Oh I’m sure you’re tired of talking about it, there’s a pretty quick turnaround on topic-weariness these days, but the Guardian has released a video reading of Seven Jewish Children here, and I wouldn’t mention it except that, well, I think that they got it terribly wrong.

This isn’t just a bid for you to watch my take on it at CambiareProductions.com (though of course I will wait while you compare and contrast) it’s an honest matter of artistic choices serving the text.

The Guardian has a single woman reading the text off of cue cards locked  looking off camera on a black background with interscene pictures attempting to provide context.

This does the piece and the discussion a disservice.

In most ethical debates I am against “teaching the debate”, because you either have a debate or teach the facts, teaching the debate is a mealy mouthed compromise that neither teaches nor debates. In the case of Sven Jewish Children however, I am convinced that it is the best place for the piece to live.

I felt from the outset that the balm to the outcry against the presumed anti-Semitism in the piece was to show the conflict in the unnamed and textually undifferentiated characters; and show the evolution of the debate up to Operation Cast Lead in January when Ms. Churchill asserts that the voice that was winning was was of oppression and disproportionate response.

The Guardian’s video has no debate. The reader delivers the entire thing straight, which leaves the trendline towards Ms. Churchill’s conclusion as the ONLY point of the piece.

That renders the piece inert, removing conflict, and leaving us with a stranded performer with no one to appeal to in terms of what to tell or not.

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