I may have mentioned just once or twice (!) that I love “Hamilton”, and that we went to see it this week. It really is an amazing performance; to say I’d highly recommend it is an understatement. I could easily bash out a few thousand words about all there is to love about the show, but that’s not the point of this blog.
Just in case you’ve somehow missed all the hype, one thing that is notable about “Hamilton” and its presentation of the story of America’s founding fathers, is its inclusivity and freshness through its colour-blind casting, meaning that actors predominantly of colour represent white historical characters. The New York Times puts it this way: “The Black and brown founding fathers of “Hamilton” make the story of America something that can finally be owned by people of color, as opposed to the reality, which so often refutes the relevancy of their lives and contributions."
It's pretty powerful stuff, casting the story with a mix of people who inherited it; I understand it means an awful lot to the African-American community in particular.
Meanwhile, on the Lin Manuel-Miranda theme, we’ve coincidently seen “Encanto” this week. I loved that too, and so did some reading about it, which has sent me down a rabbit-hole of theorising about representation in Disney films, which I will now attempt to summarise some of (badly, because it’s such a big topic, that deserves much more lengthy and scholarly discussion).
Historically, Disney has not done well on issues of race. Think of the Native Americans (refered to as ‘redskins’) in “Peter Pan” (1953) , and the stereotyped plantation workers in the now pretty much banned “Song of the South” (1946). Even in more recent times, when Disney has tried a bit harder to be more sensitive, its attempts have fallen short. For example, “Pocahontas” (1995) with its hot-potato historical subject matter, received criticism from Native Americans, and is generally considered “not a train wreck. It's more a cinematic misstep, and as more and more time passes, we look less kindly on it.“ (Chris dos Santos, writing for Switch).
It took till 2009 for Disney to give audience a black princess in Tiana ("The Princess and the Frog"), but then turned her into an animal for most of the film (following its previous tradition of making black roles animals or villains), failed to market the film well, and generally place poor Tiana lurking at the back of any princess line-up.
Then there’s “Moana”, returning us nicely to the Lin Manuel-Miranda theme. Plucky female lead, and a feel-good message about girl power, all endorsed by the Oceanic Trust of scholarly and cultural advisers set up by Disney, who were wising up to the issues of cultural misappropriation. But there were mixed reactions from Pacific Islanders. Even as a non-expert, I can see that taking someone’s god (Maui) and presenting him as a large grumpy buffoon, cut off from his counterpart female deity, presumably to streamline the young-gutsy-Moana versus obese-braggart-Maui symmetry, is perhaps not the wisest move (I really enjoyed the film, but I’m not sure I’d appreciate people making a film about a fat, foolish, ego-centric Jesus either!)
So returning to “Encanto” (that Lin-Manuel Miranda is a busy man; and he certainly gets a lot of air time in our house). Well, could it be that Disney are finally getting it right in their representation of non-European cultures? A film with another plucky female lead saving the day, and this one wears glasses, and lives in a family of pleasingly varying body shapes and skin tones and abilities. A nice narrative arc in which family bonds are the most important relationships, and romance is a very minor sub-plot. But perhaps more importantly, sympathetic in its cultural setting: this is a story set in Columbia which represents a family displaced by violence, living in a home which fractures like the country it represents, and the tone is so positive and celebratory about colourful, vibrant, diverse community and everyday life, with no mention of gangs, drugs, or kidnappings, which are the more common representations of Columbia in the media. In other words, it is a story about healing, growth and togetherness in a country which has had more than its fair share of violence and division, and needs to heal. I’m sure in time we will scoff at the clumsy Americanisms, the accents, the lack of traditional instrumentation (I actually love the soundtrack; it’s very “In the Heights”, and we all shimmied out of the cinema to salsa rhythms) but I think we should give Disney credit where it’s due on this one (Disney by its very nature of being in the business of taking big stories and simplifying them for children makes it an easy target for accusations of cultural misrepresentation).
It’s a funny one, isn’t it? I loved the predictable narratives of the boy-meets-girl earlier Disney films, felt no qualms about singing “We are Siamese”, accepted that female characters should delight in cleaning for strange men whilst surrounded by woodland creatures. But it’s a bit uncomfortable sharing these with my own children now…
Perhaps I wouldn’t be quite so sensitive to all this if it weren’t for my wonderful students who keep me on my toes with these issues. More on this here: https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-danish-whales-and-quantitative-easing I recently listened to a fantastic presentation on queer-coding, and how Disney uses queer culture as a proxy for villainy in characters like Ursula (“The Little Mermaid”), Scar (“The Lion King”), and Jafar (“Aladdin”). I was introduced to the phrase “kill your gays”, and so look back on even some of my favourite books like “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” with fresh eyes. But the race thing - it’s inherently different.
