It's Bigger than This: Musings on Patti LuPone and Microaggressions

So the community organized and sent an open letter with hundreds of signatures. A lot of big names have spoken up. Even Hell froze over when THE Patti LuPone issued an apology. It was even a pretty well-written too.

So why do I still feel uneasy?

I’ve been drafting my response to this situation for days. At first, I, like a lot of people, was quick to shock and anger. Sharpening my pitchfork, ready to join the witch hunt. But I didn’t want to post something reactionary, so I sat with my feelings and thoughts while statements poured in from industry professionals, fans, and friends. Some calling for LuPone’s head and discrediting her career, and others disqualifying any presence of racism in her remarks—decrying the Snowflake Left. Watching all of these arguments made me realize why I was so shaken. It’s so much bigger, and people were ignoring it.

“Patti is racist!” “Patti is a diva!” Yes and yes. But these truths don’t exist in a vacuum. LuPone’s remarks and overall demeanor are the product of surviving in an industry that put her in competition with other women and valued her pedigree far more than her personhood. She built an impenetrable armor—the Patti LuPone character—to make her untouchable. “Untouchable” quickly mutates into “infallible.” So what happens when a person’s whose mode of survival is rooted in her own infallibility is met with a critique that harms that image of perfection? She lashes out. Doubles down. This response is my frustration with white liberalism as a whole. This entitlement to infallibility that resists investigation.

In 2020, We See You White American Theatre was supposed to usher in an era of rigorous investigation, unlearning, and dismantling. People posted their black squares, added White Fragility to their Amazon cart, and got very used to adding #BLM to their captions. A performance of allyship. A box to check to prove that you’re one of “the good ones.” And the “good ones” can’t be racist, that would betray the rules of that character. “I voted against Trump, so I can’t be racist!” “I say ACAB, so I can’t be racist.”

Black lives don’t start and end at the other side of a bullet: a fact I thought we all agreed on years ago…or at least hoped. Though, LuPone’s remarks and, more importantly, how people on all sides are responding have taught me that any progress I thought we’ve made was an illusion.

It isn’t lost on me how many opponents of LuPone are criticizing this interview as an isolated incident: the rantings of an aging diva past her prime. Bernadette would never. (She absolutely would…) I’ve yet to see people unpacking in themselves how they’re products of the same machine as LuPone, but I’ve seen a lot of people disqualifying any possibility that LuPone can be micro aggressive further bolstering this myth of infallibility. And MOST egregiously, despite the actual goals of the open letter, people aren’t investigating the other ways this micro aggressive sentiment can appear in other ways. It’s all so empty.

Scott Rudin is openly producing on Broadway again.

Sutton Foster remains Broadway’s darling despite never apologizing for performing in vocal Blackface or calling the cries for justice in 2020 “noise on social media.”

This is not an isolated incident.

And furthermore, I’m wary of how swiftly people moved to tear down Patti LuPone. Throwing around woke vocabulary words, claiming to occupy some sort of moral high ground. I have a couple of questions

:

Would the response have been as swift or as passionate if LuPone disparaged performers

with less pedigree or acclaim than Kecia Lewis or Patti LuPone. “Audra is the most decorated performer in Tony Awards history.” That shouldn’t matter. You’re using an elitist argument to counter an elitist argument.

Would people be so quick to denounce LuPone if she had the demeanor of someone softer like Kelli O’Hara or Victoria Clark? Would they be met with the same level of vitriol, or would you be more inclined to sweep it under the rug?

The industry is far more broken than one diva who misspoke. The work is far from done, and I wonder if it’s even started.