christie is racist (part 1)

apparently.

i had a very long conversation with someone this week, who was kind enough to spend a good 3 and a half hours with me, providing feedback on the reading (march 4th in english theatre berlin)

she said many things, mostly challenging and highly critical as far as the plot and themes raised in the play are concerned. right now, i would like to discuss one of them: christie is the biggest racist in the play.

that certainly took me back. but seeing as i want the play to be challenging, i guess there is no reason why i shouldn't be challenged in turn?

according to the lady i was speaking with (i will call her h.), christie fails to communicate to those around her who are behaving in an ignorant manner, why their behaviour and their assumptions are wrong. so for example, there is a scene with three senior white managers who behave in an outrageously dismissive way towards christie. in that scene h deems the behaviour of managers as ignorant, certainly wrong, but that christie is the racist, as she doesn't call them on their rubbish - christie misses an opportunity to rid the world of racism because she doesn't challenge it.

do you follow?

according to h, another reason why christie is racist is because she sees everything so completely in terms of 'black' and 'white'. she reduces the problems she experiences simply to being a black person and the character of christie offends white people (both those on stage and in the audience) because she is so confrontational & reductionist: 'you can't understand me, because you are white'.

i see a contradiction in these two lines of argument, but that doesn't trouble me, because i believe discussions about race, racism and identity will almost always be inherently contradictory - the language we have at our disposal to discuss these issues is far too poor to capture the richness of human experience. we are bound to stumble - the trick is to get up and keep walking just the same. and i am grateful to h for meeting with me to share her views.

having said that, i do feel the need to blog about the charge of racism levied at christie.

this could be long(!), so i will deal with this issue in several parts. for now, part 1, i will leave the charge as it stands - please feel free to leave comments...(comments policy soon come - for now, simply be respectful).