Anything Goes Should Get Gone
NaBloPoMo · 3 comments · 500 words · read ~3,580 times.
For a musical that's over 90 years old, Anything Goes is pretty funny, lightly charming, and wildly racist.
A few weeks ago we saw a youth-theatre production of the classic Cole Porter show. The cast were enthusiastic, the band in fine form, the voices loud, and - apparently - at no point did anyone there say "Hang on... is it OK for a bunch of white actors to put on exaggerated Chinese accents for a laugh?"
You can gender-bend the cast, race-flip the characters, muddle-about with their sexuality - but you can't fix the final scene. Three white characters beat up some Chinese characters, steal their clothes, put on "hilarious" chop-suey accents, to disrupt a wedding.
Here's a random school production on YouTube:
There are many different school productions which, apparently, think this sort of "Yellow-face" is just fine and dandy.
Here's a (different) production, with an Asian-American lead grimacing in reaction to his co-stars' accents - does that make it any better?
In some productions, they change the "Chinamen" into Russians with mixed success. Others use a predominantly Asian cast - which doesn't seem to help much, with cast and audience arguing over the suitability. Occasionally the director just dives straight into the racism.
Perhaps there's an argument to be made that we're laughing at the white characters' corny attempt at subterfuge. But, at the end of the day, the joke is still "look at our silly accents and stereotypical behaviour."
There's also the weird number in which a man sings about how his "Gypsy blood" will turn him in to a sex-crazed maniac. That's totally a normal thing and not at all racist either, right?
The play has been revised a number of times throughout its history. The jaunty title number "Anything Goes" - that toe-tapping song! - once contained this verse:
When ladies fair who seek affection Prefer coons of dark complexion Anything goes! A Cole Porter Companion
At some point, the book lost that hideously racist line - but somehow its stench permeates everything. Almost as if the writer took a certain pleasure in his warped view of race relations.
There are plenty of other good musicals suitable for large casts of bright-eyed hoofers. Perhaps it is time for Anything Goes to get gone?
Anon says:
I 100% agree! I’m currently in a difficult situation as my school is performing this musical, and as a member of the cast I am being expected to condone and take part in racism. For obvious reasons, I am incredibly uncomfortable with this, especially as my school is predominantly white, myself and the staff directing included, but according to my director ‘it’s the same as a British person getting offended by a bad British accent’ and ‘if people are offended they are too sensitive’. Unfortunately, my director, a white male, believes my hesitance to be racist makes me immature, and that hate is part of comedy and musical theatre. All I can do is hope that my refusal to condone racism by appearing on stage for the last scene after he has refuses to allow me to be removed from it won’t sabotage my chances in future school musicals. Thanks for listening to my rant.
Léonie Watson says:
I wonder whether your Director would cast a white actor in the role of Othello, and expect them to “black up” to play the part?
Throughout the 19th and much of the 20th Century, it was considered acceptable for white actors to portray black characters in plays, movies, and on television. They would use stage make-up (sometimes just boot polish) to darken their skin, hence the term “black up”, and would exagerate other features in a caricature of the way white people saw black people at the time.
The practice gained enormous popularity in the early 20th Century, particularly (though not exclusively) in America, where many states in the south of the country were introducing laws designed to segregate the “superior whites” from the “inferior blacks”.
They say life imitates art, but art imitates life too. At a time when white people were imposing their supposed superiority over black people in society, they did the same in plays and movies by portraying black people as lazy and unscrupulous, as drunks and theives, and as rapists and murderers.
The effect on public opinion was so strong that a 1915 film called The Birth of a Nation became a recruiting tool for the white supremacist organisation the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).
This happened again and again over the following decades. There was a UK TV sitcom that ran from 1965 to 1975 called Till Death Us Do Part. The lead character was Alf Garnet, a white working class bigot and masogynyst. The creator claimed that Garnet was a satirical caricature, but the BBC commissioned a report that found that a significant proportion of the series’ 16 million viewers found Garnet’s views “quite reasonable”.
This is the thing that your director doesn’t seem to understand; that perpetuating racial (or any other) stereotypes in art, gives people permission to behave the same way in life.
It’s valid to recognise a play (or movie or television series) as an historical commentary of the time in which it was written; it’s quite another to revive that play as acceptable entertainment for the audiences of today.
To answer my question; I suspect your director would not cast a white actor in a black role and expect them to “black up”. He may then be surprised to learn that the practice of “yellowing up” (where white actors used similar techniques to caricaturise people from Eastern and/or Southern Asia as compulsive gamblers with opium addictions) has its origins in the same racism and bigotry of the time Anything Goes was written.
Your decision not to condone racism and racial stereotyping is absolutely the right one. The right decisions aren’t always the easy ones to make, but when you look back on your life and the decisions you’ve made, this will be one you’ll look back on knowing you did the right thing.
David says:
Go you for not agreeing to go along with this. It's small acts of bravery in doing the right thing that really make all the difference over time.
It's a shame that the director doesn't agree with the issues. For future shows I encourage you to get as many people as possible discussing what shows to do and who should direct (until you can do it yourself if you want to).
Till then keep fighting the good fight.