The West Versus Prejudice: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘South Pacific’

The West Versus Prejudice: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘South Pacific’
(L –R) New Zealand's Teddy Tahu Rhodes as Emile De Becque, with Jamal Sydney Bednarz as Jerome, Ayanda Dladla as Ngana, and Australia's Lisa McCune as Nellie Forbush for the Lincoln Center Theater production of “South Pacific” at the Sydney Opera House in 2012. TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP/Getty Images
Kenneth LaFave
Updated:

“You’ve got to be taught to be afraid/ Of people whose eyes are oddly made/ And people whose skin is a different shade/ You’ve got to be carefully taught,” sings Lt. Cable in “South Pacific,” objecting bitterly to the prejudice that has kept him from committing to the Tonkinese woman he loves.

In 1950, a year after “South Pacific” opened on Broadway, the censors in South Africa demanded that Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II remove those lyrics from a Johannesburg staging of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical. The famed songwriting team refused, shutting down the production entirely. Lt. Cable’s sentiment was central to the show’s premise that the Western, middle-class values of individual worth and responsibility applied to everyone, not just to white people. It was a profoundly antiracist statement and remains one today.

Kenneth LaFave
Kenneth LaFave
Author
Kenneth LaFave is an author and composer. His website is www.KennethLaFaveMusic.com
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