The Taotaomo'na in the Tempest
“Shakespeare gi Guinaiya yan Chinatli’e’”
Michael Lujan Bevacqua
Marianas Variety
4/30/14
Shakespeare’s Hamlet asks, “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by
opposing end them?” Hamlet is paralyzed
by the fear of death or suffering, but ultimately moves toward decisive
political rebellion.
Similarly, the African-American
lesbian poet, scholar, and activist Audre Lorde speaks of the radicalizing
crisis in her life when she faced a diagnosis of breast cancer: “I was going to
die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.”
Most might assume
that it is ridiculous to compare a “great” writer such as Shakespeare to an
activist like Lorde. One of them so many seem to accept as the height of human
achievement whereas the other is generally read only within feminist and ethnic
studies circles. There is something problematic about this, something that we
on Guam should be very familiar with by now.
A study by Yale
professor Harold Bloom is literally titled Shakespeare:
The Invention of the Human. It is a provocative thesis if one thinks about
it, but most people simply do not. You have to read Shakespeare in high school,
just like the way you have to learn about Magellan or Columbus. It is easier to
accept their importance because an authority tells you so, rather than question
is there is any substance to the pedestal upon which it is placed.
It is just as
silly to call Magellan the man who “discovered” Guam as it is to say that
Shakespeare is the man who invented the “human.” Both were things that clearly
existed prior to European intervention. The problem with making these types of
assertions is that they strip power away from so many and place it in the hands
of a select few, who not surprisingly happen to be male and European. To give
Shakespeare that type of credit is to reinvent the colonial game: it is to not
just give over land and history, but give over the creativity of people and the
sovereignty of imagination and chain themselves to a hierarchy upon which a
long dead, white European man sits atop.
In order to
create a cult of greatness of Shakespeare, you have to obscure so much. The
perceived authority becomes the excuse for not acknowledging the limits of
problems that are also present.
For example, in
the plays of Shakespeare there is a clear ingenuity in terms of the language he
uses. His “birthday” passed recently and my Facebook timeline was filled with
people sharing images of all the phrases and sayings that we owe to the
inventiveness of Shakespeare. But when you look at the plays themselves of
Shakespeare they are actually quite tame and conservative and seem hardly
appropriate for being someone who we should look to as the universal height of
human creative achievement. Shakespeare’s protagonists are generally the same:
white, privileged men. The stories were not considered very radical in their
time and that conservatism is hard to shake. Women and non-whites fare very
poorly in Shakespeare’s plays, unlike in those of some contemporaries such as
John Webster, which a clear problem if you are trying to establish someone as
the epitome of human creativity. Taking on strong, controversial, mold-breaking
characters is one of the ways that artists define themselves in a timeless fashion,
by defying instead of milking the conventions that surrounded them.
Shakespeare did
feature some interesting characters, such as Shylock the Jew, Rosalind as a
heroine, and Othello the African general. In postcolonial studies the comedic
and degraded African-Mediterranean slave Caliban of The Tempest is often re-imagined as a figure of radical
anti-colonial resistance.
UOG Theater Professor
Michelle Blas (currently directing the play Pågat)
took such considerations into account when she directed The Tempest at UOG in the Fall of 2012. She made a radical choice
of casting female Chamorro actors in the roles of Caliban and Ariel, who are
both supposed to be male according to the text.
Ariel is an
interesting character. He, or she in Ms. Blas’s production, is the original inhabitant
of the island and although she is portrayed as the servant of Prospero, a white
male colonizer on the island, Ariel is actually far more powerful than he. It
is she who conjures up the typhoon in the play’s title. She is oppressed by
Caliban’s family and later manipulated by Prospero through her sense of honor. Throughout
the play, Ariel constantly pushes for freedom and the right to
self-determination, and in fact finally wins freedom from Prospero, who gives
up his claim to rule over the island and returns to Italy.
No complete study
of Ariel as a colonized figure of resistance has yet been done. Today at 2 pm
the Chamorro Studies Program at UOG is pleased to present a colloquium that
will feature such an analysis. Professor Blas with her colleague Dr. Elizabeth
Kelley Bowman have studying the figure of Ariel within the context of Chamorro
values. They will be using a Chamorro-centered and islander-focused critique in
order to draw out aspects of Shakespeare’s play that many who are focused on his
supposed greatness may miss. This presentation is free and open to the public
and will take place in the CLASS Dean’s Professional Development Room on the 3rd
floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences Building at UOG.
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