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Real Mormons and The Book of Mormon
Re “My Mormon problem, and yours” (Editor’s Notebook)—
While Dan Rottenberg is correct that The Book of Mormon is very funny and highly entertaining, he has completely misinterpreted the show’s message and point of view.
Yes, the show pokes fun, in an affectionate way, at some of the more implausible aspects of Mormonism’s creation story and theology. The ribbing is all good-natured, however, and there is not a whiff of more unseemly and controversial topics, such as polygamy or blood atonement.
The song praising Salt Lake City as paradise is not meant to be ironic— Salt Lake City is a paradise compared to an impoverished village in a TFC that is plagued by warlords, AIDS and forcible female genital mutilation.
Most important, the show gives the Mormons the last laugh: As ridiculous as their beliefs are to nonbelievers, they end up converting all the villagers to their modified version of Mormonism and making the village a far better place to live.
The show’s ultimate point is that all religions are based to some extent on crazy, unprovable beliefs, but if they make the world a better place and improve quality of life, the crazy beliefs are beside the point. To their credit, Mormons seem to have understood the show better than Mr. Rottenberg.
Stanley Kull
Wynnewood, Pa.
November 23, 2011
Mormons have, you say, “produced the only two candidates in the current Republican presidential stable (Romney and Huntsman) who could reasonably be described as grownups.” I should have thought only Huntsman fit that bill of particulars, given Romney’s notorious treatment of his family’s dog.
And as for The Book of Mormon lampooning Mormons, James Fenton is to my knowledge the only reviewer who has pointed out, in the New York Review of Books, that the musical’s main lampooning targets are Ugandans, who are stereotyped as foolish, gullible, and happy-go-lucky. And by the way, let’s all have some big laughs about Uganda’s AIDS problem and the native Ugandan with maggots in his scrotum. As Fenton writes, “The more ridiculous [the character Elder Cunningham’s] message, the better it goes down with the natives.”
The Book of Mormon is really a two-fer: Snigger at the Mormons, and laugh out loud at the Ugandans.
Hilary Hinzmann
New York
November 23, 2011
I wish I had had a high school history teacher as clear and coherent as Dan in his summing up of the Mormons.
As regular as clockwork, once a month or so I run into a pair of elegantly attired Mormons on missionary duty in Weimar. Occasionally we engage in a brief theological conversation. They seem as distant from being polygamous freaks as tickets to their Broadway musical are to my theater budget. Yet the implications of this religious phenomenon for our current presidential farce are very obscure, unless Dan means to mock a half-ass Christianity the other candidates seem to represent.
Patrick D. Hazard
Weimar. Germany
November 23, 2011
This isn’t really a response, except to point out that the Mormons do love the arts.
I was out there 30 years ago. I loved how you could walk from the downtown/city to the suburbs and how the mountains were everywhere.
Curiously, a friend told me they don’t use dynamite to blow up the mountains. They just drill holes and fill them with water. Eventually the water expands, breaking up the mountains. So pretty smart.
Joseph Glantz
Levittown, Pa.
November 23, 2011
I realize you are trying to make a point in your review when you refer to “making fun of retarded children.” But there is truly no situation when referring to special needs children as “retarded” is appropriate. While I understand that the term “retarded” was once widely used, it is one that has been used with a negative connotation for years and is no longer acceptable. It causes those of us with disabled children or adults in our lives to flinch as we watch our loved ones manage a harder life.
Amy L. Murphy
Managing Director
Arden Theatre Company
Old City/ Philadelphia
November 25, 2011
One comment, Dan— I hope you realize that Moses really did stay on Mount Sinai for 40 days and nights. If he didn’t, it wouldn’t have been recorded in our people’s historical record! Would I lie to you?
Bob Rottenberg
Brattleboro, Vt.
November 28, 2011
Tales of Hoffman at AVA
Re Steve Cohen’s review of Tales of Hoffman by the Academy of Vocal Arts—
Good going Steve. Unlike your esteemed colleague over at the Inquirer, you understood much more about the tangled history of this wonderful opera. While of course, he is entitled to his opinion, David Patrick Stearns stated: “The one misstep is Giulietta’s new, second aria: It’s dramatically redundant.…”
I’m not quite sure what Stearns means by “Giulietta’s second aria.” Perhaps he’s thinking that the famous Barcarolle is her first aria, but that’s actually a duet with Nicklausse.
