Threaded Order Chronological Order
| re: Gene Nelson -- Yes "White Privilege" Benefit | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 11:45 am EST 03/07/21 | |
| In reply to: Gene Nelson -- No "White Privilege" Benefit? - BroadwayTonyJ 09:28 am EST 03/07/21 | |
|
|
|
| Did most aspiring Asian, Black, and Native American movie performers have a long if not spectacular career in movies, including some big parts, followed by television and a highly-paid star part in a major Broadway musical? Did any? When we're talking about privilege, we're not saying that white people have it easy and everyone else suffers. We're saying that the system is set up to benefit white people disproportionately, and that it provides white people with more space to succeed even if they don't achieve their highest dreams. From very quick research, Gene Nelson had a good career. From 1950 to 1980, he pretty much never stopped working, alternating acting and directing. Yes, a lot of that was on TV, but it's work, and some of those series have become iconic; how many Asian, Black, and Native American directors directed 8 episodes of "I Dream of Jeannie"? How many directed an episode of the original "Star Trek"? Or 22 episodes of "The Donna Reed Show"? We have vey different definitions of being chewed up and spat out, and I think you picked a poor example to disprove the existence of White Privilege. |
|
| reply to this message |
| re: Gene Nelson -- No "White Privilege" Benefit | |
| Last Edit: BroadwayTonyJ 02:26 am EST 03/08/21 | |
| Posted by: BroadwayTonyJ 02:13 am EST 03/08/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Gene Nelson -- Yes "White Privilege" Benefit - Singapore/Fling 11:45 am EST 03/07/21 | |
|
|
|
| You and I have different ideas about what "white privilege" means. That's OK, of course -- I respect your opinion, read your posts, and enjoy sparring with you. I watch CNN and MSNBC a lot. In recent weeks I've heard respected journalists (some of color) like Craig Melvin, Fareed Zakaria, and Anand Gridharadas, (others white) like Bob Woodward opine about the subject. Their definition is closer to my experience. When they speak about white privilege, they refer to the children of well-to-do white families who grow up in the best neighborhoods, go to the best schools, attend the best universities, and stuff like that -- they don't regard working class whites as being privileged. BTW (and not that I'm complaining) but my great, great grandparents came to the U.S. some time in the 1800's from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Ireland. They were all laborers and/or factory workers, poorly educated. They, my great grandparents, my grandparents, and my parents lived in slums and/or poor neighborhoods most of their lives, and never had more than a high school education. I was the first person in my family to go to college (and the only one, my 3 siblings did not)-- against my parents' wishes actually -- they thought that I considered myself better than they were. There certainly was no money for college, but I won scholarships and worked part time after school, on holidays, over the summer. When a college education was in reach, I drew a low number in the 1966 conscription lottery, which meant being drafted as soon as I graduated from high school. As a remedy, I joined ROTC (which morphed into being in the army) so I could use my scholarship to get a BA in secondary education. While in the army (for 10 years), I taught high school, went back to school for my MA, had to quit teaching because of conflicts with the army, worked in a factory for 15 years, and eventually got a decent job in sales for a paper company. I worked hard for 31 years as a paper salesman, happily developed an interest in theatre -- seen about 1700 plays and musicals in Chicago, New York, London, Toronto, and other places since 1989 -- moved to a nicer suburb, and made a fair amount of money. Now I have a comfortable retirement. Despite all that I achieved by hard work and determination, all my life I've been called a dumb Polack, but that's never bothered me because I'm pretty happy in my own skin. However, please forgive me if my life experience has given me a somewhat different view about white privilege than others seem to have. Regarding Gene Nelson, I thought I saw a few similarities in his film career to that of Patrick Adiarte. That is what inspired my comment. You're right, Bobby Driscoll would have been a better example. Cute, white kid actor, won an Oscar when he was 12, had a lucrative contract with Disney, but got fired for having bad acne. His career was pretty much over before he was 20. He turned to narcotics, died a pauper, and was buried in potter's field. Yeah, white privilege did him a lot of good. Sorry about the cynicism. |
|
| reply to this message |
| re: Gene Nelson -- Yes "White Privilege" Benefit | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 01:27 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Gene Nelson -- No "White Privilege" Benefit - BroadwayTonyJ 02:13 am EST 03/08/21 | |
|
|
|
