It’s time to move on from the critical minefield of the reception to Plague Over England — its supporters and detractors must simply to agree to differ, whatever the agendas that each might have - but I can’t let go, just yet, of a strand that simultaneously has everything and nothing to do with the play itself: namely, the dark stain of homophobia it has provoked, which proves that nothing at all has changed, at least in some quarters of the press, since the time the play was set.
According to Michael Coveney, “jokes in the reviews are being misconstrued as signs of homophobia”, before proceeding to immediately misconstrue my own review in the Sunday Express to suggest that I thought that that the critic character in the play is Nicholas de Jongh’s revenge on Milton Shulman. I said no such thing - I merely pointed out that the title of the play alludes to a headline that once adorned a Shulman feature.
Michael replied to defend Shulman, claiming he was not homophobic, but “represented his generation’s overwhelming conviction that homosexuality was in some way a minority interest. I think that’s different from saying it should be suppressed or even disapproved of…or indeed that Shulman held homophobic preoccupations.”
That’s a generous defence of a man who forced the withdrawal from circulation of Coveney’s brilliant diary of a year on the critical aisle, “The Aisle is Full of Noises”, published in 1994, when Shulman objected to Michael’s characterisation him as one of the “kosher butchers” of theatrical criticism, alongside Herbert Kretzmer, Bernard Levin and David Nathan.
But perhaps Michael feels compelled to defend Shulman, since he himself regularly makes gay jokes in his reviews and blog entries. In 2007, Madame Arcati - the self-styled “premier showbiz and media clairvoyant” - wrote a blog that pointed out that Michael “appears to have a problem with sexual aberration”, and takes him to task for accusing AA Gill of walking and talking like a “homosexual male model” and describing Brian Sewell as “epicene”. In a more recent blog on Chichester’s new season, Michael points out that its forthcoming production of Terence Rattigan’s Separate Tables — which he says is to be sponsored by Conquest Furnishings - will be “using Rattigan’s amended version which makes the old major’s offstage offence one of homosexual soliciting in a cinema, rather than the touching up of young girls in the back stalls. I suppose Chichester’s ready for that sort of thing now, but I wouldn’t bank on it. Will Conquest Furniture be supplying extra pouffes?”
If something is said in jest, does that excuse it? Christopher Hart seems to think so. In his Sunday Times review of the play last week, he wrote, “There’s also quite a lot of men kissing. I can cope with most things on stage — rape, torture, the plays of David Hare — but I still have to lower my gaze at men kissing,” as I reported here.
Chantelle Staynings, the original producer of the play when it premiered at the Finborough last year, wrote to Helen Hawkins, the culture editor of the Sunday Times, to protest, and called for Hart’s resignation. Hawkins has duly replied as follows: “I am sorry to disappoint you, but Mr Hart won’t be resigning, or apologising. His remark in the Plague Over England review was patently humorous — and the humour was aimed largely at himself. (I won’t claim he is a staunch supporter of diversity awareness weekends.) If I, or any of the senior editors here, had thought for a second that it was a genuinely homophobic remark, it would never have made it to the page. I asked Christopher Hart for a response, which is this: “This was very much a joke against myself: I didn’t say, ‘Isn’t the sight of men kissing disgusting’. I said, ‘Isn’t it awful that I can happily watch rape and torture on stage, but still squirm at the sight of men kissing?’ There is a great difference, and I worded it v carefully.”
Hawkins goes on, “His intention, clear to see, we both thought, was to lampoon himself and his personal inability to keep up with the status quo. He was in fact implicitly acknowledging that the battle has been won since the days the play depicts, and gay people can legally kiss wherever they want, including the stage. So how can his remark be detrimental to a cause that has already been won? Feel free to scoff at his apparent unworldliness, as he himself invites you to, but please don’t twist his humour into something it was never intended to be. Homophobia it is not.”
As Simon Edge, a theatre critic for the Daily Express and a former editor of Capital Gay points out, “It’s always the last refuge of the scoundrel: ‘How could you possibly accuse him of being homophobic? Nothing could be further from the truth and we would never tolerate him if he were. He just has a visceral reaction to any evidence of homosexuality. Where’s the harm in that?’”
