2008 Woodie Awards
Focus on Christie play distracts from real race issues
Brian Graney
Issue date: 11/30/07 Section: OpEd Page
Agatha Christie's classic mystery novel, And Then There Were None, has sold millions upon millions of copies worldwide. The book has been adapted as high school plays all over the country and even performed on Broadway. It's a classic tale of characters innocently coming to an island-only to be killed one by one according to the verses found in the Ten Little Indians nursery rhyme. This novel was one of the first true murder-mystery novels and the story can be found today in dozens of languages. So it comes with no surprise that local Lakota East High School students were planning on performing the story onstage this weekend. Students rehearsed lines for months and prepared their stage for the popular suspense thriller.
Then entered from stage far-left the Grinch of this tale, local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) President Gary Hines. Hines strongly objected to the performance because when Christie's popular novel was originally released in England in 1939, the working title included the highly offensive n-word. When the book was released a year later in the United States, the title had been changed to the now familiar And Then There Were None. But because of that original title in England, Hines labeled the literary work as racist and offensive-at least if Lakota East students performed it.
Such ignorance and feigned indignation is beyond comprehension. The actual story speaks nothing about racism and can hardly be interpreted as offensive at any point. The characters of the story are punished by a mysterious and anonymous murderer for various sins of their past. A judge who ruthlessly and recklessly sentenced scores of criminals to the death penalty and a wealthy man who killed an innocent couple in the midst of driving dangerously are just two of the characters who meet their fate in what the psycho killer feels is justified. The story goes deeper than a simple suspense thriller and presents the reader with the struggle to side with the victims or feel their lethal fate is entirely justified.
Then entered from stage far-left the Grinch of this tale, local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) President Gary Hines. Hines strongly objected to the performance because when Christie's popular novel was originally released in England in 1939, the working title included the highly offensive n-word. When the book was released a year later in the United States, the title had been changed to the now familiar And Then There Were None. But because of that original title in England, Hines labeled the literary work as racist and offensive-at least if Lakota East students performed it.
Such ignorance and feigned indignation is beyond comprehension. The actual story speaks nothing about racism and can hardly be interpreted as offensive at any point. The characters of the story are punished by a mysterious and anonymous murderer for various sins of their past. A judge who ruthlessly and recklessly sentenced scores of criminals to the death penalty and a wealthy man who killed an innocent couple in the midst of driving dangerously are just two of the characters who meet their fate in what the psycho killer feels is justified. The story goes deeper than a simple suspense thriller and presents the reader with the struggle to side with the victims or feel their lethal fate is entirely justified.
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