Not enough Whisky for this Tango Foxtrot

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I disagree with all of this. Art should shock and challenge the audience. I would go see that Romeo and Juliet.

OK, now you are just trolling.

I don't particularly agree with Al here, but I don't think this is appropriate. You can disagree without accusing a long-time member and friend of "trolling".

[Sunsilver]

At first I thought the same thing as Frelga, and just decided to ignore Al's post, but after thinking about it a bit, and remembering the Richard III movie, I changed my mind.

Two of the people involved in the production had family members who died or were displaced during the Holocaust. We haven't seen the script. There HAS to be some sensitivity there to what the Jewish Juliet was going through. It does sound like a crackpot idea on the surface, but we don't know the whole story.

Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge.

[Frelga]

I disagree with all of this. Art should shock and challenge the audience. I would go see that Romeo and Juliet.

OK, now you are just trolling.

I don't particularly agree with Al here, but I don't think this is appropriate. You can disagree without accusing a long-time member and friend of "trolling".

It's either that, or accuse him of completely missing every single point about Romeo and Juliet and also about Holocaust, and I think it is much more likely that Al would post something just to provoke an argument.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I disagree. If I thought that Al was posting something that he didn't believe just to provoke a reaction that would be one thing, but what he said is perfectly consistent with what he has said before. Engage with what he says substantively or ignore it. Name-calling is not going to be tolerated.

[RoseMorninStar]

At first I thought the same thing as Frelga, and just decided to ignore Al's post, but after thinking about it a bit, and remembering the Richard III movie, I changed my mind.

Two of the people involved in the production had family members who died or were displaced during the Holocaust. We haven't seen the script. There HAS to be some sensitivity there to what the Jewish Juliet was going through. It does sound like a crackpot idea on the surface, but we don't know the whole story.

Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge.

I agree. This view fits with the article I quoted & linked a few posts earlier. It seems those at the helm of the play had the best intentions, as with the original Romeo & Juliet, to encourage people to put aside their petty hates, prejudices, and feuding and focus on what truly matters, the love they have for their children. The It would have to be done with sensitivity.

"The main purpose of doing this play is to remember what happened and not let history repeat itself.”

Also per the article, it's also to provoke those who may have been indoctrinated into any sort of (especially hate) group to give serious thought as to what they are being indoctrinated against and the purpose of those doing the indoctrination.

[elengil]

From a gentile perspective I think it's easy to look at such things from a detached and academic interest because it isn't such a viscerally personal thing to us. We can look at something and go "oh that's probably bad" but we aren't going to have that instant deep gut revulsion to it. I don't think that's being a troll, I don't think it's being insensitive either. Our reactions are just informed by different experiences. And when you don't have an intense personal negative reaction to something, you might very well approach it was ... maybe morbid curiosity but it could be genuine interest in how it will play out.

[RoseMorninStar]

The director of the play, Max Lewendel, is Jewish. And, as was said earlier, had family members who died in the holocaust. I doubt he viewed the play as a 'detached gentile' but felt he had a compelling viewpoint that should be heard. It is a story about brainwashing and being indoctrinated into dangerous points of view without deeply questioning what it is we may be being indoctrinated into. It's something many of us (around the world) could probably learn a lesson from.

A version of this play was put on in Santa Monica in 2018 (sans non-binary main characters) and it was well received.

[Frelga]

It's a little known fact that someone can be Jewish and still be an idiot.

The point of R&J is peciesley that there is no objective reason for the two kids not to get married. You make Romeo a Nazi, and the entire premise falls apart. We no longer have two houses alike in dignity, we have one party committing genocide against the other.

Juliet is no longer giving a free, if misguided, consent, she is being coerced into a massive power imbalance, as were many women under the Nazi occupation.

Mercutio dying is not tragic if he's a Nazi. It's not a plague on both your houses situation. Benvolio is not the voice of reason if he's a fucking Nazi.

Tibalt is not being a jerk for attacking Romeo if Romeo is a Nazi.

To quote a friend, Juliet’s family is not unreasonable for telling her not to fuck with romeo IF HIS ENTIRE FAMILY ARE NAZIS.

You don't get a too-late reconciliation of the families, because one family is fucking Nazis.

And I refuse to believe that Al is missing every single of those points.

If the only reason for a production is shock value, it's not art, it's just empty sensationalism.

