Bend the truth on your job application

Lets please add here that the reason for this is not that the opera house is racist. Hungary was one of the European countries that didn’t trafic with slaves in the past and is not exactly the first choice of black african immigrants either, hence the population is pretty homogeniously caucasian. In fact the black population is so tiny you couldn’t possibly find enough trained black singers to put Porgy and Bess on stage even if you tried.

@Timoleth That's true, and I only know two black Hungarians, one of them originally from Kenya and another who is the child of African immigrants in the 70s, but it's the way this was done and the timing that's bad.

First off they chose an opera set in a very specific time and place (Catfish Row, USA, in the 30s), and which it's author SPECIFICALLY requested to be played as he envisioned it, because the message itself is about race relation in the US. They chose to completely disregard the author's wishes, and doubled down when challenged by the Gershwin estate by having the audacity to have their singers sign a declaration stating that “African-American origins and spirit form an inseparable part” of their identity, which is clearly bullshit.
Secondly, this all comes with the background of Hungary having a really right wing government and attitude, being both anti-immigrant (especially anti Muslim immigrants) and ramping up persecution of their own minority, the Roma.

I see at least a few of ways the Hungarian state opera could have done this and be less racist - they could have changed the setting to be explicitly about the plight of Middle-Eastern immigrants in Hungary (I have an inkling this is what they were going for originally, but they probably got scared when a performance of the musical “Billy Elliot” was blasted in a government-friendly newspaper as “gay propaganda” and had to be cancelled) or they could have set it in a Roma community and have gotten as many actual minority singers as they could.
Or they could have just left it on Catfish Row and invited guest singers at least for the leading roles, or played it with a white cast but have an introductory piece explain to the audience the setting and why they didn't have any black singers on hand as the author specifically wished.

But no, they chose to handle it the most misguided and tone-deaf way possible, by saying "well, the author says this is to be played exclusively by African Americans, well, I say these white ethnic Hungarians are actually African Americans, even though they're clearly not... what are you going to do about it, bub?" and then act surprised and defensive when people call them up on their bullshit.

@wingsofwrath Perhaps Rachel Dolezal and Shawn King were unavailable?

@wingsofwrath That last section was good ^^

@wingsofwrath if your definition of "racist" is "hates and actively promotes evil against people of other races", maybe not. But racism is more than that.

@wingsofwrath
Obviously, the second-from-last paragraph would be most reasonable approach, having an introductory piece that explains that despite being a homogeneous nation Hungarians still find issues of racism relevant in current times and as such Porgy and Bess, seen in wider prospect, not only lost nothing from its relevancy, but gained new meanings and is a worthy piece to present, especially to homogenous public, which might not experience racism related crap on everyday basis. To say opera is a good medium to convey emotions is a damn understatement. Yet, common sense is so rare these days...

But lets not mix what's anti-immigration is all about in Eastern/Central Europe. It sounds like we close our borders and minds to plights of refugees who wants to find home there, but it's not like that. We are against forced settlement of people who do not want to be settled here! Few millions of Middleeasterners arrived (illegally) into EU and now EU wants to settle them legally in member states more or less proportionately but it's the immigrants who are against that first! They couldn't care less about ex-communist-bloc member states who can't offer as high comfort of life, measured in social care paid and as far as current forced settlement attempts show, they hightail it to Germany / Austria / Scandinavia the moment their friends settled there gets any access to a car. It's usually a matter of week or two for them to dissappear without trace, presumably returning to a status of illegal immigrant in some Western State. What's a point of settlement program that results in a third or a half participants returning to illegal immigrancy as soon as they are able to? How can a reasonable government not be opposed to it?

It's not hard to comprehend that Muslim immigrants want to live in Muslim-rich area, or at least a diverse one, one that's multiracial and handles accompanying problems with years of practice. And it's not ex-commie states fault they are unnaturally homogenous. We weren't until 2WW. Soviets in 1945 redraw borders on their whim and forcibly relocated everyone who was out of place in this new order. Nobody knows how many thousands perished because those relocations usual Soviet standard of care: bare freight wagons. And under next 45 years of communist rule we rebuilt after war as well as we could, but not up to Western standards. So don't blame Hungary, a Maine-sized country with a Michigan-sized population, for being poor, reasonable, homogenous, unwanted as a home by Muslim immigrants and last but least, against the forced settlement, because we know firsthand how badly it sucks.

