[wat0n]

Note that I lumped Classical and Renaissance art together.

[Fasces]

OK, now give an example.

[wat0n]

OK, now give an example.

Fine:

British Columbia

To cancel or not to cancel Shakespeare? Meet the English professor flipping the script on the Bard
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Some of the playwright's racial references can be removed without affecting plot, Dennis Britton suggests
Bridgette Watson · CBC News · Posted: Mar 06, 2022 10:00 AM CST | Last Updated: March 6, 2022

To cancel or not to cancel Shakespeare?

That is the question English professor Dennis Britton is asking second year students at the University of British Columbia in his course Cancel Shakespeare.

Britton's academic research focuses on the history of race and critical race theory, and he uses this lens in his course to explore the complicated history the playwright has with Black people.

As the theatre world begins to welcome audiences back after a two-year pandemic, Shakespeare costumes are likely being dusted off across the globe. But while the curtains were closed, issues of race took centre stage, including during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.

In response, over 300 BIPOC theatre makers signed their names on a statement titled We See You White American Theatre, demanding a more equitable and safe space in the industry.

And although film director Joel Coen recently cast Denzel Washington to play the titular character in Macbeth, generations of Black audiences have been disrespected by Bard characters in blackface.

Is it time to put William Shakespeare to bed? CBC's Bridgette Watson spoke with Britton to find out.

The following transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Shakespeare wrote at least 37 plays for white actors and white audiences. Does he portray or make reference to Black characters in any of them?

Shakespeare uses colour symbolism with Black being associated with evil and white being good. His representations of blackness or Black people also have to do with lines that get sort of thrown in at various points by white characters. We definitely see ideas of anti-Blackness.

And, of course, this is also happening when Europeans are having an increased contact with Africa and the slave trade is emerging.

Othello is the most obvious character but throughout the plays there are also negative references to Black skin.

Rosalind, a white heroine in As You Like It, calls black ink on a letter "Ethiope words" because she doesn't like what they say.

In Titus Andronicus, the villain Aaron has a soul "black like his face." So you take joy and pleasure in his villainous activities and make the explicit connection between his black deeds and Black skin.

So is Shakespeare's work only for white people?

That's a complicated question. He's very much engaged with the belief systems and ways of understanding the world that his audience would have had, even if he is at times poking fun.

Also think about who has had access to Shakespeare and under what conditions. Literacy being a big issue, and the price of books and theatre tickets, all of that has a class dimension as well.

There's also the issue of Black actors wanting to perform Shakespeare and often not finding a place for themselves in professional companies. This is why you get things like Laurence Olivier playing Othello in blackface even while the civil rights movement was gaining steam.

Can Shakespeare's plays truly be adapted to celebrate Black excellence?

I think so and I always want to go back to the fact that this is entertainment. We probably don't need another Romeo and Juliet set in the 16th century and theatre companies aren't really going for accuracy anyway because then you wouldn't see female actors. So the plays have already been updated and this just seems to be another way, another form of adapting, that could bring them new life.

I think some of the racial references can just easily be taken out and it have zero effect on the plot. Most audiences will not miss them because they don't know them intimately enough.

But you teach a university course called Cancel Shakespeare. Are we adapting or abandoning?

There's a real sense now that we want more women and more writers of colour in our curriculum, so something has to go and and Shakespeare should equally be on the chopping block. You can't make room for new voices without getting rid of some of the old.

He seems to be the only writer that must be read over and over even when there are some rather offensive attitudes in his work. In my own student experience, those lines were not dealt with when they did come up. I think those are the moments that are really worth interrogating in a classroom.

Do you think Shakespeare will still be assigned in high school in 50 years?

I'll be retired so it won't matter to me personally (laughs).

But there are so many writers of colour and writers from marginalized identities now adapting Shakespeare's plays, arguing with his plays, and as long as that continues, there will be the need to understand the original works.

"But you teach a university course called Cancel Shakespeare. Are we adapting or abandoning?" cracked me up

Note how this is an example of the mediocrity of the woke artists: Instead of creating their own woke art from scratch, they prefer to bastardize other artwork by changing the characters. This can clearly be seen in the film industry as well by woke washing characters in some remakes of successful old movies. Constantly doing this obviously alienates many sooner or later, specially those who just want to wind down and watch a good movie.

There could be some fine movies featuring e.g. Ethiopian history if one took the effort to make one. Say, for example, the successful resistance of Italian attempts to colonize Ethiopia in the late 19th century could make for a good war movie.

