Undesirables

We had a showing today in my Transition Project class, and I showed the material that I have thus far. Claudia, my professor, asked me where I was coming from with this piece--is it a spoof? Is it in earnest? Is it historical? These are some really important conceptual questions that I was happy to think about and answer.

I think that Duck & Cover is first and foremost a satire, with a touch of historical record. When we look back on the Red Scare and Cold War era, it seems so silly. So I want to satirize the silliness of that fear. But at the same time, there are frightening parallels between the fear-mongering then and the fear-mongering now, just with different contexts. There’s also a terrible precedent in history of hiding/getting rid of “undesirables”--Jews during the Holocaust, the Japanese in WWII, the Blacklisting of alleged Communists in the 50s, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and other racial cleansing/genocide, the segregation during the Civil Rights era. And now we have that same animosity towards Arabs and Muslims. I’ve been thinking a LOT about that lately. I want to comment on that in the piece, in a way that’s both satirical AND profound, and make the audience realize that the fear-mongering wasn’t just a thing of the past. It is still happening now.

Any thoughts on this??