Millie: alternate version? — Page 2

White people aren't oppressed just because they are white.

When will you crackers get the point, making fun of white people is ok, because they are in charge.

It's the way it works, you can pretend to be indignant, but it's NOT A TWO WAY STREET, and that is because the balance of power IS NOT EQUAL.

It may be a hard pill to swallow, but making fun of white people is fine, deal with it.

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Wouldn't changing them to Lithuanians wreck the plot point of Mrs. Meers selling them into prostitution? I mean, if you're going to sell girls to an overseas whorehouse, why choose Lithuania?

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>> When will you crackers get the point

And when will *you* stop playing the Eternal Victim?

Here's a clue for you: slavery's over. Has been for a really long time. Yeah, nothing's perfect, but know what? It aint perfect for anyone... so get over yourself and deal with it. I'm getting really tired of hearing "poor oppressed me", particularly when it really no longer applies unless you *let* it.

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Fenchurch, WHY do you continue to do this to yourself? Stop while you're behind.

"That's too funny. You think I'm black or hispanic or another minority, don't you? and that *you* might as well have been following by any epithet, you're disgusting.

Emancipation has NOTHING to do with oppression, if you think that, then you're an idiot. Do you think blacks actually became equal because of a piece of paper? Do you think the fight for equality is over? Do you really think that? Even you can't be that naive and ignorant.

Oh yes, everyone let themselves get thrown off buses and out of schools and killed and maimed. Yeah, when a gang is chasing you because they want to lynch you, then you *let* it happen.

How sad."

...

So...then you're just afflicted by White Man's Guilt?

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While I think the characters were written tongue-in-cheek, it takes a highly sophisticated audience to get that, and when you market a show to the lowest common denominator tourist audience, you can't expect them to get that.

That's when it becomes a problem.

It's very much like Peter Jackson's King Kong. He mitigates his portrayals of the "savage people" from the Island where they find King Kong by using ridiculous portrayals of "natives" in the stage show where they present King Kong in New York. but if you haven't read Heart of Darkness or aren't a particularly saavy viewer, you're not going to get that.

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I don't understand why people freak out so much over some plays on stereotypes, and not at all on others.

Will & Grace is a perfect example. Jack and Karen and HORRIBLE people. But HYSTERICAL plays on stereotypes. Grace is even a horrible person! But America loved them and laughed because they knew they were wonderful finely crafted plays on a stereotype. They won Emmys for it!

When I saw King Kong, I was not offended by the savages. They were used to heighten the dramatic effect of the story. When writing the script, of course the authors are going to have the filmmakers come in contact with scary native islanders in this strange crazy world. Of course they would be incorperated into the New York show. It is a horror/action movie. It is fiction. Extremely heightend fiction. People know that going in.

In The Color Purple they play up the big sassy black ladies like nobodies business. Are all big black ladies sassy? No. Does the black audience care? No. They clap and cheer and go crazy when they come on. Do they care that the director of the show, who is responsible for the staging and crafting the performances, is white? No. Do they think he is a racist? NO.

Updated On: 4/27/07 at 01:43 AM

SM, youre hopeless. You can pretend that equality is here but it isn't, any fool with eyes and ears knows that. All your blustering just makes you look ignorant.

Live your priveleged life, but know this. Hopefully one day someone will make you feel inferior for something that was god-given, something that you can't help being, it's just the way you are, and then you'll know what it feel likes.

Until then, don't bother the grown ups, you're out of your league.

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Fenchurch:
I know equality isn't here. I also own the book Blacking Up. I do have a master's degree, since the "unsophisticated" nature of the audience has been brought up.

What bothers me about your opinion is that you didn't see the entire show. The dialogue in the final scene, which I won't reveal entirely for people who haven't seen the show, when it's revealed that Bun Foo speaks English, takes every stereotype we've seen and flips it on its head. You're speaking about something you know nothing about.

Additionally, I don't care where you lived. Did you live there in 1922? Did any of us? Are you saying Michael Mayer, one of the theatre's best directors knows nothing about cultural theory and dramaturgical research?

Everything you've posted has been completely elitist. The theatre IS mass entertainment, and MILLIE approaches the issue of identity from a point of view that seems to be stereotypical at the start, but in the resolution of the plot, we learn that things aren't what they seem. That theme relates to the revelations about Jimmy and Miss Dorothy as well. Every character is an archetype with an atypical backstory. A thoroughly modern concept in the modern art movement that was alive and well in the 1920s. We didn't understand the full implications of mass sharing of culture then, but have been more enlightened in the nearly 100 years since. And when I saw we--I mean the general populace, too. We have some distance to go still, but your statements about tourists are more offensive than anything in Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Thoroughly Modern Millie is not a thesis on cultural relations, but it does contain the very American theme of self-reinvention. As the characters all reinvent themselves, the audience is forced to reconsider the roles we assign to people, regardless of cultural or ethnic makeup.

You seem to desire a kind of segregation in the arts, as though all cultures not in the historical makeup of the artist are off limits. Dramatic theory has moved way beyond (about 20 years ago) into an area of interculturalism that looks at the drama that happens when culturals collide together. And audiences have followed, because they are not stupid.

Adjust, or shut up.

PS--There's been a lot written about culture, colonialism, and imperialism since Joseph Conrad. (If you don't know--he wrote Heart of Darkness. I own that, too. That's the book Fenchurch says must be read by everyone in order to understand the complexities of cultural studies. The plot was adapted into the film Apocalypse Now and moved from the Congo to Vietnam... Which I'm sure is offensive to Asians.)

Updated On: 4/27/07 at 03:32 PM