Despite the Metropolitan Opera’s attempt to be ‘progressive’ by hiring a black choreographer for their January 2020 production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, any presentation of this piece inevitably involves a substantial degree of cultural appropriation. Such efforts to avoid the appearance of appropriation often only manage to avoid the underlying offence of which appropriation is just a symptom. Namely, profiting from the depiction of a minority culture solely from an external perspective, while simultaneously avoiding to include members of this demographic in the creative process. Whatever is wrong with productions of Porgy is likewise wrong with any production wherein diversity only matters when it comes to casting.
A robust definition of cultural appropriation would be useful here. This would include the superficial and fundamental error of portraying a cultural identity from a decidedly external emphasizes the degree to which directors and dramaturgs have mostly focused on addressing outward manifestations of appropriation whereas addresses the pre-production exclusions that perpetuate it. We can then begin to understand why the Met’s particularly self-conscious —on which significant energy was spent to emphasize the portrayal of on stage—can at best be perceived as the company’s brazen attempt to rectify its history of neglecting black singers in its pre-Rudolf Bing years. And at worst, it merely perpetuates the subconscious, immutable to which black artists in opera are generally relegated.
