Production of Sophocles’ Antigone at the Classical Theatre of Harlem in 2018, starring Ty Jones and Alexandria King.
1,200 words
After I graduated from college way back in the 1980s, I decided to return to my old high school to substitute teach for a while. Soon after beginning to sub, I asked the school’s theater director if at some point I’d be able to direct a play.
At college I had been quite active in the theater department, and had performed credibly in a number of roles throughout my four undergraduate years. Acting had its challenges, but it had always seemed to me that directing was where theater people really earn their spurs. I viewed the creative responsibility a director held with terror, so naturally I wasn’t going to rest until I had given it a try.
I had not performed in any of the plays or musicals the high school produced during the time I was there, so consequently I wasn’t very well acquainted with the director, despite his being nearly a legend in that small town. But his generosity to me was truly boundless. Not only did he allow me a slot for the spring show, I had the freedom to choose the play, cast it, design the set — the works. I doubt that I ever fully realized until now how generous those allowances were.
Not having any choreographical skills worth inflicting on the public, I eschewed the musical form and chose tragedy instead — Greek tragedy, naturally. But, wanting to make things a bit more interesting, I chose Jean Anouilh’s version of Antigone, a rendering that dissolves the moral absolutes found in Sophocles. It is written so as to make Antigone’s choice to flout her uncle and bury her brother against his orders less easily justified, and Creon’s resulting decision to execute Antigone more challenging to argue. I found the moral morass created by those long debates between Creon and Antigone, which those young students pulled off marvelously, simply more provocative than the original.
What was not intended to be “provocative” was my casting of a young black high school student in the major role, opposite a white Creon and white Haemon. Race qua race was never interesting to me in itself, and certainly not as interesting as provoking an audience to weigh the merits of two opposing arguments over a subject that on the surface should have elicited a quick and sure conclusion. I simply cast that young woman because she was the best candidate for the role, period. And because it was the ‘80s, and because we were in a small, mostly white town, that casting proved a non-issue. It was almost as if we were living in an apolitical bubble.
But, despite the lack of controversy (or even comment), I would never make that casting choice now, and that reversal has nothing to do with my disdain for “woke” signaling. There is something more urgent at stake.
A couple of years ago I began to notice posts on social media expressing dissatisfaction with many British television shows and movies, specifically due to the casting of black actors and actresses in roles that were historically played by white actors, either because the historic personage was in fact a Caucasian or because the fictional character had been written as a Caucasian. These social-media posts expressed genuine anger over this new imaging, as well as insistence that these choices were yet another facet of the ongoing Great Replacement.
You can buy Greg Johnson’s It’s Okay to Be White here.
At first, I was puzzled by the outrage. I thought, why take something so obviously untrue as, say, a black Ann Boleyn, or a black King Arthur, and so on so seriously, when everyone knows this isn’t historical or textual truth?
Of course, at that time I was still considering those choices in terms similar to the one I made so many decades ago. No one in their right mind would have wondered if, upon seeing my Antigone, Sophocles might actually have intended her and her family to be African. I further concluded, with a mental shrug of the shoulders, that as long as we actually teach history and literature, the race of the actor in one production is irrelevant.
But it isn’t one production, is it? It’s an avalanche. And we’re not actually teaching history and literature, are we? Thus each generation is functionally a tabula rasa, to be written over with a brand-new story, and a brand-new history, if the cultural zeitgeist so directs.
It was only after the Black Panther absurdity that I remembered something that Nigerian author Chinua Achebe had written in the essay “Spelling Our Proper Name”:
. . . it is not necessary for black people to invent a great fictitious past in order to justify their human existence and dignity today. What they must do is recover what belongs to them — their story — and tell it themselves.
I applaud that suggestion and the inherent respect for the totality of a people that it implies. And that is certainly what Achebe did himself, in his own work. But black people, here in America and in Britain, are not telling their own story, and they’re not telling it themselves. Aside from a few grandiose attempts at myth-making, they’re telling our story, the story of white Europeans, and inserting themselves into it — albeit, with the assistance of self-abnegating whites.
But that then begs the question: Since they are most certainly pawns in the much larger story being written for all of us, do black people have any culpability for their roles in this monumental act of revision?
I find that answering this question is difficult, especially in light of the extent to which whites have enabled this juggernaut to get rolling in the first place. Further, I think the most important thing is not to identify the culprit of our historical vandalism, but to get aggressive about preserving our heritage in all of its forms.
White people in both Europe and America have to reject this revisionary endeavor — denounce it, in fact, with vigor. We do not have a responsibility to retroactively insert every race and ethnicity into our historical timeline, nor in our centuries of creative work. White people need to wake up to the importance of race qua race and begin to treat the vast output of their people with as much care as we treat UNESCO sites, for if we can be motivated to preserve individual architectural and sculptural wonders, why not the immense output of an entire culture?
