{"id":258147,"date":"2021-05-25T05:47:18","date_gmt":"2021-05-25T02:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-a-slavery-uproar-at-juilliard-school-threatens-artistic-expression\/"},"modified":"2021-05-25T05:47:18","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T02:47:18","slug":"how-a-slavery-uproar-at-juilliard-school-threatens-artistic-expression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-a-slavery-uproar-at-juilliard-school-threatens-artistic-expression\/","title":{"rendered":"#How a \u2018slavery\u2019 uproar at Juilliard School threatens artistic expression"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How a \u2018slavery\u2019 uproar at Juilliard School threatens artistic expression<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

Turn on CNN or open The New York Times, and you may encounter someone explaining how exhausting it is to be a black person. The idea that systemic racism is leaving blacks scarred and spent has been embraced across mainstream America, articulated by corporate CEOs and university presidents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The latest performative assertion of black oppression is playing out at the Juilliard School in New York City. The controversy has significance beyond the school.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This year, NYU theater professor Michael McElroy, who is black, taught a three-day \u201cRoots to Rep\u201d drama workshop. The workshop would combine history, research and music to explore the journey of black people in this country, McElroy explained, with a specific emphasis on the way \u201cthe Negro spiritual .\u2009.\u2009. is the foundation of so many musical genres today.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n
\"Michael
Michael McElroy, the professor who taught the \u201cRoots to Rep\u201d drama workshop.<\/figcaption>
Photo by Walter McBride\/Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

McElroy asked students to prepare for the workshop by writing a paragraph about a key event in the history of black enslavement. The president of Juilliard\u2019s Black Student Union, Marion Grey, saw this requirement as identity-threatening, but she kept her objections to herself, she told American Theater<\/a>, in order to test whether the school would \u201cprotect\u201d her in the face of such a racial assault.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On the workshop\u2019s first day, McElroy offered a trigger warning that the forthcoming audio exercise contained the \u201cN-word.\u201d Students could leave the Zoom session anytime they wanted, McElroy said. The lesson began with an auditory recreation of the African slave trade. A march through the jungle was followed by a slave auction, with the auctioneer extolling a \u201cfine black pearl\u201d who would raise her owner \u201ca fine litter of pickaninnies.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

During this soundscape, the black students were texting each other about how \u201cutterly broken\u201d they were by the exercise, according to Grey, while white students and faculty, as well as a few black students, participated in the workshop without protest. Afterward, the white students recounted how moving the experience had been.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Grey then Zoomed an impassioned remonstrance about cultural app<\/a>ropriation and trauma. \u201cI was like, \u2018There are wounds here, and you don\u2019t get to just explore someone\u2019s history and culture with them \u2014 that is earned, you don\u2019t just get that,\u2019\u2009\u201d she told the class, according to American Theater.\u00a0<\/p>\n

