Man on the Moon

Forty years ago, a man walked on the moon for the first time. (Unless you believe in conspiracy theories and Kirk Cameron, in which case you may as well stop reading here and pick up the more comfortable work of fiction by the Sarah who is not on a box of dessert, but could just as well be.)

Forty years after a manned flight to the moon, I sit in the top floor slanted ceilinged bedroom of my grandparent's Cape Cod. Rain is making music on that slant. High above that rain, an astronaut is at work at a space station, floating in orbit around the Earth. A camera films him. A live signal is beamed down by satellite to the silver laptop on my desk. I gaze at the images and marvel at how easily we accept this as commonplace.

In 1969, a young boy may have had this room as his bedroom. It isn’t difficult to imagine him in his pajamas with stars and planets on them. His collection of Robby Robot toys on the floor. A mobile of the solar system suspended from the slanted ceiling. I can picture him staring out the window, up at the night sky. Imagining those men walking on the moon.

How far will science have taken us forty years from now? Will my own grandson be sleeping in this room, sending text messages to his best friend on board a spacecraft from another planet? Will things we now consider far fetched be accepted as commonplace to him? Time travel, transporters, extra terrestrial beings? How far fetched does something have to be, before it can safely be considered beyond the range of possibility for longer than a person can imagine?

Almost everything in Jean Luc Picard’s world is either already in ours or soon to be. There are exceptions of course, but for how long? Looking back at how quickly science has emerged from science fiction, it seems silly to write anything off as beyond that range.

I can almost recognize how much effort it must take for our own higher consciousness to stay immersed in this world. On a higher plane, we must already realize what more there is to discover. Before coming into this world, perhaps we were well familiar with other worlds, and only agreed to forget all of that in order to be fully present in this one. How strong must be the temptation each night, while we dream, to step out of the accepted limits of this world at this time and go freely to explore those others? How much we must love this one to keep coming back, perhaps bringing with us a deeply stored recollection of some piece of the future. How else does it come into being?

Rain on the roof. Robby Robot on the floor. Astronaut on the laptop. Transporter in the closet?

True Dat?

“True dat,” said the anchorman, in response to a comment from a reporter. True dat. From an anchorman on the six o’clock news. A white anchorman. Dressed in a suit. Not the colorful sportscaster, nor the ditzy weather girl dressed for clubbing, but the man behind the desk. The one whose face the network hopes we will regard as trustworthy. Whose voice we will rely on to present the events of the day in an unbiased and responsible way. True dat.

At first, I was not sure I heard him correctly. Did he really say “True dat?”

Now, I am white. I have always been white. Even when I was a kid, I was white. I expect that I shall always be white. I feel no reason to apologize for being white. I know that caucasian is probably more accurate a term, because my skin tone is not actually white, but I take no offense when I am referred to as white. It is what I am, and it does not seem likely to change. It would be foolish of me to try to be anything other than white. I might play a character on stage who is not white, but in real life I know that I am, in fact, white.

That can probably be said about every white person I have ever met, or will ever meet. I’m sure there may be exceptions, but for the most part, anyone who started out as white will end up as white. That should be a given.

Why then, am I confronted daily with white people speaking in gangsta rap slang? White people from the suburbs. White people who are old enough to have grown children. Even white people on the news. Trying to sound, what, young? Cool? Black?

How is it cool to sound black? When did ebonics ever sound anything other than ignorant, whether being spoken by a white person or a black one? I cannot understand why any white person in their right mind would choose to speak gangsta rap. For that matter, I cannot understand why any black person in their right mind would choose to speak that way.

None of the black people I know speak in ebonics. They view the gold toothed gangsta rappers in the same way that white people view shirtless trailer park drunks running from the cops on those reality shows. As embarrassing stereotypes. Ignorance is not subject to interpretation according to cultural differences. Ignorance is ignorance, and it should not be something toward which we aspire.

Imagine an Asian person dyeing their hair shocking red, having their face tattooed with freckles, walking around with a cane and speaking like the Lucky Charms leprechaun. “Top O the mornin’ to ya!” Going on and on about “potaters” and their saintly mum, and drinking “a wee bit O whiskey at the pub.” It would be no more ridiculous than the hordes of white suburbanites pretending to be black gangstas from the hood.

The only people who should be speaking like gangstas from the hood are gangstas from the hood. If someone grows up in the projects, where surviving past the age of nineteen is considered an accomplishment, then it is perfectly understandable why education might not be a top priority to them. That of course is a shame, since education is a sure way out of that scenario.

