Bright Sheng, a Chinese-American composer and music educator, was recently expelled from the University of Michigan after being accused of “racial insensitivity.” The The New York Times According to his article, the university’s music students were given the opportunity to learn from one of the school’s most famous professors about the process of turning a classic literary text into opera, but in the end everyone learned something different from Sheng’s first class. The professor, previously praised around the world for his multicultural influence, if not immediately, was eventually replaced after he showed his students the 1965 Othello in the first hour of a composition symposium, starring Laurence Olivier in black. The students said that they watched a movie for an hour and a half silently with the black-faced actor, but at the end of the lesson, someone almost immediately sent a message to the head of the department saying that many students were “deeply upset” with the Sheng class movie, but most of all is Reason for choosing this movie.” A few hours later, Sheng sent a short letter of apology, and after a few weeks of correspondence and cancellation, it was announced on October 1 that Professor Sheng would voluntarily resign from the class “to create a positive learning environment.”
Othello’s 1965 introduction is now “a racist act in itself without context”
Kim Bruchwezen, a university spokesman to the New York Post He said, “Music history offers lessons that still apply today, including how black-faced performers, as part of American light music, were products and methods to support racial stereotypes.” He added that, in his view, “lessons such as what happened should include the correct context and be presented with care and sensitivity in all cases”.
According to a colleague, Sheng lost the latter and did not warn his students before showing the film that they might see an old tackle in many cases, with an actor with a face painted black. Composer Evan Chambers, in a letter to the University Gazette, put it this way: “Showing the film now is a convenient interpretation and context, and without drawing attention to the racism inherent in it, is a racist act in itself, no matter what.” Professor’s intentions.
Laurence Olivier in Othello, 1965 in black lacquered leather
Photo: Photo12 via AFP
The term black face dates back to 19th century America, when white performers entertained white audiences by imitating and mocking black people with dark painted faces. In the 20th century, this was still a well-established habit in films, with John Jazz Singer appearing in 1927 with the face of Al Johnson in black, but Shirley Temple, Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney also appeared in films disguised as black. Rooney was translated into Chinese in Dream Luxury, but this can be listed for a long time, the Washington Post compiled in an article. those casesWhen “a white actor played a non-white character”.
In his article about what happened at the University of Michigan, Christian Schneider was quoted by The New York Post Twitter share Also, as the writer said, “Bright Sheng survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution, but might not survive showing some cinematic versions of Othello to some grumbling Michigan student.” Many under his post were similarly drafted, and there were those who wrote that it was not Sheng, but the university that should be ashamed of itself, “for yielding to stupidity and not defending his fellow.”
According to the newspaper, the university also separately noted that all of their full-time lecturers participated in a “mandatory in-service anti-racism training” in the 2020-21 academic year.
“LL Junior, but an albino breed!”
While in the United States, a teacher was dismissed from his students for showing them a more than fifty-year-old film in which a white actor disguised as black sings, and in Hungary claps for shouting on a weekly basis under the supervision of Attila Till and viewers Majka, Köllő Babett, Tóth Gabi and Pápai Joci, when at least 3-4 people with brown faces are shown in front of them every week.
The show in question will be Star on Star on TV2, the essence of which is that the singers who appear on the show will perform on stage, imitating celebrities, in this case, the tradition applies not only to the voice, but also to the looks. That is, if someone Janet Jacksont, Lionel Richie, or so to speak Bango Margittot Tradition, you would definitely smudge your face with a good thick, dark brown primer to set the mood just like in the 19th century American shows where blacks with lacquered faces discovered black for a loud laughing white audience.
Here’s an example of a competitor imitating Will Smith on TV2:
Or another Madcon attacker:
Another who imitated Ian Lewis:
But it was also a notable achievement from TV2 to not only paint the man’s face black, but even put a woman’s dress on him so he could laugh really out loud:
However, the climax clearly came on the October 10 broadcast, when one of the contestants imitated LL Junior. The singer responded to the performance the next morning and wrote the following on Facebook – in a post he has since deleted, a 24 h Quoted: “I can’t find, and I don’t understand, the reason, and the source, which suggests that the non-Roman actor pulls his nose up and ‘swallows’ a balluk-accented song in the style of a swallow. Pathetic cartoon. Porous cliché. Vika Janisak fell into the same exaggeration. Bass, I’m Multicultural world of language/Culture eater in Budapest. I ask myself these cliches.”
However, LL Junior no longer objected to what was left in Babett Köll’s mouth when a jury member practically tried to explain post-production that the skin of a competitor imitated LL Junior She was very white.
The sentence in question can be heard in the video below from 2:14 p.m. I mean this:
“I came out, at first I looked like this little one, but I’d say kind of albino! But you know, you’re standing here with all-white skin.”
