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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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So there's a musical on Broadway, called Suffs, about the Women's Suffrage Movement in the US in the 1910s. It won a couple Tony's last month (https://playbill.com/article/shaina-taub-wins-best-original-score-at-2024-tony-awards-for-suffs). Alas, even the stage is not immune from impromptu protests, as a far-left group of demonstrators interrupted the show and unfurled a banner for approximately 20 seconds before being escorted out. (https://apnews.com/article/suffs-disrupted-broadway-whitewash-05c6df87a220c253b66807f312948a80).

The group's website (https://www.cancelsuffs.com) alleges that the show is whitewashing the history of the suffrage movement. They point out two historical main characters Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt excluded Black women from the NWP and believe white supremacy would be strengthened by the movement. They also bring up Woodrow Wilson's efforts to segregate the federal government and his screening of The Birth of a Nation while the suffrage movement was still ongoing. They also suggest that the 19th Amendment opened the door to women-centered factions of the KKK.

Has anyone here seen the musical? What are everyone's thoughts about the depiction of controversial historical events as entertainment? Is there any merit to this far-left group's position?

My position is that women should not have been given suffrage

No clue about this particular musical, and I hate the idea of a group of random protestors interrupting an artistic show. But, I kind of get it- the early suffragettes would be a complicated group for modern leftists:

  • feminism! Women fighting for their rights! Yay!
  • But it's entirely white women. Mostly upper class. Probably they said some things that would be considered racist by today's standards. boo.
  • Also they were highly religious. As I understand it, voting rights was almost a secondary issue for them- what they really wanted was prohibition. Bring their husbands home from the pub and send them to church!
  • very harsh on any sort of open display of sexuality. No doubt they'd be super against homesexuality, if they even mentioned it at all.

All in all a weird, interesting group that doesn't fit neatly into the modern political spectrum.

What part of this wouldn't fit in well with modern AWFLs?

But, I kind of get it- the early suffragettes would be a complicated group for modern leftists:

feminism! Women fighting for their rights! Yay! But it's entirely white women. Mostly upper class. Probably they said some things that would be considered racist by today's standards. boo. Also they were highly religious. As I understand it, voting rights was almost a secondary issue for them- what they really wanted was prohibition. Bring their husbands home from the pub and send them to church! very harsh on any sort of open display of sexuality. No doubt they'd be super against homesexuality, if they even mentioned it at all.

All of this is why I question the appropriateness of telling the story in the format of a musical.

Our daughters' daughters will adore us / and they'll sing in grateful chorus / "well done, sister suffragettes!"

But not for too many generations after that, alas.

I'm reminded of the statue of Ulysses S. Grant being pulled down and can only conclude that, if social progress continues to operate as it has, eventually the progressives of today will be swept into the same historical bin as their adversaries. Give it a century and "CancelSuffs" themselves will have their moral improvement over the suffragettes judged insignificant.

One might ask whether one could or should be okay with that state of affairs, but I think even if one is, it's going too fast. Being so quick to tear down societal heroes (I do think a century for this is quick) is to live in a perpetual revolutionary terror, where instead of building a new and stable and hopefully improved status quo, the heroes of yesterday get guillotined tomorrow. Try to shorten the moral arc of history too much by bending it too sharply and it may spiral out of control.

Give it a century and "CancelSuffs" themselves will have their moral improvement over the suffragettes judged insignificant.

You don't need to wait a century, we're doing it live. Canceling the Cancellers is half of Cancel Culture's schtick - there's a top level post on Neil Gaiman getting MeTooed in this very thread, for example.

Try to shorten the moral arc of history too much by bending it too sharply and it may spiral out of control.

A few years ago I would have pushed back, as the capricious nature of the mob somehow felt like it was an advantage for the movement, but these days it does feel like they're running out of mana, so here's hoping for the spiraling out of control.

I expect them to yield to this pressure eventually. No progressive, left-wing, or liberal movement seem to really have any leverage they ever seem willing or able to use against attacks from the left. I don't see how they could fight back without painting a big target on their back.

I'll take that bet. I think they mostly ignore it and the musical continues its planned run without modification.

I think it depends. The fatal weakness is any mention of "inclusivity" as a core value; once you do that you might as well roll over and present your belly because there is no way to defend yourself against someone with greater oppression points.

I imagine the motive here is to further deny the white public from admiring their supremacy in any way. It is a reminder that you can’t have white heroes or stories, not in the foundation of the Republic (what we saw a few years ago) and not even in the misguided women’s rights movement, and certainly not in pseudohistorical entertainment (Bridgerton, Hamilton). You have to let them know that every white achievement is stained in blood and evilness. So to have a musical — the culture of the wealthy liberal base — extol heroic white women is a faux pas that must be balanced by blackening their reputation. Expect an update story and cast in future productions. At least to me this genuinely has the most predictive power for which things are criticized and altered. It’s not actually about purity spiraling, as we know (for instance) that MLK was a pro-rape plagiarist [2]. There won’t seriously be change to the connotation of MLK because of this.

