Posted on 12/05/2017 3:09:57 PM PST by artichokegrower
TheatreWorks’ “Around the World in 80 Days” could have been such perfect holiday fare. Its action is zany, its aesthetics whimsically theatrical, its myriad characters fruitful showcases for some of Bay Area theater’s foremost clowns.
Yet there remains a niggling problem with the show, which is only its central conceit, its raison d’etre. The taciturn but eccentric Phileas Fogg (Jason Kuykendall), a rich white English guy, hopscotches across the globe on a wager, plying his country’s colonialism at every stop.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Please tell me this is satire. This reviewer can't be for real. Jules Verne has to be rolling in his grave.
The woman Phileas Fogg rescued from suttee was Shirley MacLaine...who is white. So what’s the problem?
“Niggling?” Sounds racist. Fire this woman forthwith!
This writer wrote “niggling”.
When will he be fired?
Remember a case a number of years ago, where someone said “niggardly”, and was fired from a job?
If we have the same standards at work, this writer needs to go.
To the left - everything has to be politically correct.
They are as bad as the Taliban when it comes to destroying a nation’s culture so it does not offend them (and them alone).
Better she should die to preserve Indian culture? Such a maroon this writer is.
Don’t we have to interpret any literature, movies, plays etc within the context of the times depicted, and the times of when something was produced?
Britain had colonies all over the world. Historic facts can be stubborn. If the story takes place during such times, then it will show evidence of same.
Also, what about ethnic depictions? I recall a movie, I forget the name of, which had Mickey Rooney playing the part of someone Japanese or Chinese as I recall? Such movie could not he made today. But can’t we appreciate such a movie for what it was, and understand the times in which it was produced?
This article is mild compared to what hair-on-fire SF writer Mark Morford would do. TTYTT, I miss his droolings.
That's racist.
How times change.
I have some bad news for the author, though. Sati wasn't stopped by legions of shrieking, sign-waving suffragettes. And the people who did stop it don't need to be treated with such contempt.
Regarding sati, I always liked the approach of Charles James Napier, who was commander of the British army in India. When told that sati was the local custom, and that he couldn’t upset that, he said:
“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
Wish someone would throw Lily Janiak onto the funeral pyre.
It seems to be a requirement of being a liberal to excise any sense of humor or playfulness. Oh, and historical anachronism is a must - the past must always be judged by the standards of the present.
Tom Sawyer has actually been banned by a lot of schools, when it was required reading for me in grade school. Apparently it wasn’t written politically correct enough for today’s students. They’re not being taught facts, they’re being submission to popular values.
Did I mention that was published in 1913???
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