Racist satire or the tyranny of the literal

If you haven't seen this already, have a watch:

As he did last year, Michael Rubenfeld created a series of short films to promote the SummerWorks Festival, which ended last weekend. And, again, like last year, not all these films were designed to directly promote shows but rather to stir up thoughts and reactions about theatre, performance and culture generally. Last year, we got the notorious film about hot, pillow-fighting playwrightesses - this year, we got the above.

When we were preparing our SummerWorks coverage, Rubenfeld sent me a link to the clip and asked my thoughts. My immediate reaction: there will be some who will not understand who or what the target is. Sadly, given the brewing shit-storm taking place over at Praxis Theatre I’ve been proven, at least partially, right.

I think the predictable controversy stems from the fact that satire and irony are pretty much dead in our culture (with the irony being that people think we live in a very ironic age). I think we’ve lost our ability to understand satire because so many of us are so bloody literal.

It seems to me that the target is the guy making the pitch. I thought it was about white people dishonestly claiming diversity in the never ending chase to secure funding. Without naming names, I have worked in situations where this has pretty much been the case and, yes, it was pretty distasteful (and in desperate need of satire).