelfth-century Benedictine monk and chronicler
Orderic Vitalis put these words into William's mouth: "I've persecuted the
natives of England beyond all reason … I have cruelly oppressed them and
unjustly disinherited them, killed innumerable multitudes by famine or the
sword and become the barbarous murderer of many thousands both young and old of
that fine race of people."
Historians report that, "In the
north-east of England, from 1069 to 1070, William ordered villages to be burned
to the ground, farm animals to be slaughtered, and crops to be destroyed …
Thousands of people were killed and many more died of starvation over the next
few years … it took many years for some areas to recover. There is some
uncertainty over how many people were killed, but the Domesday Book shows the
population in the North decreased by 75%." William especially abused
Anglo-Saxon women, forcing them to marry Norman invaders. Many sought refuge in
convents. Others secretly taught their children English; these Anglo-Saxon women
are thought to have contributed significantly to keeping the English language
alive.
Stonehenge was begun around five
thousand years ago. Over four thousand years later, Geoffrey of Monmouth, a
Welsh cleric, wrote in his book, Historia Regum Britanniae or The
History of the Kings of Britain, that Merlin, Arthur's wizard mentor, built
Stonehenge. Geoffrey reached back across millennia, back through one population
shift after another, and wove a fifth-century king into Stone Age megaliths in
a twelfth-century narrative. Geoffrey also wrote that Uther, Arthur's father,
was buried at Stonehenge.
There's a notorious
scene in the 1981 movie, Excalibur. It depicts Uther
Pendragon (Gabriel Byrne) harnessing Merlin's magic to rape Igrayne (Katrine
Boorman). The scene is stunningly graphic. Igrayne is nearly naked and
Pendragon is dressed in full armor. That rape is how Arthur is conceived. One
thinks that only modern times could produce such a perverse, lurid hero origin
story. In fact this episode comes from a twelfth-century cleric, Geoffrey of
Monmouth. Twentieth-century soft-core porn meets twelfth-century sexual
brutality that is stretched back, mythically, to the Stone Age.
In the fifteenth century, someone named
Sir Thomas Malory – and there have been too many men by that name to know which
one – compiled folkloric Arthur material into Le Morte d'Arthur. Modern
adaptations of Malory place Arthur in the Middle Ages, rather than the fifth
century, almost a thousand years earlier.
T.H. White was born to unloving parents in
British Bombay in 1906. He attended a British boarding school, where he was "bullied, beaten, and alone." He
retreated to a gamekeeper's cottage and drank too much. He yearned to be "feral," "ferocious," and "free."
Lonely and unloved, sexually disordered and a conscientious objector in a time
of world war, White attempted to bond with animals, including a goshawk and an
Irish setter. He was a "modern exile in time longing
for the past." His isolation was underlined by where he died: shipboard.
One autumn day, feeling "desperate"
for something to read, and, "in lack of anything else," he picked up
Malory's Arthur. "I was thrilled and astonished to find that (a)
The thing was a perfect tragedy, with a beginning, a middle and an end implicit
in the beginning and (b) the characters were real people with recognizable
reactions."
White published a series of fantasy
novels about Arthur. He eventually republished them, in 1958, in a compilation
titled The Once and Future King. White took his material from Malory. His
book "is a wish fulfillment of the kind of things I should have liked to
have happened to me when I was a boy." White, as other authors had done,
brought contemporary concerns into his version of Arthur. Freudian
psychoanalysis influences the story, and White injects a brief allusion to
Hitler.
About White's book, Ursula K. LeGuin
wrote, "A fierce and damaged man, T. H. White wrote about fierce and
damaged people, and children, and animals, with a brilliant, painful innocence
that has no equal in literature. He is so good at hurt and shame; how did he
also manage to be so funny? I have laughed at his great Arthurian novel and
cried over it and loved it all my life." J.K. Rowling described the young
Arthur character from T.H. White as the "spiritual ancestor" of Harry
Potter.