McElroy had offered this workshop numerous times before without provoking a similar meltdown. The slave-auction dialogue was taken from the widely aired miniseries<\/a> \u201cRoots.\u201d The historical record contains no indication that \u201cRoots\u201d generated trauma when it was released in 1977.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The
The dialogue from the workshop was taken from the miniseries \u201cRoots.\u201d<\/figcaption>
Walt Disney Television via Getty<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But Juilliard immedia<\/a>tely terminated McElroy\u2019s workshop and went into crisis mode. The president and provost met with Grey and her black peers. The administration launched new investigations of racial issues. Grey was not impressed. Despite getting an audience with the school\u2019s top leadership, she did not feel \u201ctruly supported,\u201d she told American Theater. She was the victim of a \u201cculture of silencing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Apparently, Grey and her fellow students could not provide actual examples of such silencing, but that inability only proves how serious the silencing is. \u201cAsking us the question, \u2018When have you felt silenced?\u2019 does not mean you will get an answer, especially when you\u2019re not in the practice of making space for the student\u2019s voice,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After spurning months of administrative outreach, Grey ratcheted up the pressure. On April 21, 2021, she released a teary video decrying the racism of what she called \u201cSlavery Saturday.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s maddening to have your humanity so disrespected, to have something done to you that is so wrong. It is so wrong,\u201d she said to the camera.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Marion
Marion Grey, Juilliard\u2019s Black Student Union president, reacted to the workshop in a video.<\/figcaption>
Instagram<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A petition accompanying the video demanded the decolonization of the Drama Division and the hiring of an outside consultant to analyze the \u201cinequitable, anti-black and racist structures and systems that are built into the architecture of the Juilliard culture.\u201d Grey claimed to be frightened that Juilliard would retaliate against her. \u201cIt\u2019s terrifying to put myself on the line, but I know my worth, I know that a wrong has been done to me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The chance that Juilliard would offer any opposition to Grey\u2019s video, much less retaliate against her for posting it, was zero. Two days after the video was released, school president Damian Woetzel sent out a schoolwide e-mail. He adopted every trope of threat and injury used by the black students: \u201cI want to state unequivocally that this workshop was ill-conceived and should not have occurred in the manner that it did. I extend a heartfelt apology to the individuals who have been adversely affected by it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Juilliard's
Juilliard\u2019s president Damian Woetzel apologized for the workshop in an e-mail to students.<\/figcaption>
Getty Images for Lincoln Center<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Tackling difficult topics is a responsibility of artists, Woetzel said, but Juilliard must do so \u201cin a manner that respects and protects the members of our community.\u201d Woetzel called the auditory experience of enslavement \u201cextremely distressing and problematic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The school did not respond to an inquiry asking whether Woetzel had sought McElroy\u2019s perspective before calling his presentation \u201cill-conceived.\u201d The school also refused to spell out what exactly was \u201cproblematic\u201d about the exercise or what criteria Juilliard would use in the future to ensure that pedagogy \u201cprotects members of [the] community.\u201d (McElroy declined to be interviewed for this article.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

The dean of the Drama Division, Evan Yionoulis, apologized for the workshop, too, in an e-mail appended to Woetzel\u2019s own. The workshop never should have happened, Yionoulis wrote, throwing McElroy under the bus as decisively as Woetzel had done. Yionoulis felt \u201cremorse\u201d for engaging McElroy and for not stopping the exercise once it was in progress, though it is not clear how the school could have known to do so. Yionoulis lamented the \u201ctrauma\u201d caused by the workshop without explaining in what, exactly, such trauma consisted. The school will continue to try to \u201cfacilitate healing,\u201d Yionoulis said, but it also recognizes that it \u201ccannot fully change the impact of what happened, nor .\u2009.\u2009. erase all that was experienced in that moment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Drama Division\u2019s response to the students\u2019 protests betrays the division\u2019s very reason for being. Their complaints rest on notions about history and dramatic art so crabbed that they would destroy freedom of imagination entirely if they were widely implemented.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Evan
Evan Yiunoulis, director of Juliard\u2019s Drama Division. <\/figcaption>
Julliard<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Grey would erect gatekeepers around historical truths. Favored victim groups could expound on that history at will; others would need to \u201cearn\u201d permission to do so. It matters not that any given historical presentation is accurate; it may enter the public arena only if it does not offend the feelings of those who claim to be oppressed by its recollection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But Grey and her peers notwithstanding, there are no barricades in history. Anyone with a commitment to the ideal of historical truth may explore whatever aspect of the past he chooses. Whites don\u2019t get to bar blacks from studying \u201cwhite\u201d history, and they don\u2019t need permission from blacks to study \u201cblack\u201d history. A Japanese historian does not need to \u201cearn\u201d the right to research the Habsburg Empire; an Italian may become an expert on the Incas. To string \u201cDo Not Enter\u201d signs around territories in the past will smother human knowledge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The idea that the recreation of the auction violated Juilliard\u2019s duty to \u201cprotect\u201d its students would rule out a large portion of dramatic art. Eugene O\u2019Neill\u2019s plays would be off limits, lest they \u201cretraumatize\u201d students with alcoholic parents. Francis Poulenc\u2019s opera \u201cDialogues of the Carmelites\u201d should not be performed lest those with aristocratic or monastic ancestors be shaken. Aristotle argued that tragedy provides catharsis through the reenactment and transcendence of suffering. But under Juilliard\u2019s definition, there should be no Passion plays, because they would retraumatize Christians.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The left claims that American history teaching underplays slavery and other civil-rights violations in favor of a triumphalist story of white supremacy. This claim is ludicrous. There is almost no nonracialized political history taught today, much less a whitewashed narrative of the City on the Hill. The focus is on marginalized groups and their mistreatment by white males. But if it were true that students are being kept in ignorance about America\u2019s past betrayals of its democratic ideals, a visceral recreation of enslavement would seem an ideal way to pierce that ignorance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is taboo to question claims of racism-inflicted disability, since such a challenge denies someone his subjective \u201ctruth.\u201d When it comes to race, subjective truth is now the only allowable truth. Nevertheless, the alleged psychic catastrophe occasioned by the audio recreation of the slave auction strains credulity. The experience of slavery is as remote from Juilliard\u2019s black students as it is from Juilliard\u2019s white students. Neither group has any realistic expectations of being subjected to such treatment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Imaginative empathy is a good trait for drama students, but so are emotional distance and objectivity. How broad must the protective cone be? Should museums shut down displays of slave shackles and whips? If the alleged emotional devastation here is taken at face value, it is time to retire the strained conceit of \u201cwhite fragility\u201d and replace it with \u201cblack fragility.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The need to assert victimization at the hands of Western civilization is all consuming, however. It has led Juilliard\u2019s drama students to opt for ignorance rather than knowledge, identity rather than imaginative freedom. One demand from students calls for the elimination of all pedagogy that seeks to enhance an actor\u2019s ability to transcend his particular identity. \u201c\u2009\u2018Color-blind\u2019 casting\u201d (scare quotes in the original) must end, replaced by \u201ccolor conscious casting practices.\u201d No student of color should \u201cbe forced to leave behind their racial\/ethnic identity when playing a role.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

