Recently, I talked to students aged 10-11 from my course, and the conversation turned to the fact that they would not like to see characters in the adaptations of their favorite fairy tales and books who differ in skin color from the characters described in the book. They stated that they could not imagine Alice or the Little Mermaid with black or yellow skin. “It's scary to even imagine!” - the child cried out. I tried to figure out the reason for their rejection. Is it due to the fact that the director often imagines characters differently from what we readers imagine them to be? If so, then we are doomed to be constantly unhappy with the screen version of the film and the director's interpretation. If we're just talking about our differences between the director and my ideas about what a hero should be like, that's okay, but... Comparing a film to a book, we put us in a bad mood and can't enjoy watching it, because we are no longer interested in the events, adventures and experiences of the characters, but in “matches” and “inconsistencies” with our images.
If a director invites a talented dark-skinned actor to play the role of a hero we've imagined as white all our lives, should this very fact spoil the impression of the film? Aren't we, viewers, punishing ourselves when we choose the main criterion for evaluating a film not the virtues of acting, not a great script, cinematography or special effects, but only our idea that Cinderella should be white? By the way, who said she “should”?
The plot of the fairy tale “Cinderella” is one of the most popular fairy tales in the world. One of the oldest “Cinderella” lived in ancient Egypt before our era. And it wasn't her crystal slipper that she was losing, but her sandal. When we read about African Cinderella, don't we empathize less with her just because she was born on a continent other than Europe? Of course we'll empathize with her! When I watch a play based on Nikolai Gogol's novel “The Overcoat” at the Bashkir Drama Theater or a theater from Yakutia at the theater, I don't mind the actors' national facial features at all from perceiving the drama that Akaki Akaki Bashmachkin, a 19th-century St. Petersburg official, is going through. This could be the drama of a “little man” of our era living anywhere in the world.
Each year, the Multimedia Art Museum presents the Pirelli calendar for the following year. In 2018, I took the children to the Pirelli exhibition to show them an unusual interpretation of Alice in Wonderland. The 2018 calendar, shot by photographer Tim Walker in his usual cinematic manner. It is dedicated to the fairy tale “Alice in Wonderland”, and its main characters are black models, musicians and actors. Editorial stylist Edward Anninful, who this year headed the editorial staff of British Vogue, says: “When they see Alice in black, children will understand from childhood that our world is diverse, and beauty can be of any color.” Thus, Naomi Campbell, Whoopi Goldberg, P Diddy, Advoa Aboa and Lupita Nyong'o were reincarnated as heroes of a favorite fairy tale. (You can see your favorite actors on the illustrations for my post). The guys were amazed and expressed displeasure and annoyance, but I talked to them the way I'm talking to you now, and they calmed down. Some of them acknowledged that this interpretation is “unusual and interesting and even beautiful”. And since the exhibition took place in December, I already told the guys about the Black Madonna in the studio where we study...
Can Maria and Joseph look like Paulo, a Spanish shoemaker, and his wife, Maria, who live next street, or like Giovanni, an Italian hardware salesman who shares news with you every morning, peeking out of his shop?
While traveling across Europe, I saw several nativity scenes with black-faced heroes. I prayed to the Black Madonnas in Poland and Spain. And I've never rejected their black statues. When I became interested in this issue and found out that the color of the Virgin's skin is not the influence of time, nor the centuries-old soot of candles. Art historians agree that her skin color was chosen intentionally by artists; this, in particular, is indicated by the fact that black covers only areas of her skin, but not clothes or supporting objects.
According to the allegorical reading of the Song of Songs, King Solomon's beloved can be considered the prototype of Our Lady, who says about herself: “Do not look at me that I am swarthy, for the sun has scorched me;...” (Song 1:5). In Vulgate, this place sounds like “Nigra sum sed formosa”. This quote is sometimes found in images of the Black Madonna. In the Greek Septuagint, the corresponding passage sounds like “alaumygama kala”, which can be translated as “I am black and beautiful”. Theologians' debates caused discrepancies in the last sentence, which was also translated as “I am black but beautiful.” I saw pilgrims from different countries and of different skin colors walk thousands of kilometers and climb high into the mountains to apologize to the Black Madonna for their sins or pray for the health of their loved ones. And pilgrims are not concerned about medieval prejudices about the black complexion of the Virgin Mary. I will suggest that black-faced Madonnas could be created by artists of dark skin, representatives of dark ethnic groups. Medieval artists in stone or wood embodied such images of the Mother of God and the baby Christ that would bring their peoples closer to them.
Their work did not contradict the trend mentioned in his book Mimesis (1953) by philologist and specialist in Romance literature Erich Auerbach. The scientist noted that since the Middle Ages, an interpretive tradition has arisen in Europe, when it was necessary to “pour the content of Christianity into a form that would not only translate it, but also adapt it to its own tradition of worldview and expression”. Its essence was that biblical events were presented in literature as everyday events taking place before people's eyes. At this stage in the decline in biblical stories, the presentation was popular in nature: “a sublime event of ancient times should appear before the eyes of every viewer as a modern, always possible, comprehensible, intimate story” that was supposed to “grow into the life and feelings” of any person. And this desire to cut Our Lady out of black basalt or coat it with black lacquer, in my opinion, is also due to the desire to introduce her as your mother or a familiar laundress or a grape merchant. And this trend, which Auerbach writes about, shows the strong desire of artists to reveal precisely the human nature of the Son of God.
In 1894, Paul Gauguin began painting “Te tamari no atua” (Christmas) in Brittany, and finished it in 1896 in Tahiti. On it, Our Lady is Tahitian, and the baby Christ is depicted in the arms of a midwife. It is black with a barely noticeable halo above his head. Even if we didn't know the title of this picture, we would have guessed its plot. It is too recognizable, but it is also not canonical. But we, modern people, will not give a damn about this picture and curse the creator for showing us all what Man is. And the form that God's son took is not that of an African American, a Jew, or a Slav. He showed us Man in all his diversity and in all possible guises, from commoner to king.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, an English philosopher and apologist for Jesus Christ, wrote about people's return to Christ throughout the history of Christianity in 1925 in his book “The Eternal Man”. The title of the philosophical work indicates the connection between the philosopher's optimism (“Christianity declines, but the Lord remains with us”) and the reason for this optimism — the democratism and realism of Christ's actions described in the Bible (“the story of Cana of Galilee is democratic, like Dickens's books”). Chesterton believes that Christ's human words and actions (“He and man and something more”) are timeless: “He did not utter a single phrase that made His teachings dependent on any social order.”
At the same time, the philosopher never tires of reminding him of what his contemporaries would do if they saw such a person:
“It's good to remind us of Jesus' wanderings so we don't forget that He shared the wandering life of the homeless. It is very useful to think that the police would drive Him away, or maybe even arrest Him, because they could not determine what He lives on.” Christ in the form of a hippie, Christ as black, Christ as a Jew or a Georgian - none of this should matter to true faith. In my opinion, something else is important here. One of the manifestations of Christ's human nature, for example, in Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita or in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar is his self-esteem, which is very difficult to preserve in the recurring historical conditions of disregard for the individual.
Only the hero's actions, not the skin color of Christ and his mother, have made us think about our community with them for two millennia and feel compassion for their suffering.
Only the characters' actions and their attitude to eternal values are important for the development of a child's personality.
Only the ability to accept the Other as oneself contributes to the spread of humanism in society.
Paul Gauguin, Christmas
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