South Pacific

I'm going to start the conversation off with a bang-South Pacific. One of the MOST racially themed musicals (if not the MOST racially themed musical) ever written and produced.

The whole darn thing is about race. Literally.

You've got the war being fought, in the first place, in which one can argue that one of the leading issues is Hitler's campaign for the Aryan race to rise up and wipe out other "lesser" races.

You've got a group of American soliders set up on the island of Espirite Santu, south of China and right off of Australia, dealing with the Pacific Islanders and the Tonkinese workers who inhabit the island.

And finally, you've got the two main Protagonists, Joe Cable and Nellie Forbush, trying to overlook the races of the people they have fallen in love with while on the island.

Oh, and there's a stereotypical Tonkinese souvenir seller named Bloody Mary.


(Photo Credit the San Fransico Sentinel website, http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=43415)

One truly has to hear the music to understand the controversy. Here is a clip from the Carnegie Hall Concert production of 2005.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMSWEVtmHvk

Key things to listen for:
"Bloody Mary is the girl I love, well ain't that too damn bad."
"Her skin is tender as Dimaggio's glove."
"She is always chewin' betel nuts, and she don't use pepsodent."

So, basically, she's ugly, rough, drug addicted and has no teeth. And this is one of the opening songs of the show.

Mary exists in the show for a reason, though. The sailors use her as a mascot, mocking her and poking fun at her. As audience members, we see the injustice.

Next, Joe Cable. He falls in love with Bloody Mary's daughter, Liat, and refuses to marry her because she is Tonkinese. He sings this poignant song, "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwK8HyAbFZA&feature=related

Here are the full lyrics, from http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/southpacific/youvegottobecarefullytaught.htm
You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

Victor Lana, in a review of the musical you can find at http://viclana.blogspot.com/2010/08/tv-review-south-pacific-live-from.html, states of this song,
"One only has to really listen to the words of "You've Got to Be Carefully Taught" to know the strength of the message sent here. In essence, as powerful as a soliloquy in a Shakespearean play, the song is meant to reveal Lt. Cable's issues with race, but we can also understand that love, if it is meant to conquer all or not, can in the end just break someone's heart."

And finally, Nellie Forbush's story...a girl from Little Rock, Arkansas, who falls in love with a French man living on the island, only refusing to marry him because of his previous marriage to a Polynesian woman (which left him with two half white, half black children). She is the only character to overcome her racism, and end up the happy adoptive mother of the two children.


The issue: How is this show put on? How do companies portray the racism without offending? This is something that I will be looking at, seeing as I am currently in the University of Minnesota Duluth's production of South Pacific, playing the walking stereotype, Bloody Mary. I am learning the tricks of playing a raced character carefully...hopefully.