I’ve been on an Aaron Copland kick lately.
This is at least partially the fault of my lovely new car, Alexa. ‘Lex is a 2015 Honda Fit, which turns out to be the year Honda’s cute little econobox got a serious upgrade, including a more fuel efficient engine, sleeker styling, a sweet little spoiler bar, and a truly kickass sound and entertainment system. AM, FM, CD, HDMI, Pandora, Bluetooth, Aha, even an iPod dock...you name it, ‘Lex has it, and I’ve spent many a happy evening commute listening to everything from Monteverdi to Bruce Hornsby simply by plugging in my little Nano. It’s wonderful, plus it’s kept me from stroking out and/or breaking the steering wheel from sheer rage at the bilge spewing from All Things Considered or Marketplace.
There are drawbacks, however. Every once in a while the iPod will basically get stuck on one album, performer, or group of songs, meaning that I’m bombarded by, say “Mr. Roboto” alternating with “Ohime Ch’io Cado,” “Call Me,” “Star-Spangled Man,” and/or a random selection from La Pellegrina on continuous loop for ten minutes or however long it takes me to unplug and reset the damn thing. “Annoying” doesn’t begin to describe it, especially the times I’ve basically mellowed out listening to Beethoven and suddenly the speakers start squawking about how Captain America will kick the Krauts to Spokane.
All of which goes to show that even I have my limits when it comes to fannishness...but I digress.
The most recent occurrence was a few days ago, when the iPod got completely stuck on Aaron Copland’s Greatest Hits. At first it was fun — I love Appalachian Spring and Billy the Kid as much as anyone — but after the sixth or seventh time I heard the ”Hoedown” movement from Rodeo on the way home from choir practice I all but started dreaming of t-bone steaks thanks to the commercial that brayed “Beef! It’s What’s For Dinner!” while Copland’s music played in the background.
I also got curious about Rodeo. The score was written in the early 1940’s for Agnes de Mille, who wrote the scenario and danced the main character, the Cowgirl. Copland hadn’t initially wanted to write another “cowboy ballet” after the success of Billy the Kid a few years earlier, but the combination of his brilliant score and de Mille’s equally brilliant choreography was an immediate hit. The world premiere in 1942 received twenty-two curtain calls, Rogers and Hammerstein asked DeMille to choregraph their upcoming Oklahoma on the spot, and Copland’s glorious score became one of the foundation works of mid-century American orchestral music.
All of this is well known. The actual plot of Rodeo, however, is another matter. As DeMille herself put it, the Cowgirl, who spends much of the ballet in trousers, cowboy boots, and a man’s shirt as she chases after the Head Wrangler and/or the Champion Roper, "She acts like a boy, not to be a boy, but to be liked by the boys.” And when that fails, she puts on a dress, acts like a girl, and gets the Champion Roper at the end of the final “Hoe-Down,” even though he had initially approached her when she was still dressed like a man.
If that weren’t stereotyped enough, de Mille herself insisted that the Cowgirl should be played by "charming and talented comediennes from the Broadway musical stage” instead of a prima ballerina. This is because, as the program notes from a 1950 performance put it, the plot is basically “how an American girl, with the odds seemingly all against her, sets out to get herself a man. The girl in this case is a cowgirl, a tomboy whose desperate efforts to become one of the ranch's cowhands create a problem for the cowboys and make her the laughingstock of womankind.”
Yeah. I know.
de Mille always claimed the Cowgirl was at least partly autobiographical, since she had been an awkward child who’d been forced to shift from ballet to modern dance because she didn’t have a typical long, lean dancer’s body. This does explain the whole “ugly duckling” aspect of the plot, especially since the Cowgirl does end up with the man who was attracted to her even when she was an awkward wannabe. At the same time, though, “all she needed to do was put on a dress” ranks right down there “Miss Smith, you’re beautiful without your glasses!” as a plot that not only should be retired, but should be buried at a crossroads during the full moon with a silver stake in its annoying little heart.
Or as Robin the Boy Wonder might have put it, “Holy heteronomativity, Batman!”
Knowing that the plot of Rodeo basically reinforces midcentury gender norms is disappointing, to say the least. That doesn’t prevent me from loving the music — it’s still magnificent, even if my iPod went kinda berserk repeating it — but it does make me wonder about how many works we now consider classics are similarly problematic.
Think about it. Wagner’s pioneering use of the leit motiv has led directly to modern film scores...but his virulent anti-Semitism set the stage for the horrors unleashed by his most infamous fanboy, an Austrian artist turned dictator with a penchant for swastikas…
JRR Tolkien basically invented the modern heroic fantasy novel, but then there’s the “sallow, squint-eyed” goblins and the “cruel, swarthy” Haradrim who must be defeated by the noble, pale-skinned, gray-eyed Gondorians…
Baroness Orczy basically invented the non-powered superhero with her dashing, laughing, rich boy rescuer the Scarlet Pimpernel, but there’s a streak of anti-Semitism at the end of his first adventure that is just painful to read…
Gilbert and Sullivan’s witty, sparkling, delightful Princess Ida has the heroine give up on the idea of education for women to get her man…
Literally hundreds of books, movies, operas, and epic poems with a beautiful, tragic, doomed heroine, from the Bride of Lammermoor to Tess Durbeyfield…
Even more books, movies, etc., with a gay character who’s either evil, mentally ill, or just plain dead…
Seriously, if I had a dime for every time I’ve winced at outdated racial, gender, or nationalistic themes in an otherwise enjoyable book, I never would have needed to go on Jeopardy.
