This article originally appeared in Roar.lk The inaugural Shakespeare In The Park in Colombo was a 6-day festival, held over three weekends in April and May, in which The Workshop Players put on evening performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant Of Venice and Othello. These performances took place in the Open Air Theatre at Viharamahadevi Park in the centre of Colombo, and showcased some important aspects of our contemporary cultural life.
Admission was free, and audience enthusiasm was great, despite the threatening weather conditions. The stadium itself, a mini-amphitheatre, designed with descending tiers of stone converging onto an elevated performance space, enabled good vision of the stage. People started queuing about half an hour before the performances commenced, punctually at 7 p.m. Older people with walking sticks, kids running around, school groups, a medley, a myriad, of citizens.
A scene from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Image credit: Andre Perera/The Workshop Players
Shakespeare In The Park originated in New York, staged in Central Park, as an outdoor theatre festival which was intended to popularise theatre-going, making attendance at a dramatic performance accessible to all citizens of a city, irrespective of their social class and socio-economic status. It is a popular culture event, in contrast to the events held in theatres and concert halls and opera houses, and free of dress code. Cafe style food, drinks, and ice cream are sold, and it is arranged on a ‘first come first seated’ basis, a refreshing alternative to the hierarchical ticketing structures of almost every event these days.
At its heart, it is an interactive and collaborative event, not a display which can only be witnessed. Live theatre performances are rehearsed, but they are neither prescribed nor mechanical. There is room for improvisation, and the lines are not merely ‘by-hearted’ but delivered with brio and feeling. The actors wholeheartedly enjoy the characters they embody. High culture can often be seen by the general public as static, stylised, and intimidating. This, in contrast, is as colourful and inclusive and visually fluid as can be.
A captivated audience. Initiatives such as this one make theatre freely available to more audiences. Image credit Andre Perera/The Workshop Players
It is impossible to emphasise enough the significance of such an initiative in Colombo, at this particular point in Sri Lanka’s cultural history, when the country is opening up to the outside world after years of horror, trauma, and frustration, to which the understandable and survivalistic response has been endurance and introversion. Western food, art, music, and literature have been presented, in this Democratic Socialist Republic, as elite indulgences available only to a privileged few.
The opportunity to access available sources of global, rather than just local, culture is the mark of an open and free society. For the people of a city, of all generations and backgrounds, to have the ability to attend pure metal concerts, chamber music performances in cathedrals and churches, eat olives and smoked salmon and buy European style bread at the Good Market, eat locally made cheeses alongside Sri Lankan bites and not feel unpatriotic or elitist in their preferences, because all these products coexist, is surely a joyful outcome, after years of deprivation, scarcity, and suffering.
The goodwill and cheerfulness of the audience at this Festival matched the energy and enthusiasm of the actors, and virtually all attendees came with umbrellas and shawls to fend off the elements. This is the first Shakespeare In The Park festival to be held in Colombo, and it was a vibrant celebration of the popular elements of theatregoing which Shakespeare, who was an actor himself, would have certainly approved: the open-heartedness of the participants, the optimistic determination to proceed with all performances despite the rain, the gorgeous sensation of having falooda ice cream in the interval, the pleasure of seeing Shakespeare’s characters, both comic and tragic, colliding and colluding and conspiring on stage.
“The opportunity to access available sources of global, rather than just local, culture is the mark of an open and free society.” Image credit: Andre Perera/The Workshop Players
The lights in the trees, the sound of the winds blowing through the leaves above our heads, the beautiful, lilting Renaissance music which played as we climbed up the outside steps and entered the gates and descended into the amphitheatre and took our seats, the flashes of lightning, the outbreaks of thunder and the cathartic outbursts of rain all contributed to the sound and light effects of the sensory outdoor experience.
At the performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the audience fully appreciated the vivid characterisations of the characters by the young people: the athleticism and mimicry of young mister Robin Goodfellow, who at one point threw himself bodily into Oberon’s arms and imitated the action of a bow and arrow, the inspired use of leaf fronds to suggest the personified forest and the characters’ confused meanderings through it, and the heartburnings of the young ladies Hermia and Helena as they traversed the gamut from being friends to frenemies to being friends again, while sorting out their interpersonal issues of self-esteem and dignity and pride with interspersed words and fisticuffs.
This festival was held to celebrate Shakespeare in the 400th anniversary of his renown, and it was wonderful to experience his work in such an exuberant and appropriate way. This festival signals a great opportunity to celebrate the arts and humanities in public spaces in a city and a country in which these spaces have been contested for so many years: rendered dangerous to visit, by guerilla war and political incidents, occupied by ritualistic displays of public power and military might, and policed by regulatory governing bodies. In a society in which public parks and spaces are being opened up, after so many years of terror, apprehension and anxiety, it is appropriate and profoundly balancing that joyful incidents like this should now occur in them.
The winds were so strong at times during the opening sequence of The Merchant Of Venice that items of the stage set and scenery were blown down, and the rain was so fierce at times that the lively words between Portia and Nerissa as they laughed at Portia’s wannabe suitors could not clearly be heard, yet many people in the audience stayed right through to the end, and this could not just have been out of loyalty or a desire to support specific members of the cast or support team of The Workshop Players. To enable the facing of such a barrage of elements, there must be an abiding love of literature and drama itself, and an appreciation of the efforts of those seeking to embody characters whose portraits add much to our knowledge of our shared human condition.
Shakespeare in the park: the cast, undeterred by adverse weather conditions. Image credit: Andre Perera/The Workshop Players
The weather poetically mirrored the intensity of the performances! ForA Midsummer Night’s Dream, a comedy with lighter conflicts and mitigating circumstances, the rain was light and intermittent. For A Merchant Of Venice, with its dark and intense vengeance theme centred on Shylock, an alienated and bitter individual, the skies darkened, and the rain was so heavy that temporary shelter was needed. Innovatively, inclusively, and imaginatively, the audience was invited onto the stage for the performance of Othello, where they could have an immersive theatrical experience without themselves being physically inundated by rain which was so heavy it fell not in veils but in blankets.