But as for Romani case, and in general, yes, we tend to be racist. It's just pure xenophobia, not a racism per se. It's not about color or religion, it's more about the fact they are aliens, or just different, and skin color and faith is just a cherry on this rotten cake. Xenophobia is a natural thing for homogenous population, natural as in "default state it drifts to", not a commendable thing of course. We are afraid of new things, different things from the ones we know, that's how our species survived. We can easily overcome it by learning, knowing, experiencing, getting to like. And getting liked by locals is what sometimes happen to immigrants... from some locals. Let's not pretend any population is universally decent. Any human sample, sampled from any community under any criterion is bound to be a mixed bag.

@wingsofwrath Roma culture does not equal African American culture. Your idea of transferring one onto another may be offensive for both of them

@Timoleth Most black people in Europe are not decedents of slaves. Slaves were sent to the colonies, you couldn't get away with slavery in Europe, there would have been an uprising from the servile and working class being put out of a job. Certainly in the UK the vast majority of the non-white population immigrated during the mid 20th century as part of a program to encourage young workers from Commonwealth countries to come and help boost the economy after WW2.

@Timoleth Absolutely. I'm entirely willing to believe Hungarians aren't racist against blacks. Although the thing about whether it's the "first choice" of immigrants is a bit rich since they're keeping 'em all out, black or otherwise. Probably the only country to accept fewer Muslim refugees in recent years would be Israel.
Now if they were putting on an opera that was supposed to have Roma characters, then stuff might hit fans.

@Timoleth same thing here. I remember last year during World Cup Russia's team was fiercely criticized by media for not having any black players. I wonder where they would get them, since African population in Russia mostly consists of students or their descendants, which is a tiny percentage if compared to the amount of immigrants or refugees in Western Europe.
P.S. The team now got an African-Brazilian Ari to play with them.

Sir Patrick Stewart once produced a race-reversed version of Othello, where he played the title role and the rest of the cast was African. (Instead of the opposite where Othello is a Moor and the rest of the cast is European.) I would have loved to see that production.

@Tarmaque i think we saw that once! We also saw one with Benedict Cumberbatch as Iago lol

The list of traditionally white roles that have been played by black actors in movies and on stage in the last couple decades is a mile long.... it's only fair that the reverse be acceptable as well. Heck, the cast of Hamilton is primarily people of color despite the fact the real life people they're portraying were all white....

@Nihil Alright, name ten

@Wetmang I'm not very familiar with the play, but I at least heard of Washington, Jefferson, Lafayette, some girl named Angelica who is the only black one in an all-white family (something like that has only happened once, in Africa, and she wasn't that dark, but still had a lot of contrast with her boer family), and looking around I found Madison, Burr and Mulligan, just from the original cast (some of them were played by the same actors, but whatever).
Looking around even more, I've also seen that the very role of Alexander Hamilton was played by at least two different black actors (the original was white, though).

That's eight, and I'm not quite knowledgeable, so fans of it will probable name even more (and you need just two to get to your ten).

@Kemm Well maybe it is a problem that such an important story has no black character when black people always were such an important part of the US... But what can you do about it, I wonder... :s

@Isdaril Well, I won't deny that black People were important in forming America, few of the most dominant and outspoken character were black. To be honest, most blacks that came to America early on were brought as slaves, and even if they got out of slavery, few of them could achieve the status needed to be mentioned like the other characters are. None of this is meant as racism in any way.

@Isdaril I don't really have an issue with that, unless it goes against the suspension of disbelief, like a black girl being a biological member of a completely white family (unless she wasn't that dark) or a person accused in-story of being a "white slaver landowner" being possibly the one with the darkest skin (and with a typical african-american hairdo).

