| re: "1984 on Broadway" - Gripping, must-see theater - and parallels to the events of 8/16/17 | |
| Last Edit: Singapore/Fling 12:28 am EDT 08/17/17 | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 12:22 am EDT 08/17/17 | |
| In reply to: "1984 on Broadway" - Gripping, must-see theater - and parallels to the events of 8/16/17 - summertheater 11:53 pm EDT 08/16/17 | |
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| I understand the sentiment that what we're seeing in our own society mirrors the story told on stage. There is also an argument, though, that our history is a continuously told story, and that all people who tell it shape the factual event (to the extent that they even know what that is) to create the narrative that share the lessons and model the values that they wish their society to reflect. What we might see in the removal of that plaque is a desire to re-contextualize how we reflect on slavery and the ways that it nearly broke this nation as a functional civic society, and may still do so. While a plaque has been removed, there isn't a larger attempt to erase the existence of this person or his life's work, but rather a consideration of how and where we wish to tell it... and how we choose to deal with the fact that we are all descendants of people who owned or were owned by other people. The plaque itself isn't being destroyed or thrown away - it's being archived, so that it may play a new role in history than it does today. And of course, this becomes even more interesting when we consider the fact that mounting the plaque in the first place was a narrative choice, and one not made until nearly 40 years after the actual historical event. The decision to place the plaque is as much a testament to a story that 1912 wanted to tell about itself and its history as it is to the actual war that Lee fought in. I see a different prominent parallel between our time and the play, which is at the level of our national government. When the President dismisses anything he doesn't like as "fake news", one can see an attempt to rewrite the present, erasing facts and events that might be inconvenient to the narrative that the President wants to believe in. In the aftermath of Charlottesville, I've been reading interviews with people in the Deep South who have readings of history that strike me as nearly perfectly inverted from what the factual record tells us of those events - at least the record as I understand it. I have impeccable sources for my history, but part of the brilliance of the "Fake News" meme is that is destabilizes the providers of the historical record, such that all accounts are considered equally valid. It's definitely a play that brings up a lot of questions of what is happening in our world right now. |
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