NIDA →Productions & Events →#KillAllBlacks
#KillAllBlacks
Date/Time: 19 Oct 2016 – 25 Oct 2016
Eight men create an internet utopia where they discuss the most intimate details of their lives, the most righteous, and the most hilarious. Drinking, sports, work, activism, and how to be an out and proud Klansman. But when one of them disappears after being attacked everything changes. #KillAllBlacks suddenly moves from joke to reality.
OK, relax. I’m just pulling your leg. Australia’s prestigious Institute of Dramatic Arts didn’t really fund and host a production called #KillAllBlacks. That would be bigoted beyond belief. Can you imagine the uproar? Chortle, chortle. As if!
No, in fact they funded and hosted a production called #KillAllMen. It’s still bigoted of course, but the essential difference is that men are a social group that one may now denigrate without fear of repercussion. The #KillAllMen hashtag has quite a history, as discussed in this further blog post.
Oh, I can hear some of you chorus “but there is no comparison at all – men have all that privilege. Look at all those male politicians and CEO’s!“.
Ignoring all those men of colour for a moment, just what percentage of men are politicians or CEO’s? One per cent? Even that?
The writer, Nakkiah Lui, identifies as an aboriginal. One might have thought she would possess an abundance of empathy regarding bigotry. Or at least enough to avoid such a grotesque mis-step. But clearly her feminism trumps her empathy.
Hypocrisy is the short answer, but those preferring the challenge of a TL:DR version can chew on ‘cognitive dissonance‘.
Bigotry dressed up as art is still bigotry. Shame on NIDA
Addendum: Ms. Lui was aware of this post as of the day it was uploaded, and was invited to offer a rebuttal. Subsequent feedback consisted of witless ad hominem delivered in a manner reminiscent of terriers yapping behind a screen door. The one criticism that contained even an ounce of substance, was that I had not seen the play.
How ironic then that feminists have just succeeded in having the Australian screening of a film about mens rights cancelled. A film that, ahem, not one of them had seen.
So on the one hand we have an individual castigated for saying bad words about a feminist production in a personal blog, but with no serious intent of having the play cancelled. On the other hand we have 2,000+ feminists and white knights deliberately setting out to deny everyone the opportunity to experience a production. The former production finished its run, the latter never got started.
Again, this patriarchy of ours sure does work in mysterious ways.
See also:
Hateful Clementine Ford (6 January 2024) Scroll to the last two paragraphs to read about her proposed publicly-funded theatre production
Why it’s not OK to say ‘Kill all men’ (2 December 2021)