Like many ordinary people I have a blog. Per google analytics most of the people who come here on any given day come to find out how to get cheap tickets for the Met, and/or to read my take on some opera I’ve seen – even though I am a musical ignoramus. So maybe some of my subscribers might be wondering why I haven’t said anything about the brouhaha regarding the The Death of Klinghoffer at the Metropolitan Opera. I haven’t said much because too much was being said, and my own feelings were so muddled, I didn’t know where to start.
I just read a thoughtful piece up on the Guardian website. I strongly recommend you go there now. They took four regular New Yorkers to the premiere of The Death of Klinghoffer and each one wrote his or her response. They each did a wonderful job of representing. It got me thinking. I was not there last night, although God knows I could have been. There were more than usual number of unsold tickets – even for the cheap seats. I have never seen any production of the piece. I have not heard it either, but I’ve read a lot about it. Reading the Guardian, immediately got my juices going and I wrote a comment. You can read my comment there, as well.
Reading their panel’s views, helped me put mine in perspective. If you don’t read through all the comments to find mine, here it is in a nutshell:
I look at a picture of Leon Klinghoffer, and I see my father, who like him was a smart, New York Jew, a son of immigrants and someone who worked his way to a certain point. I hear their story — a final voyage with his terminally ill wife who would die months later from the illness that killed my father, and it makes me terribly sad. Aside from every thing else, the Klinghoffer daughters object to this opera. They don’t want their father remembered as a symbol of something — just what isn’t entirely clear. One of the Guardian viewers said the opera was about the competing narratives in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If that’s the case, it’s offensive to both Palestinians — represented by terrorists who would execute a disabled, old man and throw his body off a boat (and then say his wife did it) AND also to American Jews. Whatever the Klinghoffers’ may or may not have felt about Israel, they weren’t Israelis. They weren’t the Holocaust victims rising to form the modern Israel depicted in the opera’s chorus. They were New Yorkers and they became victims of a terrorist attack. I don’t want to see them victimized again for “art.”
Here’s what it comes down to: “[T]he juxtaposition of the plight of the Palestinian people with the coldblooded murder of an innocent disabled American Jew is both historically naive and appalling,” — from the initial statement by the Klinghoffer daughters on seeing the piece.
Marion, you worry me.
“I have never seen any production of the piece. I have not heard it either, but I’ve read a lot about it.”
“If [my italics] that’s the case, it’s offensive to both Palestinians — represented by terrorists who would execute a disabled, old man and throw his body off a boat (and then say his wife did it) AND also to American Jews.”
Well, I haven’t seen Klinghoffer either, but I’d hesitate to condemn it without at least having read the libretto.
Back in 1987, a play by Jim Allen, Perdition, was pulled by London’s Royal Court Theatre, in response to allegations that it was antisemitic. (It deals with collaboration between leading Hungarian Jews and Nazis during the Second World War.) The critic Bernard Levin (known your side of the Pond?), condemned the work despite the fact that, by his own admission, he had not read it. Well, I read it, and found no antisemitism in it.
Then there was Bezhti, a play set in the Sikh community in England. Furious demonstrators (who had not read the play, but had read a lot about it) caused Birmingham Repertory Theatre to cancel its production in 2004.
In London recently, an art exhibition, Exhibit B was cancelled in response to vehement protests against its “racist” content. To make people aware of the nineteenth-century phenomenon of the human zoo, in which Africans were turned into museum pieces, it showed black people in chains and cages.
I intensely dislike all attempts to ban a creative work because someone finds it offensive. You don’t go so far as to say that you want Klinghoffer banned, but as far as I can tell, you would prefer that it was never staged, which amounts to much the same thing.
Please go and see it. There’s still plenty of time. And let us all know what you think. And if you can’t bring yourself to do that, I wonder if you’d consider having a look at You Can’t Read This Book, by Nick Cohen. All about censorship, overt and covert, in the modern world. I’d love to have your opinion on that, too.
