Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone...
It is official:
ALADDIN HAS BEEN CANCELLED
Forget everything you thought you knew about the 2023 Northwich Memorial Hall Christmas Pantomime, it's going to be Beauty and the Beast starring Les Dennis.
"I thought you said last week it was going to be Aladdin starring Les Dennis?" I hear you cry!
(If you didn't cry it, you just missed your cue - this is a panto blog, keep up!)
I did say they were doing Aladdin... and they were... until they weren't. Now they're not.
Twitter has spoken and Producer X has decided to change the production.
Well thank goodness for that! I've been losing so much sleep with worry. I shall rest easy tonight!
In hindsight it all seems so obvious. OF COURSE: all we had to do was CANCEL ALADDIN and now the world is a better place.
Say what you like about the people of Twitter, but when push comes to shove, they really are quite a lot better than ordinary people like us.
AND SO ENDS THE GREAT NORTHWICH PANTO DEBATE OF 2023
It's not every day you get to witness a full blown Panto Twitterpocalypse unfolding before your eyes. We gasped, we cried, we said "ooh, it's Les Dennis". It was great while it lasted, but all good things come to an end (except for the Möbius strip).
The panto title has been changed, the artwork redrawn and the infamous all-white cast-reveal tweet has been completely and totally deleted, and any/all traces of it have been scrubbed from the Earth, so that no man will evermore see it again.
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| Screengrab of the original tweet. |
If this whole debacle has taught us all anything at all, it's that:
"It is racist to perform a play set in a China,"
Or was it that:
"It's racist to cast a play exclusively with white actors,"
HANG ON, I'VE GOT IT!
The lesson we learned was:
"It's immoral to perform a story that was written by someone from another country,""
Or was it:
"if you can't cast a real Chinese Princess you can hire a white Princess Jasmine, just as long as the actor playing Les Dennis is black."
Whatever the lesson we were supposed to have learned is, I'm sure that it went something like this:
This production is X
The people involved are Y and not X
THEREFORE the production MUST BE CANCELLED
And surely we can all agree on that?
Or can we?
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Aladdin, The Big Tiny 2022.
Michael Pellman (Aladdin) and Will Cousins (Chinese Lion)*
*WARNING: Cultural appropriation... Will is a human and not a real lion!.
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Quick bit of context...
For those that don't know, I'm currently researching a PhD in 'how contemporary British pantomime is responding to evolving ideas of identity.'
At the end of my research, I'll publish my thesis with recommendations for best practice across the industry, including what we are going to do with Aladdin. Possible options are:
1. We should cancel Aladdin.
2. We should change Aladdin.
3. We should defend Aladdin.
There are some interesting and nuanced arguments made for reimagining and/or scrapping Aladdin, which I'll be addressing in my next few posts.
But if I may, I'd like to leave the specifics aside for a week, and instead lay some groundwork by posing a question that gets to the nub of the matter:
"Why is everyone so bloody interested in identity all of a sudden?"
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| Identity is a dangerous game |
IDENTITY POLITICS
At its core, identity is a privilege that we claim in order to get something we want. It might be something important like fair treatment in job interviews; it may be something mundane like a parking space.
It works by drawing an imaginary line between two groups of people, an in-group made up of good-looking, clever and noble people like you, and an out-group for everyone else.
“we need a sense of difference or otherness in order to develop a sense of self or identity.”
Caroline Howarth, Eleni Andreoui "Nobody Wants to Be an Outsider”;
From Diversity Management to Diversity Engagement p330
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My Actual Passport Photo
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UNDER THE BONNET: How does it work?
1. You want thing X (e.g a deadline extension, audition slot, sympathy, social change, etc.)
2. Make a claim to identity (race, religion, disability, gender, sexuality, political tribe, nationality...
3. Identify some characteristic or quality and differentiate between two groups
(Graduate vs school leaver, working class vs missile class, white vs global majority, professional vs am-dram...)
4, Argue that the group you're in deserves special consideration (e.g. weight my opinion, give me resources, invite me onto the management team...)
5. If all goes well, you end up with X and merrily carry on with your day
We all claim different identities when we think they'll be useful. I claim my identity as a gay man every time I fill out a diversity form for a grant application.
