".... of the community we wanted so much to represent with pride and joy. In trying to paint a mosaic of this community, we fell short. I’m truly sorry. I’m learning from the feedback, I thank you for raising it, and I’m listening.”
Tweets Lin-Manuel Miranda, quoted in "Lin-Manuel Miranda Addresses Lack of Afro-Latino Representation in ‘In the Heights’: ‘We Fell Short’" (Variety).
Here's the criticism that caused him to go straight to apology mode:
DAMN DAMN DAMN THIS IS PAINFUL pic.twitter.com/A4TOwYwHlb
— numa perrier (@missnuma) June 13, 2021
By the way, that's an interesting use of the word "extractive" — "without sufficient dark-skinned Afro-Latino representation, the work feels extractive." Is that a new usage? The OED has the adjective "extractive," but in the sense of "extractive industries" — like the coal industry, where a resource is extracted.
Miranda does not want to have merely extracted material from the community — Washington Heights in NYC. He wants to represent it. To extract is to treat the people like an inanimate resource — like, say, coal. He wants to treat people like people, not things. But you may question whether matching the colors of the actors to the colors of the people in the neighborhood is the way to treat people like people.
And yet I think you can tell that what was done was to pick extraordinarily beautiful people, so there is some sense that this is a statement about who is most beautiful. Now that I've put it that way, I can see that the people of the neighborhood could also assail him for not showing a representative cross-section of good-, bad-, and middling-looking people.
What is this movie anyway? Is it a celebration of diversity? If so, then the complaints come with the territory. I see the movie has a 96% "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes, so it's slathered in praise. The dissenting viewpoint seems to come from conservatives, e.g., National Review. Let's read that (by Armond White, who is black):
Miranda composed his 2008 show about New York City’s Dominican Republic enclave in Washington Heights as if he was putting its non-white immigrant community on display. It’s the same local-color concept handed down from Porgy and Bess, West Side Story, Zoot Suit, and Do the Right Thing. Miranda shamelessly pilfers all four but goes light on sociological angst....
Whose idea was it to hand Puerto Rican Miranda’s shallow Dominican folktale over to Jon M. Chu, director of Crazy Rich Asians, the most ethnically fake, aggressively woke movie of 2018? In the era when racial groups complain about not being “seen,” Chu depicts the Other as outsiders see them: diversity stereotypes, proud ethnic minions....
And yet, In the Heights’s phony “communal” style suits Miranda’s inauthentic Broadway rap. He owes his breakthrough to Eminem’s white hip-hop “breakthrough” — it’s too fast, nonsensual, and bloodless.... Miranda’s cultural misappropriation in In the Heights is the grotesque product of a mainstream culture that seeks a Latino figure who is acceptable precisely because he is politically and artistically nonthreatening.
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5 comments:
Birches writes:
Crazy Rich Asians was aggressively woke? That sounds a little deranged. I don't think there were white people in the movie, aside from the bride, who seemed to be ethnically mixed. Her race wasn't remarked upon at all. Instead, the movie was like watching Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. It was really enjoyable to watch beautiful people in beautiful places acting wealthy for a couple of hours. Sheer entertainment. Noting his opinion on CRA, I'm guessing he's being a bit of a contrarian on In the Heights.
Carl says: "Yep, Miranda's musical definitely feels extractive to me. Much like Lawrence Olivier's interogation of Dustin Hoffman in The Marathon Man."
LA_Bob writes:
"And yet I think you can tell that what was done was to pick extraordinarily beautiful people, so there is some sense that this is a statement about who is most beautiful. Now that I've put it that way, I can see that the people of the neighborhood could also assail him for not showing a representative cross-section of good-, bad-, and middling-looking people."
Yes.
Decades ago, a young woman who did television commercials on the side told me directors look for certain facial characteristics in an actor: a large head, big eyes, high cheekbones, and a generous mouth. Some years later 60 Minutes profiled the commercials of Joe Sedelmaier (Federal Express, "Where's the Beef", Alaska Airlines, and more). Siskel and Ebert praised Sedelmaier for often hiring actors who looked like regular people.
Of course, commercials are short films, not feature-length productions.
I say, let Lin-Manuel Miranda re-make "In the Heights" with ordinary, representative-looking black and "Latinx" people. Let's see how commercially successful the result is. My guess? It won't be.
By the way, here's a collection of "Sedelmaiier's".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiQjdQGYTpM
Jaime Roberto writes:
"Crazy Rich Asians wasn't necessarily woke, but the marketing around it was. Every time one of the actors was out promoting the movie they had to comment about how wonderful it was that the cast was all Asian. They emphasized it so much that it made me not want to see the movie. But I did, and it was pretty entertaining."
What does this mean:
Itzik Basman writes:
…And yet, In the Heights’s phony “communal” style suits Miranda’s inauthentic Broadway rap. He owes his breakthrough to Eminem’s white hip-hop “breakthrough” — it’s too fast, nonsensual, and bloodless.... ?
Can you unpack this?
I can make little sense of it.
I think Eminem is a terrific rapper, terrific artist. I don’t get what White, an acerbic, idiosyncratic, contrarian critic is saying about Eminem.
I don’t really care what he’s saying here about Miranda, who doesn’t interest me, save as that may help understand what he’s saying about Eminem.
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