[Pants-of-dog]

Please note that the course is a class discussing racism in Shakespeare and is not an actual attempt to cancel anything.

[wat0n]

Except that it is, and then what's taught in this kind of courses is eventually implemented in the curriculum.

So no, you're just wrong as usual.

[Potemkin]

Fine:



"But you teach a university course called Cancel Shakespeare. Are we adapting or abandoning?" cracked me up

Note how this is an example of the mediocrity of the woke artists: Instead of creating their own woke art from scratch, they prefer to bastardize other artwork by changing the characters. This can clearly be seen in the film industry as well by woke washing characters in some remakes of successful old movies. Constantly doing this obviously alienates many sooner or later, specially those who just want to wind down and watch a good movie.

There could be some fine movies featuring e.g. Ethiopian history if one took the effort to make one. Say, for example, the successful resistance of Italian attempts to colonize Ethiopia in the late 19th century could make for a good war movie.

In my opinion, The Woman King is a good example of just such a movie.

[late]

Except that it is, and then what's taught in this kind of courses is eventually implemented in the curriculum.

So no, you're just wrong as usual.

Life doesn't conform to Right wing adolescent fantasies.

Academia argues about everything. Getting them to agree on what time it is can feel like an accomplishment. So you have one guy, in one discipline. What about the few thousand other guys, and the thousands more in other disciplines? And on what planet does that translate into political action.

It can, but 99.99999999% of the time no one pays attention.

[Tainari88]

In my opinion, The Woman King is a good example of just such a movie.

Spike Lee was in the middle of production for Malcolm X when the studio pulled funding and were shutting down production. They did not really feel committed to finishing a movie that was too long according to them. They had Rodney King meltdowns on the streets of Los Angeles all about racial tensions and felt talking about the Rodney King incidents at the beginning of the movie was incendiary Potemkin.

This is what Spike Lee said...notice he called rich Black people who had money and were well known celebrities and Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Bill Cosby, and others all donated movie to finish Malcolm X. The reality is Latinos themselves and African Americans and Asians themselves will have to write their own material, produce it and market it. Most of these corporate production companies are headed by white people who do not feel comfortable writing scripts and producing themes were everyone is from another ethnicity and have a totally different experience of the USA or a particular history that is not reflective of theirs in the same nation. It is interesting. You got to create your own art and deal with it. The white majority and wealthy class do not care about those topics.

[wat0n]

Life doesn't conform to Right wing adolescent fantasies.

Academia argues about everything. Getting them to agree on what time it is can feel like an accomplishment. So you have one guy, in one discipline. What about the few thousand other guys, and the thousands more in other disciplines? And on what planet does that translate into political action.

It can, but 99.99999999% of the time no one pays attention.

What part of "schools are already incorporating these things into their curriculum" was unclear?

@Potemkin that's also an excellent example, there are definitely actual historical events in African history that can be adapted into good movies.

Or if we stick to fantasy, there were some who hated Black Panther (and others loved it) but on top of being an average MCU movie (which is good in my book, but YMMV. I didn't quite like Black Panther 2 though - it is definitely worse than the original), even haters should recognize it is way, way better than just taking an old movie and making an adaptation using black actors that (at best) doesn't improve on anything else (at worst, they can actually be worse). It at least makes sense for the characters to be black given the movie's lore.

[late]

What part of "schools are already incorporating these things into their curriculum" was unclear?

Unsupported assertions from the Right can be safely ignored.

Let me approach this from a different angle. Change gets messy, and mistakes get made. That's inevitable. Academia will argue about this, and eventually come to some sort of conclusion.

Last thing the country needs is the Right telling them how to do their job.

[Potemkin]

Spike Lee was in the middle of production for Malcolm X when the studio pulled funding and were shutting down production. They did not really feel committed to finishing a movie that was too long according to them. They had Rodney King meltdowns on the streets of Los Angeles all about racial tensions and felt talking about the Rodney King incidents at the beginning of the movie was incendiary Potemkin.

This is what Spike Lee said...notice he called rich Black people who had money and were well known celebrities and Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Bill Cosby, and others all donated movie to finish Malcolm X. The reality is Latinos themselves and African Americans and Asians themselves will have to write their own material, produce it and market it. Most of these corporate production companies are headed by white people who do not feel comfortable writing scripts and producing themes were everyone is from another ethnicity and have a totally different experience of the USA or a particular history that is not reflective of theirs in the same nation. It is interesting. You got to create your own art and deal with it. The white majority and wealthy class do not care about those topics.