| Thank you for sharing your story, and I appreciate your point of view. There are definitely ways that the dialogue around privilege fails to consider the needs of people from poor and working class backgrounds (if those are even the right terms anymore), and one of the more nuanced ways of looking at this is to consider relative privilege within economic groupings: so a white working class person from the Rust Belt will in most situations have less opportunities than a Black or Brown person from the upper class, but they will almost certainly have more opportunities than a Black and Brown person who also hails from a poor, working class background. But I fully agree that a lot of our conversation around intersectionality is class-blind in ways that are destructive. And of course, any white person can fail, and any BIPOC person can succeed. When we talk about privilege, we should be talking about groups of people in the aggregate, not specific individuals, and we should not be talking about Privilege as an automatic pathway to success. I think the better metaphor might be having extra time to finish an assignment, or being able to drive in the carpool lane rather than the normal traffic lanes on the highways; small, often unnoticed bonuses that give someone a slight advantage that can add up over time. Someone can have extra time to finish a test and still fail that test, but the extra time certainly doesn't hurt. That's privilege. In the case of Gene Nelson, privilege was that he was able to play the lead in "Oklahoma!", but Asian people weren't able to play the leads in "The King and I", though things got a bit better with "Flower Drum Song". Privilege is a lot about access, and Nelson had more access where BIPOC artists had less access. (Also, did you mean Patrick Adiarte? I just Googled him, and he is neither White nor dead... though he did play the Prince in "King and I", which made him the only Asian performer to have a prominent role in the movie.) In terms of your life, I get the sense that you're from a background where you weren't considered "White" when you were growing up, instead being seen as an Other and receiving a version of the prejudice that this country directs towards BIPOC people, but now the cultural definition of White has grown to include people from your background, and perhaps there's a sense that people are holding your Whiteness against you now in the way that other people held being Polish against you then. That's terrible all around. There is a tendency for some activist to flatten and erase the historical prejudices of this country, and I'm sorry if you're experiencing that. I can see why those experiences would make you think that privilege is a bunch of bunk (especially as some people weaponize it to dismiss the achievements of hard working people), but if we acknowledge the barriers that non-White people have faced in this country, then we also have to acknowledge that other people benefited from those barriers, and that's White privilege. |
|
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: Gene Nelson -- Yes "White Privilege" Benefit | |
| Posted by: BroadwayTonyJ 04:58 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Gene Nelson -- Yes "White Privilege" Benefit - Singapore/Fling 01:27 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
|
|
|
| I appreciate your detailed and respectful response. All that I can say is that "whiteness" or "white privilege" is more complicated than the way those terms are used on ATC. My skin tone is pretty white, although that is not true of some of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Everyone from the Irish and Polish part of the family are very white. However, some of my family from the German and Czech part are much less white-looking and even a little dark. As kids we used to joke about it, even laughing that one of my cousins was the black sheep or the dark one of the family. There were stories from my German grandfather's siblings that generations earlier, we must have gotten some Hebrew blood mixed in with the German. Also, from 1948 through 1992 my family lived in Chicago suburbs that were regarded as less desirable. My dad was an electrical worker, my mom was a factory secretary, neither was well educated. Even after graduating from college and getting a master's degree, I was regarded as an "other", most likely because of my background. This never bothered me and never hindered my advancement -- I always had a lot of drive and self-assurance. However, my brothers and other members of my family all suffer from low self-esteem. As I've mentioned a few times before, my current extended family is now about one third white, one third Hispanic, and one third Asian. The Hispanic part is about half Mexican and half Cuban. The Asian part is about half Korean and half Lebanese. When we all get together, I get to hear a lot of opinions and points of view. Regarding Patrick Adiarte, you and I sparred a few weeks ago about the casting of Adiarte as Chulalongkorn in the film of The King and I. I had argued that the opportunity given to him and Yuriko Kikuchi in the film was a good reason for Brynner getting the role of Mongkut because without Brynner, the film would not have been made. In yesterday's post I said that I had seen some similarities between Adiarte's career and that of Gene Nelson. Another bone of contention on ATC is the litmus test some here have for who is considered Asian or Asian enough to play Asian roles. My opinion has been that (at least in the 50's) the casting of actors like Brynner (who is East Russian and Buryat on his mother side) and also Martin Benson, who is of Russian and Hebrew ancestry, was appropriate. |
|
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: Gene Nelson -- Yes "White Privilege" Benefit | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 06:36 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Gene Nelson -- Yes "White Privilege" Benefit - BroadwayTonyJ 04:58 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
|
|
|
