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Essay by Sarah Barrows |
It's a shame that this otherwise positive event re-iterated one of the feminist-movements most embarrassing and detrimental failures: white exclusivity.
One glance around the audience and performers on stage was a vision of white displaying how successful the fem-movement has been in following in its mothers and grandmothers fund-raising footsteps.
I can't imagine how this fem-fest justified the fact that it was only celebrating white women; nor can I know how many people other than myself didn't notice this fact with disturbing clarity until Jane Armitage launched into the final moments of her Beijing-saga - during which she explained, "we can never know the Asian mind" as well as something to the effect of how "they" want to know our theatre et cetera but they don't know `how'?
Because that performance was in such poor taste on many levels I'll only take up one point at a time. When this statement was made how many people noticed beneath their scowls, shock, and uncomfortable shifting that non-white women were not there in any significant number (and by this I mean using two hands and some toes to count instead of showing the peace sign). How many people were still awake?
Again Oberlin's liberal mask slips to reveal the hypocrisy of our segregated campus. True, we live in a segregated world and you can't "control" social dynamics but events such as Fem Fest West should appeal to all PEOPLE. After all, it is the concerts, parties, dance recitals and guest lectures which ever really synthesize the campus anyway. When these few and far between opportunities fail to encourage and collect the diverse population living in this tiny environment it smacks so loudly of the "liberal" propensity to talk the talk and never walk the walk. More importantly it robs this campus of any hope for improving its segregated reality or at least relaxing these constipated state of affairs.
Plus, Fem Fest West was pretty shown up by the Multi-Cultural Dance Celebration that featured performers from a variety of backgrounds, excluding no one, and raking in some 500 people of equally diverse composition for the audience.
Some speculations on why such a disparity was seen between the Fem Fest and the Multi-Cultural Dance Celebration include:
The Theater and Dance Department had everything to do with Fem Fest West and nothing to do with the Multi-Cultural Dance Celebration, save for the fact that the dance show featured dance and a lot of the performers may have been trained in such departments. Anyone whose ever taken a dance class or seen a concert will have noted that there are mainly two paths: Modern Dance seems to embrace the White and Dance Diaspora the non-White. People who know far more about the political inner-workings of the department may have an ear-full to say about this, whether in defense or attack I don't know. The point is, the tendency of the Dance and Theater department is segregation and the only reason I can think that so few women of color were present at Fem Fest West is because they didn't know it was happening and were not encouraged or invited by the very department that ran the affair.
Due to the `first-time' nature of the event the lack of adequate advertising may also be partially responsible for the turn-out. Still, it would be more than stretching the excuse to say that this is why the event was 99 percent white.
Back to the Jane Armitage issue. I'm tempted here to be somewhat kind because I think the Bejing, China monologue was touching in places and, as I overheard someone saying, if Ms. Armitage was a bad actress you would at least have been able to tune-out and attend to your hangnails and personal thoughts.
As it was, she was somehow captivating and the thirty-minute performance held the viewers gaze with much anguish. Clearly this is an issue of personal taste so I need not be so callous or self indulgent to bring up all the reasons the performance was only slightly tolerable. Thus I'll bring up the reasons which seem to me inexcusable.
Much of the anguish created by watching the piece was directly related to the wrap-up statement that, "we can never understand the Asian mind" and something to the effect of: `they' want to know our theater but they don't know how.
I know I'm not the only one to wonder - would Armitage have prepared the same piece if the audience were not almost all white? Would she perform the same thing again at an AAA meeting? Was her aim anything beyond trying to engage the people there in some befuddled variety of compassionate pity which stank of the Old Boy Network in women's clothing, namely, how strange `we' don't get `them' and `they' don't get `us' and isn't it sad. Where the Old Boy Network has laughter, inside jokes and nodding approval does the Old Girl Network have pursed lips, raised brow and a hand patting the heart with benevolent understanding and belittling condolence?
How strange that a festival which incorporated the eradication of female stereotypes and oppression into its agenda managed to exclude people of color and continue a cultural stereotype about Asia - those wise, mysterious Orientals we could never figure out, the mystical creatures condemned to never know how to be American . . . how strangely beautiful, they are preserved but also denied our convenient Western life - and if the aforementioned litany makes too many assumptions of its own then I challenge Ms. Armitage to explain what she did mean when she wrote the end of her monologue (if in fact she wasn't just improvising) and also may she defend her choice of these words, their tone and the context of her entire piece.
I wish I could say I was done but there are some more than petty extra points on the matter: Three weeks of tour-group travel warrants anyone authority to speak about an entire continent's mind? Furthermore, since when did Bejing, China equal Asia, let alone the `Asian Mind'?
At one point in the monologue Jane Armitage comments that Americans have no culture. Ms. Armitage, is that supposed to make your mystification and assumptions about `Asian' culture somehow more acceptable when you outright disregard in a careless and blatant manner your own culture? If what you meant was the Chinese have a rich traditional culture that is maintained in Chinese schools through artistic education and, by comparison, America does not, then find a poetic way to say that. You've proven to have some talent in writing monologues.
Lastly, despite the fifteen minute limit set on all performances Armitage allotted herself double the time and spoke slow enough to remind you of every minute. The overall carelessness of the episode was pitiful and made more so when one remembered that a professor was behind it.
Hey Ann Cooper-Albright, if you didn't want to come and watch then you shouldn't have bothered to show up - you'd have saved the rest of the audience the annoyance of walking in and out of the performance a hundred times whenever you pleased. Your position as a professor grants you no such authority and your yawning and bored eye-rolling during Jane Armitage's monologue would have earned any eight year old a sound spanking.
Feminism may be destined to be mocked if it continues to stupidly engage in petty male-bashing and assume that female equals feminist and hence it is only the boys who have to learn. Unless feminist festivals are more careful and yet carefree about educating and celebrating womanhood the audience will likely only dwindle.
Male-bashing is what I'd describe as a few of the monolouges erroneous references to men. In an intriguing monologue about donating one's tongue to a child the actress made heated emphasis over the fact that it was "a male child" and then claimed something to the effect of women needing a tongue more than men. Really? What did that mean?
Male-bashing is taking all that is surface and shallow about male stereotypes and `sticking it to `em' in a piece that illuminates the victimization of women. No doubt women are and have been victims and oftentimes the culprit is generic Joe wife-beater or something to this stereotypical effect. But if you want to `teach' men (as one Ren Hen so tersely put it), actually, if you want to teach anyone it is helpful to present realistic situations that make both men and women more than their one-dimensional stereotypes. If you want to learn about how women are silenced, oppressed, starved and manipulated it is helpful to see them in light of their own mental complexity, as well as the complexity of the world and men who live and contribute to this oppression.
Did anyone feel like they learned something new about feminism on Saturday night? Was a new element of oppression or success investigated? Was anyone comforted? What about celebrating womanhood ?
The white liberal mask is so old and dead it's a fossil we've been endeared by because it allows us to be lazy, and it shows the former shape of an investigative and thoughtful time. It's kidding no one.
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