#and i'm like uh i don't know if anyone should ever make a wonderful yumyum again

[disregardcanon]

i’ve been wrestling a little bit, recently, about the merits of uh, lets go with “insensitive” art in and out of context as i’ve been singing “the sun whose rays are all ablaze” in voice lessons which is out of context a lovely little gilbert and sullivan aria and out of context. is. uh. 

more complicated?

i liked this article about an asian-american reimagining of the mikado a lot, especially the prologue that it adds in that ensures to frame the setting not as “japan” but as an englishman from the 1880′s parody of his own limited understanding of japan. i think that this issue is very complicated and muddy if we try to preserve things like this, but that finding ways to frame the history and context is good at least. 

the opera is also, in a lot of ways, accomplishing the same task that shakespeare accomplished by setting so many of his plays that were indictments of british culture in italy where the audience goes “ooo! foreign! cool!” and doesn’t realize that they’re being satirized because there’s the veneer of “far off land” veiling the criticism of modern society. 

but there is like, the uh, racial caricatures thing. it’s a tricky subject that i’m doing more reading on, but in the short term: the sun whose rays are all ablaze slaps

another article of interest