| re: what is problematic in Ragtime? | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 08:47 pm EDT 08/27/20 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 08:40 pm EDT 08/27/20 | |
| In reply to: re: what is problematic in Ragtime? - CanadianRyan 07:56 pm EDT 08/27/20 | |
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| I'm sorry... i can't get behind this. You want to erase the very issue being taken on by the show so that audiences don't have it in mind? Do you think Ragtime normalizes beating and killing black bodies? You are really comparing Ragtime to trauma porn? I'm really lost on how to respond to this. But i appreciate your response. I think there's merit in introducing the potential issue I really think if that's how we are going to look at all past plays, movies and literature, or anything yet to come, we are in trouble. But for what it's worth, Coalhouse blowing himself up in the building is my least favorite part of the story. But i think it makes a very big statement and that statement isn't "let's watch a black man's body explode for change". It's a culmination of the white world coming full force against a black man who wants justice for a crime done and a life lost, and the unraveling of the lie of the American dream and American promise fed to all of us but especially to black people when he and Sarah need to system to work for them just once, and the extent of his rage and need to make his voice heard, to impact SOMETHING in the system set up to drown and ignore and abuse him, vs what's waiting for him if he walks out of the building to the police. It's not glorifying the situation and it's not like we have to watch him murdered by police. Are you implying we cannot have any plays, even ones from before, that do not include racism and abuse of minorities? This is a tricky line. But I don't think the answer is to rewrite the story of Ragtime so that Sarah doesn't die and Coalhouse isn't in a position to take his own life rather than to give it to the police. I also do not see Mother as a "savior" but rather someone coming into her own newly found decency and lack of selfishness, and reflection on the class divide and racial divide. I don't think Mother looks like a hero here, and her first realization that "the help" have lives outside her house and her decision to not let a baby die in a hole does not paint her as some hero either, it paints her as a very stunted woman who is seeing the world a bit more and realizing her own prison as a woman in the patriarchal society she subscribed to fully. I understand why in the optics department it can be seen as "white savior"... but I don't think it's written that way. But perhaps my world view as a white person has kept me from understanding how it is that. I don't know. |
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