#boogleboot

ok I'll be honest. I don't hate puccini. I'm not against his works being staged or performed, even Butterfly and Turandot which are rife with imperialistic and orientalist tendencies, because they are important pieces of work.

But, having said all that, I dislike him to a degree where I would rather not listen to his music at all. It boils down to the fact that if it composes music like a racist and writes libretto like a racist... you can fill in the rest.

I'm not a music major or particularly involved in music in my studies/career, so I see no personal loss to just not experiencing his works (though he has written some nice operas, I won't deny that). It's that I'm already living the reality of postcolonialism where Puccini's more racist operas are Real Life Experiences. They're not interestingly packaged stories, they're painful and they still affect whole societies, not to mention individual women, to this day. I hear Madama Butterfly with half the old women I encounter. Turandot happens anytime some white guy orders a Filipino mail order bride. These operas are real to me.

His music is free for other people to experience and his stories are free for others to inspect but why would I want to inspect some story when I have studied, when I have known, when I continue experiencing the effects of his views?

also i keep saying this but using 茉莉花 as Turandot's theme is shoddy research at best and intentional in its message of "welcoming the foreigner" at worst which 🤨