And, well, I suppose that part of the issue is that it's not a "story" it's "history" (fictionalized history, but real characters) and that there will be more people that associate those names with the play than with the history books, which will probably bring a lot of confusion.

Also, most black people fought the war in the british side (the national anthem makes reference to the blood of black enemies and the Constitution was soon amended over the main text to make black people "not equal"), so that side was really not the best for black people to thrive. Not to mention that not only they were about the last country to get rid of african slavery, they were the second to last country to embrace equal rights (and the only country that did it after them has surpassed them leaps and bounds in technical implementation and social regarding).

@Wetmang Well, Hamilton prolly has ten all on it's own, but I can come up with others: Mary Jane Watson (Spiderman), Annie (Annie), Hermione Granger (Harry Potter), Robert Neville (I Am Legend), Nick Fury (The Avengers), Red (The Shawshank Redemption), Heimdall (Thor), Bennett Marco (The Manchurian Candidate), Johnny Storm (Fantastic Four), The Kingpin (Daredevil), Hercules (Hercules), Catwoman (Catwoman), Jim West (Wild Wild West), Henry VI (Henry VI), Pete Ross (Smallville)

All but two of those was a character that was well established as white played by a black actor in a widely released movie (Henry IV was a stage production by the Royal Shakespeare Company and Smallville was a VERY popular TV show in the USA). I'm pretty sure I could at least double that with some research, but I've already gone five over what you requested.

@Nihil I wouldn't depict most of those roles as "traditional", except for maybe Henry VI and Hercules but wait... Hermione Granger ? I remember Emma Watson to be pretty pale... :o

@Isdaril You got me, I missed a stage production.... on the Broadway production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Hermione was played by Noma Dumezweni

All the rest were characters that were established as white in the books they were adapted from (Red is described as white and Irish in the book), decades worth of comic books, television series that preceded them, and/or previous versions of the film mentioned.... hence my use of the phrase "traditionally white roles". If you're arguing time-frames, all but maybe two or three of the characters I mentioned have been around 50 years or more in various media.

Regardless, my original point stands: what's good for the goose is good for the gander

@Nihil When things are as good for the gander as they are for the goose, I'll see your point. But white actors have not suffered for these changes. There is no shortage of roles for them, and no shortage of depictions of white people in media for white audiences to relate to. When the default main character in every movie we see, the default romantic interest, the Everyman, is automatically assumed to be a person of color, I'll see your point, but for now, that really isn't the case, is it? I mean, look at 300. The whole cast was English, Scottish, Australian... No one batted an eye. Same with Troy. Were there any Greeks cast at all? Almost every biblical movie ever stars a white cast. Look in the backgrounds of movies that take place in very diverse cities like London or New York City and you'll notice that even the extras are all white. And keep in mind that in your examples, the vast majority of these characters that have been changed were mostly minor and/or supporting characters. The hero is still white. Thor is still white. Superman is still white. Andy Dufresne is still white. Harry Potter is still white. Mr. Fantastic and Daredevil are still white. Unless the star is a big box office draw (Will Smith or Denzel Washington), the hero is always white. Even in movies like Crazy Rich Asian, the romantic lead was portrayed by a guy who's half-white (full Asian in the book). In Hidden Figures, the movie about the efforts of black female mathematicians in NASA, they CREATED a fictional white man (Kevin Costner) to defend them. So it's really not the same situation at all.

And incidentally, Mary Jane Watson has yet to appear in the new Spiderman series. You're thinking of Michelle, who is not Mary Jane. The new Annie was a retelling (like The Wiz, or Patrick Stewart's revision of Othello in which he was the sole white actor and everyone else was black). Nick Fury Jr is black in the comics and the son of Nick Fury Sr, the white man who led the Howling Commandos in the 40s and 50s. Nick Fury Sr is still white in the comics. And the Catwoman movie was based on a character named Patience Phillips (not Selina Kyle) who took up the mantle of Catwoman. Not that it matters. That movie was a train wreck. If you haven't watched it, don't bother.

