Hamlet and race... and my fail at deep thinking

[beccaelizabeth]

So it's International Blog Against Racism Week again ( ibarw ). Therefore I think about race.

Hamlet ate my brain. Therefore I think about Hamlet.

There were black people in the RSC Hamlet. I remember because, being from Norfolk, every time I see a black person I'm all 'ooh, different! not seen one of those this month!' Which, um, sounds about as annoying as it is, I suspect. I don't set out to stare, but *sigh*.

Actually it is considerable more mixy around here than it used to be. There used to be one black person, two brown people, and a lot of white Norfolk people who think those of us who moved up from Essex are strange. Now there's leaflets in the doctors office in Portugese, and Norwich has Polish shops to go with the existing Chinese community that has been there apparently since half way to forever. And there's bunches of black people too, wearing much more interesting hair and fabrics last time I was on the bus staring out the window.

... my tendency to treat race, when not thinking about it, as a kind of shiny visual treat, do make me *facepalm* at me, it really do.

It's difficult to write about race when my day to day experience is so academic. I can see people on TV. I don't leave the house much, so that's about it. Many of my cousins are black, and gold, and brown, and quite likely red though I don't know for sure. We have cousin rainbow. But I don't actually meet them much. Or enough to reliably recognise them if I bump into them in town. I recognised my uncle, but not so much the lady he married. Social skill fail.

So I watch Hamlet with some black actors in it, and I'm thinking 'ooh, shiny hair!' because this one guy... where's the program gone, ah right behind me... I think it was David Ajala playing Reynaldo... anyway, one guy had hair that's all in rows and patterns and looked very neat. I like patterns. And someone else I only saw from behind in the first scene, lady playing an ambassador, she had good hair too. And... that's about the level I was thinking about at the time.

The characters I can name - Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Polonius, Ophelia, Laertes - they were all white. Then there's Horatio , who I should probably remember the name of but didn't. What other names... Rosencratz and Guildenstern I remember because I used to have toy bears called that. Don't ask, I was very small, I have no clue. They were bear puppets, you put your hand in and moved them around. I strongly suspect grown ups named them for me, for that be entirely appropriate then...

In my brain, association with toy bears be stronger than is they white people.

You could call that colorblind.

I do more thinking but don't think any extra names. They were people that were there and doing things and logically had names. Don't remember.

So, the royal and powerful people is two families, both played by white actors. The not-royal not-powerful people have more variety.

That's what I vaguely thought at the time.

If the royal-powerful people were played, either or both, by more variety of people... would that make the thing seem like it was about race? Like, suddenly, instead of being about a ghost and some politics and maybe going mad, it's all that happening to people of color?

T'other thing I think on - when listing race stuff that is going on locally I mentioned Polish people, because Polish immigrants are in the news as an issue so it do come to mind. If the word was ethnicity that would undoubtedly fit. Do it fit race? Can't tell by looking. Is that what race means?

See, my thinking about any/all this be very small, very shallow, quite a lot about hairstyles.
How annoying am I?
Am I a 'don't be on our side you make our side look dumb' person?
I fear that sometimes.
I can see that there are big important things to think about.
I just... usually fail at attempted thinking about them.

Racism : bad.

Thoughts in my head : ... embarrassed about being potentially racist?

... so, minimal points for effort there ...

*facepalm*

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

The RSC has had a policy for a long time (15, 20 years maybe? I'm getting old) of just casting people and ignoring their race, so you can get some odd mixes such as where a brother is played by a black man and a sister by a white woman. After a bit it becomes just something you don't notice any more and it doesn't affect the story. I've seen the National Theatre do colour blind casting for Shakespeare, and I think the Globe as well, so it is probably quite standard practice for Shakespeare these days. This could be part of the 'otherness' of Shakespeare that I was talking about the other day, where it can inhabit a different mental space from 'normal' plays. And the BBC Robin Hood does it as well - just casts people at random so you will suddenly get a black woman playing a nun in medieval England without anyone commenting or noticing. Mind you, that Robin Hood is on crack, it's one of the things I find most endearing about it.

I guess whether people approve of this comes down to whether they want people to be colour blind or politically correct.

I'm not sure what the RSC do about Othello and Merchant of Venice, I don't think I've seen the RSC do either of those. Since those are actively about race it would send out different signals to have colour blind casting. Certainly the productions I have seen didn't use it.

[beccaelizabeth]

I gave up on watching the BBC Robin Hood ages back, partly because of effects of 'color blind' casting - seemed like every black person was evil & dead by the end of the episode, and why put up with more of that?
Color blind casting ignores a signal it is still sending and can mean making a right mess of it. It's a nice idea that doesn't work on the 'read' end unless everyone is in the same brain.