No laughing matter: Political correctness in the theatre and in the academic world
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
When I uploaded my last theatreVOICE posting its title was: “Who pissed against Melbourne city gate?” – a job for Harold Pinter’s ghost. Mysteriously on the website the first half was missing. Naturally I assumed that the system was programmed to remove “offensive” words like “pissed”. Immediately Dominic Cavendish reassured me that the real problem must have been the length of the headline or the quotation marks. Nevertheless quite a few people would only too gladly install “intelligent” software of that kind.
In the strange world of academia political correctness is already tiresomely well established. Still, an experience of mine with the German Shakespeare yearbook came as a surprise. The American Alan C. Dessen is a performance historian on a crusade of making a cause for every line ever published under the name of Shakespeare. He regularly berates directors and dramaturgs not only for their bigger but also for their smaller cuts. Even he in his highly pedantic book “Rescripting Shakespeare” (2002) admitted sympathy for a decision at Stratford, Ontario: “In a virtually uncut Othello Othello’s famous speech building to his suicide was not interrupted by the brief lines from Lodovico and Gratiano, a standard adjustment. In this instance, however, the two interjections were not omitted to enhance the dramatic rhythm but because, in a production that was to end its run with a series of matinees for high school students, the director and her actors were fearful of losing this climactic moment when Lodovico, in front of 2,000 teenagers, exclaimed: ‘O bloody period!’”
When I quoted that in my review for the Shakespeare Jahrbuch the severely feminist editor of the books section told me that Shakespeare’s line “O bloody period!” in this context would only enter the august pages of her publication over her dead body. Thus censoring the Bard himself, for good measure she added that Tom Stoppard’s well-known theory of the “Broadway bladder” which refers to “the alleged need of a Broadway audience to urinate every 75 minutes” would have to suffer the same ignominious fate. I had used it with reference to a Munich King Lear where the interval came after a record three hours twenty minutes which must have been a nightmare for everybody with prostate problems. During my debates with the academic lady about what turned out to be my last review for her publication I repeatedly thought of Michael Frayn’s surprising claim that the Germans got the same sense of humour as the Brits.
Luckily in the theatre this kind of ludicrous political correctness used to be rarer. In England famously even the supposedly cutting edge Royal Court’s box office wasn’t allowed to utter the full title of Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking, opting for “Effing” instead. But currently Richard Bean stands accused of enhancing racist stereotypes with England People Very Nice and Caryl Churchill of antisemitism in her playlet Seven Jewish Children. For obvious historical reasons in Germany there is a particular and justified squeamishness when it comes to possible allegations of antisemitism. Thus Shylock up to the 1980s often was shown as a kindly old gentleman who only very reluctantly resorted to the cutting of Antonio’s flesh. Those Shylocks were closer to Lessing’s Nathan and accordingly called “Nylock the Wise”. Only Jewish directors like Fritz Kortner and Peter Zadek dared to show the character’s negative sides and thereby made clear that only if you accept Shylock as he is, can tolerance be worth its name.
One of the funniest Jewish dramatists was George Tabori (1914-2007). In his play Mein Kampf, the character Herzl returns to the Viennese asylum for the homeless where it is set and tells Lobkowitz (originally played by Tabori himself): “Last night a waiter at the Café Central told me: No dogs, no Jews.” – “No dogs, that’s outrageous!”, is Lobkowitz’ reply and one of Tabori’s best jokes. When I saw the play a few years later in Wiesbaden, the line was changed to “No Jews, that’s outrageous!” As always with political correctness: a sound conscience and absolutely nothing to laugh at.
