PURITANICAL PACHYDERMS

H.L. MENCKEN DEFINED PURITANISM as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” G.K. Chesterton wrote, “A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.”

 Michael Paulson offers word on this in “It’s Getting Hard to Stage a School Play Without Political Drama,” The New York Times, July 4, 2023. Paulson writes, “School plays—long an important element of arts education and a formative experience for creative adolescents—have become the latest battleground at a moment when America’s political and cultural divisions have led to a spike in book bans, conflicts over how race and sexuality are taught in schools, and efforts by some politicians to restrict drag performances and transgender health care for children and teenagers.”

“For decades,” Paulson continues, “student productions have faced scrutiny over whether they are age-appropriate, and more recently left-leaning students and parents have pushed back against many shows over how they portray women and people of color. The latest wave of objections is coming largely from right-leaning parents and school officials.”

And, as one might expect, much of this is from Puritanical Pachyderms, though there are Ideological Donkeys as well. 

An Example. Paulson writes that “Stevie Ray Dallimore, an actor and teacher, had been running the theater program for a private boys’ school in Chattanooga for a decade, but he never faced a school year like this one.”

Paulson continues, “A proposed production of ‘She Kills Monsters‘ at a neighboring girls’ school that would have included his students was rejected for gay content, he said. A ‘Shakespeare in Love’ at the girls’ school that would have featured his boys was rejected because of cross-dressing. His school’s production of ‘Three Sisters,’ the Chekhov classic, was rejected because it deals with adultery and there were concerns that some boys might play women, as they had in the past, he said.”

The Irony of It All. There’s irony in this, as noted here at SimanaitisSays in “On Actors, You’ll Excuse the Term.” Priestly types of all sorts dictated that only men should take on certain life’s roles, including acting. Even before Shakespeare’s time, women were prohibited from the stage; young men and boys portrayed the female roles. The change came half-a-century later when Charles II decreed that he enjoyed watching women portray women.

Even Kabuki, though initiated by women, saw them forced off the stage in 1629. To this day, males specialize in portraying onnagata roles.

Ideology. These days, though, it’s not just tradition but ideology that forces the issue. 

Paulson quotes Dallimore (whose Chattanooga teaching position was eliminated): “This is obviously a countrywide issue that we are a small part of. It’s definitely part of a bigger movement—a strongly concerted effort of politics and religion going hand in hand, banning books and trying to erase history and villainizing otherness.”

Red/Blue Madness. Paulson recounts, “In emails and phone calls over the last several weeks, teachers and parents cited a litany of examples. From the right there have been objections to homosexuality in the musical ‘The Prom’ and the play ‘Almost, Maine’ and other oft-staged shows; from the left there have been concerns about depictions of race in ‘South Pacific’ and ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’ and gender in ‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying’ and ‘Bye Bye Birdie’ and ‘Grease.’ And at individual schools there have been any number of unexpected complaints, about the presence of bullying in ‘Mean Girls’ and the absence of white characters in ‘Fences,’ about the words ‘damn’ (in ‘Oklahoma’) and ‘bastards’ (in ‘Newsies’) and ‘God’ (in ‘The Little Mermaid’).”

Wait until someone gets hold of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex.

To me, the most outrageous example cited was “In Pennsylvania, the North Lebanon School District barred ‘The Addams Family,’ the most popular school musical in the country, citing its dark themes.”

Geez. You’ll excuse the epithet. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2023