| I don't think I was part of that conversation about Adiarte, though I am still curious which actor you were thinking of who was a child star and then died after developing acne. In terms of being Asian enough, as I wrote at the time, we get into some very difficult territory that verges on the White supremacist notion of "one drop" to determine who is or isn't Asian. But I don't think any definition of who is appropriate to play Thai/Southeast Asian should be so loose as to include Russian Jews and someone whose mother was mixed race with ancestral connections to Siberian Mongol tribes. I think this was only considered appropriate in the 1950s because these actors were regarded as "foreign", which was to say anything that deviated from White/Western European. |
|
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: Gene Nelson -- Yes "White Privilege" Benefit | |
| Last Edit: BroadwayTonyJ 07:42 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
| Posted by: BroadwayTonyJ 07:40 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Gene Nelson -- Yes "White Privilege" Benefit - Singapore/Fling 06:36 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
|
|
|
| A few weeks ago, you posted something like since the film of The King and I was going to be somewhat racist, Brynner should have turned it down so a more appropriate Asian actor could get the role. I argued that Rodgers was calling the shots and that Brynner would be the king. I brought up the names of Patrick Adiarte and Yuriko Kikuchi, who both gave stunning performances. I told you this film undoubtedly helped their careers. Both had played the roles on Broadway and deserved the opportunity to appear in the film. I said for this reason alone the film should be made and asked you to reconsider about calling it racist. Something like that. I've read a lot about the movie industry back in the 50's and earlier. I know this is going to sound awful but back then the "powers that were" generally favored Asian actors who were Russian, Mongol, Armenian, Indian, but rarely southeast Asian. They wanted an Asian look, but not too ethnic. Brynner, of course, was a great actor and he had the right look, one that would probably please a mostly white audience. I believe Richard Rodgers back in '51 was being truthful (in his own mind) when he stated that Yul Brynner was an Asian actor. Bobby Driscoll was a popular child actor in the 40's. He made some films for Disney, won a juvenile Oscar for The Window in '49, and then Disney starred him in Treasure Island and the voice of the title character in the animated Peter Pan. He also played the lead role of Bibi in The Happy Time. As he entered puberty, he developed a bad case of acne, which eventually resulted in Disney cancelling his contract. The roles began to dry up, he tried TV for awhile, but he turned to drugs and the rest wasn't very pretty. I would not characterize any of the decisions that the "powers that were" made in these instances as white supremacist or examples of white privilege, but I respect your passion and opinions. Of course, since that time the culture has evolved, audiences today no longer want fairy tales or romanticism for films depicting Asian characters. In the remake of The King and I all the Thai characters will be cast with Southeast Asian actors or the film will not be made. |
|
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: Gene Nelson -- Yes "White Privilege" Benefit | |
| Posted by: Singapore/Fling 09:05 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Gene Nelson -- Yes "White Privilege" Benefit - BroadwayTonyJ 07:40 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
|
|
|
| I think you night have had that specific conversation with somebody else. I posted in that thread, but I didn't write that Brynner should have turned the part down. I was arguing for a middle ground, where we can respect the film for what it is and also recognize that it reflected the racism of the time. I also wrote about how we don't have to get caught up in binaries of good versus bad, and that acknowledging the film is racist doesn't mean we can't appreciate the film. Likewise, the film could have been positive for the careers of two Asian actors while also being a racist movie. Those two things can exist, and that's okay. The first step to becoming antiracist is to recognize that racism that we all live with and perpetuate. | |
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
| re: Gene Nelson -- Yes "White Privilege" Benefit | |
| Last Edit: BroadwayTonyJ 09:46 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
| Posted by: BroadwayTonyJ 09:45 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
| In reply to: re: Gene Nelson -- Yes "White Privilege" Benefit - Singapore/Fling 09:05 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
|
|
|
| I responded to that specific post of yours. Another ATC-er replied to my post. Gradually the thread morphed into a discussion about Patrick Adiarte and Yuriko. You did not participate in the rest of the thread. It's been a few weeks and I'm sure I got some of your exact words wrong. However, I definitely responded to what you are stating in your post above. I agree that there is racism in all aspects of our society. I'm just not that comfortable with going back to the 30's, 40's, and 50's and characterizing the actions of the moviemakers of that era as racist or examples of white privilege. I would rather say what they did was wrong, unfair, unjust, or words to that effect. |
|
| reply to this message | reply to first message |
Time to render: 0.026176 seconds.