Camelot, the 1960 Lerner and Loewe musical, takes
its plot from T.H. White. The play opens with Arthur quivering with fear. He
has to marry a woman he has never met. With time, Arthur and Guinevere's arranged
marriage-of-state settles into comfort and warmth. Arthur works to create a society
where the powerful serve justice – "might for right."
Arthur's idealistic dreams are made
manifest in the Round Table. A round table has no head. Everyone is equal.
Medieval illustrations depict the Holy Grail, that is the vessel from which
Jesus drank at the Last Supper, in the center of the Round Table (see here and here).
As in Greek tragedy, it is Arthur's
fatal flaw that dooms his best intentions. Arthur's illegitimate son, Mordred,
arrives to avenge his father's abandoning him by crushing his father's dreams. French
knight Lancelot and Arthur's wife Guinevere run off together. Lancelot must
violate every courtly vow and slay his fellow knights to satisfy his lust. He
and Guinevere do not find lasting happiness. She becomes a nun. Arthur forgives
them both, and faces his final battle with Mordred.
I was an idealistic kid. I loved many
musicals but Camelot occupied a sanctified spot. Some of the songs, like
"Fie on Goodness," are clearly rambunctious satire; "Fie on
Goodness," which celebrates rape and pillage, ruthlessly mocks the very value
system of the play's premise. "Eight years of kindness to your neighbor /
Making sure that the meek are treated well / Eight years of philanthropic labor
/ Derry down dell / Damn, but it's hell! … Ah, but to burn a little town or
slay a dozen men! Anything to laugh again! … When I think of the rollicking
pleasures that earlier filled my life / Like the time I beheaded a man who was
beating his naked wife…" etc.
Underneath the anachronisms, the fa la
la, the cynicism, and the costumes, the folkloric bones of the story
communicate deep wisdom about human character and our perennial, and
perennially doomed, yearning for the Eden we left by choice. At the play's
open, Arthur is hiding in a tree. He fears marriage. His mentor Merlin urges
him to embrace gritty, real-world duty. Then Merlin is lured by the seductive
Lady of the Lake to abandon reality. Merlin enters a perfect world, one where
Merlin will always live in a dream state, without choice or consciousness. He
can no longer warn Arthur of the danger Mordred poses. The play acknowledges
that humanity's yearned-for perfect worlds are always elusive. Arthur creates "eight
years of philanthropic labor," and his subjects rebel out of boredom. Guinevere,
like too many women, throws over a good man, Arthur, for a bad boy, Lancelot. To
preserve Camelot's honor, Arthur must behead Lancelot and burn Guinevere, but
he's too compassionate to do either. Alas, that kind of compassion in a leader
can lead to societal breakdown.
The songs reflect the story's depth. In "What
Do the Simple Folk Do?" Guinevere enlists Arthur's help in dealing with
her depression, possibly caused by her hidden lust for Lancelot, her husband's
vassal. This light-hearted song contains more wisdom about human nature and the
successful treatment of depression than many a physician's prescriptions.
Arthur does not understand Guinevere's reaction to Lancelot. He sings "How
to Handle a Woman," a song I wish every man I've ever been involved with
would commit to memory – and then act on. "Before I Gaze at You Again"
details the struggle to resist immoral lust.
I love Camelot. So I was prepared
to cast aside hesitation about spending a lot of money and bussing to
Manhattan. I clicked on the play's website. The website showed me the three
leads: Andrew Burnap, a white man, as King Arthur. Phillipa Soo, of partly
Chinese descent, as Guinevere. Jordan Donica, who appears to be mixed race, as
Lancelot. The demographics of this new Camelot are the same demographics
as commercials, lately. The cast of commercials have to be a black guy married
to a white gal and they have an adopted Asian kid. When I saw the cast photos
on the Camelot website, I immediately decided: I will not buy a ticket to this
production.
I realized, if I tell anyone this, that
I love Camelot, that I got excited about buying a ticket to Camelot, and
I decided not to buy a ticket because of the tricolor leads, they'd call me a
racist. Would they be correct?
