Apparently, “white gaze” (yet another pernicious import from America) is the assumption that the default reader or observer is coming from a perspective of someone who identifies as white, or that people of colour sometimes feel need to take into account the white reader or observer’s reaction.
Various authors of colour describe it as a voice in their heads that reminds them that their writing, characters, and plot choices are going to be judged by white readers, and that the reader or viewer, by default, is white.
Err… if you say so…. In other words, black racism.
Or, in the context of this nomination, the banning of white people from attending a theatre in the West End of London on certain nights. Apartheid anyone?
From the article:
Playwright Jeremy O Harris told BBC Sounds yesterday he was ‘so excited’ to put on nights in the West End where tickets were only sold to people who identified as black.
‘One of the things we have to remember is that people have to be radically invited into a space to know that they belong there and in most places in the west, poor people and black people have been told that they do not belong inside the theatre. For me, as someone who wants and yearns for black and brown people to be in the theatre, who comes from a working class environment, who wants people who do not make six figures to feel like theatre is a place for them, it is a necessity to radically invite them in with initiatives that say “you’re invited”. Specifically you.”’
Asked if it didn’t make him uncomfortable that in turn it was telling white people they weren’t allowed in the space, he responded: ‘There are a litany of places in our country that are generally only inhabited by white people, and nobody is questioning that, and nobody is saying that by inviting black audiences here you are uninvited.’
(Bollocks. There are no places in the UK where black people are banned. More’s the pity some would say.)
One senior Tory MP, who did not want to be named, raised questions over the decision to bar white people from the show, telling MailOnline: ‘I understand the subject matter of the show may have particular resonance for some but I would simply question the legality of this? In other circles it would be illegal and racial discrimination. I don’t understand why this isn’t.’
Precisely.
Nominated by: Shit Cake Baker
And on a similar note, there’s this from Balsamic Dave
I don’t know if this one has already been nom’d, but the producers of race-baiting theatre production “Slave Play” have declared their intention to hold two performances for black-only audiences so that those assembled can enjoy the production “free from the white gaze”.
Now let’s indulge a brief thought experiment. Let’s reverse the scenario and have a play devoted to the theme of being white; shall we call it “Hard Working Play”. Let’s have two evenings where we have white-only audiences, this initiative devised to allow an all white audience to enjoy the spectacle “free from the black gaze”. That’d go down just fine, wouldn’t it everyone?
This preposterous “blacks only” restriction also demands the question who does and does not qualify as “black”? Will one half of a mixed race couple have to stay at home? Will someone born of one white and one black parent only be allowed to stay until half time? Can Gary Lineker tag along? Would Michael Jackson be shown the door?
I’d say this lot more than deserve to take a bow for being the bunch of cunts they so clearly are.
