Emmett Till, age 13, on Christmas Day. Photograph by his mother, Mamie Till Bradley.
The painting shows a young black man in a coffin, his face a blur of color in the manner of Abstract Expressionist art – and violent death.
The departed, then, is not just someone who has succumbed to the ills that the flesh is heir to. Emmett Till was just 14 years old when he was lynched by two white men for flirting with the wife of one of them. “Open Casket, “ on view at the Whitney Biennial, is Dana Schutz’s 2016 painting of a mutilated Till in the open casket his mother, Mamie Till Bradley, insisted on. The work has drawn protests and condemnation from black artists and writers, who question the right of a white woman to appropriate a searing moment in black history.
Schutz has defended the work, saying that she sees an analogy between Till’s death and the violence visited on young black men by police that has given rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. It is a not-so-distant mirror of our time. I would further argue that a white woman depicting Till in the casket closes the circle that began with a white woman talking with Till. The painting also underscores the reality of Trump’s America: White women and people of color are still beholden to white men in what is the last gasp of white dominance. By mid-century, white people will be a minority in America. That reality is part of what is fueling the rage at and hatred of the other exemplified by the president’s Old White Boy Network – just look at his cabinet – and the leadership of the Republican Party. That 53 percent of white women voted for Trump merely reinforces that there sadly is still a type of woman who derives her status from male power.
But male power cuts both ways. On March 22, Francine Hughes Wilson died of pneumonia at age 69. Few will remember her as the inspiration for the superb Farrah Fawcett TV-movie “The Burning Bed,” about a woman who set fire to the sleeping husband who abused her horrifically. (A jury of 10 women and two men found Wilson not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.)
We don’t, however, have to delve into issues of race and gender to defend Schutz and her painting. It’s not a question of political relevance but of artistic truth and tradition. The high arts – painting, sculpture, literature, opera, ballet and theater – have always transcended reality. No one ever questioned Leontyne Price, an African-American woman, singing the role of Japanese geisha Cio Cio San in Giacomo Puccini’s (Italian) opera “Madama Butterly.” All anyone who had tickets or a recording ever said was “My God, how fortunate we are to hear Leontyne Price’s Butterfly.”
In the popular arts – particularly in the digital age – verisimilitude is everything. And yet, political correctness is such that it’s all right for minorities to play the majority. Hence we have “Hamilton,” filled with people of color playing the white Founding Fathers and Mothers. (To me, it’s only fitting: They may not have realized it, but a multiracial, multiethnic America was what the Founders were fighting for.) However, the history of racism in America is such that the reverse – white people playing blacks – smacks of exploitation. Thus, our abhorrence today of minstrelsy.
I don’t think I would be comfortable with whites playing blacks in general. And indeed, I deliberately made the gay, biracial quarterback at the heart of my new novel “The Penalty for Holding” (Less Than Three Press, May 10) Indonesian-American instead of black and white to explore racial issues at a less explosive remove. (An exception – Robert Downey Jr.’s hilarious performance in the comic film “Tropic Thunder” as a Method actor who undergoes a procedure to darken his skin for a movie role. But then, Downey and “Tropic Thunder” are making fun of actors’ extreme preparations, not black people.)
In the high arts, particularly – which rely more on talent and technique than verisimilitude – creator, subject and audience meet on the bridge of the imagination. What did Leo Tolstoy know about being an adulterous woman (“Anna Karenina”)? What did Stephen Crane, born 10 years after the start of the American Civil War, know about being a soldier in it (“The Red Badge of Courage”)? What do I know about being a gay, biracial football player?
I know what I read, observe and think. I know what I know. Maybe I don’t know what it’s like to be hit by two 300-pound defensemen. But I can imagine it. And maybe, too, a quarterback lacks the cognitive and writing skills, as well as the distance, to articulate what that’s like in a novel.
“Who tells your story?” It’s a question that “Hamilton” asks. Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda says it was as if Alexander Hamilton chose him to tell his story. Maybe Emmett Till chose Dana Schutz – a youth who died too young in a manner no one should experience reaching beyond the grave to another white woman in conversation, in understanding.
"Who tells your story?”
The answer is simply the person who has the talent and courage to try.