[Impenitent]

I pretty much stand on Frelga's hill here, though I do not at all think Alatar is trolling. Without being so impertinent as to speak for Al, I believe his perspective is much shaped by his lifelong endeavour in the theatre, one aspect of which is to reinterpret and dissect vital human issues, a mirror for society to see what we often don't want to see.

For me, it comes down to the question of how far can one tolerate intolerance. There's free speech and artistic licence and then there's the use of the arts as propaganda to draw false equivalence between prideful human failing and intolerable brutal institutionalised hate.

I am unfamiliar with the script, and it maybe that the director's purpose was a complete subversion of Shakespeare's original play for an excellent political point. Can't judge, and we'll never know now, but I can't condemn it out of hand. I just don't know enough (although unlike Al, I think I would not have chosen to see it)

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I would certainly not choose to see it, and from the little that I know, I doubt that I would judge that it would have much value, artistic or otherwise. But I also know that my judgment is colored by my own biases, so I can't say that it is the one and only valid judgment.

I appreciate Alatar sharing his perspective.

[Frelga]

This would be a better Shakespeare adaptation.

[RoseMorninStar]

I interpret the basic (original) story of Romeo & Juliet as something more than two kids wanting to get married. The theme being one of love overcoming hate and how hate can poison the future- the future being our children (however the lovers double suicide at the end is beyond tragic and I have a hard time getting beyond that).

You make valid points Frelga. I have no desire or intention to argue against anything you've written. I don't know enough about theater to enter into a serious discussion from that perspective, but from what I can tell from the synopsis of the play (misguided, idiotic, &/or tasteless and crass as it may be) the intended focus was to be about waking up to the very real danger of fascism, brainwashing via national patriotism/programs/slogans, and to critically examine what one has been taught to believe. While there were/are unquestionably plenty of horrible, evil Nazi's, there were also plenty of 'ordinary' people--children--who were brought up as Hitler Youth who didn't question what they were told. They were raised to believe they were being good citizens. This story is about someone who, through love, questioned what he was brought up/told to believe (this is important no matter where one lives). It should be a lesson for us all, to see and call out such hate and prejudice and to never let it happen again. Unfortunately, we never seem to learn the lesson and this is probably not the vehicle for such a lesson. But it does have us talking about it, which is where I think the 'art provoking thought/controversy' comments made by Alatar fit in.

[Alatar]

I am totally not. Look at Cabaret, where the Emcee sings about the Gorilla he loves, finishing "If you could see her through my eyes, she doesn't look Jewish at all", or young Rolf in the Sound of Music who is in love with Liesl even though they're "Sixteen going on Seventeen", but when he joins the Hitler Youth he betrays her. Is it so crazy to use that juxtaposition for a retelling of Romeo and Juliet? Any more crazy than retelling it as a musical where the Montagues are White Trash and the Capulets are immigrants? That was originally about the conflict between Jews and Catholics and was to be called "East Side Story"?

[Frelga]

Or maybe it's not that deep and it really is the cheap attempt at epatage that it appears to be.

[Alatar]

Maybe, but I certainly wouldn't pre-judge without seeing it.

[Sunsilver]

Like I said above, even though it sounds like a crackpot idea, maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge.

As Alatar has reminded us, Cabaret was a wonderful movie, and definitely NOT pro-Nazi.

[Maria]

I haven't seen Cabaret, but am very dubious about a human/gorilla love story.

[Alatar]

I thought this was quite amusing

https://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2021/ ... war-crime/ Britain Proud Of Never Having Committed Single War Crime


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[RoseMorninStar]

I haven't seen Cabaret, but am very dubious about a human/gorilla love story.

The number "If You Could See Her (Through My Eyes)" aka 'The Gorilla Song' is not about a human/Gorilla love story, it's a chilling allegory that the Nazi's saw Jewish people as less than human/as animals compared to their *gag* 'supreme race'. It also references the Nazi disdain of Darwin's theory of evolution and their rejection that Aryans were descended from apes but it was (in their twisted thinking) likely that the Jewish race probably was. If I recall there is a distorted fun-house mirror effect in parts of the movie (I don't know about the play) emphasizing warped points of view.

I hadn't realized that West Side Story was a modern take on Romeo & Juliet. Originally the female lead was supposed to have been a Jewish immigrant from Israel who survived the Holocaust and centered on the anti-Semitism of the Irish/Catholic 'Jets'.

[Sunsilver]

I thought this was quite amusing

https://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2021/ ... war-crime/ Britain Proud Of Never Having Committed Single War Crime


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ah, yeah, the British version of The Onion...