My essay on “South Pacific” in “Bigotry on Broadway,” an anthology edited by the noted author Ishmael Reed and his wife Carla Blank, launches this week.
Yes, the Philippines is in the Pacific, but not the South Pacific. But the musical shows how Asians showed up on Broadway in the 1940s and 1950s. Forget about what you’ve heard, the musical wasn’t nearly the condemnation of bigotry people like to think. Rather, it was an enabler that flashed its own toned down racism for a mostly privileged White theatre audience of its day. And the audience got just what it wanted—toothsome tunes to forget their troubles while sipping a Mai-Tai fantasy.
But it’s a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, Broadway’s legacy. How many times have people said that the song lyric, “You must be carefully taught” is by its nature anti-racist? Sure, you’re not born a racist, you’re taught it, great. But does that explain away the racist story line the musical is teaching us?
No wonder a new generation of theatre lovers have started to question “South Pacific.” One set of protestors even shut down a high school production in New Jersey earlier this year. Political correctness? No, just a modern reaction to a dated piece of theatre.
If you saw the Tony Awards, you know Broadway is looking for a diversity update. But are they looking hard enough for Asian Americans? Any Filipinos?
The Tony telecast
This week Broadway celebrated its recent reopening in New York with the Tony Awards, which is a little strange extolling the virtues of live theatre on a flat television screen.
You’re just getting 20 percent of all the vigorous fun. Still, that’s better than the nothing we had during the pandemic.
The fact that it was happening, with people publicly masked and vaxxed was practically a public service on how these kind of gatherings could be had with performers safely delivering their plosives at will.
But the startling thing for me was how much I appreciated B.D. Wong, the San Francisco-born star of stage, screen.
After seeing one diversity message, implied and direct, fly by on the show, the show’s theme was clear. Inclusion. But it seemed all about black and white. There were LGBTQ shout outs, doubly so when Matthew Lopez became the first Latino playwright to win a Tony for his “The Inheritance.” It’s a play about gay life after AIDS, inspired by Lopez’ favorite novel “Howard’s End” by E.M. Forster. His acceptance speech was a mini-Ted talk on Latinx underrepresentation.
But Asian Americans? Did I miss the great and prolific writer David Henry Hwang? Filipina Lea Salonga? She was there. But I missed her presenting turn.
I did see a male Asian playing a student in the “Jagged Little Pill” sketch. He was the one who shouted out “That’s actually not ironic!” Which was funny and got a laugh. We live for those moments. As a performer, I know.
But the Tony moment for me was just seeing Wong as a presenter. I remember seeing him as Song Liling in “M.Butterfly,” and was so taken by his performance back then. He’s the only actor in Broadway history to receive the Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Clarence Derwent Award, and Theatre World Award for the same role.
So when B.D. gets up on the Tony stage it should be enough. But it’s not. We need more. In fact, when I think of Asian Americans on Broadway, I don’t think of “South Pacific.”
I think of B.D. Wong.
The Hamiltoning of Broadway
It’s Broadway’s style to ride success for as long as it can. And now “Hamilton” is it, the trick pony of the day. Whites can play blacks, and blacks can play whites. And you can hum to it all.
The signs are all good. Th hip young people know the lyrics. It’s on Disney Plus. The road show has opened up around the country. When people think Broadway now it’s all “Hamilton.”
It’s surely why “Hamilton” cast member Leslie Odom Jr., was the emcee of the awards show. But then Lin Manuel Miranda can’t do everything.
Ishmael Reed, the co-editor of the anthology “Bigotry on Broadway,” thinks he should do more.
Reed wrote the play “The Haunting of Lin Manuel Miranda,” to expose the “Hamilton” story as an historically inaccurate portrayal of Hamilton, who married into the Schuyler family, notorious slave holders. That detail just doesn’t come across in the hip-hop musical.
Reed’s play had an Off-Broadway run at the Nuyorican Café in New York last year, but he’d still like to see Miranda come clean about the theatrical juggernaut he created. Because it’s toning down the hate that’s in the history. So people dance and rhyme to a hip hop beat, does that forgive Hamilton’s family, kneed-deep in slavery as slave holders in upstate New York? The musical glorifies Hamilton and his connections. Someone needs to tell the hipsters Hamilton wasn’t as hip as Lin Manuel-Miranda said. Sure, putting blacks and people of color is a great diversity trick. But the truth still has to count for something.
Reed’s critical look at “Hamilton” led to the book of essays that includes mine on “South Pacific.” What do intellectuals and scholars from different ethnic groups feel about our portrayals on Broadway? That’s the gap Reed’s anthology “Bigotry on Broadway” intends to fill. I am privileged to be a part of the effort.
“Bigotry on Broadway” book launch is on Facebook Watch on Wednesday, Sept. 19
Listen to my podcast with B.D. Wong on his Emmy nomination for playing “White Rose.”
Listen to “Emil Amok’s Takeout” Daily at 2p Pacific
https://www.facebook.com/emilguillermo.media/ Or recorded on www.amok.com
Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He writes a column for the North American Bureau.