Malcolm X himself didn’t trust white liberals. He felt that, deep down, they just didn’t care about racism or inequality in the same way that Black people do. And he had a point. Black people experience racism on the own skin, in their own bones, in the depths of their being. White people don’t, we just don’t. Malcolm X regarded white liberals as fair weather friends, with no real commitment to the cause. And was he wrong? As Spike Lee found, you can’t rely on white liberal Hollywood producers or studio executives. They’ll pull funding at the slightest sign of anything ‘problematic’, if they think it might affect the return on their investment. Black artists have to make their own movies themselves, tell their own stories themselves, and raise the funding themselves.

[wat0n]

@late I provided a source that is not right-wing.

School Library Journal is the premiere publication for librarians and information specialists who work with children and teens. A source of quality journalism and reviews for more than 60 years, SLJ produces award-winning features and news coverage on: literacy, best practices, technology, education policy and other issues of interest to the school library and greater educator community. We evaluate a broad range of resources, from books and digital content to databases, in 6000+ reviews published annually.

Not that shooting the messenger will do you any good.

[Pants-of-dog]

The quoted text about Shakespeare provided no evidence that Shakespeare is being censored.

At worst, Shakespeare is merely being removed from the curriculum.

There is a difference between that and censorship.

[wat0n]

The quoted text about Shakespeare provided no evidence that Shakespeare is being censored.

At worst, Shakespeare is merely being removed from the curriculum.

There is a difference between that and censorship.

Teachers are not allowed to deviate from the curriculum.

And I didn't say Shakespeare is being censored either - schools aren't banning students from reading it on their own. The same could be said about CRT by the way.

[Potemkin]

The quoted text about Shakespeare provided no evidence that Shakespeare is being censored.

At worst, Shakespeare is merely being removed from the curriculum.

There is a difference between that and censorship.

Shakespeare has always been censored. Back in the 19th century, a ‘scholar’ by the name of Bowdler edited Shakespeare’s plays to remove all the rude bits. And in the 18th century, many of Shakespeare’s plays were extensively rewritten to better conform to the popular taste of the time - King Lear, for example, was rewritten to give it a happy ending. Seriously. The present-day respect for Shakespeare’s text as (we think) he wrote it is something new.

[Tainari88]

Shakespeare has always been censored. Back in the 19th century, a ‘scholar’ by the name of Bowdler edited Shakespeare’s plays to remove all the rude bits. And in the 18th century, many of Shakespeare’s plays were extensively rewritten to better conform to the popular taste of the time - King Lear, for example, was rewritten to give it a happy ending. Seriously. The present-day respect for Shakespeare’s text as (we think) he wrote it is something new.

I think they need to modernize the English used from Shakespeare's time Pote.

I hardly understand it. Imagine the younger generation? Keep the essence of the meaning of the dialog or literature but update the vocabulary and language. Because it is hundreds of years of evolution and it is dated beyond belief.

I read some of the original scripts of Cervantes times there and of old Spanish and it was difficult to follow. You got to keep it fresh for the youth. Lol.

[wat0n]

Shakespeare has always been censored. Back in the 19th century, a ‘scholar’ by the name of Bowdler edited Shakespeare’s plays to remove all the rude bits. And in the 18th century, many of Shakespeare’s plays were extensively rewritten to better conform to the popular taste of the time - King Lear, for example, was rewritten to give it a happy ending. Seriously. The present-day respect for Shakespeare’s text as (we think) he wrote it is something new.

Indeed, although I'd say our current view - 2 centuries later - is that was rather silly to say the least.

[Unthinking Majority]

I think they need to modernize the English used from Shakespeare's time Pote.

I hardly understand it. Imagine the younger generation? Keep the essence of the meaning of the dialog or literature but update the vocabulary and language. Because it is hundreds of years of evolution and it is dated beyond belief.

I read some of the original scripts of Cervantes times there and of old Spanish and it was difficult to follow. You got to keep it fresh for the youth. Lol.

Put boxer briefs on Michaelangelo's David also.

[Unthinking Majority]

Censoring Shakespeare at the University level is an abomination.

[Potemkin]

Indeed, although I'd say our current view - 2 centuries later - is that was rather silly to say the least.

Yet we are now playing with the idea of doing something similar - bowdlerising Shakespeare’s texts to remove the ‘naughty bits’ - in Bowdler’s own time, the ‘sexy’ bits, in our own time, the ‘racist’ bits. We now regard Bowdler as a silly Victorian prude. But are we any better, in our own neo-Puritan way?