It's egodeath for a lot of minority interests to have to essentially acknowledge that the majority of equal rights concessions came from Western Whites essentially opting to concede them

Now explain why progressive whites - who actually possess the bulk of the power in situations like this - indulge it.

This is "indulgence" indeed. Land acknowledgements without giving the land back. Bitterly complaining about historical whites without giving up their good job for a non-white person.

These people pay no personal cost for indulging in this. They gain social cachet if anything.

Bitterly complaining about historical whites without giving up their good job for a non-white person.

Yes, this is the standard explanation but I don't think it can fully explain the situation.

White people do lose out on positions. Most progressive whites aren't at the top of the stack, able to ride out issues like AA and so on until retirement. Even those that are can suffer from cancellation when they violate a new rule.

When the Leopard does eat their face they tend to pivot, just minimal situational awareness until that moment actually occurs.

Because we don't care about shit like this. There are yacht parties to go to.

I think a little bit of the MLK discussion stems from a desire to use something like the legal "fruit of the poisoned tree" idea, since many of the bad things we know about him were, though in many (not all) cases true, were also the result of a racist and politically-motivated smear campaign by Hoover's FBI. I'm a little sympathetic. The other angle, of course, is that hero worship never went away, it just changed targets for a little bit.

The balance of how much as a society we "allow" hero worship is still a major point of debate. Personally, I feel we've swung too far on the hate and criticize side of things, to the point where some of my friends are saying things like we shouldn't teach patriotism too much in schools because it could be dangerous or is dishonest or something. I think that since it's generally harder to build up than it is to tear down, maybe we should lean a little bit towards letting hero worship alone. Or even, in the case of public schooling, both deliberately start with positive indoctrination, and then deliberately add some critical nuance a little later. Neither of those two sequential steps are optional, it doesn't work without both. For adults where it might be "too late", the question is more like what's worse, cynicism or idolatry? I actually don't know. I think we could use some passionately wrong people in today's society more than we need cynical nothings.

In this case, given how little the general public knows about the suffrage movement, I think it's probably completely and totally fine to go all-in on a production even if it lacks context or is exclusionary or whatever it is. The lower the knowledge, the more tolerance for simplistic narratives, that's kind of just how we learn, for better or worse.

IMO heroes are not quite the issue. The Left has heroes, they are just continually written into and out of the political story. Their heroes come and go like musical productions. Obama was a hero, now he is not, and AOC is a hero for those who “subscribe” to her but one day she won’t be. What the Left doesn’t have is any permanent hero, definitely not any old white ones from the white tradition. I mean… Marx? I don’t know. The parasocial relationship that young left Americans have with Hasanabi is pretty indicative of “hero worship” — watching for hours, imitating, buying merch, as an example.

My apolitical opinion on hero worship is that it’s an essential biological feature of humans that will never go away, because it’s shared social imitation. Ideally we should appreciate the specific virtues of specific heroes and not care about about the rest, and possess a large repertoire of heroes to pull from. For a culture, it’s optimal to have a number of heroes as points of reference in conversation and as stories for the young and as “self-checkups” for our own conduct — that’s kind of what the medieval virtues were all about.

Hmm, that's really interesting. So you think having a common set of hero cultural touchstones is nice, and that we should attempt to deliberately cultivate a set of heroes with some very well-exemplified virtues? Does that mean, for example, that you'd like to see MLK there, but only if he were accompanied by a good and (diverse?) set of other people in a larger pantheon, rather than getting special and rare privilege?

Absolutely + absolutely; the third question is bit complicated for me — if he did demonstrate a virtue closest to perfection (there’s no one better at universally important skill x) and if I subscribed to the idea of a “general American” pantheon then yes. IMO this is the best use of our instinct to like heroes. Flaws in heroes can then help us to remember the inevitable flaws of all humans (our own Achilles’ Heel). If I could extend the ideal further for no reason, the “special and rare” virtue of the pantheon is social humility, the great untold heroic quality behind every civilization. People love this quality, eg the internet loved when the owner of Arizona Iced Tea talked about purposefully keeping the price a dollar. Now maybe the owner lacks the virtue of prudence but that’s another digression.

So to have a musical — the culture of the wealthy liberal base — extol heroic white women is a faux pas that must be balanced by blackening their reputation.

I think there is some merit to the opinion that a Broadway musical is not an appropriate venue to tell such controversial stories. It's am entertainment product, first and foremost. It exists to make money before anything else. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to put such a show on as a truly non-fictional retelling at a museum or non-profit cultural center, where they have staff that can evaluate the script, characters and cast, sets, music etc. to be period correct and sensitive to context.