“I have never seen any production of the piece. I have not heard it either, but I’ve read a lot about it.”
I didn’t mean I’ve read diatribes. I meant I’ve read just about all the reviews and critiques – positive and negative. I think it would be highly unlikely I’d find something in the opera that everyone else missed. I think I’ve read enough for me to know that I’d find the libretto annoying at best, also politically reductive – how could it not be in three hours?
“If [my italics] that’s the case, it’s offensive to both Palestinians — represented by terrorists who would execute a disabled, old man and throw his body off a boat (and then say his wife did it) AND also to American Jews.”
Well, I haven’t seen Klinghoffer either, but I’d hesitate to condemn it without at least having read the libretto.”
I’m not “condemning it” but I’ve read enough to know I wouldn’t like it. I don’t have to see the latest Vin Deisel movie to know I don’t care for car chases.
“Back in 1987, a play by Jim Allen, Perdition, was pulled by London’s Royal Court Theatre, in response to allegations that it was antisemitic. (It deals with collaboration between leading Hungarian Jews and Nazis during the Second World War.) The critic Bernard Levin (known your side of the Pond?), condemned the work despite the fact that, by his own admission, he had not read it. Well, I read it, and found no antisemitism in it.”
Ok. But here’s the thing, when someone who is a member of a group, says “I find this offensive to my group,” the people who are not members of that group need to consider the possibility that the offended may have a point. And maybe not being a member of that group, you don’t get that point or even to judge.
Art should make waves and trouble, and everything will offend somebody, but if you look at the exchange of comments on the Guardian article referenced above – it’s not good. There’s no dialogue going on in those comments. And certainly some of the comments at least border on anti-semitism. Others are also strongly anti-Palestinian as well.
“In London recently, an art exhibition, Exhibit B was cancelled in response to vehement protests against its “racist” content. To make people aware of the nineteenth-century phenomenon of the human zoo, in which Africans were turned into museum pieces, it showed black people in chains and cages.”
There are ways of making people aware of history, without making them experience it. I don’t know about the exhibit, but I can certainly understand why black people would be uncomfortable. It’s not the teaching of the history that’s offensive, it’s seeing it. It’s a father having to explain it to his son.. Does this display make us less racist? Is the purpose supposed to shock us so that we’ll say, “Oh, it really used to be that bad. Therefore, I will be a more understanding less bigoted person.”?
We have a problem in the US with the banning of the book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for its use of the n-word. It’s one of the most infuential American novels. It’s accesible. Yet, I could see, especially if I were the parent of one of the few African-American kids in a mostly white school, the pain and humiliation of having people read aloud or throw out the n-word in discussions of the book. Do I think the book should be censored? No. But I think schools probably should come up with guidelines in working with it. I think sometimes history and time change the way we understand something.
“You don’t go so far as to say that you want Klinghoffer banned, but as far as I can tell, you would prefer that it was never staged, which amounts to much the same thing.’
I’m not saying I don’t think it should be staged anywhere ever, but guilty, I really wish it was not being staged at the Met. I also wish that the Met had not staged the terrible, very bad, truly awful “new” English language libretto of Die Fledermaus. I could have lived without the rat-pac Riggoletto, and I think the singers should have sued for allowing Eugene Onegrin to go on basically without anyone directing the production.
Please take a look at this New Yorker piece on the general drift at the Met. As that critic does, I see bringing Klinghoffer to the Met as one of many bad decisions made by what is now New York’s ONLY major opera company.
“Please go and see it. There’s still plenty of time. And let us all know what you think.”
I don’t think I’d take away anything very profound that would make it worth my sitting through it. But even more than that I don’t want to see it. I don’t want to go to the Ground Zero Museum of Heroes or whatever they are calling it in downtown Manhattan either. I don’t think that should have been turned into a tourist attraction and I don’t think the (small d) death of Leon Klinghoffer should have been turned into an opera.
All right, so I’ve opened a can of worms. If I were still blogging, I’d address the issue there, but I ain’t.
