The Man You Hate.
(Unknown, 2008, cited inDemotivational Posters.)
If I remember correctly, years ago I was watching a performance where an actor accidently said “he was a good man” instead of “he wasn’t a good man”. The context of the text was a description of one of those genocidal dictators, which one it was I cannot remember.
However the accidental removal of the two letters ‘n’ & ‘t’ within his script, prompted me as an audience member, making me want to boldly stand up and say “no he wasn’t” in reply to this accidental comment. Since I as an audience member I didn’t know that this was a mistake, I felt that the writer and the actor were wrong and offensive.
After the performance I realised that it was a mistake, however I still thought about the situation. I thought about how one statement which was commonly accepted as immoral, offend me so much that I wanted to voice my opinion openly at that exact instance. Why didn’t I ever get excited when watching a political/social performance that I agreed with? Even though these types of performances entertained me, I never felt it was necessary to show/voice my exuberance in the same manner that I wanted to show/voice my disagreeance.
I believe this was because I agreed with these politically correct plays and thus they effectively voiced my own opinion which left me with no intellectual part to play. Because I didn’t need to process and make decisions based on the plays subject matter, I became docile.
Thus this is why I came up with the idea The Man You Hate which is a presentation of a, for lack of a better word, negative character. I do not want my audience to become somewhat docile because their views where compliant with my own. I personally feel that a great performance is one that gets a large and visual response from the audience, be it positive or negative.
I wish to play around with the presentation of horrific material in the same way the above image does as it conbines the lovable kids game of hide and seek with mortifying inevitable deaths. This initial idea of The Man You Hate is, on the surface is a character who is homophobic, sexist and racist but is gleeful about his discussions and his vulgarity. While under this exterior, the performance hopes to negatively excite the audience and make them think deeper into these subjects. From this hopefully these social matters become discussed and thought about considerably more than what is being discussed at the moment.
Unknown. (2008) Hide and Seek WWII Soldiers Nazi. [online] Demotivational Posters. Available from http://www.demotivationalposters.org/facebookview.php?id=62406 [Accessed 23rd May 2014]