In any case, Giulietta’s aria “L’amour luit dit: ‘la belle’” is definitely not redundant. It’s the device by which she begins her total subjugation of Hoffmann.
Previously, in the corrupt editions of the opera, the entire gambling scene in which this aria is sung was mangled and the aria deleted. Now, thanks to the landmark edition of Michael Kaye, the Giulietta Act is reinstated in all its glory and clarifies and enhances the plot as never before.
In the traditional version, Hoffmann tells Nicklausse that he could never love a courtesan, but a few moments later, and after a few brief lines from Giulietta, Hoffmann is at her feet professing undying love! The missing scene gives Giulietta time to subtly seduce Hoffmann, and to give him the false idea that she has a great depth of soul.
I think it’s great that the students at AVA had the opportunity to work from the real Offenbach music. I wanted to post these observations at the Inquirer, but the comments there are closed.
Charlie Richards
Deerfield Beach, Fla.
November 22, 2011
The Inquirer’s new home
Re ”The Inky comes down from its ivory tower,” by Jackie Atkins—
The Inquirer fell victim to the age of electronic media and the 24-hour TV news format, not to elitism as you posit. If ever there was a need for a mission, “ torch of knowledge” for the masses, it’s now, though not with this particular editorial board.
Gone are days of the prize-winning journalism of Bartlett and Steele, the “Black Hawk Down” series or the reporting and columns of Steve Lopez and Pete Dexter. Most folks now read the news notes on the free Metro paper or listen to Fox News. And we know how that turns out.
Wil Durant
Yeadon, Pa.
November 23, 2011
What? You write that a “large part of the reason” that Inquirer and Daily News newspaper sales have dropped precipitously “has been the disconnect between the people who once read these papers and the attitude of the editors and writers.”
And tell us, please, how you know that such an outrageous generalization is true?
Offering simple answers to complicated questions is bad journalism.
Murray Dubin
Southwest Philadelphia
November 23, 2011
Editor‘s note: The writer is a retired Inquirer reporter.
Theater for grownups
Thank you for “Theater for grownups,” by Jim Rutter. I have been saying lately that we have better theater in Philadelphia these past two months than in New York.
I just saw two highly touted plays there. They were family dramas leavened with sophisticated caustic wit and they concerned family “secrets.” I have a name for the genre: “sit-traj-com” with the usual handsome three-dimensional living room set.
By contrast, Spinoza, Red, Our Class and The How and the Why were all debate-weighty issue plays, yet not without humor. They’re right up there with Copenhagen, Freud’s Last Session, Kushner’s Intellectual Homosexual, Stoppard’s plays, Venus in Fur, etc. Our Class was powerful because of the subject, the choreography, the incredible production and acting values.
Ruth Perlmutter
Society Hill/ Philadelphia
November 17, 2011
What a way to see the play in today’s local theater. I agree. I don’t give a damn about most of those talking head or slacker/vegan-based works, no matter how well written or produced.
Merilyn Jackson
South Philadelphia
November 15, 2011
America through a Spanish lens
In “America through a Spanish lens,” Marshall Ledger states that the Moors were peaceful inhabitants / irrigators of Andalusia. History tells us something else.
Occupation by the Moors began in 711 C.E. when a Berber Muslim army under Tariq ibn-Ziyad, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar from northern Africa and invaded the Iberian Peninsula. I would not characterize this as a movement of immigrants. For the next 700 years, Spaniards became vassals in their own country. No wonder the expulsion of the Moors was so violent.
Jackie Atkins
Northern Liberties/Philadelphia
November 16, 2011
Marshall Ledger replies: I didn’t call the Moors peaceful, and didn’t mean to suggest that they were immigrants as we might understand the word. Nonetheless, they contributed much to the Iberian economy, social fabric, intellectual life and science; and in its wholesale expulsions (against the Jews as well), Spain lost much more than it gained. My point was that expelling immigrants, for whatever reason, can be a disastrous national policy.