It can be a brilliant strategy for drawing attention to your situation, providing another point of view, and for redressing balance when things get out of kilter.
"You can't understand racism in the workplace because you're white. I've been turned down for job after job, even when I've clearly been the best candidate by miles - at my last interview the manager asked me "where I came from... originally". Big companies should have all-black candidate lists to make sure their workforce is representative."
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IS IT JUST ME, OR HAS ANYONE ELSE NOTICED...
1. In the past, people didn't think much about identity.
2. Recently it seems like everyone's talking about their identity (particularly young people)
3. People seem to be placing a lot of importance on certain core characteristics: sexuality, race, gender
4. Recently there seem to be lots of new categories to sort yourself into: trans/cis, non-binary, neurodiverse etc.
5. Other people's identity seem to be placing increasing demands on your own practice, e.g. pronouns, casting quotas etc.
Something's definitely different. So what's changed?
Pretty much everything.
It's certainly true that until very recently (sociologically speaking), people didn't spend an awful lot of time thinking about who or what they were. Not that it didn't matter. Who or what you were mattered a lot: if you were a serf you had to toil on the land; if you were a king you could start a religion and chop your wife's head off.
The thing is, up till quite recently, no matter who or what you happened to be, you didn't really have much say in the matter - you were who you were and that was that. Complex webs of duties, oaths and obligations tied individuals to one another, and into much larger social structures. Identity was not something that had to be thought about. It simply was.
In academic terms: in traditional societies, identity of the individual is an emergent property of social structure, characterised by predefined inter-personal relationships and mediated through reciprocal social interaction. TRY SAYING THAT AFTER THREE DOUBLE GIN AND TONICS!
For all their faults, many of the core qualities of traditional societies were strong and socially cohesive. Contrast this to the socially destabilizing qualities at the core of Modern Western Society.
Table 1: Core qualities of traditional and modern Western societies
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| Multi-faith and Atheistic
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The history of pre-modern human civilisation is one of gradually increasing population size over thousands of years precipitating the incremental evolution of social structures into increasingly complex and organised societies.
Now, in the comparative flash of a few decades, these social structures have gone, and society has been destabilised by an unprecedented and prodigious realignment of our core values.
While this transition has gained us much in the way of personal freedoms and prosperity, there are some benefits that it forfeited. One of these is the loss of emergent identity.
For the first time in the history of human civilisation, people have been thrown onto their own devices to ask themselves some unsettling questions:
The unsettling answer:
You're nobody and you don't.
NOW HOW DO YOU FEEL?
Uneasy
Insignificant
Disconnected
EXISTENTIALLY ANXIOUS
How can you emotionally anchor yourself in a society where nothing is fixed?
Through the act of identification.
"I am X. X matters."
"I am trans, I am gay, I am black, I am a Muslim... "
"No. You're a giraffe"
"So who's that rabbit you're thinking about?"
"How can you see through that box?"
"What box?! Aaaagh! Help, I'm trapped in a box!"
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Everyone happy enough with the theory?
Good - It's important for what's coming next!
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If you had a suspicion that things have changed - You're right!
People are making more claims to identity, but that's because they're using identity to achieve something different.
The game we are all playing has changed and it happened while you weren't paying attention.
HOW PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY USING IDENTITY
1. You feel disconnected from society and experience existential angst
2. You make a claim to identity
3. Using some characteristic, you differentiate the in-group that you're in from "the out-group"
4. HOORAY! Now you have a group! A group full of people you like and are like, and not like the people from the out-group, (who nobody in the the in-group likes).
5. Finally, you feel like you fit in.
6. Anxiety fades, you can go merrily on your own way.
Only you can't.
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Unlike the previous example in which people claimed an identity in order to achieve something specific of value, now they might claim identity without any specific demands - the value is derived from the act of claiming identity itself.
You cannot go your own way. Your in-group identity only makes sense in opposition to the out-group.
There can be no end. Just perpetual introspection and struggle against 'an antithetical other.' There is no end-game, no ultimate plan, no point at which you can say: "I've got what I wanted - I'm going to go and enjoy it!"