The narrative is that black people are
excluded from roles and therefore roles that a white actor might have played
must be played by black people; otherwise, we'd never see black people in
entertainment. I understand that that was close to true decades ago, but, a
Baby Boomer, I have never lived in that world. As a child I adored films like To
Sir With Love and Lilies of the Field that starred a top box office
star, Sidney Poitier. I had a girl crush on Diahann Carroll, whose TV show, Julia,
I watched intently in order to mimic my role model. Nichelle Nichols, Ossie
Davis, and Isabel Sanford were TV stars fifty – fifty – years ago. I've
gone out of my way to see films starring Don Cheadle, Will Smith, Michael B.
Jordan, Chadwick Boseman, Idris Elba, Leslie Odom Jr, Angela Bassett, and Halle
Berry. These are all major box office stars. One of my all-time favorite films,
1970's My Sweet Charlie, features a
romance between a white woman and a non-white man, as do several other films I've
taken to heart, including The Mountain Between Us, Three Thousand Years of
Longing, A Patch of Blue, Crazy from the Heart, and The Bitter Tea of
General Yen.
I admire black actors. I am moved by
them. I thrill to their talent. I do not pity them. They do not require my
charity. Donica's career, like the career of any actor, will rise and fall on
his talent and his luck.
Both Phillipa Soo and Jordan Donica gained
prominence in Hamilton. Hamilton famously chose non-white actors to play
white people like Alexander Hamilton. Donica played Thomas Jefferson; Soo
played Eliza, Alexander Hamilton's wife. In 2016, Hamilton put out a
casting call for "NON-WHITE" actors. The words "NON-WHITE"
are capitalized in the casting call.
If you Google the name "Phillipa
Soo," you discover that in many sites that mention her, her paternal
grandparents' Chinese ethnicity is also mentioned. Soo does not look Chinese.
Depending on lighting, makeup, and costume, she could pass as descending from
people anywhere from Northern Europe to Afghanistan. Soo could certainly pass
as a sixth-century British queen whose name, Guinevere, may have meant "white
fairy," "white enchantress" or "fair ghost." Soo was
chosen to appear in Hamilton, and, presumably, the new "diverse"
Camelot, because of ancestry she must mention for the viewer to notice. The
obtrusive mentions of Soo's Chinese ancestry tells you something. It tells you
that people who make decisions about art, culture, and money have decided that
it is better to be NON-WHITE, in all caps, than to be white. Soo adds value to
the new production of Camelot because she can be understood as
non-white.
In the 1960 Camelot, "If
Ever I Would Leave You" was Robert Goulet's show-stopping love ballad; it
became handsome Goulet's signature song. A YouTube video of Jordan Donica
singing "If Ever I Would Leave You" is here.
For this viewer, Donica surpasses Goulet. While Goulet was rigid and perfect, Donica
packs love-drunk passion, insistence, and tenderness into his performance. I
can believe that this is a man so sensitive that he has been able to memorize
every detail of the married woman he has loved from afar. I can also believe
that this is a man so egotistical he can murder his former colleagues and
destroy a kingdom to get to the woman he wants. I got chills listening to
Donica in this YouTube performance. My eyes teared up. As talented as Donica
is, the photos that were chosen to publicize the play speaks loudly about why
marketers chose him, and chose those photos.
In some photos, Donica's European
ancestry is predominant. See here. The Donica in this photo could be a
tan Lancelot from the south of France. This is not the look the marketers of
the new Camelot chose for their publicity, though. They chose these photos. Donica's handsome young face becomes
a footnote. It is overwhelmed by a more obtrusive feature: the large Afro hair
style that occupies most of the headshot. In the second publicity photo, Donica's
Afro is as big as his head. Race hustle is the headline. I'm surprised that
they didn't make Phillipa Soo wear a fengguan, or Chinese tiara, for her
photo.
