| re: Spoiler | |
| Posted by: LikeABladeOfCorn 07:07 pm EST 12/16/21 | |
| In reply to: Spoiler - dramedy 11:51 am EST 12/16/21 | |
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| Hi Dramedy, I wanted to offer an interpretation of this ending because I find boiling it down to "bull shit" to be a dangerously reductive statement about a play that astonished me. At the end of Slave Play, Kaneisha does not thank her white husband Jim for raping her as if she were enslaved. She thanks him for listening. In the scene leading up to that moment, Kaneisha tells Jim that her Black elders are watching her, and they don't care that he is a demon, the elders just want both of them to know it. To know the history of Black and white people, of enslavement. She suggests their relationship should potentially end because he is unable to engage in Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy. He cannot sexually perform while calling her a derogatory racist term as requested; He labels the request as unfair because he is in denial of his own inherent racism, suggesting it is unfair that he have to say that word despite her request that he say it. And then, in a moment of sexual crisis, his voice reverts to the voice of a white man in the antebellum south. He suddenly has a whip because, as I interpret it, it is the physical symbol of white dominance that Kaneisha has always known he carried with him, and he initiates sex. When he finally engages both physically and verbally in Antebellum Sexual Performance Therapy, Kaneisha screams and shouts their safe word, then begins to cry. Then, and only then, does Jim burst into violent sobs because, for the first time, he is aware of the trauma she carries as a Black woman and how his existence perpetuates that trauma. Once he understands, she thanks him for listening. She has been heard. Based on this, I believe their relationship that appeared to be on the brink of termination can now have a real path forward. I thought, as a white theatergoer, that it was a stunning depiction of the polite denial of many, many white people who also fail to realize that they carry a whip. I left the theater aware of my own complicity and denial, my own participation in structures that skew unfairly in the favor of white people. I was stunned and moved. I do not know if anything I've said will change your opinion of the play, but I hope this bears consideration. |
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