Humans are responsive creatures, absorbing and reflecting what is enacted around us. We respond and react to our ambient context, and unconsciously imbue the cues and prompts of our settings. Spaces of beauty, expressiveness and spontaneity are cordials for our souls. So often these days, our experiences are event-managed: regulated and controlled and cordoned off, in an effort to deliver to us a pre-paid and packaged experience. Along with that level of organisation, very unfortunately, often comes a loss of joy.
This did not occur in this space. Sorrow was displaced by joy!
Featured image credit: Andre Perera/The Workshop Players
Remember the evil Queen in ‘Snow White’, who used to stand
in front of her mirror and ask this question? Dreading the answer, in case she
was not deemed the ‘fairest’ (which, in the fairy tale, meant ‘the most
beautiful’)?
'Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall, Who's The Fairest Of Us All?'
Image from Walt Disney's 'Snow White' (1937).
As people with dark skin, Sri Lankans face a challenge which
many of us are reluctant to recognise: that ‘white’ is seen as ‘privileged’ and
that not being ‘white’ or ‘fair’ is consequently seen as an inferior status.
And we see this projected onto us every day.
Many of the messages we absorb about our value and our worth
come from the advertisements we see in magazines, on television, at the movies,
and other media. The eye-opening part of this is that we in South Asia, who
endorse these advertisements, are perpetuating racist stereotypes and imposing
implied inferiority onto ourselves and our fellow citizens. By buying into and
creating this type of marketing, we accept an inferior status in the
contemporary world, in which fairer-skinned people are seen as an ideal, and
darker skinned are seen as comparatively lesser.
How Did This Happen?
Manisha Anjali, a poet and writer who has written
extensively on the subject of skin bleaching, comments that: “South Asia is in
desperate need of a skin-positivity revolution. White worship is an archaic
colonial hangover.”
One of the advantages of living in the 21st Century is that
we can evaluate the cultural myths that have been imposed on us: see how they
started, see through them, and set them aside, if they are damaging and
belittling to us.
The greatest cultural myth underlying colonialism is that of
the inherent superiority of the coloniser. White superiority was expressed
aggressively, through genocide, exploitation, humiliation, and pervasive
cruelty towards those of darker race, who inhabited lands rich in resources
which were coveted by the colonisers. The ‘Terra Nullius’ doctrine in Australia
declared the land on which dark-skinned indigenous people were living to be
‘uninhabited’, and thus available to be ‘settled’ and ‘developed’.
But the association of ‘darker’ with something lesser,
something less formed, more violent, goes back to far more primitive times.
Think about the common expressions: ‘Dark and Difficult Days’, ‘The Dark Lord’
(from the Harry Potter series), ‘On a Dark Night, There Came A Dark Man With A
Dark Purpose’ (from ‘Aladdin’), ‘The Darkest Hour Is Just Before The Dawn’,
‘The Heart of Darkness’ and ‘The Dark Ages’. Humans fear the darkness of the
night, which could be filled with unseen horrors, and this fear is evident in
the way we are threatened by the dark, and have to contain it, control it, and
protect ourselves against it.
This impacts on what we hear, when a 7-year-old is asked
what colour the bath water is after her bath. Does her skin colour wash off? So
that if she is cleaned up, she will look acceptable? And why is what is
acceptable, fairer?
This may seem relatively harmless at first hearing, as
children are too young to know what they are talking about. But children grow
up into adults, and carry their unquestioned beliefs with them. And some of
them become copywriters for advertising agencies.
A typical example of how beliefs of white superiority are
perpetuated is the targeting of high-end, luxury buyers through images
associating white-skinned people with unquestioned dominance and power.
Beauty standards: the whiter the better. Photograph courtesy
of Eleanor Blaxland-Ashby.
Note how the dominant figure in the above advertisement is a
white woman, centred and positioned with her gaze directed at the viewer,
conveying strength and power. See how the darker hued women around her have
their gazes averted from the viewer, or deferentially directed at the woman in
the central position. The African, East Asian, and South Asian women are
visually portrayed as occupying less powerful space in this portrait, and as
relegated to ‘minority’, and literally marginalised, status.
This experience of marginalisation is something that we
notice when we emigrate to places like the U.K., Europe, the United States,
Canada, New Zealand, or Australia. In these countries, dark-skinned people are
seen as a minority group, and our skin colour makes us visibly different from
the Anglo-Celtic majority in these societies. We should be aware that countries
like North America, Canada, and Australia are all societies created on the
genocide of their indigenous populations, who resemble us. And the immigrants
who were accepted into these countries often formed an underclass, whose
members are frequently physically similar in feature and skin colour to us.
People who judge books by their covers also judge immigrants
by their colour.
As immigrants, if we are fortunate, we have people
commenting on how ‘luscious’ we look, with our big, dark eyes and lustrous dark
hair. If we are unfortunate, we might be viewed by redneck racists as bush
pigs, or pieces of exotica. People show conflicted feelings towards our skin
colour, and as human beings are responsive creatures, we absorb this
conflictedness.
Colour Aspirations
What we aspire to be seen with, and seen to have, tells us a
lot about ourselves. What colour are our dreams? We fetishise and make icons
out of what we wish to be, and have. The size and location of our house. The
friends we associate with. The clothes and accessories we acquire. The books we
read, the events we attend. The food we conspicuously consume. What we look
like. What colour are WE, in our dreams?
