|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
[SPECIAL JANUARY PROMOTION: Spend $50+ In The FPM Store And Receive A Free Copy Of “Final Battle” By David Horowitz.]
Last year, for Black History Month, Franck Sylvestre was canceled for racial stereotypes even though he’s black. Now he’s suing the Red Coalition which claims to fight “systemic racism”.
Sylvestre was born in France to parents from the French West Indies, he moved to Montreal and began putting on his own productions which combined music, slam poetry, dance and, this is where he got into trouble, puppetry.
While Sylvestre’s previous black history month shows had gone without a hitch, he began presenting ‘L’incroyable secret de Barbe Noire’ or ‘The Incredible Secret of Blackbeard’, meant for children, in which he acts out the part of a boy from his island home who on hearing a story from his grandfather discovers a treasure chest with gold from Cortez, of the famed pirate himself (while wearing a pink mask and wielding a wooden pirate sword), and a puppet.
The puppet is black.
Sylvestre’s family had originated from Martinique, once the haunt of Blackbeard, and his shows had incorporated stories and legends from the West Indies. The puppet, named Max, is supposed to be a caricature of himself who steps into the story. Making lookalike and caricature puppets is common enough in puppetry, but the rules are different for Sylvestre and his face.
After a decade of performing the award-winning play for kids, suddenly there were complaints and demands that the Blackbeard show be canceled.
The Red Coalition, an “anti-racism group”, held a press conference attacking a Montreal city for its “tolerance of a clearly racist children’s play featuring a grotesque blackface puppet.”
“I hope that the artist knows that in North America, the climate that we are in now, a blackface puppet, is totally not acceptable,” another professional anti-racist declared. “It’s not about being censored … it’s time for a change.”
Allison Saunders, a BLM rally organizer and school commissioner, claimed that she felt “disrespected” when she saw the puppet.
Can a man’s face be racist? According to professional anti-racists, it can and it is.
“I have the face I have. I have big lips and a big nose. The puppet is bald, however,” Sylvestre protested that the puppet is actually him. “It’s a precedent in terms of freedom of speech and artistic liberty.”
But it did no good.
A local city in Montreal canceled the show and a year later, Sylvestre is suing the anti-racists.
Black History Month has come around again and this time Sylvestre decided to head off trouble by taking Alain Babineau, the head of the Red Coalition’s racial profiling department, to court for defamation.
The Red Coalition describes itself as a “registered lobbyist in the fight to eliminate racism and discrimination in Canada”. It has recently accused Canadian hockey of racism, attacked the police and promoted claims of ‘Islamophobia’.
Now it may be headed to court.
Sylvestre’s lawsuit mentions that Babineau had smeared him by derisively calling him a “bon noir” or “good black” and suggesting that he enables white supremacy.
The Red Coalition, which claims to be the number one organization fighting racism in Canada, has announced that it refuses to be “intimidated by Mr. Sylvestre’s actions and the Red Coalition’s legal team is prepared to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
A coalition with a sizable budget is heroically refusing to be intimidated by a black puppeteer.
Sylvestre sees this as an issue of artistic freedom, but it’s also a question of who decides what’s racist. We used to associate racism with unthinking prejudice, but the response of Canada’s professional anti-racism class was filled with unthinking prejudice. On seeing Sylvestre’s caricature puppet of himself they immediately reacted with some very racist prejudices.
Allison Saunders, the school commissioner and BLM rally organizer, described the puppet as “a scary ‘sauvage’ from the jungle.”
The anti-racist crowd often claims that the black people they don’t like are suffering from “internalized racism”, but when a BLM activist looks at a black man’s caricature and sees a jungle savage, who’s really suffering from internalized racism here?
Applying the Rorschach test to racism has never been any clearer than it is here.
Sylvestre has spent a lot of time trying to explain himself and to defend his art. He has invited the cancelers to come and see the show for themselves, but they seem to have little interest in that. Much like Justice Potter Stewart, they know what offends them when they see it and that’s all there is to it. But should the personal tastes of activists be used to censor a man’s art?
“It’s the principle of children’s shows.Things are big, colors are strong, things are not refined,” Sylvestre has argued. “Is it that because the character has black skin that we can’t do children’s theater with it?”
That is exactly what many of the activists he’s pitted against have in mind. Instead of a system in which artists are selected based on their art, the activists want to decide who gets to appear. And while they clearly don’t want to see Sylvestre and Max on stage, they’ve used the campaign to seize control of artistic productions that will then have to pass a political test.
And the only thing standing in the way of turning art into their puppet may be one single puppet.