Staynings, for her part, says she’s replied, “saying that I presume she wouldn’t consider the phrase ‘I have to avert my eyes whenever I see a black man kissing a white woman on stage’ racist…”
Meanwhile, Ian Shuttleworth points out in his Prompt Corner editorial to the latest issue of Theatre Record that “Tim Walker sees in Alan Bennett’s Enjoy another example of what he condemned in his Be Near Me review as an excess of plays with homosexual themes”, as I’ve previously also pointed out in the same blog entry about Hart’s review. As Ian goes on to ask, “I wonder what he would consider the right amount of such plays? I don’t know Tim’s sexual orientation, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if he turned out to be gay and closeted? The rank hypocrisy would be too, too delicious for words.”
Helen Hawkins should be ashamed of herself.
Yes, gay people can "legally kiss wherever they want", but they cannot kiss each other safely wherever they want. If I greet my boyfriend in a public place with a kiss on the lips at the least we get stared at, the worst threatened.
She should realise that there is a long way to go before the battle is won and by suppporting her colleagues 'personal inability' to tolerate such acts she gives anyone with such outdated and discriminatory views support in believing that it is OK to feel like that and state that. She should challenge his response, as I hope she would do if he made such comments about any minority group.
If Christopher Hart is content to be living in the 1950s, perhaps he should not be writing for a paper in 2009.
Its a shame you weren't at Devoted and Disgruntled this week. One of the topics discussed was Christopher Hart's comments.
My personal view was, and is, that the framework of humour still informs the readership that its ok to find homosexuality in some way cringy. Sure he doesnt say honosexuality is disgusting, he says "I find homosexuality disgusting" (because he looks away) "and thats ok because I can joke about it the national press".
There seems to be a general consensus in this country that the gay rights battles have been faught and won, and now we can all become thoroughly complacent and all have a good old joke about it. Well, sorry, thats not the case. I blogged myeself a while back about the reactions many teenagers had when confronted with homosexual characters in drama:
http://confessionsofadirector.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-will-survive-of-us.html
To joke that homosexuality makes you cringe in a national newspaper is ultimatly irresponsible. Thank you Mark for being a voice of reason on this subject.
I completely disagree with Christopher Hart's editor. While his remark was not viciously anti-homosexual, it was "politely" so. He was clearly inviting readers who find the sight of two men kissing distasteful or disgusting to agree with him and to sympathise that he is subjected to these revolting spectacles in the line of duty. I wonder if the editor would find it "amusing" if he "joked" about his cringing and looking away when a black man on stage kissed a white woman. It is his job to look at everything on stage and judge whether it is fitting in the context of the production, not whether it accords with his own tastes.
Having said that, however, I would like to make a protest of my own--against the photographs of a bare-chested young man that appear alongside this review, with the line "find sexy gay singles in your area." I do not want to see these photos and the attitude they represent, and I do not think it the role of the Stage newspaper to act as a procurer.
Rhoda - I think you are right to raise objections about that ad. I may be wrong but I suspect that "miami001" is nowhere near my area.
Still, it's nice to know that there is a website where all the men are athletic and two thirds of them have blue eyes, should one be after that sort of thing.
Agree with the comments here, and Rhoda's race analogy is a good one. His editor's defence of Christopher Hart presents him as a harmless armchair fuddy-duddy who doesn't get the latest frivolous youth craze, as if he was tutting at an episode of Hannah Montana. But this is a professional critic discussing a pretty fundamental aspect of human identity which still invites persecution and even murder the world over. Yes, he shows an implied understanding that his view is out of step with the modern world, and to his credit, he doesn't invoke politics or religion to back it up, but I'm sure his sentiments are warmly welcomed by the true fruit-loop fraternity who do. He may be harmless but that's beside the point - plenty of people who share his views are not, and those people are vindicated when he expresses those views in public.