There are two great ironies that are observable about this:
1) Many white-skinned people try, through sun tanning in
salons and on the beach, applying sun lotions, and using sun beds, to become
brown. They risk skin cancer to achieve the colour we are naturally born with.
In countries with wretched wintry climates, a tan signifies the ability to
travel to Spain or the Mediterranean, or to own a summer home, and thus denotes
further privilege.
2) We brown-skinned individuals, in contrast, are surrounded
by images and advertising in our own countries which shame us for our darker
hue. Skin whitening and bleaching products abound, and we are told that darker
shades of skin tone are ‘blemishes’, and ‘unsightly’. Marriage advertisements
specify fairer complexions as being the most preferred by potential husbands
and wives, and their extended families, and women and girls in particular from
a young age are praised for their relative fairness or criticised for their
relatively dark skin.
The condition of being ‘fair’ is seen as the attainment of
the state of perfection worth striving for, and by implication, darker skinned
people are seen as wanting, missing things that they need, and desiring things
that they have missed out on having.
Fair complexions have been associated with privilege and
higher socio-economic status for centuries, probably since those fortunate
individuals who did not have to work in the fields under a blazing sun to earn
their living were able to protect their complexions from harsh extremes of
climate and weather. Thus, radiant, fair, soft skin has become
a desirable asset to have, and to display: an indication of one’s
‘worth’ and ‘value’.
However, in the modern world, while many white women and men
are endangering themselves trying to become brown, brown women and some men
‒ even international
film stars! ‒ are endorsing products which promote skin-whitening. We are
all apparently dying to look more like each other!
The images presented to us of physical flawlessness via
global advertising show generically airbrushed people with smooth alabaster
skin. Only recently have golden brown or dark chocolate or coffee coloured
people been celebrated as beautiful. Supermodel Iman objected strongly to
someone saying that she was like a “white
woman dipped in chocolate,” because the ‘compliment’ implied that she was
beautiful because her features were acceptable to the white normative model of
beauty, as if her colour was like a topping on a dessert, or an accessory to an
outfit, and not part of her inherent self. In fact, the ‘compliment’ implied
that she was beautiful because her ‘inner whiteness’ shone through her dark
skin ‒ no wonder she was offended!
Supermodel Iman’s response to being told she looked ‘like a
white woman dipped in chocolate’.
What Are The Biological Facts?
Dark skin merely means that the skin has a greater degree of
Melanin. Along with this comes inbuilt skin protection from the sun, via a
degree of subcutaneous oil which keeps us looking relatively young. While white
skinned people develop freckles, creases, skin cancers, and dry skin, and
constantly try to ‘nourish’ their skin with external emollients, dark skinned
people age comparatively more attractively.
With our darker skin comes some physical negatives,
however. Acanthosis Nigricans
causes thickening of the skin and dark patches to appear on the body and face.
And when we are wounded, or recovering from surgery, our scars can be thicker
and darker, due to Keloid reaction.
Both of these are conditions which those of us with darker skin are more prone
to experience.
What Are The Historical Facts?
We all know that colonisation took place in history. But
that does not mean its impact has ended. It was based on racist assumptions of
cultural superiority and inferiority, and in our contemporary world these
attitudes are inflamed by immigration, refugee migration, and huge cultural
backlashes that we are witnessing against multiculturalism in countries like
the U.S., the U.K., and Australia. A recent
poll showed that almost 50% of people living in Australia actively
objected to immigration from countries in which people were seen as visually
different from themselves. In post-Brexit
Britain, there are pro-nationalist policies being implemented which
designate and define ‘British’ individuals, seeking to differentiate
‘essentially’ British people from those who are merely living in Britain to
improve their economic conditions by earning their living in British currency.
How far will these categories extend? Who will be included? Who will be
excluded?
Colour-coded targeting and profiling of people has
historical connotations which are racist, and unsettling. The Nazis during the
Holocaust forced their prisoners to wear colour-coded signs on their clothes:
Yellow Stars for Jews, Pink Triangles For Homosexuals, etc. Being called a
‘Chocolate Drop’ at school is not at the same level, but it is on the spectrum
of otherisation. Our skin and its colour is a visual designator: an imprint
that cannot be bleached or scrubbed off.
What should change is not the skin colour of people, but the
social and cultural attitudes that shame people for inhabiting their own
bodies.
Why Is Colour-Shaming Happening Today?
There is currently a narrowing of borders, a narrowing of
minds, and a diminishing of generosity which can be seen all over the world, in
every country where there is an immigrant population. This is part of a
backlash against policies of multiculturalism which in recent times are being
blamed for many of the social and economic ills besetting Western countries.
The most obvious differences between people are physical: in
our body shape and size, our facial features, our clothing and the colour of
our skin. This is why being dark and large-sized is often seen as a double
negative, in contemporary society, which along with its other superficial
attitudes, constructs our physical attributes as ‘assets’ or ‘liabilities’.
Plus-size positivism is one way of responding to this. So is dark skin
positivism.
Underlying racism often comes out into the open when
privileged territory is disputed, by dark-skinned and talented people. Let us
note the way the Obama family have been attacked since Barack Obama became the
first black U.S. President, 8 years ago. Michelle Obama has been called a ‘gorilla‘,
and her elder daughter a ‘monkey’ ‒ because they were boldly entering into and
legitimately inhabiting the whitest of white spaces: The White House. And
Harvard University.
First Lady Michelle Obama posing for her official portrait,
the first-ever first lady portrait to be captured digitally, in the Blue Room
of the White House in 2009. Joyce N. Boghosian/TheWhite House
What Is The Impact Of This Imprinted Inferiority?