Recall what James Baldwin said of the Swiss peasant in “Stranger in the Village,”
The most illiterate among them is related, in a way I am not, to Dante, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, Aeschylus, Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Racine; the cathedral at Chartres says something to them which it cannot say to me, as indeed would New York’s Empire State building, should anyone here ever see it. Out of their hymns and dances came Beethoven and Bach. Go back a few centuries and they are in full glory — but I am in Africa watching the conquerors arrive.
I’m sympathetic with the anguish in that statement. But I also don’t want to see, in a perverse reversal of events, the whites of Europe watching the conquerors arrive, and doing nothing to prevent the unraveling of all that their forebears wrought.
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21 comments
I’m waiting on the black Professor Harold Hill for The Music Man. Better still would be a black Eliza Doolittle. Don’t fret. They’re coming.
The Music Man takes place in 1912 and Professor Hill is from Gary Indiana. Although I couldn’t find any info on the demographics of Gary at that time, I would assume it was every bit as white as the fictional River City “Ioway” in the film. It would not be too far fetched to see a black Professor Hill these days, considering over 78% of residents of Gary Indiana are melanin enhanced.
What would a black Professor Hizzle be selling, by the way? I imagine him as an aspiring rapper selling his mixtapes.
Like Detroit, I refuse to believe that Gary Indiana is only 78% black. If River City was an actual town I’m sure it would be getting overrun with transplants from the south side of Chicago. The same way that Davenport and Ames are being destroyed.
78% black doesn’t imply 22% white. The 2020 census found Gary to be nearly 8% Hispanic. Same goes for Detroit. “Mixed race” is also counted separately.
Yes. It must be absolutely refuted, rejected and condemned as a practice. It isn’t multi-culturalism. It is a singular culture where the race of people whose actions performed the deeds and imaginations created the technology, art and civilization are summarily replaced by an alien race who did none of that.
It is an outrage every bit as outrageous as the ending of our sovereignty by replacing us in our homelands. It is not just an outrage, but it is pure evil. It encourages the open expressions of spite and contempt as we saw in Scotland with Yousef the Usurper. In a better day, he and the abnegating people who enable him would be dragged out by the scruff of their necks and made into the messengers they must become.
I appreciate your ability to re-evaluate the circumstances and change your mind. If only Jordan Peterson were not so occupied with bending the knee and kissing the ring of his handlers he could reach his audience with such a rational, loving and needed message that you have written for him.
God Bless You!
Thank you very much! I didn’t expect that sort of response! The tipping point for me was that I’d have no problem with a Nigerian Shakespeare production just as I have no problem with the Chinese obsession with Western classical music. These behaviors are nothing less than an homage to greatness. But that’s not where we are. The creative output of the West, as well as its history, are being either co-opted or erased. That is absolutely intolerable.
Hi JC –
Yes. Taking in more and/or new information and changing one’s position is a hallmark of intelligence and moral courage. I suspect many on this site have had to do that or we wouldn’t be here. I commend you for this.
I have significant experience in the world of classical music – before decolonization of it was a concept I’d ever heard of. I don’t think Asians love of classical music is in any way the same as the race replacement in the cultural of indigenous Europeans and our diaspora. They are a civilization on the rise and they honor greatness and are striving for knowledge and betterment. I was recently at the York Cathedral and the hordes of East Asian tourists were in awe and deeply appreciative of the endless artistic and architectural marvels within just that single building.
The race replacement in our culture is intentional. It is what conquerors do, and it is every bit as planned and intended as destroying our statues and renaming our streets. We are being dispossessed in our own homelands. All of this is a classic, malevolent political power tactic of messaging. For Europids, it is a message that says, ‘you are being dispossessed; this is no longer your nation and your story. We can write you out of it at will.’ For non-Europids, it is a message that says, ‘We choose you to rule through and complete the dispossession of white people. It is your time now. Take their stories, their symphonies, their monuments and deface them and be the blight that humiliates them. We hand their world to you now.’
They are even doing it with Joe Biden. Look at the drunken buffoon Boris Yeltsin that the post cold war oligarchs installed to humiliate the Russian people. Biden has been chosen for the exact same reason. We are in a fight with pure evil bent on our destruction. You are right over a primary target. This is a major front in their war. It is critical that we resurrect our identity and install it in so many of our people who were never educated so as to assume and understand it.
I found your other writings. Thank you for picking up the fight with your pen. Stay strong and stay courageous.
Mars Exulti!!
Writing us out of our own culture (and history) is nothing to do with inclusion, and everything to do with rubbing our noses in cultural Marxism.
Other than that, I’m a bit tempted to read some Chinua Achebe for review. Anything you might recommend?