If a BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) student is cast in a non-BIPOC role, the director must justify that choice and reflect that justification throughout the production. The school should not \u201ccenter\u201d the General<\/a> American Dialect in its speech and voice classes; doing so is \u201cdiscriminatory.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leave aside for a moment the implications of these demands for dramatic art. They are self-constricting, as well. At present, black actors have a monopoly on black roles, since no director today would think of casting a white actor as a black character, but blacks can also play white roles. Now, however, per the Juilliard students, if a black actor plays a traditionally white character, it must be as a black and the rest of the production must foreground that black identity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The essence of the actor\u2019s art is the ability to embody a life radically different from his own and in so doing to take the audience outside of itself, as well. It is not an erasure of an actor\u2019s self to learn the General American Dialect; that neutral voicing is merely the launching ground for a range of imaginative possibilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Peter Francis James\u2019 kaleidoscopic reading of \u201cNative Son\u201d on Audible uses the General American Dialect for the narrative voice but adopts a stunning range of accents for the characters, each one providing insight into the novel\u2019s fatal drama. But for today\u2019s black activists, their identity is their greatest power and their greatest weapon, and so anything that seeks to subsume racial identity into something more abstract must be beaten back.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Black Lives Matter movement in the arts is only nominally about \u201cinclusion.\u201d In fact, it is about exclusion and the power that has motivated every revolutionary mob: the power of negation, the power to tear things down. This purportedly \u201cinclusive\u201d movement will result in a world of constricted imaginative possibility and stunted human growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Excerpted with permission from City Journal.\u00a0<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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“#How a \u2018slavery\u2019 uproar at Juilliard School threatens artistic expression” Turn on CNN or open The New York Times, and you may encounter someone explaining how exhausting it is to be a black person. The idea that systemic racism is leaving blacks scarred and spent has been embraced across mainstream America, articulated by corporate CEOs…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":258148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/05\/julliard-school-slavery-uproar-414.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[107005,107166,4937,77117,21170],"class_list":["post-258147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-5-24-21","tag-juilliard-school","tag-racism","tag-roots","tag-slavery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}