The most disturbing thing about the New York Shakespeare in The Park depiction of Trump as Julius Caesar (complete with assassination) is how unoriginal the whole thing is.
Really, there’s nothing new about it.
“The Hunger Games” called and want their dystopian sense of doom and gloom back.
An American President equated with Caesar? That’s been done. Shakespeare repackaged as suit and tie drama? Pre-teen girls eat that stuff up. Political assassination treated as “art”? Yawn.
For these so-called artists to peddle this nonsense as something edgy, challenging, or controversial is ridiculous. Depicting Trump as Caesar smack dab in the Ides of March is about as edgy as a Kardashian. If there is anything challenging or controversial, it’s that taxpayers were forced to pay for the whole thing,
In effect, the play would have been more accurate if health care was depicted as Caesar being murdered by tax dollars pissed away on the play itself. Or if infrastructure, education, Planned Parenthood, and all the rest had been assassinated by tax dollars flushed down the toilet that passes for art in America these days. To bring things full circle some of those tax dollars could have represented money spent on the several never ending investigations over allegations of Russian hacking during the 2016 election.
Not to mention, the play is racist.
Why did it have to be Shakespeare? Were there no plays from medieval Africa, Asia, or Arabia that could have been repackaged as anti-Trump drama? Shakespeare was white. He was white back when white people were into slavery and conquest of Africa. Isn’t the left – and presumably the leftists participating in the play – all about old, dead, white dudes being evil and people of color being awesome?
Play organizers should have used some ancient Islamic play or a drama once performed before the Oba of Benin, but instead they opted for cultural appropriation. In our era of resegregation – a time in which leading left-wing newspapers like the LA Times run articles complaining about white people moving into View Park – it’s apparently inappropriate to use art from different ethnic origins than your own. Thespians of color appropriated Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when instead they should have stayed within their own ethnic lanes. Is that harsh? I’m merely applying the left’s own standard.
I suspect in time we’ll see a Star Wars remake featuring Trump as Vader. Or a Broadway production of “The Three Little Pigs” with an orange furred wolf that wears a suit and tie.
I thought art was supposed to make people think. That is was supposed to inspire dialogue and present challenging ideas to the public.
Take a pass on Shakespeare in The Park and binge watch Hunger Games instead. You’ll get more out of it.
Screen Shot: http://www.onenewspage.com/video/20170612/7748927/Sponsors-Drop-Support-For-Central-Park-Play-Due.htm