The association of dark skin with ‘lesser’ or culturally
despised status is intensified because it derives its impact from a number of
concurrent and co-existing factors, which operate simultaneously on those they
impact upon. And this message is strongly imprinted on us from a very young
age:
When we see the young children in the video above aligning
themselves with the doll who is ‘ugly’, ‘not pretty’, ‘bad’, and ‘not nice’;
and not to the white doll, whose white skin they associate with ‘niceness’ and
‘prettiness’, we can understand how we internalise ideas about our status from
a young age, and how difficult it will be to challenge external racism and
other inequities which makes us feel lesser, when we already carry those
terrible feelings inside ourselves, with a self-concept damaged by the
inequities of the society in which we live.
We are all aware that high-end designer labels in South Asia
are routinely sold to us using fair-skinned models. These images of people who
do not look like us, continually and subconsciously impact on us, excluding us
from identifying with the luxury and glamour, the wealth and success these
beautiful people, and the lifestyles they are associated with, create in our
minds.
It is historical fact that those of darker skin have been
objectified, vilified, enslaved, targeted, sexualised,
colonised, exploited, harassed, incarcerated, abused, and denigrated by
dominant white culture ‒ and those who perpetuate the dogma of white racial
superiority ‒ for centuries. Thus, being born dark-skinned in a racist world
immediately places us in a problematic relationship to the natural need and
wish for self-worth and self-fulfillment that is inherent in all human beings.
Dark skin colour is socio-culturally associated
with a problematic life.
Conflicted Visions Of Beauty
Exoticisation and eroticisation are yet another form of
targeting. Dark-skinned people are often presented as more sexualised and
sexually available than other races. So perhaps we should think twice when we
are called ‘hot’ because of our honey-hued skin and curvy bodies. We could also
be being designated as more alluring, and provocative ‒ and the attention we
receive may quickly become disrespectful and unwanted. People project fantasies
onto dark-skinned, ‘exotic’ people all the time. As they do to ‘exotic’
locations.
Dark = ‘Dirty’
This picture speaks a 100,000 words – all of them offensive.
These negative associations have powerful effects on us.
However strong our self-esteem is, we are implicitly told that to be beautiful,
we must not only exfoliate but also decontaminate ourselves from whatever
causes us to be diseased with a dark hue. Beauty rituals at spas all over the
country emphasise the whitening ‘benefits’ their products offer. Come into the
salon stressed, distressed, discoloured, weighed down (by the problems of the
third world) ‒ and leave uplifted, purified and ‘lightened up’. Your aura and your
skin will be radiant and glowing! Your ‘defects’ will be diminished! You will
emerge several shades lighter, from the wrapping and peeling and bleaching and
scraping and face masks and face peels, and all the absolving effects these are
guaranteed to have on us.
The products sold to us to ‘remedy’ our dark skin are
saturated with chemicals. Their physical impact on us becomes even more
dangerous when we are effectively told we should be ashamed of ourselves, in
advertisements which attempt to sell us skin whitening creams to lighten the
colour of our private parts, because sexual shaming is deliberately brought
into the wording of the advertisements as well, disguised as helpful advice, to
make the buyer more ‘appealing’ and ‘desirable’.
How Shaming Looks And Sounds
Human beings seem very good at shaming each other,
particularly where our physicality and sexuality are concerned. They often
treat it as a joking matter.
Our private body parts are not inherently ‘dirty’ or
shameful. Yet, because they are clothed and covered most of the time, they are
associated with aspects of ourselves that we feel are private and should be
protected from public gaze, and so are not exposed to air and sun as much as
the rest of our body. In freer societies, less constricting or covering
clothing leads to better circulation and less ‘unevenness of skin tone’.
Listen to the euphemisms used by advertisers, in the
interests both of political correctness and expansion of a client base. Look at
the implications of the image below, which is supposedly skin positive and
inclusive of diversity. Note that at the end of the spectrum is burnt toast,
which is inedible (and carcinogenic).
This image is often seen as a positive expression of colour
diversity. Image courtesy Pinterest.
The private parts and sexual organs of most human beings are
naturally darker than the rest of our bodies. Where white skinned people have
pinkish parts, we have brown or dark brown parts. This is surely nothing to be
ashamed of ‒ in fact, it is part of the diversity of the human race!
However, when you add the shame we are culturally taught to
feel about our sexuality to shame about the ‘discolouration’ of our private
parts, we get a powerful, product-selling message ‒ which people buy, along
with the products that these messages sell to them. But really, this shaming
needs to stop. We are not inserted into our skin: we are embodied within our
skin. We must surely learn to accept and embrace our embodiment, or be
separated all our lives from our inner sense of dignity and self-respect.
Many of our beliefs about ourselves begin in the comments
made about us from when we are young, by various well-intentioned (or
ill-intentioned) family members.
Manisha Anjali has showcased this in her poetic work ‘Sun God White Face’, which
“was composed when [she] was approached by editor Michalia Arathimos to
contribute to a special issue of Blackmail Press named ‘Piercing The White
Space’”.
Where Colour Shaming Starts And How It Can Be Challenged
It starts in the home. And it is perpetuated in the comments
we make about each other, and the way we speak to each other, at work and at
social functions. When we praise each other for looking ‘prettyyy’ or ‘so fair’
as if they are concepts that are interchangeable. When our elders tell us we
look so fair that we ‘could be European’, as if that was a compliment! To ‘pass
for’ being white! When such a high percentage of marriage advertisements rate
fairness, literally, as a desirable quality.
It is not just personal. It is also political. Martin Luther
King’s famous ‘I Have A Dream’ speech can be summed up by one telling phrase:
he wanted his children to grow up in a world where they would be ‘judged not by
the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character’.
We need to start re-thinking how we give and accept praise,
when it comes to our skin colour, and our appearance in general. We can
consciously praise qualities of character rather than physical features. We can
omit offering each other ‘complimentary’ comments about each other’s
complexions. We can choose a less superficial and less damaging way of relating
to each other.