As for Spain’s violence in driving out the Moors: The Inquisition and the plundering of the New World proved Spain’s facility for unremitting brutality, even against harmless folk, and into the 19th Century.
LaSalle’s unsung art museum
Re “The best art museum you never heard of,” by Richard Carreño—
Thanks for bringing attention to LaSalle’s gallery. It’s a treasure.
I would add three things. The historic paintings are displayed in rooms that pleasantly suggest the times in which they were created. The museum has had an excellent series of exhibitions of work by contemporary Philadelphians. Finally, the modern works do deserve more space than the current one, which does remind the viewers that they are in a basement.
The museum is well worth a visit. When I’ve been there, I’ve been alone.
Arthur Waddington
Wynnewood, Pa.
November 16, 2011
How timely the “discovery” of LaSalle’s great secret. It used to be my favorite “must see,” after stumbling upon its wonders in the ’60s.
Patrick D. Hazard
Weimar, Germany.
November 20, 2011
The Orchestra’s crisis
Re “Allison Vulgamore’s quandary,” by Dan Rottenberg (Editor’s Notebook)—
As a music professional and long-time Philadelphia Orchestra listener, subscriber and supporter, I feel passionately about this issue and would submit the following factors:
— Orchestra musicians often adopt a “Do no harm” attitude while aspiring to the technically “perfect” performances demanded by many current conductors.
—Long performing seasons may also have an effect: Some key players, especially in the winds and brass, may feel the need to pace themselves in order to maintain a high performing standard. In the string section, pervasive use of “subs” certainly does not enhance orchestral cohesion and unity.
— Today’s audiences have lost touch with what great music is and what its performance is all about. The sheer life, energy, and passion in many older recordings are much more stimulating to perceptive audiences than today’s more polished but often lifeless performance practices.
Of course, this problem extends to educators, as well. Many K-12 school principals, university presidents, deans, etc., are either clueless or have a superficial understanding about the residual effects, nature and value of classical music and the other fine and performing arts. Many schools have dropped music education (as well as the other arts) from their curriculum, pulling away from the holistic, humanities approach.
— Many contemporary composers are too often concerned with current stylistic trends or techniques. Musical innovation and exploration are important, but today’s composers seem not to have been taught that the main goal is the mature expression of emotion and meaning. Much of the new music I’ve heard recently can be characterized as either Noisemakers, Alms for the Poor (containing slivers of melody) or Minimal Music.
Dr. Peter Nocella
Wynnewood, Pa.
November 19, 2011
Re “The end of the Orchestra?”, by Robert Zaller—
It certainly is difficult to be optimistic about the Philadelphia Orchestra’s financial future.
On the afternoon of Friday, October 16, my wife and I, as subscribers, attended the Orchestra’s first concert of the season at Verizon Hall. The program consisted of the Prokovieff “Classical Symphony,” the Sibelius Violin Concerto, and the Beethoven Seventh Symphony. If you can’t attract a large crowd with that program, you’re in big trouble.
I’m sad to report that even after the many students with $25 season passes were admitted just before the concert, the house was only about three-quarters full. In fact, we attended the concert with another couple who had stood in line for 45 minutes to purchase $10 rush tickets. Our tickets, at $48 apiece, were in Row N, Orchestra left; theirs were Row U, Orchestra center. Talk about a buyer’s market!
The news of the players’ apparent caving in to management demands had been in the Inquirer that morning, and even disregarding the discouraging attendance, we wondered if the occasion would feel more like a wake than a celebration of a new season.
As it turns out, we needn’t have worried. The Orchestra played beautifully and apparently with joyous enthusiasm. To my ears, Dutoit’s reading of the Beethoven Seventh was incandescent, even though David Patrick Stearns, the Inquirer’s critic, damned the same performance with faint praise.
I had been only vaguely aware that Verizon Hall’s troublesome acoustics were being tuned over the summer, and I had completely forgotten this fact until the concert began. But with the very first notes of the Prokovieff, I said to myself, “Wow, that sounds different!” The sound in Verizon Hall has always been astonishingly clear, and it still is, but whatever was done over the summer has, at least to my ears, added the brilliance and power that was previously lacking.