Rachel Dolezal, Raquel Saraswati,
Elizabeth Warren, Ward Churchill, Jessica Krug, CV Vitolo-Haddad and Kay
LeClaire are all white people who, in recent years, have been discovered to be
faking non-white identity. They did so because being white was disadvantageous
to their career and social goals, and being non-white was advantageous to their
career and social goals.
Less prominent folk also abandon
unhelpful whiteness for more desirable non-white identities. "More than a
third of white students lie about their race on college applications, survey
finds … Seventy-seven percent of white applicants who lied about their race on
their application were accepted to those colleges" The Hill reported in October,
2021.
Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West
Wing, wrote the book for the new Camelot. Sorkin is openly leftist.
The New York Times hinted at the
direction the new Camelot might take. The Times quotes a director
as saying, "People think the show is about a love triangle … but I really
think it's about the birth of democracy, and when you look back at 'The West
Wing,' which is one of my favorite shows, that is a TV show that believes
government can work for the people."
Sorkin "made one key early decision
that has guided his approach to the show: no supernatural elements. Merlin is a
"wise tutor." Morgan Le Fey is a scientist. "Even Arthur's
sword-in-the-stone origin story is questioned."
Camelot, the Times reports, "like
many older musicals, has its complications for a modern audience. 'From a
contemporary perspective, it's very problematic … The musical is about heterosexual
adultery ruining a visionary government, and the woman is ultimately blamed for
it' … Sorkin quickly realized that two songs, in particular, posed problems:
the sexist-sounding 'How to Handle a Woman' and the classist-sounding 'What Do
the Simple Folk Do?'"
Sorkin decided to eliminate the "problematic"
songs. Others objected, so he re-added them, but he mocks them. "The songs
are back, preceded by dialogue in which Guenevere preemptively defuses their
sting with Sorkin-esque wit." Sorkin deconstructs other "problematic"
features. "Guenevere is now a strategic helpmate, periodically outthinking
her husband." Note that Soo, coded as non-white, is superior to Burnap,
who is clearly the white guy in the cast.
Originally, Morgan Le Fey "was
little more than a spurned ex-girlfriend." Sorkin rewrote her. "He
made Le Fey a scientist, an unmarried mother, and, for a time, an opium addict
… 'The old version of Camelot felt distant … This version is inviting
the audience to ask themselves who they are' … 'the ideas of democracy that are
discussed in this show are the ones that are discussed in this country.'"
Sorkin's script implies "that Guenevere might be agnostic."
New York Times readers were not onboard with Woke Camelot.
The most popular reader comment is from Don in New Jersey. "How are 'How
to Handle a Woman' and 'What Do the Simple Folk Do' problematic for today's
audiences? Both songs are reflections of the patriarchal social system of the
Middle Ages … the arc of Arthur's character is that he matures throughout the
show. I consider myself very woke, but can we please stop re-writing other
people's works?" Other popular reader comments echo the sentiments of Don,
from unsophisticated New Jersey.
In another interview, Sorkin labeled the 1960 Camelot
"problematic." He made, he said, "major changes" to the
"love triangle between King Arthur, his queen, Guenevere, and the knight
Lancelot. 'I wanted those stories to feel relevant to 2023.'" He
reemphasizes his removal of all magic. "Once again, I'll return to there
not being literal magic in the new show … a White House could have been
Camelot. But with real-life humans working the switches."
Below are quotes from online, audience
reviews of the new, improved, relevant, non-problematic, no-magic Camelot.
"Gueneviere's lines are very snarky
… so it's hard to see how King Arthur could love her … that makes his choice
between saving Gueneviere and saving Camelot less convincing … it's the lines
themselves in the show that forces her to play the role as a kind of cutting
and not very nice person."
"The original lines are some of the
finest ever written but they were cut and replaced with a dryer political
monologue … [Soo as Guinevere] was clearly directed to be snarky and a strong
female but in so doing, we never see the love that must exist between her and
Arthur for this story to make sense. And like others, I mourned the loss of
magic."
"Reset for contemporary values
around capable woman and sometimes clueless men."