We achieved Independence as a nation 60 years ago. It is
surely time we made ourselves free of this internalised and self-imposed
prejudice, as well. Unless we actually believe it ourselves, any racist
assumption of our inferiority as dark-skinned people need only go skin deep.
The latest instalment of the story of The Boy Who Lived is now out, in bookstores of all kinds, simultaneously, throughout the world. In 2007, early in the morning on a cold winter’s day in the Southern Hemisphere, my friend and I stood in line to buy our pre-booked copies from the local bookstore, while normally stolid and respectable citizens of our suburb joined the queue dressed in cloaks and magical outfits, and a large man hired by the bookstore manager drove up and down the high street on a noisy motorbike with a sidecar.
We came home and started reading, from morning throughout the wintry day, updating each other as we went, on the big revelations. This was, after all, supposed to be the last tale in the saga. All the keys to all the mysteries lay therein.
I can hardly believe it was 9 years ago! And now the latest story is a play, and in London there is an outcry because the author has endorsed the casting of a black actor to play Hermione on the stage.
This is not how many readers of the books have envisioned her, apparently.
Noma Dumezweni, who plays Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Image credit: Charlie Gray
Many people over the last 19 years have said that this story has encouraged children to read again. The adventures of Harry Potter and his friends and frenemies and arch-enemies have been a great vehicle for social commentary and political satire. Rowling has dealt with some big issues, in ways that children will never forget. Foremost among these are issues of social justice, equity and human rights.
The Mudblood/Pureblood debate, the movement to assert the supremacy of wizards over other magical creatures, the rising pro-marginalisation of minorities in the form of elves and giants and centaurs were all profound in their impact on the way children who read the stories in their formative years saw the implications of race hatred and bigotry. The bullying in the school room and the rivalries in the sports fields reflected the skewed stances of the grownups: the personal vendettas of Malfoy’s goons illustrated the race and class prejudices of the adult Death-Eaters. The divided wizarding world reflected the dangers in our own. And Rowling placed her faith in the children, to outgrow the hostilities of their damaged adult guides and mentors.
The poem she cited at the beginning of ‘Deathly Hallows’ highlighted her serious intent, and her awareness of what the contemporary younger generation are facing, which she portrays metaphorically, but which is real:
Oh, the torment bred in the race,
the grinding scream of death
and the stroke that hits the vein,
the haemorrhage none can stanch, the grief,
the curse that no man can bear.
But there is a cure in the house
and not outside it, no,
not from others but from them,
their bloody strife. We sing to you,
dark gods beneath the earth.
Now hear, you blissful powers underground –
answer the call, send help.
Bless the children, give them triumph now.
From Aeschylus, ‘The Libation Bearers‘
War, conflict, suffering, betrayal, loss of family, loss of home, threats to security, threats to personal safety, corrupt and indifferent governments, evil disguised as banality, exploitation and abuse of the innocent and the vulnerable… children all over the world see these at an earlier age than previous generations ever did. The books are in a real sense a course in Defence Against The Dark Arts. How to tell our friends from our enemies. How to find out what truly matters to us amidst all the chaos, and fight for its protection and its continuance.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, is a two-part West End stage play written by Jack Thorne based on an original new story by Thorne, J.K. Rowling and John Tiffany. Image credit: Rob Stothard/Getty Images
I loved the story, not because it was beautifully written, because there are some major patches of unevenness in the telling of the tale, but because of the irreverence of its postmodern anti-authoritarianism. Dolores Umbridge, evil in shades of pink and self-justifying sadism, thinly disguised by doilies and wallpaper awash with kittens, Cornelius Fudge, fearful enabler of Dementors, Mafalda Hopkirk, the lady who writes Harry all those scary letters on behalf of the Ministry of Magic, ruining his life and always ending by wishing him a nice day, the appalling Voldemort and the group of bullies, cowards and thugs who cohere around him, the flawed and eccentric father and mother substitutes, the recognisable English stock stereotypes (‘Anything from the trolley, dears?’), the privileged boarding school with its tower rooms and four poster beds, the dining hall with its loaded tables and sumptuous feasts, the individuated common rooms, the fantasy of being educated away from home, the eccentricities and the familiar traits of our school lives all woven into a medley of magic and postmodern myth-making.
It is a classic Hero’s Journey, with mentors, foes, confrontations with oracles, and soul-searing struggles in every sequence, brilliantly set against the counterpoint of an ordinary senior school progression from Year 7 to Year 12. There are some character sketches which are Hogarthian in their satiric brilliance, and Dickensian in their portrayal of moral depravity. And the humour at its best is joyful in its ironic exuberance.
I loved the strong messages of positive ethnic tolerance and colour blindness: that Harry’s first crush was Cho Chang, yet she is never overtly identified as Chinese. Two of the prettiest girls in the school are Padma Patil and her twin, with their dark plaits, but they are never identified as Indian. Ginny dates Dean Thomas, the irreverent Quidditch announcer Lee Jordan has rasta braids, one of the Quidditch team leaders, Angelina, is black, Kingsley with his rich, dark-toned voice is universally favoured, Ron’s werewolf-savaged elder brother falls in love with the fabulous French Fleur (‘I am good-looking enough for both of us!’) and Hermione is briefly romanced by the wonderful Bulgarian Viktor Krum, who has difficulty pronouncing her name. It is a veritable United Colours of Benetton, at Hogwarts!