@Nihil
Will note that MCU Nick Fury was specifically based off of Ultimate Universe Nick Fury, who was already Black (and designed specifically to look like Samuel L. Jackson (fun fact that comic series also designed Tony Stark to look like Johnny Depp)) The original comic character was white, but after the black version was established in the Ultimate Universe, and the MCU, since then pretty much all of the comics feature a Black Nick Fury, establishing him as the son of the original Nick Fury who has since taken over his father's position as head of SHIELD. (His legal name is Nicholas Joseph Fury Jr.)

@Nihil So we got 4 major movies, Nick Fury doesn't count because they had changed him to his black and bald version way before the movies came out, same with Heimdall and Kingpin. The rest are Broadway which has always been loose with racial casting and one TV show.
Now lets do white actors in history playing other races.
Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl, Ben Affleck as Antonio J. Mendez, Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson, Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi, Juliette Binoche as Maria Segovia, The main cast of the The Last Airbender, Laurence Olivier as Othello, Natalie Wood as Maria, Johnny Depp as Tonto, Katharine Hepburn as Jade, Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, Jim Sturgess as Jeffrey Ma, Jennifer Connelly as Alicia Nash, John Wayne as Genghis Khan, Russell Crowe as Noah, Christian Bale as Moses, Jake Gyllenhaal as the Prince of Persia, Fisher Stevens as Ben Jabituya, Meryl Streep as Clara del Valle Trueba, Marlon Brando as Sakini, Yul Brynner as The King of Siam, Paul Muni and Luise Rainer as Chinese farmers, Liam Neeson as Ra’s Al Ghul, Boris Karloff as Dr. Fu Manchu, Carey Mulligan as Irene, Scarlett Johansson as Major Makoto Kusanagi, Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Horus, Cameron Crowe as Allison Ng, Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan Noonien Singh, Justin Chatwin as Goku, Mena Suvari as Brandi Boski...
You know I can honestly list these in the hundreds, and that's just in movies, and that's not even listing the characters that could have easily been played by other races in movies but they went to white actors because people would have asked, "Why did they need to be (blank)? It serves no purpose to the story." Which implies that there was ever a reason for most characters to be white besides societal pressure. And this still goes on today every single year for multiple roles. So until the default of a character being white changes and all major roles are open to other races besides white, because white actors have had 80 years of film being default cast, then change as many "white," roles as possible. There is a lot of catching up to do.

@Nihil Yeeesss . . . Hamilton kind of has its own problems on that front. I mean, portraying a white, aggressively upwardly mobile slave-owner whose major political objective was power for big landowners, as an abolitionist hipster of colour. Some race-washing going on there. I can see why it's popular in the US though.

@Nihil the list of Black or Chinese or Japanese, or Romani, or Indian, etc. roles that have been played by white actors with a smear of dark panstick, a wig and a bad accent over the years is a thousand miles long. Roles that were written and developed for actors of colour that ended up being played by a white man who couldn't even act.

and we won't even go into roles like Shylock and Othello

@Wolfette Either a thing is acceptable for all or it's acceptable for none. Most claim they want a level playing field, but few actually mean it.

@Nihil White people have pretty much all the economic, social, and political power in the western world. The playing field is NOT level, but giving PoC more screen time and representation than the paltry amount Hollywood doles out is one way of beginning to level the field.

#9813907
@Nihil

Denzel Washington as Don Pedro (an Aragonese prince) really knocked it out of the park.
https://youtu.be/PJ7W-dz1OvE?t=30

@Nihil The reverse WAS acceptable. It was called 'black face'

@Nihil Historically it's actually been the other way round. The trend these last few years of having all PoC casts when some of the characters are white is an effort to reverse that trend.

I'm reminded of an interview when GRRM talked about people calling the Game of Thrones TV show low-key racist because all the slaves were minorities. He pointed out that in the books there's no racial distinction between the slaves and their masters, but on the show they were constrained by their budget and logistics. When you put out an open call for a thousand extras in Morocco, the people who show up are all going to be Moraccan.

