Portraying "your people" in a negative light

[MikeWaters]

Read this article in the Dallas Morning News:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...1.26bfbc1.html

This is what happened when Better Luck Tomorrow showed at Sundance in 2002. During a question-and-answer session after a nighttime screening, a white man stood up and demanded that Mr. Lin explain why he would represent his people like that.

"Someone who was Caucasian was telling us how we should represent ourselves, and the theater just exploded," Mr. Lin recalls. "People were standing up and screaming, going back and forth."

Then Roger Ebert stood up to defend the film and the director. The famed critic put it plainly: Would anyone even think of making the same demands of a white filmmaker? Why choke off the complexity and humanity of characters, good or bad, just because they're Asian?

Mr. Lin still appreciates Mr. Ebert's passionate defense. But he knows the issues that provoked it haven't gone away.

This reminds me of Labute who, according to him, was disfellowshipped because he portrayed some Mormons in a negative light in one of his plays (homophobes talking about beating up gays, if I remember correctly). As if no Mormon could ever be a homophobe/gay basher.

The notion that an artist should "protect" his people is an interesting one, and some might argue, something that has effectively killed the notion of Mormon art. Mormons can't and won't tolerate Mormon art.