OK, you sent an angry retweet about a panto in Cheshire you'd never have gone to. Everyone saw how not like those other people you are - how you'd never tweet headshots of only white actors, when Aladdin is a story from the SYRIA! There are two types of people in this world: people who understand everything and are right, and people who think it's OK to set a pantomime in a foreign country - which is actually, as everyone you know has already decided is incredibly, incredibly RACIST. And thanks to your tweet everybody can see how not-racist you are - which is why you've never produced a panto of Aladdin in Northwich, or anywhere else in mid-Cheshire for that matter, CERTAINLY NOT with with white actors and DEFINITELY NOT with a Chinese font on the poster. That is a ! Which now everyone knows - because YOU retweeted the poster - you commented : 'Another racist panto again!" and then THREE eye-roll emojis. And thanks to your tweet, they've changed the production to Beauty and the Beast - which is one of the not-racist pantomimes because the foreign country it's set in is closer and has mainly white people living in it!
Well done. They'e pulled it. Now what are you doing? You're already scrolling through Twitter for something else you can rail against.
WHY DOES IT MATTER?
Despite what you may have read in the statements of the UKPA, there are competing opinions amongst panto producers about how we ought best go about adapting our practice to accommodate everyone.
Let's get down to brass tacks. We're stuck on a rock hurtling through space at 66000 mph. As far as we know, we get one go round and that's our lot. I don't know a great deal, but I'm certain of this: we need more joy, less hate and we all ought to leave this planet in a better state than we found it.
I want to support everyone, everywhere who identifies as anything at all: if it brings you joy then I'm 100% on board! I remember when my cousin transitioned (M2F). She was ABSOLUTELY bloody delighted every time she came out after surgery. It took a few goes on the surgeon's bench, but she finally became the beautiful woman she always wanted to be, and every day since has been a total delight.
GOOD LUCK TO YOU: If you're half as delighted to identify as religious, body positive, neurodiverse as I am to identify as gay, then the world and all that sail in her shall, in one voice, rejoice!
However, if instead, it is the case that the recent tendency towards identification is a symptom, not of people attempting to improve their lot, but of ameliorating the existential anxiety that comes from societal dislocation, it is not clear what accommodations we could really make (if any) that would ever be sufficient to help.
We all got into panto producing because we want to bring joy to the world. It's panto - it's supposed to be joyous and fun - and everyone's invited to play along! But for whatever reason, some people come and don't play. They pitch up on the other side of a battleground - and suddenly we've stopped playing "let's make a better panto for everyone to enjoy," and started a never-ending game of "What identity do I need to claim to find what you are doing offensive?"
They didn't come here to watch the panto. They didn't come to observe, or discuss or, god-forbid, be entertained.
What if we did? We could CANCEL ALADDIN. Could we at least move on?
I think not.
They came here to shout:"CANCEL ALADDIN," not because they want to see Beauty and the Beast, but to be seen shouting.
The truth is, there is no end to the demands that could be made:
BAN Aladdin because it's cultural appropriation
BAN Snow White because it exploits little people
CANCEL the dame because it lampoons gender non-conformity
ESTABLISH quotas to ensure 50% of every cast is from the global majority
INSIST that 50% of the cast are obese, to better represent the audience
DEMAND all productions of Dick Whittington employ a Moroccan actor to perform the role of the Sultan
STOP throwing out sweets because they rot kids teeth
BAN the dame slapping the comic over the head because it encourages domestic violence
WRITE asexual love stories to promote diversity (this has already been suggested)
SILLY Billy must not be silly, because it otherises children with SEND
BAN innuendoes as they provide a barrier to enjoyment to religious families
PHASE OUT the fairy godmother, because it encourages children to engage in magical thinking
RETIRE the ghost gag and replace it with something less scary - a rabbit gag!
The day you wield identity as a weapon, is the day that you cross the Rubicon.
Acquiescence is not a viable option.
I love panto. I love it so much I make it professionally and spend 3 years researching it for my PhD.
If I'm going to have to fight for it, then I will.
If people make demands instead of making their case,
my recommendation for best practice is likely to be...
"We need to meet this head on.
Once more unto the breach dear friends.
Fight the good fight, comrades.
Don't give 'em an inch."
