My Audience Connection class is in full swing and below I post my first sound clip of the semester. Lawren read a blog post by Molly Sheridan (Mind the Gap) about a school band t-shirt that “created” an uproar. Darwin is turning in his…now where did he go exactly?…….
In Sedalia MO (not far from us!), the shirt designed left has been banned. Here is Molly’s post and here the original article as it appeared in the Sedalia Democrat. Here are two quotes from the article the first from a parent, the second from a student….both priceless!:
“I was disappointed with the image on the shirt.” Melby said. “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school.”……
and
“It’s not like we are saying God is bad,” sophomore band member Denyel Luke said. “We aren’t promoting evolution.”
followed by this priceless line (bold my emphasis):
High School junior Adam Tilley said he understood why the shirts were repossessed.
Here is our discussion in class about this: (Link if clip wont play and the full podcast of each class is here):
This is story is shocking and hilarious in a way, (The company that made the shirts is now selling them all over the world), but I think you might be taking the wrong lesson from this. Follow up stories in the newspaper mentioned that the shirts were not just for ‘informal’ use by the members of the band, but were actually to be worn during marching performances. It seeing the shirts at a performance that caused the first objections.
The school got rid of the shirts in an effort to stay far away from any type of controversy, because such controversy can only make them look bad (there is no upside for them) and it would have worked, too, if the newspaper hadn’t reported those firework quotes.
What should concern us, is how easily not looking out into the community can cause a huge uproar that can be a burden and a distraction to any organization. And arts orgs are NOT immune to that. For example, if you are going to have a huge citywide Wagner festival ( like los angeles) or if you are choir putting on the Bach St John Passion, the issue of antisemitism, is a real problem you have to confront.
We livein a complicated world, and sometimes the Arts world can be quite insular, and that could be a big problem if you fall into this trap, after all, we live in a country where a leading academic publisher (at Yale) brought out a definitive account and analysis of the Muhammad cartoons controversy, WITHOUT the cartoons themselves. In fact the person responsible for that decision said it would save lives. We will do ourselves and everyone a favor when we think about our actions within a larger context