Finally, I can sympathize with anyone who finds Lang Lang’s theatrics annoyingly distracting, but I love them. He seems to me to be able to channel the spirit of whatever composer he is interpreting as much through his face and his body as through the music itself. And his musicianship is impeccable.
Dan Coren
Queen Village/ Philadelphia
October 26, 2011
Lesa Chittenden Lim
Re “She’s getting bolder,” by Andrew Mangravite—
Thank you for giving Lesa Chittenden Lim the attention she deserves. I have admired this gifted artist’s work and appreciate your comments on her most recent show.
Carol Spaulding
Maple City, Mich.
November 16, 2011
Joe Paterno and Penn State
Re “Joe Paterno and his media enablers,” by Bob Ingram—
What in the world did Joe Paterno think his former assistant Jerry Sandusky was doing in the shower with those kids when informed by an aide of his inappropriate activity? Paterno should not have rested until the matter was thoroughly investigated and the perpetrator stopped and punished, and the kids given proper counseling and care.
What to do next? A growing exhortation is: “Tear down that Paterno statue!” I find it troubling and misguided when I read of statues constructed for those who may be deserving but are still breathing. Paterno may be the winningest coach in Division 1 Football, a builder of men from boys, a caring man, a good husband and father and Christian, by most accounts. But, in the one instance (of which we are now aware) when he was called upon to exhibit timely, sterling judgment and rock-solid character, he failed miserably.
May we now reserve our statues for those who always go the extra mile to right wrongs? And please, let’s wait until the ink on their eulogies has dried before construction begins.
Frank L. Tamru
Egg Harbor Township, N.J.
November 8, 2011
Bob Ingram’s take on this stuff is really terrific and usually not mentioned by the media in their own coverage. Yes, they are complicit to the nth degree.
Dinny Zimmerman
Peterborough, N.H.
November 9, 2011
You should also mention this:
In 1983, as Paterno was being honored for his first national football championship, he gave a speech challenging the university’s Board of Trustees to make Penn State number one in academics as well as athletics. He specifically targeted the need for a top-quality library, stating, “Without a great library, you can’t have a great university.” In 1993, he and his wife Sue began a campaign that raised $13.75 million for the construction of a new library. The groundbreaking for the library, named the Paterno Library in their honor, took place in April 1997. Paterno has also donated several million of his own money toward the library.
Joseph Glantz
Levittown, Pa.
November 10, 2011
Poles, Jews and Our Class
Re “The sorrow and the pity,” by Merilyn Jackson—
I do not know too many writers who can integrate social commentary about the effect of a play on current audiences, provide insight about the demographic of those who attended (and, more poignantly, those who do not), assess the quality of the acting, directing and presentation of the play itself, and give historical context, all in less than two pages.
Suzanne Cummins
Tucson, Ariz.
November 8, 2011
Absolutely penetrating and brilliant commentary, Merilyn. Bravo!
Lew Whittington
Center City/ Philadelphia
November 8, 2011
Recently I participated in a reading at the Polish American Cultural Center on Walnut Street that marked the centennial of the Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz. There I spoke to a Polish friend of mine and former student of Milosz’s and asked him if he’d seen Our Class, the play at the Wilma about the massacre of Jews at Jedwabne by their fellow townsmen in 1941. He hadn’t heard of it, nor did I hear mention of it from anyone else there.
As Merilyn Jackson points out in her review, while Our Class has raised great controversy in Poland, the local Polish-American community has been conspicuous by its silence on a subject that is certainly of significance to anyone of Polish heritage. Since, as Ms. Jackson notes, there are substantial Polish and Jewish communities in Philadelphia, an opportunity for dialogue appears to have been missed.
This is a pity. Poland was once the most hospitable state in Europe for Jews. The road that led to Jedwabne, and Jedwabne itself, is a part of the historical record that needs to be faced honestly, not in a spirit of blame but of understanding and healing. I hope there will be another occasion for this.
Robert Zaller
Bala Cynwyd, Pa.
November 23, 2011
Orchestra’s heavyweight Brahms Requiem
I second and third Victor Schermer’s accurate rave review of Yannick’s (interesting that Yannick has come to be known by a single name, like a Brazilian soccer player) extraordinary performance of the Brahms Requiem.
