Staging Rachel Corrie
CBC's News Website has this story on it today:
Now, brushing aside the bizarre editorializing by the author of the piece, what the hell is up with the beside the whole point of art ass covering that seems to be going on by everybody connected to the play.
If I had the resources, I'd make "Rachel Corrie - The Documentary" and show it on every street corner in every city of the world. It's a truly heroic tale of a young idealistic woman who lost her one and only life trying to make the world a better place for others. It doesn't matter if people object to her for political reasons - and people are more than welcome to state their case against her - politically. They're alive, afterall, to do it. She's dead. The problem isn't that there is pressure to mute the telling of her story, the problem is that people who don't have to are caving in to the pressure.
I mean, c'mon. What the hell is art for, anyway? Why bother with the truth? Good Gawd, as long as we are afraid to offend, there will always be people willing to be offended. And who, really, could be offended by the Rachel Corrie story? It's not personal. It's about a young woman who was killed for her beliefs - in cold blood. As far as I'm concerned, that's a story that needs to be told, if only because I think Rachel Corrie herself never thought it would happen.
The fact that that it did is what people should be offended by - not the staging of a play about her daring commitment to a cause so far away in every sense from her safe and secure American life. I mean, so many of us have strong and committed opinions about issues that will never affect us, but Rachel Corrie actually lived and died standing by hers.
Anyway, as far as this armchair radical is concerned, Rachel Corrie's is a remarkable story of courage that should be told and heard by audiences everywhere.
Damn the torpedoes and make 'em howl and whatever other expressions we use these days to make sure the right thing gets done.