"Three hours of a slightly bored
dress rehearsal."
"Where was the magic? We was robbed!
… [Arthur called] Guinevere his business partner - ouch! They had no chemistry
… Morgan Le Fay as a scientist, not a sorceress…really? It was a thin and too
often joyless rendering of what has had pathos and beauty."
"Gueneviere was feisty but overly
snarky."
"The script got too preachy."
"The magic of Camelot is
missing."
"Nowhere in the preceding action
did we see a moment when [Guinevere] was anything but snarky and [white Arthur]
was anything but the butt of too many jokes …
our 14-year-old grandson has no clue why the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot
triangle is considered the greatest of the medieval tragic love stories. He may
never read The Once and Future King! Now that's a tragedy."
"I felt completely insulted by this
show, and it was torture to sit through … updating the book with current snarky
and sarcastic dialogue … made absolutely no sense … He played Arthur as an
absolute doofus, like a more simple-minded version of Chandler from Friends.
And Phillipa Soo … played Guinevere as a shrew. She treated Arthur horribly
… in this production she supposedly
comes up with the idea [of the Round Table] herself while she treats Arthur
like an idiot who can't think for himself. And without that real love … the
tragedy of her affair with Lancelot just doesn't work … Morgan Le Fay slept
with Arthur as a 15 year old boy and then gave birth to Mordred? First of all,
that's very creepy … I want to wash my brain of this production so I can love
Camelot again."
"Heavily embellished with Sorkin's
politics."
"A cross between a bad sitcom and
Monty Python."
These and other reviews from audiences
who have seen the new Camelot can be read here.
Guinevere's snarkiness and Arthur as the
butt of jokes can be seen in this YouTube
clip from the new production. Andrew Burnap sings
"Camelot," a song meant to be witty, but also to convey how very
special Camelot is. Burnap sings without commitment. Soo looks on with disdain.
She performs a contemptuous gesture, a head wag, associated with contemporary
urban black women. Burnap "mansplains" to her. The above-quoted
review is correct. It reads like a scene from "Friends."
Compare Burnap and Soo in Sorkin's Camelot
to another clip from an old Sammy Davis Jr. TV show. Richard Burton is
alone on stage, not in costume and unsupported by any set. In this brief,
blurry footage, Burton, with his voice and person alone, transports the viewer
to Camelot, a once-and-future Utopia, destroyed by a king's tragic flaw, a
treacherous friend, and a queen's lust. Burton brings tears to your eyes. It's
remarkable; Richard Burton, the man, was the embodiment of most of the seven
deadly sins. He was a womanizer, a drunk, a carouser, a spendthrift. His own
sins killed him at the ridiculously young age of 58. And yet no other actor has
ever, as poignantly as Burton, conveyed transcendence. You can watch this
footage here.
I decided not to purchase a ticket to Camelot
on the basis, only, of the headshot featuring, primarily, Jordan Donica's
Afro, and, only secondarily, featuring his face. The marketer's choice to erase
Donica's obvious European ancestry and cartoonishly to overemphasize his
African ancestry told me much. This would be a Woke Camelot.
But what about the question of cultural
appropriation? We know about Keziah Daum, the white teenager who wore a Chinese
dress to her prom and was dragged all over the internet. We know about Kooks,
the Portland, Oregon, burrito sellers who had to run for their lives – literally – because they weren't Mexican
but they sold Mexican food. We know darn well that violence would break out if
a white actor were cast to play a black hero. Should we apply to Camelot the
leftist taboo against whites engaging non-white cultures, and ban Donica
from playing Lancelot? Hell no. He's got a great voice and even otherwise
negative reviews single him out as the strongest actor in the cast.
Here's the issue with those headshots.