And maybe it’s also different because it affects me. Which seems a stretch for a middle class white woman to say. I have freckles and I even teach English. But here is an anecdote which stands out in my mind.
I was once out with my father (Tunisian), step-mother (also Tunisian), and their children, in Liverpool city centre. For this story to make sense, you should understand that amongst themselves, my dad's family often speak Arabic. A passerby came up to my dad and said something I didn’t quite catch about a licence, and Dad got cross. I asked what had happened; he explained the man had told them we needed to get a licence to be in this country, because we weren’t speaking English. Now my dad with his skin tone and faint accent has heard all this before and no doubt worse, but I was astounded. At that time, I was finishing my English degree at Cambridge, and had a place to start teacher training at Oxford. The whole thing was so just so ridiculous (that I should need to learn my mother tongue to justify living in my home country) that I wanted to chase after the man to tell him so. I am not scarred by my tiny dipping-the-toe-in-the-water, once in a lifetime, experience of being on the end of a racist comment; I’m just bamboozled by the absurdity of it.
I’m 50% North African. I still have a passport to prove it, because you just wouldn’t know it. I don’t look it, and I lack linguistic and cultural ties. I bring it up very occasionally at work, for example, to try to give some credibility to my teaching Islam, probably whilst mispronouncing all the key terms. But perhaps this status has given me some small insights into the white privilege I take for granted, ironically, nowhere more so than in Tunisia itself, where being pale-skinned, at least in the suburbs where my family lives, is apparently highly valued.
Every now and then, the boys’ school has some cultural event where children are meant to wear/bring in things relating to their heritage, and I hang my head in shame, and send in bowls of couscous and tubs of olives, which my boys don’t even like, and we rarely have at home. I’ve dressed them in the red and white of the Tunisian flag, making them entirely indistinguishable from their red and white English friends, which they are.
So perhaps my interest in (mis)representation of culture and race on stage and in films, connects somehow to my own poor attempts at connecting to and representing a culture.
Another of my Year 11s (yes, them again, but they are quite brilliant, and impact on me perhaps more than they know) recently gave a talk on his experience of being second generation Chinese. He described how every decision he made was perhaps subconsciously a reaction to his heritage, for example, whilst a naturally quiet person, he makes an extra effort to be gregarious because he does not want to fit the nerdy Asian stereotype.
He stopped me in my tracks. I began questioning both how I make assumptions about my students, and also how I position myself culturally. “Second generation” is a label which could be applied to me, at a stretch, but it’s never one I’ve considered. On forms, my mouse hovers momentarily over the genetically correct ‘mixed race’ box before plumping for the more culturally representative ‘white British’ box.
Ah, the boxes. The necessary evil that allow us to track trends and avoid discrimination, whilst in their very essence highlighting the divisions.
But in concluding (big drum roll), let me highlight that I think no-one should be more in favour of inclusivity than a follower of Jesus. Today, I listened to a fantastic sermon on the beginning of the book of Romans, in which Paul, writing to a mixed group of Jews and Gentiles, describes himself in his missionary purpose as: “obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish.” In a culture in which people were so sensitive of their religion, national identity, and status, it is truly remarkable that the good news of Jesus was (and still is, of course) unashamedly for everyone. How completely outrageous that everyone, Jews and non-Jews, rich and slaves, should all be told of the same offer of forgiveness and acceptance by God; how funny for such a diverse group of people to then be bumping up against each other in the churches to which Paul writes. In Galatians we read, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This line, oft-quoted in debates on racism and sexism, of course gives rhetorical flourish to the idea of equality before God, rather than denying that the categories exist. Shouldn’t a Christian have more reason than anyone to celebrate the diversity of people, all the God-breathed ‘ethnos’ (people groups) which will one day all be represented in the new creation, whilst also recognising that these divisions will be meaningless in the ultimate acceptance before God for “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”? If you love Jesus and what he has to offer, you can't really avoid loving all the different types of people to whom he makes this same offer (ie everyone!). Myself; George Washington; a member of a Columbian drugs cartel; an evil, camp, fratricidal uncle; a peace-loving, Maui-worshipping Polynesian; the entire nation of Tunisia... we all share equal urgent need of forgiveness from a merciful God.
It was really wonderful to watch “Hamilton”; I can’t put into words how thrilled I was to see it. And I do want to fill my mind and our boys’ minds with cultural influences which celebrate all different types of people.
And maybe one of these days I’ll try a bit harder to talk to the boys about Tunisia too.
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