The series introduces a number of characters of different racial origins – although the main characters seem never to be anything other than Anglo-Celtic. Image courtesy thereadingroom.com
But none of the main characters in the books or the films seemed to be anything other than Anglo-Celtic. And there never seemed to be curry night or yum cha or biriyani on the menu in the dining hall. It is wall to wall treacle tarts, ham and chicken pies, and Irish stew. Nothing even as exotic as a sun-dried tomato. It is a predominantly Anglo-centric story, and it seems as if it was always intended to be so. Rowling insisted that no non-British actors would be cast in the movies. It is the Englishness of the story, its similarities to the Chronicles of Narnia (except without the religion), to Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, the evocation of familiar tropes with slight tweaks and twists of whimsy that comfort and reassure the Anglophiles amongst us ‒ and within us. The ethnic and cultural diversity portrayed here is supremely managed. The non-Anglo-Celtic characters, (with the notable exception of Kingsley Shacklebolt, who becomes an important progressive figure in the latter part of the stories), are all in minority roles, not central to the narrative, and their being praised for their exotic qualities of voice or their beautiful smiles disturbingly suggests tokenism, which we absorb along with the other organising rules of the world Rowling creates.
Perhaps this tokenism is a reflection of real contemporary Britain, which, after centuries of colonisation fuelled by Anglo-centrism, may be developing the ability to look outside its own parameters and see equivalent centres of self in other countries and cultures as valuable and meaningful. Kingsley is the only adult ethnic minority figure represented who is praised for his political effectiveness and his leadership abilities. Even the Dursleys appreciate him ‒ by default! At school level, Angelina is very good at Quidditch. And everyone seems to interact as equals on a literally equal playing field.
Rowling’s wizarding world appeared to be a place where people were judged not on the colour of their skin but on the content of their character. So it is easy to see it as a moral and poetic saga: the end of each book sees our hero tussling ever more successfully with the inimical Dark Lord, and having a story-so-far summit meeting with Dumbledore, either in person or in his mind, where the take-home messages and mottos are underlined in Socratic dialogue, mentor to mentee. Its structure is reassuringly formulaic.
Dementors: one of the finest portraits of the struggle with depression seen in contemporary literature. Image courtesy harrypotterwikia.com
The sequence with the Dementors is one of the finest portraits of the struggle with depression seen in contemporary literature, and the protection against them, which must be learned, is a resonant one. Think of what makes you happy. Focus on that. It is your defence against the sadness which we all experience when we are at a low ebb. Lupin’s lessons are forms of cognitive reasoning therapy which can be understood by even young children. And I love that the remedy for a Dementor attack is chocolate.
The moral universe of the stories is drawn and shaped by a generous hand: it allows for us, along with the protagonists, to review and reassess our judgments of the characters we meet. The hard oppositional lines demarcating good and evil are blurred in this world ‒ we gain insights via magic into the circumstances which formed Voldemort and Snape, and Harry is confronted by unpleasant sides of his father which he must accept. We are shown the vulnerability and self-awareness of the great Albus Dumbledore, and the ‘superb’ courage of Minerva McGonagall. We see Harry’s unprejudiced openness to learning from the dispossessed: from the insights offered by the zany Luna Lovegood, from the bumbling loyalty of the huge and large-hearted Hagrid, and in his love for Dobby, the liberated self which transcends all barriers. In Hermione’s activism, we see compassion which eventually influences Ron and Harry to understand the plight of even the twisted house-elf Kreacher.
We see in Ron’s family’s poverty and Malfoy’s family’s scorn of it, and in the Malfoy family’s ill-treatment of others, their condescension and their competitiveness, how unpleasant and offensive a sense of entitlement based on inherited socio-economic status can be. Yet we see also the love and concern the Malfoys have for their son. My favourite moments are when the children rise above their histories and do their best to save each other, even from the Fiendfyre. That compassion and capacity for empathy under stress, to forgive in an instant, and deal with a complex reality as it is, changes the outcome for many people. There are echoes here of Frodo and Bilbo’s compassion for the pitiful Gollum in LOTR, and their ability to see what they have in common, even with someone who seems to be unambiguously against them.
Harry Potter created a revolution in reading for children the world over. Image courtesy bbc.co.uk
The kids who grew up reading Harry Potter must have all voted against Brexit: they surely voted to embrace difference and the life-enhancing opportunities it brings. It is such a pity that the older generation, with their memories of war and regional introversions and petty self-protective demarcations, outvoted them. Yet in some ways Ron’s insularity reflects an ignorance that Rowling presumably does not share, but which also represents a reality she is aware of. Neither he nor Harry even know what bouillabaisse is! We can excuse Harry, who (after all) was brought up in a small room under the stairs in Privet Drive, and Ron, whose family circumstances do not stretch to overseas travel ‒ even to France. But I personally welcome portrayals of an ever more diverse dining experience at the feasting tables of the world, both fictional and real. And I question whether a boy who finds bouillabaisse too much for him to handle at a meal would marry a black Hermione.
I am also dismayed to find that Rowling apparently married everyone in the core group of friends off to each other, and at such young ages ‒ did NONE of them do further study, except Neville? ‒ and how middle-aged, conservative, faded and weary they all looked as parents on Platform 9 and 3/4, seeing their kids off on the train to Hogwarts, to start another cycle. Did Rowling’s imagination fail, at that point? Will her spirited and original protagonists be limited by her own limits of experience, and her conception of them? They are only in their late 30s, at the end of Book 7!
Cast members of the play. Image courtesy: spinoff.comicbookresources.com
If Rowling can cast a black Hermione in the stage play, what else can she now do? Can a black Hermione separate from Ron on the grounds of intellectual boredom and boldly choose a different, less constrained life? Will she and Harry become entrepreneurs instead of merely working forever for The Ministry of Magic? Will some of their children go to Australia, not as an escape from bloodthirsty Death Eaters, but merely for a gap year?
I know in some ways that this outcome was the whole point. The best continuity hoped for by the citizens of this alternative universe would have been destroyed by the evil that was raging through their world, where the Dark Lord was trying to get at the kids from a young age and divide them into ideology-infused camps. Challenging that was what they had fought for in those epic struggles and battles of the will, and this was their prize: normalcy, ordinary family life, an existence which was not so intense, all the time. For people whose childhood was riven by war and trauma and dislocation, this was and is very heaven. We can surely relate to this.
