Blog 4: Slav & Kanata

  I chose to go see the Slav and Kanata presentation. The presentation exposed a major issue in the modern artistic world. This issue is the fact that cultural minorities are not present enough on the scene and their culture is being exploited in an unfair way. The two women talking about this issue accuse Robert Lepage of being insensitive to the first nations, in particular by not leaving room for the members of these communities whom he had to represent on stage. The same criticisms of cultural appropriation for Slav, a show which denounced slavery in good faith, but which presented very few black actresses on stage and expressed black culture in a false way. These pieces are very controversial because of cultural appropriation and for their predominantly white distribution. Also, much of the information on which these plays were written is completely false and does not represent the reality of the cultures and of the stories represented.

  Most people in the public agreed with the views of the two women who presented this critique. It makes sense because they explained to us that some facts in these two controversial shows are simply false and completely irrelevant to the real cultures that the stories were supposed to represent. But, the main argument of the writer of these shows was that these shows were artistical presentations and he can present whatever he wants, because it’s his imagination and his artistical ideas. Some people may agree with this statement even if most of the people in the public didn’t, including me.

  One thing that I found very interesting, is how much coverage this scandal got. After doing some research, I found out that a lot of people and even entire communities criticized this “piece of art”. Mostly black and western Canadian first nations communities. These communities expressed their frustration and didn’t support these shows at all. It is very understandable.

  To conclude, I would highly recommend this presentation to everybody, because it shows how art can make people believe things that are false and take possession and modify different cultures. This presentation really shows how unfair these shows are to the black and Aboriginal cultures.