Accusing someone of racism is much easier than disproving the accusation. And if a black artist can’t disprove the slur that he’s promoting racism against black people, how can anyone else?
That may be why Sylvestre has no choice but to go to court to stop cancel culture from claiming a beloved children’s show and Max the puppet.
A Canadian court may now be forced to adjudicate the question of whether a puppet is offensive or is just an externalization of an artist. And there lies the difference between fighting racism, which was about ending discrimination, and anti-racism which imposes discrimination.
Racism was as easy to spot as segregated water fountains, but anti-racism exists in the imaginations of the anti-racists who see racism everywhere that they look. The more that racism inhabits their imagination, the more they are driven to destroy everything around them.
Just ask Max.
Maybe he needs to import genuine indigenous puppets from Africa.
Yea, lol, The Red Coalition bozos would pitch a fit over some of those. You can bet they don’t know enough black history to know what they are.
Thanks Cowboy 🙂 My art prof neighbor had a bunch of them at his house when I was a kid 🙂
As long as they’re made by white children, working for slave wages.
What’s sad is most of these anti white groups are in fact white.
Blacks don’t see the irony that their fate still is controlled by whites.
Wonder why that is?
Here is someone who seems is not crying Racists over Blackface actor. I sure hope he straightens them out and takes on Jackson and Sharpton as well and BLM
“Allison Saunders, a BLM rally organizer and school commissioner, claimed that she felt “disrespected” when she saw the puppet.”
I feel disrespected when I see a BLM riot and Hamas coward supporters rioting in the streets, will she listen to me?
They have a prime minister that loves to appear in black face but a dark skinned puppeteer is too much. Honestly I do not get it
BLACKFACE? Google the image of TED DANSON, Whoopi’s boyfriend, (don’t know if they’re still together but man… a gold digger?) IN BLACKFACE during a Roast of her as she’s smiling at his skit. HE WAS IMMEDIATELY CANCELLED RIGHT? He couldn’t possibly be on TV, commercials, anything, right?
Then there’s Whoopi saying the N-Word, that they want banned, of course 99% of the cRap songs would be deleted, during her Hate group show and still no blacklash. How many Whites have been cancelled, banned forever, even they were saying it as an example of to make a point and not calling a person one?
OJ gets off because Mark Furman used the N-Word. Dave Chappell makes millions saying it.
Then you had Beyonce’s Super Bowl Half-time show, seen by billions, with her raised BLACK POWER fists honoring the murderous Black Panthers. (David Horowitz is still wanting the Black Panther killers of Betty Van Patter to be found and prosecuted.) During an NFL game the next year, two Black’s sacked the White quarterback and stood over him with raised BLACK POWER fists. “I see nothing! I hear nothing! I know nothing!” Refs, announcers showing the replay, the NFL, followed the Sgt. Schultz Plan. Worked for Obama, “I barely saw that news in the newspaper this morning.” Really? By the time the newspaper is printed and delivered, that’s old news and as President he needs minute to minute updates. When he said that, the MSM laughed…. it’s over.
If you stand back and look at what’s happening, there is a Black Supremacist movement, raised fists, BLM, coming to the defense of Blacks, Blacks getting away with crimes, especially politicians, openly ridiculing and blaming Whites, and while they are saying this, all I can visualize are riots, looting, arson, smash and dash, lawlessness, and murder, by Blacks, but can I blame and mention that Blacks are the problem like they openly blame Whites and all of them are White Supremacists, like MAGAS?
Beyonce has a lot of white blood, but identifies more with her black heritage. Like so many mixed race people who have black ancestry, she “whitens” her appearance and features. Heck, even blacks who have no discernible white blood do this, all the while espousing hatred of whites. Many of them bleach their hair blonde and wear blue contact lenses.
And, on dating apps, these black women invariable choose white men in greater numbers over black men. And black men do the same, choosing non-black women, especially whites, over blacks.
Time for loving one’s own without hating anyone else, I think.
Thanks KH! They even use mercury in face cream to lighten their skin.
Let’s not forget Whoopi’s The View compatriot, Joy Behar, whose photo of her in blackface didn’t raise an eye.
Whoopi is a major player in anti-white religion. Hypocritically, her romantic history contains a multitude of exclusively white men whom she variously dates and marries.
Her only child, Alex Martin, is a product of her first marriage to a white drug counsellor, and looks like a much lighter-skinned variant of Whoopi.
I think envy is the unshakeable root explaining white hatred. What else makes sense?
BLM is mentioned above. Why is it “Black Lives Matter” and not a woke “African-American Lives Matter”? Going by BLM’s own standards above I would imagine many people are triggered when perceiving “B”LM as a microagression and might have cause to sue BLM…er, AALM.