But it may not be all that could be hoped for. It may be only the end of the beginning! The best may yet be still to come, for all of us, in that world, and in this.
This review originally appeared in the Sunday Times under the title 'Gone Is The Spell, It's Truly A Curse'.
‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ was a favourite children’s story of mine, a story told to remedy a much sadder story with a tragic ending which had preceded it. At its heart was a fraud, perpetrated on a foolish ruler, who believed two confidence tricksters who posed as tailors and took all his money to make him a fantastic new set of clothes made with invisible cloth and thread.
The courtiers and advisors of this King all felt it was not their place to tell the King he was being tricked, so they played along with the fraud. So when the King came out in regal procession, thinking he was in his glorious new outfit, he was actually exposed in his nakedness to the crowd. The illusion still held – the crowd maintained silence – until one child held out his hand and pointed and stated the obvious: ‘The Emperor is not wearing any clothes!’
I cannot recall what happened after that. Was the Emperor quickly clothed by his PR team and event organisers? Were the confidence tricksters arraigned? Was the little boy rewarded?
If anyone has any information about any of this, please write in and tell me and my Editors.
Fairy tales often mirror in fantastic form the real issues of our real lives. And their influence on our minds and belief systems when we become acquainted with them as children is powerful, and long-lasting. In the last two decades, the most powerful story to capture the imaginations of the world’s children and their parents has undoubtedly been the story of an orphaned young man whose parents had been murdered by a Dark Lord who thought of himself as an Emperor: He Who Must Not Be Named. Our Hero’s struggle to face and defeat this menacing and macabre character took 7 books to unfold, in the form of prose fiction narratives with interesting themes but (at times) inconsistent stylistic presentation.
Last week, a new fairy tale for our times was released, in the form of a script for a stage play: ‘Harry Potter and The Cursed Child’. Possibly the best aspect of it is its cover, which portrays a small boy huddled in a fraying birds’ nest which is designed to look like a Golden Snitch – the prized winged golden trophy in the fictitious game of Quidditch, invented by J.K. Rowling in the books she wrote about Harry Potter and his progress through Secondary School at Hogwarts. It is meant to be a portrayal of the central dilemma facing the two sons of the arch-enemies Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy: young Albus Severus Potter and his best friend Scorpius. How do these two young princes come to terms with their complex inheritances? How do they find their own way and forge their unique identities amidst the complex criss-crossing bonds that tie and segregate them? How do they deal with the fame and power and status of their respective fathers, and the tense historical relationship between their families?
Are they orphans of the storm? Poor little rich kids, born fully-actualised from the bubble heads of their self-important parents?
It is extremely strange to see children as young as this defining themselves by class and character type and their role in the plot before they are even introduced to us, or their characters are allowed to emerge. They categorise themselves and each other in unsettlingly pre-fabricated analytical ways, like robotic preternaturally self-aware miniature sociologists. They try to sort out problems that occurred long before they were born. They play with history, alter events, seek to remedy certain wrongs.
But the best parts of the books – Rowling’s storytelling, and in particular some of her descriptions of setting and character – are absent. And the younger generation as portrayed in the dialogue by the writers do not match the open-mindedness and the capacity to evolve that was demonstrated by their parents.
Rose, Hermione and Ron’s daughter, is one of the most offensive young people ever to strut onto a stage. Where her mother was a know-it-all, this girl is a snob, full of excitement not at the prospect of what she could learn at Hogwarts but at the social supremacy she can enjoy exercising there. We are briefly warned about her by her own parents:
‘Rose is worried whether she’ll break the Quidditch scoring record in her first or second year. And how early she can take her O.W.L.s’, says her mother.
‘I have no idea where she gets her ambition from’, says her father.
But what we hear when this Young Achiever speaks is unadulterated self-congratulation and entitlement which sits very oddly in contrast to the enlightened views of her mother, the activist Hermione Granger, who spoke out so boldly against the ill-treatment of Mudbloods and house-elves, on the grounds of race and class:
‘We need to concentrate…On who we choose to be friends with. My mum and dad met your dad on their first Hogwarts Express you know…’
‘So we need to choose now who to be friends with for life? That’s quite scary.’
‘On the contrary, it’s exciting. I’m a Granger-Weasley, you’re a Potter – everyone will want to be friends with us, we’ve got the pick of anyone we want.’
‘So how do we decide – which compartment to go in…’
‘We rate them all and then we make a decision.’
(‘Harry Potter And The Cursed Child’)
Are there young children even in our contemporary world who actually think and speak like this? Without being told how offensive they are? Are they the 8, 9 and 10 year olds who ‘only fly in Business Class’? And what sort of adults will these kids grow into?
When Draco Malfoy at their first meeting attempted to impress Harry with his family’s social standing, a young Harry was rightly unimpressed. Malfoy’s jealousy of Harry (‘Famous Harry Potter!’ ) was an underlying and developing theme. But his ability to see through his own father’s social and political pretensions and choose, at crucial moments, to go against the dictates and affiliations of his father and his aunt made him an interesting character. And in the 7 books that preceded this play, one of the most pervasive, reassuring and progressive features was the strong resistant challenge made to ‘privileged’ status based on so-called purity of blood, on the comparative grandeur of one’s dwelling, and on elitism of all kinds.
I am unhappy that the high expectations I had about this sequel were disappointed – and so early in the story. It is disconcerting to find the apparent social, racial and gender equality and inclusiveness portrayed in the earlier stories so easily erased, and to find that they may have indicated a faux equality and tokenistic inclusiveness at best.
