And about time too:
One of the world’s most popular operas opens in Covent Garden today amid fresh claims of racism, colonial misadventure and outmoded, “sordid” morals…
Professor Roger Parker, a teacher of music at King’s College London and a Puccini specialist, suggested that opera audiences could be unwitting participants in racism because of the stereotypes Madama Butterfly contains.
He said: “An authentic production [of the opera] is a racist production. It has a lot of ideas within it that would be seen in any other circumstances as racist. It is not just a question of the words, it also Puccini’s music.”
“We have become much more sensitive [about racism] and the interpretation of Madama Butterfly is one of those operas that needs to reflect that.
Quite right, I say. This insenstive cultural anachronism is completely outmoded and needs to be consigned to the dustbin of history. In fact, I have taken the liberty of writing a short synopsis of a new, modernised version of the Puccini opera which will more accurately reflect the values of a modern-day audience. Act I
Murderous red-necked robot goon, Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton is sent to Japan by his ZioNazi imperialist overlords on a mission to oppress the indigenous people, steal their natural resources and poison their atmosphere with harmful hydrocarbon emissions.
While engaged in a random and bloody act of ethnic cleansing, Pinkerton happens upon a strong indigenous person of a different but equally valid gender. Unable to resist the impulses of his phallocentric culture, Pinkerton calls her ‘butterfly’ and demands that she love him long time for five dollars.
But she rejects his crude attempt to perpetuate the Western myth of the erotically charged female and, declaring the name Cio-Cio San as her nomme de guerre, she embarks upon a heroic act of resistance by singing a song called ‘The failure to acknowledge historical specificity in the deconstruction of the chauvinist narrative’.
Pinkerton is taken aback by the awakening of her racial consciousness and, despite that fact that he vows never to change his colonialist mindset, Pinkerton is nonetheless forced to reflect upon his own narrow, bourgeois Euro-centric prejudices.
Act II
Following her racial awakening, Cio-Cio San finds a sexual awakening when she meets vegan punk riot motorbike-grrrl, Suzuki. Together, they set about re-discovering the oral traditions of their people in the form a broad, popular coalition for national liberation.
While writing an important essay on the political struggle of the racially oppressed, Cio-Cio San is interrupted by Pinkerton who tells her that he has utterly rejected the Western assumptions of cultural superiority and the masculinist discourse of his upbringing and that he wants to donate his semen to Cio-Cio San and Suzuki so that they can bear and raise a child who will be free from the horrors of resource-grabbing and injustice.
But Cio-Cio San refuses his offer, telling Pinkerton that to accept insemination by him would be nothing less than the perpetuation of the repressive Western Theory and the patriarchal hegemon. Although she does welcome his apparent departure from the exploitative, imperial process and suggests some further reading material.
Act III
Heartbroken, Pinkerton returns home to his Jebusland where he commits his life to the progressive cause and subversion of the Christofascist supremacist gun-toting, gas-guzzling order. However, he finds himself the victim of dark, shadowy forces which crush his dissent and prevent him from speaking out against the prevailing worldview.
In desperation, he decides to sacrifice his life by taping his lips to the exhaust pipe of a Sports Utility Vehicle in the hope that this symbolic/ironic gesture will wake the people from their slumber and incite them to rise up against intolerance and the rape of the earth.
In the final tear-jerking scene, Pinkerton’s aria, a plea for peace and justice, is drowned out by the heckling and cackling of the Reich-Wing noise machine.
Fin.
Fucking brilliant. An insyant classical masterpiece.
A very good post.
I can’t help wondering, however, how much the criticism is the result of the fact that the production is being mounted by Raymond Gubbay. He is not a popular character amongst the tradtional supporters of High Culture, precisely because he treats the arts as a form of popular entertainment, rather than a rarified amuse-bouche for the elite.
…toss in a bit with a dog then you’ve got something…
Post this on Democratic Underground and see how many people take it as a serious re-write…
You still insist on perpetuating the outdated dogma of audience nonparticipation, by insisting that only the cast and crew may be on stage during the performance. This reinforces their dominant position as the running dogs of the (generally white male) writer and composer. Further, by allowing this travesty to be carried on in a Western language, you marginalize the equally-valid and equally-useful languages of the rest of the world.
