A few nights ago, I had the pleasure of seeing Seattle Opera’s production of Turandot, which is quite possibly the opera I most wanted to see live. I was thrilled… from an artistic standpoint everything was wonderful. The sets were wonderful, acting was phenomenal, costumes were gorgeous, singing was amazing.
Like many readers/art students I can live pretty deeply within the characters onstage, or within the pages of a book, and it wasn’t until last year that I realized that reader response was something I could study in a university setting. But I digress. Maybe it’s partially a product of following the media buzz surrounding SlutWalk, or my growing interests recent issues such as victim-blaming, slut-shaming, contraception debates, etc. as they’ve appeared in the media, my studies and in my day-to-day life. For some reason, I left the opera knowing that I wasn’t going to blog about it in general terms, but I was going to focus on how Turandot and Liu have been treated and viewed as diametrically opposed female archetypes.
It rather annoys me that critics dub Liu as the woman who is “hardly a feminist” and Turandot as the “ultimate feminist.” Yes. Liu is hopelessly in love with a man who barely notices her, and she kills herself to protect a man who immediately continues to try to win over her aggressor without blinking. I can see where the anti-feminist sentiments come from. However, let’s put this into perspective. Firstly, these are operatic characters. Operatic characters are often over-the-top and simplified down to raw, intense emotions. I think that it’s necessary to read actions and events in an opera differently than perhaps, a realist novel or contemporary movie, even when examining their archetypical roles. Secondly, this is Turandot. This is an opera where the female lead chops off her suitor’s heads out of revenge and men still line up to court her. Several times, these suitors are described as risking their lives for love when the object of their affections is not only indifferent, but malignant. Is it somehow not disempowering for men to gamble their life on a woman who quite specifically wants them dead, but disempowering for a woman to die for an indifferent object of affection?
I see this criticism occur all the time, when a female character acts flawed, or short-sighted, or unhinged, or obsessed, they are disempowered, whereas the same behavior in male characters gets them dubbed as crazy, or romantic, or realistic…. but never disempowered on a larger scale. I guess in a nutshell, I don’t read Liu as an antifeminist figure (though she is undoubtedly a tragic one who in my opinion, makes bad choices), because her actions don’t come from any sort of discernible male/female paradigm of behavior. Rather, they stem from the same sort of over-the-top, love-is-everything, die-for-true-love type of mindset that opera characters frequently demonstrate, and that the male characters such as Calef certainly demonstrate to a large extent.
To the same extent, I actually dislike trying to read Turandot as a feminist. Again, I’m not sure the overal point and purpose of opera (overblown plots and larger-than-life charaters) work particularly well as a social commentary. Additionally, reciprocal feelings shouldn’t be viewed as being at odds with feminism, thus the general plot of her defrosting view towards love, so to speak, doesn’t strike me as one that is anti-feminist in nature. Though, and I wouldn’t have picked this up had I not read the stage notes afterwards, I do find it interesting that the powers that be restaged part of the choreography to have Turandot kiss Calef, rather than have him force a kiss on her which changes her mind. Probably a reaction to the dialogue going on about consent and non-consent, and I do appreciate the gesture, but it does underplay the fairytale aspect of the opera that uses the kiss as the gesture that rapidly changes Turandot.
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