Women's suffrage is controversial?

Controversial in the sense that its history not exactly cut and dry. It's certainly not controversial that all women should have the right to vote.

I guess that depends on the group of people your asking. On this website? Probably a bit. Within the general public not at all.

Normies will say stuff about race before they express opposition to women's suffrage.

I would agree. I would also assert that while a lot of normies are more racially aware than is PC to admit I don't think there is any hidden opposition to women's suffrage in a significant amount of people. (IE I can't imagine <5% of the population seriously think women shouldn't vote) I could be wrong about that but I don't think that I am.

You also have to factor in people with alternative ideas to universal suffrage that aren't about taking the vote away from women but would effectively lead to that for the vast majority of women in practice. I.e. those who support the idea of limiting the franchise to those who are net tax contributors.

Male normie republicans will, after a drink or two, admit they think women's suffrage was a failed experiment to a friend, in private, about half the time. So maybe low double digit percentage of the population at the high end? Definitely a much smaller one than will openly advise a young woman not to date black men because they'll beat her, or who don't trust homosexuals near children, or who think the government did 9/11 to take our rights away.

Male normie republicans will, after a drink or two, admit they think women's suffrage was a failed experiment to a friend, in private, about half the time.

Maybe this is a regional thing? I am from the northeast and know more than a few people who have and share with me some, let's call them, charged opinions and even they don't think that. In my experience "women shouldn't have rights" is an opinion that exists solely in the reactionary corners of the internet vs IRL.

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I'm taking a history of modern (well, post-1600) theater class right now, so come back in a week or two and I'll have something more specific to say about this! My initial impression of what we've talked about so far in class is that telling controversial stories was in fact a central component of at least one modern theater movement, but overall, the history of Broadway seems to be more rooted in American melodrama more than anything else, of which your opinion is a fairly typical representation. So that's a fair take. But more broadly, "making money" and "entertainment first" are not general theatrical principles, and they tend to be more American-specific than universal. What form and content these kind of performing arts have taken and included is usually more closely linked with what society is going through.

For example, there's this fascinating history in England of a few successive movements and genres that reflect the anxieties, restrictions, and feelings of the era. You had Puritans take over for a while who absolutely and passionately loathed theater, and then when the monarchy was kinda-sorta restored and theater was legal again, you had a few interesting things happen. One, you had people who were tired of the super-strict puritan stuff as well as civil war, they wanted happy endings. So several Shakespeare plays were rewritten to have happy endings (Lear survives, Romeo and Juliet are together, etc). They also let women start to act, and "restoration comedy" ended up getting quite raunchy. Then, Enlightenment ideas start to become all the rage. You had this result in some "comedy of manners" and related genres, where plays started reflecting things like "marriage is a social construct/contract". Also, you get "sentimental comedy" as a sort of backlash against the excesses of restoration comedy, where they really weren't very funny but were often set up as a means of preaching moral lessons to people to make better choices. But wait! Enlightenment ideas started to lead to some crazy revolutions and unrest, paired with the beginnings of industrialization and urbanization. Cue Romanticism! Now we're back to emotion over intellect, instinct over reason, basically angst about Enlightenment ideas that seemingly made a mess of things. Shakespeare makes another comeback, plots grow more fantastical again, and this dovetails with advancements in the spectacle and technical side of the stage and increasing popularity.

It is only within that context of changing ideas of "why should I watch theater" and "who should watch theater" (which are extensive and beyond the brief overview here) that soon melodrama was born. In fact what would later become musicals first became popular because, bizarrely, in England for a long time only two (and a third in the summer) theater companies were licensed to do theater, and other play performances were illegal. Yet this only applied to spoken text, so if they threw in some songs here and there, it no longer counted as a banned play, but instead something, uh totally different. Yes your honor, totally different. As another side-note, technically an entire field called "dramaturgy" exists and is exactly what you describe where scripts, cast, sets, etc. are evaluated in context! These people are often attached to theater companies directly, though there are also some in academia, etc. How much they are employed or utilized, well this depends. However, they exist already within the theater community, so this idea that "oh that's the nonprofit realm, get away from my entertainment" is not very accurate.

I think there is some merit to the opinion that a Broadway musical is not an appropriate venue to tell such controversial stories.

This is that ship, sailing away at high speed.

To me, that's an exception to the rule. Hamilton has a diverse cast and a unique style of music (and written by a non-caucasian man) that made it extremely marketable.

I don’t quite understand your position here. To summarize, a Broadway musical might not be an appropriate venue for a controversial story, unless the cast and author are non-white, in which case it’s okay because it will make a lot of sales. If the cast and authors are all white, the play should be relegated to a museum, where the story can be told with sensitivity (i.e., told in a way that makes its worst critics happy), regardless of profitability.