You also contribute to the starvation of minorities, womyn, and others, by not allowing food or drink in the theater.
My dear sir (or other honorific appropriate to the gender(s) with which you self-identify (assuming that you self-identify with a recognized gender, which in no way is required of you, and assuming that you might participate in such feudal notions of address) you will never make it on PBS/BBC/NPR with such an offensive reinforcement of the white male paternalist corporate paradigm.
Opera doesn’t reflect public opinion. Most people do not want opera.
I think plenty of people like opera. Just not a whole one in one go!
Earth to Parker:
Of course it has racist ideas, you idiot. That was the point.
It is not just a question of the words, it also Puccini’s music.”
Professor Rogers is clearly bonkers.
How the hell do you make a musical progression racist.
Words I can fathom, but music???
The closest anyone ever got to being funny musically even, was the Bonzo Dog, but racist music??
I was taught that Puccini was a bit af a revolutionary on the quiet. And his operas are packed full of socialist symbolism. The Unification of Italy, the rise of the common man etc.
Besides it’s in Italian. Who is listening to the words except Brian Sewell anyway!!!
You’ve discovered the secret to Lefty writing. Select an assortment of Politically Correct words and phrases, stir vigorously, and paste at random.
Excellent work. However, you are suspected of possessing an unauthorized sense of humor. Professor Parker will surely not be pleased with that.
This would be funny, but the damn fools use this jiberish to prevent clear thinking. It is Orwelian.
Well, that improves Madum-sam Buttelfly! will you be reworking Shakespear next? As I remember, all the plays suffer from overreliance on cliches (Now this winter of our discontent etc, etc) And I’m sure that he has Satan-worshippers, who simply want to engage in non-state-sanctioned killings, cast as the villains in one of his works. If we can’t consign all this stuff to the bonfires, we can at least edit and update it all! Then we’ll only have Dickens to read, but at least you get the correct impression that rich means evil from him. Good work, comrads and comradesses!
Then we’ll only have Dickens to read, but at least you get the correct impression that rich means evil from him. Nonsense. Go read Dickens (again?).
Bravo!
To Alisa- I did read Dickens at school, and my teachers here in Australia all made sure that we drew the correct conclusions- that Britain was/is a class-ridden society where class really meant utter evil. Scrooge was considered a typical example- he only becomes lovable when he gives his money out freely, and he is on the way to the virtuous poorhouse. If there are Dickens stories where the rich are also lovable and sane, maybe we Aussies never read them.
I suppose what he means by “racist music” is the crass working in of clunky atonal music to sound vaguely oriental, as you might expect a 1950s disney film to do, which is only slightly less annoying than the feeble riffs on the Star Spangled Banner which pepper the score.
My real issue here is that Madama Butterfly is one of those things which has somehow made it into the ranks of High Art and therefore impervious to criticism. Its first audiences laughed out loud at its baffling mixture of syrupy sentiment and incoherent plot and yawned at its general absence of tunes other than smartarse references mentioned above, and I have to say I’m with them on this one. South Pacific without the tunes or depth of character.
Nicholas Gray,
Check out George Orwell’s essay on Dickens. I think that’s what’s being referred to here. (Rest of the collection is here.)
Racist, maybe. Offensive, no.
What is the city in the world with the most opera venues? Tokyo, Japan. What is one of the European-language operas most oftem perfomed in Japan? Madama Butterfly.
It’s performed with all-Japanese casts, with all-Western casts, with mixed casts, even pantomime-fashion with a Japanese Pinkerton and a white Butterfly ; and it’s performed all the time, often having two or more separate productions a year.
The Japanese, with their curious habit of not making moral judgements*, clearly aren’t bothered, and Westerners who insist on being bothered ought to examine the justification for their attitudes.
*That statement needs qualifying, but I’m not going to do it. Suffice it to observe that in the West, since Descartes, the old philosophical and rhetorical catefory of the preferable has disappeared into a black-and-white polarization of Right against Wrong (which I find absurd) ; and that Japanese ethics rely heavily on the concept of obligations, rather than floaring principles with no concrete referent.