Backlash grows against Shakespeare's Globe Theatre for new play depicting Maid of Orleans as non-bin

[mountaineer]

'Joan of Arc is a female cultural icon': Backlash grows against Shakespeare's Globe Theatre for new play depicting Maid of Orleans as non-binary character with 'they' and 'them' pronouns

    *Feminists today denounced new non-binary portrayal as offensive and sexist
    *Joan of Arc will have 'them/they' pronouns, MailOnline exclusively revealed
    *Historical icon is female and a saint honoured for her bravery fighting for France
    *Theatre had defended production and suggested Shakespeare would agree

By Dan Sales For Mailonline
Published: 05:27 EDT, 12 August 2022 | Updated: 06:50 EDT, 12 August 2022  ...

Daily Mail

What the Globe Theatre breathlessly announced:

Shakespeare’s Globe proudly presents a new play, I, Joan with Joan as a legendary leader, who in this production, uses the pronouns ‘they/them’. The production opens on 25 August in the open-air Globe Theatre. We are not the first to present Joan in this way, and we will not be the last. Regarding the use of pronouns, ‘they’ to refer to a singular person has been traced by the Oxford English Dictionary to as early as 1375, years before Joan was even born. Regardless, theatres do not deal with ‘historical reality’. Theatres produce plays, and in plays, anything can be possible.

Shakespeare did not write historically accurate plays. ...

The Globe is a place of imagination. A place where, for a brief amount of time, we can at least consider the possibility of world’s elsewhere...

History has provided countless and wonderful examples of Joan portrayed as a woman. This production is simply offering the possibility of another point of view. That is the role of theatre: to simply ask the question ‘imagine if?’.

Shakespeare’s Globe is unequivocally pro-human rights. This includes trans people, non-binary people, black and minority ethnic people, and people with disabilities. Trans men and women and non-binary identities exist and are valid.

These people are nuts.

[mountaineer]

I couldn't agree more.

Amy Curtis
@RantyAmyCurtis
Notice how they never take male characters and make them female trans?
Notice how F to M trans aren’t invading men’s sports or men’s locker rooms?
How “father” isn’t replaced by “womb holder” or “birthing person” or “pregnant person” but women are?

It’s always women. Women who must give up their identity. Women who must give up their opportunities. Women who must give up their safe spaces. Women who must give up motherhood.

Enough is enough.
8:40 AM · Aug 12, 2022

[Kamaji]

[mountaineer]

What the Globe ninnies don't seem to care about is that presenting history through "the possibility of another point of view ... 'imagine if' ..." is presenting complete lies and still trying to call it history. That's not history, it's fiction. Jeanne d'Arc was a real person. An actual female. Portraying her as a man is beyond dishonest.

Shakespeare's treatment of historical events and people in his plays, e.g., Julius Caesar, was not "historically accurate" probably because he couldn't watch videotape of the actual assassination, and so had to fill in the blanks. He was doing the best with the information available to him in the 1600s. It's not that he was trying to imagine other points of view. He didn't portray Caesar as a female lesbian African dwarf with blue hair, he portrayed him as a Roman man, because that's what he was.

[catfish1957]

Hey Globe....

Bill Shakespeare pissith in your general direction.

[Kamaji]

What the Globe ninnies don't seem to care about is that presenting history through "the possibility of another point of view ... 'imagine if' ..." is presenting complete lies and still trying to call it history. That's not history, it's fiction. Jeanne d'Arc was a real person. An actual female. Portraying her as a man is beyond dishonest.

Shakespeare's treatment of historical events and people in his plays, e.g., Julius Caesar, was not "historically accurate" probably because he couldn't watch videotape of the actual assassination, and so had to fill in the blanks. He was doing the best with the information available to him in the 1600s. It's not that he was trying to imagine other points of view. He didn't portray Caesar as a female lesbian African dwarf with blue hair, he portrayed him as a Roman man, because that's what he was.

[catfish1957]

Stay tuned next week when the Globe adjusts their play to make Richard III a cross dresser, and his spine was not the only crooked part of his anatomy.

[mountaineer]

Stay tuned next week when the Globe adjusts their play to make Richard III a cross dresser, and his spine was not the only crooked part of his anatomy.

And Romeo and Juliet will become Romeo and Antonio.

[Kamaji]

And Romeo and Juliet will become Romeo and Antonio.

Romiet and Julio, two trannies in love!

[Smokin Joe]

I couldn't agree more.

Amy Curtis nailed it. Motherhood, nurturing, homemaking, and the incredible skills that are developed in doing those most important jobs well have been denigrated for some time. How many babies have been sacrificed on the altar of a career (whether or not the person is really good at what they do), often out of necessity because economic manipulation and inflation (devaluation of currency) don't often permit one income households to live up to the 'standards' popularized in media.

I was relatively poor, is some senses, but I lived like a prince in others. We may have lived in the sticks, and only rarely had a new car, my clothes may have had patches (I was the biggest boy, so no hand-me-downs), but those were sewn on with love.
Mom is (still) an excellent cook, and we ate like kings, and I credit endless hours of reading and probing through encyclopedias and the unabridged dictionary to her admonition to "look it up".
I have been truly blessed, and didn't really miss the material trimmings so many seemed fixated upon.

It's a pity, that in trying to destroy motherhood (a la Brave New World) that so many of the things that make women women are being lost. Feminism (an -ism) has replaced femininity all too often, and it's a small wonder so many flock to shrinks to try and get right with defying their natural hardwiring.

Mrs. Joe was never so happy as when holding a baby: her whole face lit up.
She could shoot, ride (better than me), and was not afraid to take something apart when it didn't work (even though I was usually the one who got to put it back together), cook, clean fish, bait her own hook, help butcher a deer, drive a nail and use power tools, and still quiet a crying baby, and console (and patch up) a tot with an 'owie'. But when we went out and she walked into a room, people noticed, no matter if she was gussied up or not. She could accomplish amazing things with just a look.

That's real power, not the cheap imitations that are being sold to young women today.

[Smokin Joe]

What the Globe ninnies don't seem to care about is that presenting history through "the possibility of another point of view ... 'imagine if' ..." is presenting complete lies and still trying to call it history. That's not history, it's fiction. Jeanne d'Arc was a real person. An actual female. Portraying her as a man is beyond dishonest.

Shakespeare's treatment of historical events and people in his plays, e.g., Julius Caesar, was not "historically accurate" probably because he couldn't watch videotape of the actual assassination, and so had to fill in the blanks. He was doing the best with the information available to him in the 1600s. It's not that he was trying to imagine other points of view. He didn't portray Caesar as a female lesbian African dwarf with blue hair, he portrayed him as a Roman man, because that's what he was.

While some of the Bard's historical(ish) plays obviously catered to the Royalty of his day (good politics make for success in a Monarchy), and that caused distortions, to be sure, he also wrote for the 'Penny Stinkers" who filled the lower reaches of The Globe, and not higher up where a breeze could carry away the olfactory effects of the hygiene (or lack thereof) of the day.
Bowdler removed many of the dual entendres and ribald jokes from those writings, so what we see is not only not unexpurgated Shakespeare, but distorted for the simple act of writing a good story--much like so much of what Hollywood has concocted as 'historical'.

The Maid of Orleans was a real person, driven by her faith, and tinkering with that makes the story less, not more.