Am I taking it too seriously? It is only a children’s story, after all! Yet it is one which has impacted millions of young people for nearly twenty years. The author has never claimed to be an intellectual or a philosopher, and she has donated millions of sterling British pounds to philanthropic causes. This latest instalment can already be deemed a ‘success’ merely on the financial scale. Tickets for the play are already sold out two years in advance. So for the next two years, the actress/es playing Rose Granger-Weasley will say her/their piece on pages 13 and 14 of the Special Rehearsal Edition Script and be unchallenged, by anyone in the play, for expressing views which are classist and inappropriate. If Hermione as we have known her in the previous books had heard her daughter say those words, would she have seen them as evidence of ‘ambition’, or of something far less attractive? And more unsettling?
On a scale of literary merit, and on a scale of moral enlightenment, the play itself is a ‘cursed child’: a lesser offspring.
Perhaps the unchallenged conduct of Rose Granger-Weasley in this play reflects the lower standards of behaviour, the smug self-satisfaction and the socio-economic polarisation that have been occurring in the real world, as well as the wizarding one created by Rowling, in the past 19 years.
There are plenty of inconsistencies and tortured fabrications in this play, but the prospect that Hermione, of all people, could produce a child like that is, to me, the core fracture that produces a misaligned outcome which no sentiment can gloss over.
Remember Rowling’s brilliant satiric portrait of the corrupt and vain Horace Slughorn? Who ‘collected’ students with talent or who were from families he considered to be of powerful lineage, and who was fond of crystallised pineapple? Hermione’s daughter as portrayed in this play has more in common with him than with her sceptical, intelligent mother, the Muggleborn daughter of two dentists, who, despite her despised ‘non-pure blood’ status, was the most capable spellcaster in her class.
We are also expected to believe that Bellatrix Lestrange had conceived a child with Lord Voldemort. With the understanding and support of her actual husband! Because that type of conduct was considered to be ok in the ‘old, well-established families’! Yet adultery itself is – of course – in this morally self-righteous world of the 40 year old Hogwarts students who all married each other – only something an evil bad witch ‘of prodigious skill and no conscience’ would do. He Who Could Not Be Named was not named in any paternity suit.
A totalitarian fantasist like Voldemort would in the real world have had harems of stunned women lining up for the honour of conceiving the inconceivable. Bloodlines, reproductive organs and all other requirements intact. What legacy could he have otherwise left, beyond interfering ad nauseum with the minds of generations of students undergoing teaching at Hogwarts? And would the splitting of his soul into multiple Horcruxes not have affected his ability to produce a child?
For the first time, I find myself uninterested in the backstory and any further development in the characters created by J.K. Rowling.
This world which used to be compelling has now ceased to cast its spell. It’s as if we have all been played – a feeling all too familiar in the real world today, with its sordid politics and its disheartening power plays. One would have thought the world of original fiction could reflect a more energised and intellectually interesting reality. One where the call to battle of the protagonists was not so often the lame, Americanised ‘Let’s do this’, and the description of their state of mind in the stage directions was not so often the shop-worn ‘discombobulated’.
Casting a black actor as Hermione in the stage performance does not change the script. And in this script we have children mouthing the ponderous truisms of adults:
‘I discovered another Scorpius, you know? Entitled, angry, mean – people were frightened of me. It feels like we were all tested and we all – failed.’
What young boy with any credibility calls himself ‘entitled’? And this same boy finds the appalling Rose so attractive that he vows to work on being worthy of her, despite her ongoing ill-treatment of him:
‘You know logic would dictate that you’re a freak? Rose hates you.’
‘Correction, she used to hate me, but did you see the look in her eyes when I asked? That wasn’t hate, that was pity… a foundation on which to build a palace – a palace of love.’
Would a boy who finds his own entitlement disturbing find Rose’s self-justifying, unearned and privileged sense of superiority admirable? Would he, the young ‘Scorpion King’, described by his own father as a follower not a leader, desperate to prove himself, really accept a debased position as a persistent suitor to a girl who ought to be unworthy of his attention? Because he sees her resistance as a challenge? Because Rose, the self-styled ‘uptown girl’, morally deficit as she is, is ‘going to take years to persuade’. And is this slice of psychobabble I have quoted above supposed to be a recogniseable portrayal of the words of a young man in love?
This badly thought-out junk is currently occupying the best-seller lists. And it is a misuse of a power to persuade, entertain and influence that Rowling had legitimately earned.
Professor McGonagall lets the young meddlers Albus and Scorpius, friends contra mundum and para siempre, off, in this play, relatively lightly:
‘You’re all so young. You have no idea how dark the wizarding wars got. You were – reckless – with the world some people – some very dear friends of mine and yours – sacrificed a huge amount to create and sustain.’
But the writers of this play are old enough to know better, and to do better. Rowling in co-creating and endorsing this sequel has been reckless with the development of the characters in the world she created. And the recklessness is irredeemable: the bereftness of the plot shows through the ineptly woven strands of this threadbare story.
Even the brave decision taken by Hermione in an alternate world to face death by the Dementors’ kiss left me unmoved. It was not a world actually worth saving, if her daughter Rose was going to preside in it.
I am glad this latest work will make us want to re-read the earlier books. I admire Rowling for creating so many jobs in the creative arts sector for so many people, by creating the wizarding world. But I think we would not have made such a big deal of it if our literary and moral standards had been higher. Those were dark and difficult days, as Dumbledore said, and our reading choices revealed our own characters. The story was a fitting fable for our fractured times. And the earlier books were actually better. This is evolution in reverse!
If this literary product is supposed to represent the ‘Best Of British’ in 2016, it is third-rate indeed.
I wanted to say to the assembled writers, in their own words: ‘Your solidarity is admirable, but it doesn’t make your negligence negligible’. But Minerva McGonagall in her wisdom has said it for me.