Thank you for this question. I love it. Yes, begin with his novel “Things Fall Apart.” It is a major literary masterpiece of the 20th century. It is hard not to come away from reading it without an abiding respect for the author. I once wrote a piece for “The Federalist” on it, expanding on its moral balance, which is truly surprising, given what an ardent anti-colonialist he was.
Then try reading his book of essays, “The Education of a British-Protected Child.” At times, you will want to pull your hair out. At others you will admit he has a point. What I like about reading him is that I am able to refine my disagreements with his premises without feeling like I have lost IQ points. For instance, I disagree with his assessment of Conrad, which was very controversial some time back when English departments still taught literature. At the same time, I see his point, and there are other literary examples which could bolster it which I’m surprised he didn’t use.
Things Fall Apart is a good novel and considered by some to be a chronicle of black dysfunction in running a complex society for themselves. I believe there is a recent comment by a black South African scholar who cited TFA as the anti-plan for how black control of South Africa should proceed. He was despondent because they followed the same playbook and are headed toward equity and inclusion in the Haitian model of statecraft.
You must be talking about the last book in the trilogy, “No Longer at Ease.” In the first book, TFA, the African society is primitive, then the Brits come, and then there’s a profound alteration. Black rule doesn’t happen until later.
Yes. I stand corrected.
A high school play has a different purpose from that of a movie or professional production. The purpose is not to create the most perfect possible realization of the play, but to showcase the kids’ talents.
I play Magic the Gathering, a collectible card game that showcases art, and this trend has seeped into even those cultural crevices. It’s sort of a tolkienesque fantasy world, but blacks and other groups are included in the European contexts and even in the Greek mythos themed set. Always as the most brilliant wizards, of course.
Well and good, however, there are Japanese, Chinese and African themed sets, but those contexts are racially pure, ie there is no need to present blacks in far eastern civilizations or whites in Africa, say. It’s fine with me, I don’t want to see white zulus, for instance, but why do you guys think they do this? Is it because whites are perceived as too great a danger to minorities, whereas other cultures simply are not?
Oh, and interesting essay, of course. Where did you happen to read the Chinua Achebe essay?
Thank you. That essay is in his collection “The Education of a British-Protected Child.” I’ve commented on it above, but will add that I think it’s so interesting, that I’ve read it several times, even though I disagree with so much of what he says.
It is racial conquest. This is what conquerors do. They tear down the statues and destroy the culture and history and identity of the people who are conquered. It is both a humiliation ritual and the erasure of our identity. Young children who are white will grow up with no idea that they have a history – a grand and epic history. They will only know that it was blacks who inhabited Europe and were British, French, German kings and queens and Roman and Greek conquerors and erectors of a towering and titanic civilization. I saw a children’s book the other day. The cover had a gigantic negroid in a centurions uniform holding hands with a white woman with a red-headed mixed race child. The message for the adults is: ‘Your time is past.’ The message for the children is: ‘You have no past, so you have no future.’
It is also a spoils system. They will get hired and paid to replace us. They don’t have to erect their own civilization and create an epic history. They can LARP. That is why it is equally degrading to them, though they don’t know it. A person willing to claim the spoils of someone else’s conquest and to play act as another people is degraded and shrinks by doing so.
As the author said so eloquently, this must be vociferously refuted and renounced. We must also display agency and make our own works at a higher level of production and artistic value than the powers in our culture. The artistic value part is easy – the bar is low. The production quality part is harder but technology makes it easier and easier. We must make and tell our own stories, and get our children out of this genocide machine. That is an urgent task.
What our racial enemies cannot outright destroy, they will deface.
These are not ‘creative choices’.
They are cultural vandalism.
Yes, I say that in the essay.
I am curious what people think about the question I raise in the essay: Do black people have any culpability for their role in this cultural catastrophe, especially given the fact that they are the pawns of more powerful forces?
I think they do not on this specific issue. It’s a top down phenomenon. Blacks have the least control over any portion of the media apparatus, and they are the most susceptible to its propaganda. This is a struggle between various stripes of whites. If you were black and someone offered you millions of dollars to play a part, you would take it right?
Blacks have had almost no independent intellectual leadership since the seventies, when there were a few interesting intellectuals. Black leadership has been completely and successfully coopted by the Democratic Party and other leftist institutions. Frankly speaking, they have a small smart fraction that is very easily bought off. Not to say that we whites are doing much better, lol, come to think of it, you’re looking at our own smart set right here, at altright type sites!
Tupac was a thespian in high school who genuinely liked what he did, but I suspect that most of the blacks inserting themselves into our works now are doing it out of a malicious crusade of reverse colonization than a genuine enjoyment of our culture.
I can only imagine a blacked Antigone in the current year. ‘Ismene called the popo on me to that hater kang Creon.’
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