Schermer also made a crucial observation: “Something about this performance seemed to bode well for this world-class orchestra in the throes of bankruptcy.” With all its problems, the Philadelphia Orchestra delivered perhaps the greatest single orchestral performance of any piece I’ve ever seen live.
The audience, as Schermer noted, was astounded and overcome. I am an experienced choral singer who has listened to and performed the Brahms many times, and I was stunned. Several professional musicians I know have said the same thing.
Yet despite its performance and despite its precarious condition, the Inquirer’s Peter Dobrin wrote an oblivious, carping, critical review. (Lack of attention to detail? Too thin a choral sound?)
The Inquirer’s classical music critics— unlike, say, its restaurant critics— have limited clout, but it can’t help that both Dobrin and David Patrick Stearns seem to feel obliged to show off their know-it-all superiority by sprinkling every orchestra review with randomly generated insults.
Philip Korb
Center City/ Philadelphia
November 11, 2011
Editor’s comment: What’s worse than a critic who rejects the audience consensus? A critic who merely reflects the audience consensus.
On hiring local actors
In “Hiring local actors: triumph or calamity?”, Jim Rutter writes, “A number of companies— including New City Stage, 11th Hour and Theatre Horizon— now offer high-paying Equity contracts.”
As a matter of perspective, it should be stated that those companies have moved into lower-level Equity contracts that pay a decent salary and provide health and/or pension benefit contributions.
References to “high-paying Equity contracts” ought to be reserved for the League of resident Theatres members in the Philadelphia, area such as the Walnut and the Arden.
Tom Helmer
Willingboro, N.J.
November 9, 2011
Julian Rodescu remembered
In “Julian Rodescu: A life in the arts,” Miriam Lewin got Julian in every aspect of his incredible persona, which resonated far beyond the walls of any classroom, auditorium or opera house.
Julian penetrated the very depth of your being and your reasoning with his intellect, wisdom, kindness, humor and love— always the love and always the respect. You have captured him so beautifully, Miriam. I shall mourn him for the rest of my life.
Toni Alperin Goldberg
Sarasota, Fla.
November 2, 2011
Julian was my teacher at Swarthmore (and my director in that Magic Flute you mention in your article). He was an incredibly kind and generous soul, one who taught me that my “great big voice” was something to appreciate and cultivate, not tame and temper.
Though my artistic pursuits ultimately led me to theater, I continued to use and love the vocal instrument in all my work. It’s part of why I am the artist I am today. I only wish I could have told Julian what incredible impact he has had on my work and art.
What an incredible loss, what a wonderful person.
Adrienne Mackey
South Philadelphia
November 2, 2011
This is one of the most beautiful and completely accurate descriptions of a truly remarkable man and musician. I have passed it on to many friends, who may only have met Julian once but remembered him with love. They were delighted to learn more about him and to have their convictions confirmed by this exquisite tale of a “lover of life.”
Nancy Froysland Hoerl
Yardley, Pa.
November 4, 2011
Miriam Lewin captured beautifully the wonderful personality and many faces of Julian Rodescu.
Jane Grey Nemeth
Haverford, Pa.
November 2, 2011
Editor’s note: The writer is the former director of the Opera Company’s Pavarotti International Voice Competition.
It is lovely to have this appreciation of a remarkable human being. Julian touched so many of us, which is a large understatement.
Lesley Valdes
South Philadelphia
November 3, 2011
Editor’s note: The writer is the music critic for WRTI-FM.
What a beautiful tribute, so accurately portrayed. How we miss you,
Julian.
Liz Alperin Solms
Elkins Park, Pa.
November 8, 2011
Madoff creep show
In “The Madoff creep show,” Bob Ingram captures the horror of our times, the greed, the lack of humility and the media complicity for all of the decline of morals in our society. One of his very best pieces of writing.
Dinny Zimmerman
Peterborough, N.H.
November 1, 2011
If George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condi Rice can write for-profit books about how they turned a blind eye to a looming attack on the country they were charged to defend and steered it into a pair of ruinous and indefensible wars whose horrific consequences will be with us for decades— and, in the case of their many victims, forever— I can’t quite understand Bob Ingram’s indignation about Andrew Madoff writing a book about the predatory father who shamed him and dedicating its profits to making good in some small measure the financial damage he did.
