| RAGTIME, WILMETTE, CENSORSHIP?
by Jason Loewith on 7/15/2008 12:07:00 PM
I got a call yesterday from a journalist with the WINDY CITY TIMES asking for my response to the flap (they call it "controversy") over the Wilmette Park District's decision to cancel an upcoming community theater production of Ragtime because of the musical's use of the word "nigger" (a word which my friends in the press will only print as "the n-word").
As I understand it, the Park District - the real producers of the show - didn't realize the historically-based musical used the offensive word until 10 days before opening. Their concern was that the production, which was to play in an outdoor park with amplified voices, could accidentally offend passersby and park-users who weren't attending the show.
The news of the cancellation hit local papers about three weeks ago, and no one really seemed to care until the New York Times picked it up on July 1... and then all hell broke loose. "Censorship!" people screamed... "The people of Wilmette are philistines," others mused, while some even thought the decision was actually evidence of Wilmette's innate racism.
Eventually, the show was moved to an indoor venue, where the musical will play to the satisfaction of the Park District and the artists. (You can read all about it in the Pioneer Press article here.)
Me? It's all a load of hogwash, I say. And frankly, just stupid producing. That's what happens when city governments try to run real arts programs. The Starlight Theatre in Wilmette, which is producing the musical, is a program of the Park District... and obviously the bureaucracy there (if it's anything like the bureaucracy in Evanston) is so complex that the people with the real power haven't bothered to read the scripts of the shows they're producing.
But please, let's stop yelling, "censorhsip!" Try making art in China, or Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall, or Zimbabwe... here in this country, where we are blessed with free speech, the only censorship we've got to worry about is self-censorship.
And that's a subject for another blog post!Labels: Censorship
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