Sorkin's rewrite of Camelot is not the only rewriting of narratives
right now. Not just folklore, but actual history, is being revised to comply
with Woke. We are told of white privilege, white supremacy, white fragility,
white guilt, white settlers, white colonialism. Woke wants us to believe that
invasions, population shifts, massacres, domination, slavery, genocide, are all
what whites do to non-whites. Woke insists that whites monopolize all the
unearned goods of the earth, including all the good stories. Whites must step
back and give the good stuff to non-whites. This is quite literally the message
of Ibram X. Kendi, and schoolchildren are indoctrinated into believing Woke as
dogma.
This limited good worldview is extended
not just to the redistribution of wealth and to affirmative action policies in
universities and workplaces – whites must give non-whites money; whites must
give non-whites jobs – but also to cultural goods like stories. "Limited
good" was described by American anthropologist George Foster. It's the
idea that there is only so much good to go around and if one person has more,
the next person will inevitably have less. Eric Deggans, NPR's movie critic, expressed this limited good worldview when
he chastised Tom Hanks for making movies. When a white actor makes movies about
white heroes, that means there will be fewer movies starring black actors
depicting black heroes. Limited good is the opposite of the worldview that says
that a rising tide lifts all boats. In that worldview, a successful Tom Hanks
movie means that movies in general are doing better and, therefore, more movies
will be made, including movies starring black men playing black heroes.
Woke lies. Woke lies about history. The
invasions and population replacements that are supposed to be what white people
do to non-whites are all universal features of human life. Shifts in the
populations of the Americas had been going on for millennia before Columbus.
Inuit completely replaced pre-Inuit peoples, who left almost no trace of their
existence. Anasazi Indians were wiped out in a cannibal genocide committed by their
neighbors. The Comanche tried to wipe out the Apache.
Just so in what is now Great Britain.
White people huddled in caves and drank from skulls. White people were wiped
out by their genes or their technology that were ill-suited to new conditions.
White people were invaded, massacred, raped, starved and enslaved by other
white people. White people performed breath-taking feats, like erecting
Stonehenge with minimal technology. White people sent the spires of gothic
cathedrals into the heavens and white people raped and pillaged. That's part of
the universal human experience. Woke doesn't want us to interpret it that way,
so history is no longer taught to young people. Only unrecognizably distorted
narratives. Distorted narratives are used to denigrate whiteness and to
demonize powerful products of white cultures. Distorted narratives render Camelot
"problematic" until it is rescued by a snarky heroine and a black
lead – both of whom, in spite of their obvious European ancestry, must be
understood, photographed, marketed and talked about as non-white in order to complete
their salvific function. And so an "Asian" Guinevere makes a fool of
a "white" Arthur and undermines the entire point of the play,
draining it of any poignancy, humanity, depth, or magic.
For the past thousand-plus years, people
in what is now Great Britain have been telling stories about a wise and
benevolent king named Arthur. This is their story. It is not my story. I'm of
Polish and Slovak descent. Arthur is not my king. When I get chills listening
to Camelot, I'm being moved by a story that is not mine. Being moved by products
of others' cultures is also part of the human experience. I don't need anyone
to write a Polish character into Camelot for me to find it
"relevant." It is Arthur's very particular Britishness that renders
him universal, in the same way that John Paul II and Vaclav Havel became
universal heroes by being so very thoroughly Polish and Czechoslovak. James
Joyce said, "I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the
heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular
is contained the universal."
But, you may say, genetically
unconnected populations have been rewriting the Arthur story for over a
thousand years. These re-tellers of the tale include Britons, Anglo-Saxons,
Normans, and Jews – Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe both had Jewish
ancestry. The difference is that these successive tellers respected the
material and the people who produced it. The new Lincoln Center production
telegraphs its disrespect for both the people who generated and cherished the
Arthur story and the story itself. The new Lincoln Center production isn't
about passing on cultural good to the young; it's about tearing down that
cultural good and bastardizing it to serve a narrative that hates the story and
hates the people who produced it.
I suspected all of that when I saw the
publicity photos of Jordan Donica, that worked so hard to reduce a beautiful,
talented young man, a rising star, to political points scored on the Woke
scoreboard.
Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery
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