Incidentally, did anyone else see Tucker Carlson recently say (paraphrase), “The people who call me ‘racist’ tend to be 49-year-old white women lawyers. When black people see me they say, ‘Hey, Tucker, how’s it going?'”
When is White History Month? Straight Pride Month and Parades? I’m also changing MLK Day to Billy Graham Day… HEY…. THEY, Therednation.org, (open the link to read, in their own words, that they are Communists who want Revolution, siding with Hamas,) changed Columbus Day and going after Thanksgiving Day, the White invaders now, to a Day of Mourning. They’re tearing down statues and are tearing down and spray-painting those of our Founding Fathers. They want Mt. Rushmore removed. By giving in to these crybabies, they know that to get their way, they throw another tantrum. Stop giving in!
They, with the help of the ACLU, the reason for anarchy on the streets, “NO TOUCHING!”, they are going to demand all city, state, federal offices be open on Christmas Day… and they’ll win.
Juneteenth, another forced on America holiday. Award shows cancelled because not enough Blacks were nominated so they find any Black, regardless of talent, to nominate. Then they have to vote for them to win, and like the Emmy’s this past Monday, they use their speech to promote Black Supremacy, and get a standing ovation, some were standing because the others around them were, and they had to or else.
We all know who to blame for this, but he’s so cool!
No you got it the wrong way round, the woke leftist elites allow BLM to riot and monuments need removing because the black skinned people are not able to create their own, they’re not bright enough to do it themselves so the left is racist. We believe that the colour of someones skin is irrelevant.
Yes, people’s concerns are lopsided. Every ethnicity or gender preference gets a day or a month but not Anglo Americans straight people.
Also, if it is so evil to wear ‘black face’ because it disparages blacks, then why is ‘women’s face’ on men in drag shows not a huge affront to women? Most women are not what drag queens portray just as most blacks are not like minstrel black face actors portray. I think if black face is evil so is drag queen women’s face!
Kay, as a free-thinking female, “women’s face” is not a huge affront to me simply because it’s not about me. It’s about them acting the fool. I pray Mr. Sylvestre prevails in court.
Does this man havevacGoFundMe? I’d like to contribute.
If I remember correctly, years ago on the “In Living Color” TV show, Jamie Foxx (I think) did an over-the-top female impersonation with huge lips, big chest and hips, rather like Leon Spinks in drag, and the black women in the audience appeared to find it hysterical. This puppet is a kind of folk art grotesque, like the decorations on old salt-glazed water jugs you see on Antiques Roadshow.
And how about Flip Wilson ? I can see him now…..big bust, lipstick……he was a hoot! But I can’t remember “her” name……maybe Flo?
I was a Controller for a manufacturing company and one of our clients claimed a “shortage” on nearly every shipment! After an unusual run of “shortages” I went to the customer to check our products. Nearly EVERYWHERE you went in their facility was a sign “LOOK FOR A CHARGEBACK ON ALL SHIPMENTS”! I asked the manager what that was all about and if it had anything to do with all the “shortages” they kept claiming! He said it was just something leftover from the previous tenant. The “shortages” miraculously stopped! Now when you have an organization BASED on RACIAL GRIEVANCES, they will FIND RACIAL GRIEVANCES in EVERYTHING they see! Like that no talent black woman thing who changes hair colors like I change underwear – DAILY!!
I do hope the guy is successful and runs them out of business! Another issue is with the “n” word!! If it’s THAT OFFENSIVE then NO ONE should be using it! PASS A LAW!! Make it ILLEGAL to USE and require all (c)rap “music” to be banned if containing that offensive moniker! One director in particular will have to either come up with a LOT more dialogue or just have his movies be 10 minutes long!
These rednation flakes must love Jeff Dunham. Sweet Daddy D, Achmed the dead terrorist, Jose, Peanut, there’s plenty to get their panties in a bunch. I feel disrespected every time one of these blm marxists open their mouth.
“Anti-racism exists in the imaginations of the anti-racists who see racism everywhere that they look.” True words, these.
Who needs the Monty Python Flying Circus when you have such stories going around today.
Black History Month seems rather racist to me as it saying WE are special people, lording over every other Race.
So tell me again what the Negro has invented, created or discovered that has been of great benefit to humanity.
Inquiring minds want to know.
We had a Venticinques at our County Fair a few years ago he had this Funny Vulture Puppet
It’s not about skin color; it’s about control. The fascists want to ban anything that does not endorse their narrative. It isn’t that any particular group, action, or even belief is unacceptable on an objective basis; it’s that one must not create any circumstance in which the Alinsky-based deracination of western civilization is exposed as a fraud.