Are you familiar with John Stuart Mill’s harm principle? “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” Nick Cohen makes much of this in You Can’t Read This Book. Mill was saying that, however much you might be offended by what someone else says or does, you have no right to stop him unless his words or deeds are directly harmful to others. So you are allowed to say “I hate Americans”, but not to call for the killing of Americans.
The Nazis burned books which offended them. Is it enough to say that they were bad people, and were wrong to be offended? Justice is not divisible.
What about The Satanic Verses? Millions of Muslims were offended, and substantial violence ensued. But I was revolted by the craven response of those Western commentators, who said that, yes, it was indeed an offensive book, and Rushdie was much to blame.
I am offended by a great deal in the Koran, and in the Bible (especially The Old Testament). Much of it seems to me positively vicious, and the beliefs expounded in these books have been responsible for countless horrors down the ages. But I would be an idiot to try to have them banned.
The irony of banning Huckleberry Finn, of course, is that it is an anti-slavery novel. Mark Twain, like all of us, is conditioned by his time and place. Speaking as a WASA (White Anglo-Saxon Atheist) I’m more uncomfortable with the portrayal of Jim, the runaway slave, than I with the use of an offensive word. His naivety and passivity make him an embarrassment today. But you’re closer than you think to a burning of books if you support even the selective banning of such a work.
In response to my comment on the cancellation of Exhibit B, you say: “There are ways of making people aware of history without making them experience it.” Well, what about the movie of Twelve Years a Slave? Why has nobody called for it to be banned?
It’s easy for members of a comfortable majority to tell members of an uncomfortable minority not to be so touchy, but it’s vital to defend freedom of speech, to defend the First Amendment.
For what it’s worth, I dislike on principle the dramatising or fictionalising of recent traumatic events. Eve Pollard, for example, wrote Jack’s Widow, about the life of Jackie Kennedy after the assassination. Not, I think, a nice thing to do while Kennedy children were alive. The same goes for Klinghoffer. I wish Adams had chosen to paint on another canvas. But it’s done now, and I don’t want to see it undone.
Iain,
What the hell is dangerous or wormy about my position? Where am I saying we should censor anything? I only posted because most people coming to my blog come to find out how to get cheap seats at the Met or because their dog has cushings. (Honest, those are the two posts that get the most hits by a factor of many.) I felt that not addressing the Klinghoffer mess at all was like ignoring the elephant in the room, so I wrote about some of my reasons for not seeing it.
Do I think people have the right to be offended? Sure. Do I think they have the right to protest? Yes. But I also think it’s a circus, and most of the protesting is about the perception that the opera is “anti-Israel” and “justifies” terrorism, which is not likely. I’m dismayed that some politicians that I actually respect like Carolyn Maloney have joined the circus.
There’s a difference between saying something should be banned and saying I wish Peter Gelb the director of the Met had not decided to stage this production at this time. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that for many New Yorkers the piece has “associations”. If there’d been less fuss, there’d probably be even more empty seats.
Nor am I in favor of “banning” Huckleberry Finn, but you are right about Jim’s passivity. It’s a serious work and it’s taught in the US as early as middle school and not very deeply or thoughtfully. What I am saying is that if a school is going to teach Huckleberry Finn — or any work like it — they need to do so with some serious preparation and context and not just have white kids read aloud the n-word with no context provided.
I agree with you regarding your last paragraph, but I’m not saying I wish Adams hadn’t done it. What he does is his own business. I just have no wish to see it. And that’s only part of several reasons why I have no wish to see it.
Also, btw, I did watch part of the BBC film version the other night — the part that I could find legally. I also sent for the DVD. The music is haunting. Even from that little bit, it’s clear the Klinghoffers’ humanity shows through and from what I could see, the terrorists were presented as terrorists. That’s not my beef with the work. I’d just prefer to stay away.
Thank you, Marion, honour is satisfied. We can agree, I think, to sort of differ if we sort of do.