Word: idealizations
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...like Soviet leaders before him, a master of doublethink. Sheehy eventually turns this standard Orwellian idea into what she calls her own "shattering insight . . . There is no bottom line to the Soviet socialist ideal -- it's a snake pit of hypocrisy...
...producers decided to cast European Jonathan Pryce in the role of a Eurasian, and Actor's Equity made a recommendation that the role be played by an Asian or Asian-American. Editorial pages across the country decried the Union for espousing what they called racism. What happened to the ideal of blind casting...
Blind casting is a relative ideal; it is a corrective measure. To pretend that the bias that infused drama did not infuse society is at best idiotic and at worst malicious. We cross-cast now to redress certain cultural greivances, but we should never forget how grave those greivances are. If a director casts an Asian-American as a Prince Hamlet, that still does not soothe the stinging reality that the West never did, indeed, never could, envision an Asian protagonist. Because so many roles are scripted for the social majority as acknowledged by our culture, roles scripted for Asian...
...seemingly logical conclusion of this argument would be that Heller should be able to cast minority players in whatever roles she likes, and that Pachter should consider another medium, say sportswriting. Certainly Heller should be allowed to cast whomever she likes, and she deserves praise for embracing the ideal of cross-casting. But like any political figure, she has responsibilities. In cross-casting, she suggests that race is a superficial characteristic, and that anyone in the audience who disagrees, who thinks that a Black man embodies a stereotype, who thinks that an actor's black skin implies some awful caricature...
Neither Pachter nor Velasquez dismisses the ideal of cross-casting. Each is mindful of the responsibilities of that political gesture. Cross-casting is an ideal precisely because our society is not, and audience members are mindful of race and sex, especially when it goes against the proscriptions of a playwright. We have to be careful about the messages we let them take from the theater. We do not advance feminism if we cast women in subservient roles written for men, or egalitarianism if we cast Black actors in subservient roles written for whites. Those roles have already been scripted...