You seem to be subtly merging two different criteria (ethical and financial) to judge whether a play is appropriate to perform on Broadway. No one would disagree that an unpopular play shouldn’t be performed on Broadway; the question is whether a financially successful play that upsets leftists should be allowed to be performed. In other words, the question is one of censorship, not popularity.

There's been immense/intense backlash in the decade since, though.

I have no doubt that, like most people in the 19 teens, the suffragettes were racist and often couched their goals in those terms. This doesn’t have much to do with their final goals; in fact I think it rather unfair to judge people who died the better part of a century ago by modern progressive standards, even to the extent(very limited) that modern progressive standards are a good thing to judge anyone by.

With all that being said, my comment is ‘I love when they fight each other’.

Well it sounds like to me, these protestors simply want the appropriate context applied to the show. Was it right to interrupt the show? I'd say no. But to write off their concerns as meritless, I'm not so sure of that.

"The group of hecklers coordinating to veto your speech are merely providing context."

Any demand that a venue provide “appropriate context” is a hostile one. Who is to decide which context is important to include, if not the show’s creators? Would anyone find it reasonable if far-right protestors demanded that any show that denigrated Hitler must include the context that he was a vegetarian, animal-loving artist who worked tirelessly and apparently quite unselfishly in service for his country? Of course not. So why should anyone take these far-left protestors’ similar demands seriously?

"Is there any merit in this far-left group's position" seems like an intentionally loaded question.

Cynically, I note that it used to be conservatives who were eager to play up the racism and eugenicism of early feminists. Now leftists will try to "cancel" anything that doesn't center queer BIPOC or imply that white people might once upon a time have done an admirable thing or two. Even Lin Manuel-Miranda's Hamilton, which recast all the Founding Fathers as black, has not escaped such criticisms.

So sure, what they say about Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt is (I assume) true. Does that mean a musical shouldn't be made about them, or a musical shouldn't be made that makes protagonists out of them instead of dragging them for their white supremacy?

Nowadays, I don't think you could make a movie or musical about George Washington or Thomas Jefferson at all that didn't offer at least some criticism of their status as slaveowners. Even Abraham Lincoln isn't immune - he did, after all, say:

I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermingling with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior. I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Of course there is some historical context to that quote, and evidence that he was moving towards a more egalitarian position when he was assassinated, but as much as I struggle to sympathize with the "cancel suffs" group's argument that history should be presented in full (even given the limits of a musical which can't be expected to cover literally every relevant detail), the problem is that that really isn't their argument. I do not think they are, in good faith, complaining about historical whitewashing and agitating for a more complete and accurate historical presentation. For the same reason I don't credit Holocaust deniers with actually caring about truth and historical accuracy even if they might sometimes have a point about specific historical details. The agenda is something else entirely (in the case of "cancel suffs," I strongly suspect that it's some combination of "How dare a musical about white women win a bunch of awards?" and some theater in-group fighting) and the claims of caring about factual history are a mask.

The agenda is something else entirely (in the case of "cancel suffs," I strongly suspect that it's some combination of "How dare a musical about white women win a bunch of awards?" and some theater in-group fighting) and the claims of caring about factual history are a mask.

My personal read for a lot of these cancellation attacks is that the ultimate motive is freeing up a seat at the table for them or their friends. The protestor is here informing the culprits about their moral failings, which puts them in the position of having superior knowledge and adherence to left wing priorities. Obviously the people being protested have to go, and conveniently enough there are some people right here who know what they did wrong, and can recommend a replacement who won't be so problematic.

Is there any merit to this far-left group's position?

This is challengingly broad. Let's hypothetically grant that they're correct on the historical proposition that women's suffrage was enmeshed somehow with white supremacy, and also grant that white supremacy was necessarily a bad thing.

Then we're left with an interesting question whose shape crops up everywhere - "this good thing is all tangled up with a bad thing. Can we still endorse or celebrate the good thing?"

To which the answer is, in real life, normally "it depends on the balance of good things to bad things". But objects of thought and discussion in daily practical life are kind of naturally bounded in extent - if we're assessing whether a day at the park was a good thing, we're likely only to assess the day in question, and won't trace back the park-day's genesis to several years beforehand.

But in academia or serious thinking, we're unbounded. A thoroughly partisan advocate of American indigenous peoples can rue the Mongols' failure to do to Europe what they did to Baghdad as A Bad Thing - since a powerful Europe was able to come and wipe out indigenous peoples in the Americas a short time later. For such a partisan, the Roman empire is probably on net a dreadful thing.

"Is there any merit to this far-left group's position" then hinges on whether you think the project of de-Europeanising and specifically de-Anglicising the US is a good or bad thing.

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