Certainly, Bernie Madoff’s victims include his family members, who have not been charged with any crime and have suffered, in addition to their own financial loss, the permanent stigma of bearing what is now a disgraced name. They have a perfectly legitimate right to tell their own side of the story, just as Bob Ingram or anyone else has a perfect right to reject it.
But what I saw in their televised interview was a wife and mother trying to cope with the collapse of her life, and a brother with the death of his sibling as well as his own shame. It aroused sympathy in me, not disgust.
We would all like to think that in Ruth and Andrew Madoff’s circumstances we would surely have suspected something of what was going on under their noses all these years. But none of Bernie Madoff’s sophisticated investors did, and but for the crash of 2008 his scheme might be alive and well even today.
Robert Zaller
Bala Cynwyd, Pa.
November 2, 2011
As to Madoff’s crime, what was it? He took money from the rich who should have known better but who wanted more. Had they used the brains that enabled them to acquire the money in the first place to see that Madoff was a con man, they would not have been burned. They willingly threw away their money and their lives. After all, Madoff didn’t put a gun to their heads.
Why shouldn’t his son and wife not assume that the same idiocy that afflicted Madoff’s victims will now get others to part with their money?
Andrew Kevorkian
West Philadelphia
November 2, 2011
The Ides of March
In their reviews of The Ides of March, Jake Blumgart and Judy Weightman are both right. I spent 14 years on Capitol Hill, working on the House side and the Senate side. I was in D.C. when Robert Redford was constantly underfoot because he wanted to have a clear and true picture of Capitol Hill for his film, All the President’s Men. These dumb films and books about evil doings on Capitol Hill are primarily the work of overheated imaginations. Ides of March is dopey.
Janet. S. Anderson
Laverock, Pa.
November 4, 2011
Judy Weightman replies: People who hate The Ides of March focus on the specifics of the scandal at the center of the plot — is it plausible? Clichéd? etc. To me, the scandal is just a McGuffin— it’s the gimmick that sets the real action in motion, so its plausibility is, if not irrelevant, at least secondary. The film’s “real” action is psychological: the evolution of the Ryan Gosling character. That I found believable, subtle and fascinating.
Healing and history
“Healing and history,” Patrick Hazard’s account of the benign multiculturalism of the new Europe, leaves this reader a little skeptical.
To be sure, Europe has a lot of history to digest, and the experiment of creating a united continent out of long-warring nations has a long and perhaps rocky way to go. But the current spectacle of Germany and France ganging up to squeeze Greece to the pips over its debt (a debt German and French banks quietly colluded in) is as ugly in its way as the former traditions of military aggression were.
Those good German taxpayers who resist a bailout of the Greeks because of their alleged moral turpitude are the same ones who funded the Nazis when they flew the swastika over the Parthenon. Which sin was really the more grievous?
The current North-South divide over the crisis of the euro is economic warfare, and the losers will find themselves occupied territory, perhaps for generations. The Turks are probably thanking their lucky stars they didn’t get invited to join the Club of Europe. The Greeks might well think hard about the desirability of leaving it.
Robert Zaller
Bala Cynwyd, Pa.
October 26, 2011
Patrick Hazard replies: The Greeks’ tax-avoiding, bloated state amenities are a potential fatal drag on the euro, not to forget Greece itself. Give me the stolid German sturdiness any day.
Robert Zaller replies: The extent to which the Greeks are responsible for their own woes is debatable, but the Greek work week is one of the longest in Europe, and the vast majority of Greeks are the victims rather than the beneficiaries of the corruptions and redundancies that beset their economic system. I have seen this at first hand.
Patrick Hazard replies: Your take on the Germans “reoccupying” contemporary Greece as in Nazi Germany is about as relevant as their occupying Lorraine in 1871. They will be paying the most, after all, for Greek improvidence and pervasive tax avoidance. It is my considered opinion after a decade of close observation that the Germans have almost entirely absolved themselves from your absurd implication they remain the same old Nazis, however nice.
