Sitrep 11

 This play, Disgraced, seems very similar to another play that I saw in undergrad. I don't remember the name, so please tell me the name if this sounds familiar: 

Individual members of a family struggling with their own issues, attempt to convince the other to sell the house in order to make enough money to make up for heavy loses. One is a professor of history, and considering their family is Jewish, releases a book titled "Forgetting the Holocaust" to talk about the ways memoires of the holocaust are weaponized to obfuscate criticizes  against Jews/ the Israeli government. The professor was also cancelled as a result losing his professorship and subsequently blacklisted from work.

I do consider the question of elaborating nuance, namely in does elaborating nuance in spaces where things appear black and white. In Amir's case, he presents an anti-communal stance against Islam. In some lights, I think we all play into that community of being so self-critical of your own community, that you almost exile yourself in ways to operate outside those power systems. I am guilty of this with in my own community. So, his point of attempting to transcend his own community, whether it be through the intersections of my race, gender, religion, etc. I intellectualize to the point of alienation, which is something that I think Amir chooses to put himself in. The difference I feel between this play, and the first one I described, is that for Disgraced, the choice to consistently double down and rationalize each issue as a separation of a community as separate for oneself places Amir outside of "grace". 

Other details of falling out of grace in this play: 

1. The prominent feature of Pork items in the play as well as alcohol constantly on display marks the family immediately antithetical with Islam practices, even if one actively chooses to distance themselves or another tries to appreciate it more. 

2. Islam and Judaism is the ones at odds, despite the Christianity in theory being between these two religious teachings. In fact, Christianity remains almost entirely absent. It's omission could be what centers the entire play, placing all these conversations around the standard that Christianity set up as "norm".    

3. Jordy seems to represent a kind of Feminism that straddles being somewhat decolonial, but also strangely being white feminism. She operates under notions of Islamic stereotypes about women and continues to do so cause Amir doesn't present evidence counter to her points. 

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