Tonight’s selection is a case in point. Penned by a beloved (albeit problematic) author, it’s a reworking of a beloved classic that may have started out as a fresh take on an old plot, only to have all the savor of a rancid steak that is most emphatically not the beef that is for dinner:
Hamlet’s Father, by Orson Scott Card — Orson Scott Card has been a towering figure in the field of science fiction ever since he published Ender’s Game, a Hugo winner and one of the field’s true modern classics. If that weren’t enough, the sequel (Speaker for the Dead) won the Hugo the very next year, a feat matched only by the likes of Lois McMaster Bujold and NK Jemison. And if that weren’t enough, Card has won multiple Locus Awards, a Mythopoeic Society Award, been nominated for multiple Nebulas and Hugos, written a popular blog, taught literature and creative writing, and judged the Writers of the Future Contest. And if that weren’t enough, he’s written historical fiction and non-fiction about the LDS Church (Mormon), including the bestselling fantasy series Alvin Maker and its sequels about a North America based on the Mormon scriptures.
His influence has been both wide and deep, and if it weren’t for one huge, inescapable, bone-deep flaw, I wouldn’t hesitate to call him one of the all-time greats...except that Orson Scott Card, who by all accounts is a kind, generous man who’s devoted to his family and his craft, is a raging, unrepentent, and somewhat terrifying homophobe. And it’s not simply that he follows Mormon teachings and opposes same-sex marriage, oh no no no. Card, an otherwise patriotic American and law-abiding citizen, openly called for civil insurrection and the overthrow of the government should equal marriage become the law of the land.
This unfortunate stance has cost Card dearly. He lost a contract to write a Superman comic book, a fan boycott of the film of Ender’s Game forced the production company to distance itself from Card himself, and he’s lost sales, fans, and awards because he simply will not yield.
And then there’s Hamlet’s Father.
This 2008 novella, which Card published just around the time his views on same-sex marriage became public, is a retelling of Shakespeare’s classic, only with several crucial differences:
- Hamlet’s father was a pedophile who raped, among others:
- Hamlet himself
- Hamlet’s buddy Horatio
- Hamlet’s other buddy Laertes
- Rosencrantz
- Guildenstern
- Probably most of the population of Denmark, or at least of Elsinore.
- Hamlet doesn’t really care much about Ophelia, probably because he was raped into not liking women, or something, so basically shrugs and says “meh” when she ends up drowned and covered in flowers.
- Hamlet is also so morally rigid and firmly principled that the novella should actually be called Fortinbras’ Enemy, since there’s virtually nothing of the dithery student-type who spends about ten minutes trying to decide if he’s going to self-terminate or not.
- Hamlet’s father wasn’t murdered by his brother Claudius, but by Horatio in revenge for raping him. This is probably because Claudius was never raped, but one can only speculate
and refuse to give this desperately mediocre, untagged, squicky to the max fanfic any kudos on Ao3.
- Hamlet ends up in Hell alongside his father, so they can be together forever in flames and pain and lamentations and horror and terror and all kinds of really unpleasant things, Hamlet for murder, his dear ol’ dad for being an EVIL NASTY CHILD RAPING HOMOSEXUAL PEDOPHILE and a Bad King.
Needless to say, this did not go over well. The initial publication, in an otherwise undistinguished anthology, attracted little attention, but the 2011 reprint by the Subterranean Press was another matter. Publisher’s Weekly, io9, the Guardian, and plenty of other reviewers basically creamed it as both prejudiced and a really bad take on Shakespeare, and Card’s protests that he wasn’t a homophobe, that he’d written plenty of sympathetic gay characters in his early fiction, this was just one character really truly! did little to quiet the controversy. And then someone pointed out that hey, one of the allegedly sympathetic characters (Mikal from Songbird) is a boy who’s been modified so that he a) never hits puberty to preserve his brilliant singing voice and b) ends up having his one orgasm at the hands of — you knew this was coming — an adult who’d been in love with him for years.
“Ouch,” as we say in the Common Speech of the West even though there is absolutely no reason that Tolkien couldn’t have written about the Captains of the North or the South or the East-West Alliance and oh God why is it always, always, ALWAYS the West?????
Card has basically thrown in the towel on same-sex marriage and LGBT rights these days, probably because he realized that the long arc of history was most definitely not tending toward his views. He’s still writing, still editing, and still pontificating, but on this issue at least he’s been quiet. The damage to his reputation, however, bids fair to remain.
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Do you have a favorite book that’s got a problematic character or plot? Have you ever seen Rodeo? Read Hamlet’s Father? Read Hamlet? Wondered how Orson Scott Card went from doing a hilarious routine at conventions called “The Secular Humanist Revival” to a doctrinaire Mormon? It’s a blazing hot Saturday night at the Last Homely Shack East of the Manhan, so pour yourself a glass of your cold beverage of choice and share….
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