Sunday, March 09, 2008

Showboating rabbi   [Mark Steyn]

Dow Marmur, a Toronto rabbi, weighs in on the Danish cartoons, Canada's "thought police" and related matters, and comes down on the side of self-censorship in the interests of multicultural sensitivity. But, en passant, he observes:

This was my stance more than a decade ago when Show Boat was staged in Toronto and some members of the black community objected on the grounds that it was racist. Many of my friends thought otherwise. For all I know, they may have been right, because it's difficult to describe Show Boat as a racist musical. Nevertheless, I felt that if some blacks thought that it was, their feelings were more important to me than my own artistic judgment. I think tolerance is also about that. 

Show Boat is a "racist musical" only in the sense that blacks get the best roles and the best songs - "Ol' Man River", "Bill", "Can't Help Lovin' That Man Of Mine". Its authors were classic New York liberals - Oscar Hammerstein went on to write "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" (to hate) in South Pacific, which so offended theater owners in the south they insisted it be cut from the film version. The Hal Prince revival referenced above subsequently opened on Broadway, and I remember Paul Simon, a latterday New York liberal, telling me how much he loved the show.

If you throw over Show Boat, one of the great works of the American theatre, because somebody's "feelings" (however manufactured) are more important, what else are you prepared to lose? In such a world, there will be nothing left. To discard a work like Show Boat is to deny history, which is to deny reality, and that's rarely a smart move. In the name of "tolerance", you'll wind up in a society that tolerates nothing - nothing genuinely enquiring or provocative, or even mildly controversial. We're back to that Jonah discussion re Invasion Of The Body Snatchers - a PC-sedated populace in the name of "niceness". Even liberal rabbis should know better.  

03/09 07:16 AMShare