Isn't it Past Time to Cancel The Nutcracker?

‘Tis the season to sit through another Nutcracker. Molly, our beautiful granddaughter, danced again as she has for several years, this year as a party guest, a snowflake, a flower, and so on. She is a lovely and graceful dancer; I love to watch her dance. She is also an awesomely powerful lacrosse mid-fielder with a wickedly accurate shot. I love to watch her play. But of the two, lacrosse is harmless and engrossing entertainment. The Nutcracker not so subtly, not so.

Don't misunderstand. Tchaikovsky's music is glorious; the costumes and sets in a good production are beautiful and evocative; the dancing, entrancing. It's the content I and many object to, and should be cancelled.  

It is disconcerting to hear myself talk of cancellation – I who believe proscription of speech is wrong and speech should only be judged appropriate or inappropriate after it has been delivered. But if found inappropriate many times year after year and in many places, is it not then OK to cancel it?

About The Nutcracker, of which Tchaikovsky said “ . . . in spite of all the sumptuousness it did turn out to be rather boring:” it is not merely boring but also unforgivably racist. The Chinese tea dance has attracted opprobrium for years, with New York, San Francisco, London, PNB and scores of other companies hoping that by revising it they’d minimize racist overtones and avoid offending Asians (Feministi, 2010; Dance magazine, 2013; New York Times, 2019, 2021, and lots more.)

But that’s not all; there’s the sexy Arabian Coffee number with stereotypical harem-pantalooned temptress; the good girl/bad boy stereotype; the violence; and I’m sure animal rights folks are lurking. And over it all the Freudian acting-out of adolescent dreams of heroic, macho princes rescuing virginal maidens.

Boredom, racism, ethnic and gender stereotypes, chauvinism, violence, and sexual repression – what’s not to dislike? OK, some of you will accuse me of being excessively woke. But explain away bored.

It is time to relegate to the music library this 19^thC pean to Czar Nicholas’s empire – for Tchaikovsky’s music is beloved – and anoint some new Christmas tale to render in dance.

A ballet ’Twas the Night Before Christmas, anyone? 

Hamas Has Won the War

Who wins a war? Those who kill the most people? Or those who achieve their political aims?

Hamas, not Palestine and not Israel, has already won this war at a fearsome cost of thousands of their constituents' lives, horrific displacement of millions of their hostage/constituent Gazans, and a senseless massacre of 1200-some Israelis. 

Israel can kill Palestinians and shoot down Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthi rockets but can never kill the extremists' dreams of ridding the world of Jews. In the meantime, Hamas' war has 

• restored Palestine to Arab center stage; 
• disrupted the inevitable process of reconciling the Arab street to the existence of neighbor Israel; 
• resuscitated the nearly dead two-state necessity; 
• forced the world to look with opprobrium upon illegal settlements of occupied West Bank land; 
• dealt, perhaps, a death-blow to the political life of Binyamin Netanyahu; 
• strengthened the hand of progressive, liberal Israelis; 
• and -- most important -- weakened America's unquestioning resolve to support Israel.    

Big wins -- at horrific cost -- but big wins for Hamas.