Helen Hawkins is being disingenuous. Chris Hart was, it seems to me, doing what Al Franken calls "kidding on the square" - he was ostensibly poking fun at himself, but doing so by way of pre-emptive defence of a point which is underneath it all meant seriously. He followed up the lines you quote by saying, "Clearly, I need to send myself off on a diversity-awareness weekend" in a way that makes it sound PC-Nazi (if the battle has been won, it has been won by the use of such stormtroopers, seems to be the subtext) and more reprehensible than his own response. As far as I can see, and as Edgie suggests, it's not that far off saying, "I'm no homophobe, but...".
Interesting, too, how Tim Walker's review of Plague Over England is both unstintingly positive and makes no reference to Tim's hitherto-oft-declared aversion to plays with such subject matter.
Talking of homophobia.. currently over on www.talkinbroadway.com/allthatchat a user says of the play "Love Valour Compassion" that "You leave the theater thinking, "Thank God gays can't reproduce!""
I responded that the writer was vile pig and was promptly banned forever from again contributing to its pages after around ten years of posting there.
Amazing they allow such bigotry to remain but remove my posting protesting it. Perhaps I was over zealous in the term I used but amazing that they allow anti gay postings to happily remain.
Rhoda,
Your computer obviously has a racier life than man, all I've got is an advert for BT Broadband and a trailer for the film Marley and Me.
And, yes, Chris Hart's comments are beneath contempt.
Yes, Mr Shuttleworth is correct that my review of De Jongh's play was unstintingly positive in terms of what I felt it was trying to say, although I did also say I felt it was very much the work of a journalist as opposed to a fully fledged playwright. There is nothing "interesting" about this, as he pantingly suggests, and I have no 'aversion' to plays with such 'subject matter' as he so quaintly puts it. I merely remarked that I have seen quite a few plays with gay themes lately. I stated it as a fact with no comment. I like to review a broad range of works: I loved, for instance, Burnt by the Sun and Berlin Handover Express. I am a man of parts and I cherish above all things freedom of expression. I don't care to be told by anyone what I can and cannot say. Read my review of the latter play I enjoyed in the Sunday Telegraph this weekend and I will address the issue of how only dead fish go with the flow...
Tim, don't try and gloss matters with a guy who collates reviews for a living. You didn't say that you have seen "quite a few" such plays lately. You used phrases such as "high incidence" (a term more familiar in application to crimes or illnesses) and wrote "I would like to be able to say that it could always be justified on artistic grounds and that it has resulted in valid things being said, but, alas, I cannot" - which looks pretty damn like a comment to me, and moreover implies that some particular kind of justification is indeed required for plays dealing with such themes. I think the readership of the Sunday Telegraph - demographically the oldest, on average, of any mainstream national paper - will be likely to interpret those remarks in line with the socially conservative inclinations of such a demographic. And finally comes the traditional defence of the illiberal, the suggestion of censorship, with "I don't care to be told by anyone what I can and cannot say." No-one's telling you that: you must simply extend to others the corresponding right to interrogate openly what you did say. Because *I* don't care to be told by anyone what I can and cannot find interesting.
But you ARE telling me to watch what I say - the line you and Shenton come out with all the time is that I am "out of step." You are like that ghastly chorus in The Life of Brian which used to say: "ooh, he has just mentioned the Messiah again, he can't say that." I am gratified that you study my work with such forensic care, but, honestly, I don't see any sinister meaning to the word "incidence". You seem to be struggling to find things to get angry about in relation to me. In doing so, you quote me selectively. I went on in that review to talk about a "1950s mindset" which I felt lay behind a lot of gay scenes I had seen lately - I then explained that some playwrights, mindful that their plays are becoming boring, seem to use them simply as a decice to wake people up. But isn't all this becoming rather boring? Is this really the kind of thing you and I will be talking about into the early hours if I accept your invitation to join the Critics' Circle? Or maybe you have another of your brilliantly clever Wildean retorts up your sleeve and we will all wish that we had said that...?
I apologise profusely for reading plain meanings and common connotations into the words you used. I should, for instance, have realised that when you wrote "with no comment" you meant "with some comment". And I repeat, no-one's telling you what you can and can't say, but you must expect a corresponding freedom for others to say what they want about it. With rights come responsibilities, and all that.
Another view of Plague Over England
http://madamearcati.blogspot.com/2009/03/plague-over-england-review-wheres-cock.html