A young kid whose parents grew up in the same rough environment, and is surrounded by other kids who know nothing different, cannot possibly be expected to do anything other than emulate his older brother, who must seem awfully cool in his gold chains and signifying colors. Once up and out of that world, that same young kid will most likely change the way he views the importance of being cool.

I was never cool. I was the kid named Melvin who carried a stack of books around, was always humming something classical from orchestra practice, and who wanted desperately to be accepted by the leather jacket crowd. They were known as dirtbags. They were the tough kids who cut class to hang out behind the cafeteria to smoke cigarettes. Being something that I was not was appealing at that age, but once I left high school, I left that misguided desire behind. Those kids no longer seemed cool. They seemed limited.

I grew up speaking with a thick New York accent, but Shakespeare, Noel Coward, Moliere, and Agatha Christie removed any trace of that. I can still speak New York when I want to, mostly when angry or when punctuating a comic line. When I turn on the tv and see some mafia lughead saying “bada bing” and “yous guys,” I file him under the same category as PP Puffy Doggie. Just another uneducated bozo perpetuating an unfortunate stereotype.

What is far more mystifying to me are the young white people who combine ebonics with text speak! I have to laugh when I read something online that is peppered with “gurl” “wuz” “wit” “aight” and other configurations, all appearing like the sound effects a cartoonist might use in his comic strip. What is puzzling is how some of these abbreviated slang words actually require more time and effort to type than their English equivalents!

Take “wuz,” for example. Now “cuz” might at least make some sense, as it saves the typist from the apparently unreasonable labor of spelling out the entire word “because,” but “wuz?” W-a-s takes a fraction of a second to type, as the three letters are touching on the keypad. So, to use “wuz” requires effort and intent. Baffling.

I cannot even begin to explain the girl whose online comments I struggled to decipher the other day. She was using the collection of letters “khan” and “khant.” Your guess is as good as mine, but I think she was attempting “can” and “can’t,” and can only assume she is from a country which does not encourage its citizens to learn English.

Like ours. True dat, indeed.

Does the Curse Count if it's Texted?

A friend of mine sent me some information about a play reading being done at an istore in some other city. Was it San Francisco? Maybe Seattle. Not sure, but it was definitely not New York. It’s one of those gimmicky play readings. Shakespeare, but with a twist. A catch. A way of making the language accessible to a modern audience. A modern audience, presumably, which is so dense and limited in both intelligence and attention span that they cannot possibly be expected to understand material which has been almost constantly in production for four hundred years.

As anyone who knows anything about theatre is sure to tell you, material which has been almost constantly in production for four hundred years must not be accessible as is, and cannot possibly be performed without a gimmick. In other words, as written. The way the author intended. The way audiences for hundreds of years have been seeing and hearing it performed. Almost constantly.

The big gimmick for this production at an istore is really an igimmick: an iphone. Several iphones, to be more exact. One for each of the iactors, and possibly one for each iaudience member, although those would have to be provided by the iaudience themselves (perhaps purchased at the aforementioned istore?) The iactors will be reading the text of Shakespeare off their iphones. No need to learn the lines in advance, or even to have read the lines in advance. Why be bothered with such archaic methods? Modern marvels save us from having to do any work of any sort, after all. Isn’t that the point of having them?

What’s more, the audience is being encouraged to read along (assuming the presumably dense and limited in both intelligence and attention span modern audience is capable of reading) with the text of Shakespeare. As anyone who knows anything about theatre is sure to tell you, giving an audience the script is always a good idea! That way, they can detect every tiny deviation in the dialogue. Although, it must be difficult to find an actor who would not object to having the audience gazing down at the script (or the tiny screen of an iphone) rather than up at the actor on the stage. Even an actor who is doing nothing more than reading off the tiny screen of an iphone.

The name of the play chosen to be given this gimmicky treatment? The very bloody Macbeth. With an emphasis on the mac. As in imac. What better script is there, to read on an iphone in an istore? Makes perfect sense, and it’s one way to be sure the actors don’t pronounce it Mick-beth (a common mistake.)

I wonder, though, if the iactors are reading from their iphones, will the language be in the ubiquitous text speak? Is the iaudience to be subjected to the nightmare of “2mro n 2mro n 2mro”? Four hundred years later, and we are still at the mercy of illiterate individuals taking it upon themselves to spell words however they see fit in the moment.

To be fair to the producers of this gimmicky promotional stunt, the play reading is meant to advertise an application which will make Shakespeare accessible for downloads onto mobile phones. Hard to argue with that. How nice to consider that a geeky, high-tech computer nerd has devised a way for geeky, low-tech theatre nerds to have the complete Folio at their fingertips, wherever they are throughout the day.

That is indeed a very good thing, but does it follow that it would make good theatre? Not unless an iphone can bleed.