The Joy Vampires strike again

I am becoming increasingly exasperated by the constant drumbeat, punctuated by deafening crescendos, of race-based activism. I know I am not alone in this, and I know it is happening on both sides of the Pond. Nevertheless, it gnaws away at you, day after day.

Here’s an example for my friends on BW.com, for your information and maybe even amusement, and to help me get it out of my system before I lose it completely and end up on the news myself.

Although not unknown in the US, Pantomime is a big Christmas tradition in Britain. From big productions in the West End and the bigger cities, to amateur groups doing it for charity in the village hall, Panto is everywhere in the weeks after Christmas. Growing out of the fusion of the medieval English Mummer’s Plays and the Italian Comedia del Arte in the 17^th century, it developed through the 18^th century and starting to take a recognisable form by the late 1700s/early 1800s.

It is very basic theatre, broad brush, garish and loud. It’s aimed at kids, with plenty of music, audience participation, slapstick, and often with subtle (and not so subtle) references for the parents. Like all really good children’s entertainment, it should make both the kids and the adults laugh, but for different reasons. It does often include satirical political and other contemporary references but is not itself political. It’s certainly not Ibsen or Brecht. It is, however, often a British kid’s first introduction to live theatre, it was for me.

The 2022/23 production of Aladdin in Liverpool has drawn political fire itself. I’ll show you the poster and see if you can guess what has caused outrage.

Yup, the producers have failed to cast any non-white actors. I know, shocking, it’s almost like the producers just picked people whose names would get bums on seats and entertain the good people of Liverpool with some knock about family fun.

It gets worse, the show includes a song with the lyric (make sure you’re sitting down for this) “Come on down to our oriental town.”.

Have you recovered from the shock? Ok, I’ll go on. Apparently, a neutral word applied to the eastern side of the world for centuries is no longer acceptable. It is simply the opposite to occident, applied to the western part. The inclusion of the “O word” has excited a less strong reaction to than the “N word” would, but still a ludicrously over the top and, I think, entirely fake reaction.

The actor Irvine Iqbal, who is south Asian heritage, said the failure to cast any non-white folk was “shameful”, whereas Benjamin Armstrong, who defines himself as black, had a different take, he said it was “disgusting”. He went on to say, “I speak about casting authentic actors for Aladdin pantos a fair bit, but this goes beyond that,’ he tweeted, adding that the lines in the show were “100 per cent utter racism. There is no excuse.”.

You won’t be surprised to learn that The UK Pantomime Association has fallen over itself in its eagerness to condemn the casting and language and ritually humiliate itself before the Gods of Woke. The company producing Aladdin, Shone Productions, have shown more backbone, pointing out that the adverts went out on Spotlight, the biggest casting resource and adding, ‘Our adverts are open to all ethnicities. We have a diverse company of performers and backstage crew across all of our pantomimes. Our performers are cast based on their strength and ability for each role.”. That said, the Liverpool Echo does report that “some changes” have been made to the production in response to the toxic whinging. What changes it doesn’t say.

Let’s take a little look at Aladdin as a pantomime. [Brace yourselves, I’m going to take you on a little historical ramble, don’t worry, you’re quite safe.].

Aladdin is one of the old established stories used for pantomime, like Jack and the Beanstalk and Cinderella. It was first performed at Covent Garden in 1788. The story itself entered the western canon via Frenchman, Antoine Galland, who was told it by a Maronite Syrian storyteller called Antun Yusuf Hanah Diyab in the early 18^th century. Although set in an Islamic society, the traditional story begins with the words “In one of the cities of China.”. So, probably one of the central Asian cities on the Silk Road, like Kashgar, in the west of China.

Contrary to popular belief, the story of Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp was not originally one of the 1001 stories of the Arabian Nights. Galland added it to his translation of that work. It does fit well with the collection and is usually included these days. The Islamic social setting is clear from the original story. The role of the Genie (Djinn) is one pointer, as are the frequent Islamic greetings and oaths used by characters, and it has to be said, the blatant anti-Semitism which has not made into the modern popular versions. At one point in the original Aladdin is warned not to do business with a Jewish merchant of the town as “Jews are the enemy of the Faithfull.”. If you think that’s bad, you should read the three stories of the “Negro Eunuchs”, like the original Grimm Fairy Tales, the 1001 Nights is rather darker than the versions we see today. 

Traditionally Aladdin is produced with a  sort of crossover Chinese/Islamic style, but totally overblown and highly caricatured, as pantomimes always are. Since Disney adapted the story for the screen and abandoned “one of the cities of China” for a fictional middle eastern setting, many pantomime productions have followed suit. (We might well wonder why Disney decided to move the action away from a province of what is now the People’s Republic of China where millions of Aladdin’s descendants are being held in camps for re-education and sometimes to be cut up for spare parts for wealthy Han Chinese, but that’s another story.).

So, in answer to Mr Armstrong and his “authentic” casting, if a production wants to be authentic then they would need to cast Uyghur actors from the PRC province of Xinjiang, or the former Soviet republics immediately to the west of Xinjiang like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Actors with Indian, Pakistani or Afro-Caribbean ancestry would be no more authentic than “white” actors.

That said, why on earth would you want to be “authentic” when staging a pantomime? Panto is meant to be big and loud and colourful, fun, and anarchic. It’s meant to appeal to young children and transport them into a magical world for a couple of hours. It’s not meant to be a social drama exploring the working conditions of laundry workers in medieval Xinjiang.

Actors of all ethnicities can and do take part in Panto. This season, in the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves at Southend, the dwarves are played by Ashley Banjo and the dance group Diversity (all of whom are black, naturally). A production having no black or Asian actors is not a sign of a KKK takeover of Panto-land. Some might say that it would have difficult to cast black or Asian actors anyway, as they’re all far too busy appearing in adverts, or playing seniors coppers, lawyers, and 18^th century aristocrats in TV dramas. But of course, I would never stoop to such cynicism.

The inclusion of the word oriental has been spoken of as if a character had been given a five-minute speech on the dangers of the “Yellow Peril”. The objection to the word seems to be some vague point that it was used by 19^th century Europeans to refer to the east, and people from the east. And as we know, all 19^th century Europeans were literally Hitler, so any words they used are now forbidden. Or so the narrative goes.

In any event, yet another much loved part of British culture has been dragged into the current kulturkampf. Yet more joy is sucked out of the life of the nation, while toxicity is injected in its place. Of course, it is not the end of Pantomime, but in future, producers will be getting out the colour chart to see if they have the right mix of diversity (“Is one really black guy equal to two mixed race people?”) and policing the language  to eradicate all traces of the Before Times. This production has made changes to avoid the consequences of angering the self-appointed guardians of “equity”, in future the censorship will be self supplied and preemptive.

Of course, the actual racists are given more ammo, and more resentment is stoked. Firstly, among those elements of the non-white populace who are taken in by the story of systemic racism in the dark world of Pantomime (“Of course I ended up as a drug dealer I never had no role models did I? All the people in the Panto I went to were white!”). And secondly among white folk of goodwill who do not hate people of other ethnicities and who treat individuals as individuals, but who do bridle at the implication that having a handful of white actors on stage without a black or Asian actor among them is tantamount to a theatrical Nuremburg Rally.

As Prof Sowell has said, genuine racism is in short supply, so much so that it has to be manufactured. Just where all this lunacy will end is anyone’s guess. I’ve given up saying that this or that example of utterly bizarre activism will make people see sense. It is clear that no mole hill sized incident, no oversight, no naïve or crass comment, is too small to be made into a mountain of outrage by these Micky Mouse Marxists.