Wait... You are talking about slavers bay ? Are all the masters white people in slaver's bay ? I guess I should re watch that part... I always assumed that slavers bay was a warm (sunny) place so people having darker skin was actually a realistic approach :o

@Fakjbf95 Morocco? Isn't that, like, a half hour ferry ride from Spain? Couldn't they have put out the call there too?

@PurpleLibraryGuy Most, if not all, TV and film productions are contractually obliged to hire as much local talent as possible, except for key positions. There's usually a lot of tax credits and subsidies involved as well. Its why the unnamed wildlings are all giant icelanders and Kings Landing plebs (and more than a few secondary characters) all croats.

@PurpleLibraryGuy Not to mention that both places were not that close to spain (they are not far from marrakech).... Also, the people living in south Spain (Andalusia) are dark-skinned too. The place was a muslim sultanate (Al-Andalus) for quite a long time before the reconquista so people here share features with people living in Morocco or Algeria. What I mean is we wouldn't necessarily make the difference between Morrocans and Andalusians (I would even argue that Morrocans are "white" people that just happen to live in a place with a lot of sun).

*Bee movie intensifies*

Exactly what I was thinking :P

I am Hungarian and this is 100% true! (Don't know if we should laugh or not thoug...)

The thing is the following:
the director of the opera house said that they got a contract at first which didn't contain the all-black rule so they made the opera. However, when the owners heard this (after a couple of performance) they started to protest to stop playing the opera. They stopped it for a while, but the directorate realised that people really-really loved Porgy&Bess so they decided to continue as they can and wrote the statements that singers identify with the black culture. I read statements from singers who said that as performers they have to identify with a lot of cultures and black culture is not an exception.

To be fair, there are no black opera singers in Hungary (also not too much black people at all) so it is really hard in Eastern European countries to keep this strict rule. So yeah, interesting story...

Looking at some of the comments other white people have put here makes me ashamed to be one of them.

Seriously: There's a big difference between a group of black people saying "We don't get a lot of representation in this art form so could we please have this one thing for us?" and white people going "Oh look, another thing we like! Let's just appropriate it and replace all other cultures with our own or reduce them to stereotypes."

@OBrien I am curious, I dont dissagree with you, but do you have a good example to show to? Just wanna know if you are talking about a specific timeline, somethign recently or just generally? Peace

@OBrien Except they aren't saying "can we please...", it's racist whichever way it cuts.

Besides there aren't always enough actors of one race or another in a company or even country to perform that way throughout the world. What is better in those cases? Perform it with what you have available or not?

@hackerjack Not.

@OBrien Well there is the under-representation of black people in plays, movies, etc. for sure, but that isn't the real problem.

The problem is that the play is specifically about black people in Charleston and their experiences in that society and culture, and those experiences are tied to race. Change their race, and it changes their situation, and thus doesn't properly present what was actually the situation.

@Stealthmarmot well we asians get even LESS representation than blacks in western media. but we dont really care cause we are more worried about things that actually effect our personal livelihoods (like race based affirmitive action messing us up) than we are about seeing ourselves on tv lol.

Also i dont know if you realized it but African media would show mostly blacks and Asia media would show mostly asians. The only reason why it feels like theres a lack of representation of black people(or other races in general) in the media to you is because the only media you watch is western media. You dont try to watch media from other countries

@OBrien im not white but lol you are very very self hating.

@OBrien problem is that everybody has "appropiated" stuff from other cultures. And other than the USA, people generally like that aliens appreciate their culture so much that they copy or adapt elements of it.

'Ya like jazz?

@Squibbleblobbler11 *Cowboy Bebop theme plays"

@LuxVertas maybe the best soundtrack I have. (Except for Star Wars and the Queen soundtrack for Flash Gordon and Highlander, it's the only soundtrack I have.)

Yeah, I'm not even going to touch this one. Looking forward to the next ^^_^^

The chances you find black opera singers in Hungary is close to zero. Most likely they did what they could. The other option would be not putting it on stage at all.