Robert Zaller replies: Your spirited defense of your second country clashed with my defense of mine. I don’t know how virtuous contemporary Germans are, but I wouldn’t want the burden of living with the Nazi past. There is a line that connects Bismarck and Hitler— that of German history. Bismarck built a great country, however perilous its foundations, and Hitler destroyed it along with much else. That the Germans were able to rebuild themselves materially is much to their credit, but the job of moral repair is simply a longer task. I wish them well with it, and I certainly don’t mean to suggest that people who want others to pay their bills are neo-Nazis, whatever their flag. But there is a certain amount of insensitivity, not to mention bullying, in the way the Greek situation has been handled.
I was enjoying Patrick Hazard’s article about healing among countries, but, darn it, remembered that I can’t trust myself. I’m a bit slow, and I thank him for reminding me, but am I semi-literate because I’m monolingual? Or, comparing trilingual to monolingual, am I tertio-literate?
Oh, I just got it: I’m semi-literate because I’m an American, right. Or, wait, is it because I’m an American who hasn’t moved to Germany? You see how difficult this is for me to figure out.
Kile Smith
Fox Chase/ Philadelphia
October 26, 2011
Patrick Hazard replies: I chide intellectually lazy Americans because I deplore their imminent loss of a great country. I’m living in Germany because I fell in love with a German woman. As a retired professor of American literature, I’m ashamed of my countrymen’s fatal ignorance of their great writers. Incidentally, the Germans are retrieving their culture from the dead end of Nazism: business executives here worry about their workers, defend unions, strive to give the young the skills that will support their industries.
John Logan’s Red
Re Dan Rottenberg’s review of Red—
Oi vey! Our editor reveals a suppressed hunger to suddenly become an art critic with balls.
Mishigoss, I learned just now from the Urban Dictionary, is “a complex, annoying, stressful problem, made all the more frustrating in that it could have been prevented if certain people had just used their brains before.”
Yeah, for example, the allegedly great architect Philip C. Johnson, who corrupted our architectural discourse over a too-long life with his nouveau riche anxieties. Like Mies, Johnson was obsessed with the “A” in architecture, ironically creating uninhabitable buildings.
Patrick D. Hazard
Weimar, Germany
October 24, 2011
Our Class at the Wilma
The ending of Steve Cohen’s review of Our Class, at the Wilma, is absolutely outrageous and an archaic stereotype. The two actresses did not “look the part.” Are you saying that they did not look Jewish enough?
As a Jew, I feel deeply offended by this statement and would very much like Steve Cohen to clarify what his idea of someone who looks more Jewish to him is.
Perhaps they should have cast women with larger noses? Would that have made them “look the part”?
Michael Rubenfeld
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
October 27, 2011
Editor’s note: The writer is a member of the cast of Our Class.
Steve Cohen replies: When a play is totally about the conflicts between two ethnic groups, and when we are presented with a large ensemble together on stage, it’s important to be able to identify who is who. Politically correctness aside, Jews in Poland before World War II were recognizable, solely by their appearance, to their Christian neighbors. Why shouldn’t we playgoers be able to similarly identify them? And if a “Jewish appearance” is invalid, why do non-Jewish actors who play Shylock, like Al Pacino, put on a false nose and adopt mannerisms to identify the character’s ethnicity?
Michael Rubenfeld replies: When the Germans came into towns where the Jews were primarily secular, such as Jedwabne, they had to ask the local city councils to tell them who the Jews were because everyone looked the same, much as they often do now. If you are having a harder time telling who is Jewish earlier in the play, then this deems the text a success, as certainly before the characters are forced into segregation because of their cultures, there should be no very noticeable difference.
Steve Cohen replies: My research consisted of having family from that region, and visiting Poland myself. Jews and non-Jews said that my people (secular, by the way) were distinguishable by sight. Yes, there were some cases where Jews went undetected, but this was rare.
It is an exemplary idea to show that all people have a common humanity. This play, however, is concerned with how, at that time and place, Polish Catholics considered Jews to be a different race. The shame is not that our people were recognizable; the shame and the tragedy was that we, and other peoples, have been persecuted because we were seen as an “inferior race.”
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