Documenting Prejudice and Abjection: Racism in Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1508.23Keywords:
racism, healthcare inequity, documentary theatre, systemic prejudice, marginalized communitiesAbstract
Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy (2008) is more than just a play; it is a social indicator or a documentation of how prejudice adheres to its establishing principles on systemic racism, economic inequality, and social injustice within the American healthcare system. In this vein, Smith recreates documentary theatre accounts to raise awareness of how minorities experience racism, and classism in their quest for decent healthcare. The play unravels the racial and class-based causes of healthcare injustice, and how injustice cycles repeat themselves in the lives of people of color. Smith depersonalizes the various forms of inequities that one may experience in the health sector and makes the readers demand change for the many cases of injustice in the system. This paper shows how the stories in Let Me Down Easy describe the lingering effects of racism on the health of people and offers a call for justice.
References
Boulton, A. (2013). Race, Class, and Healthcare: A Critical Analysis of Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy. Journal of American Drama and Theatre, 25, No. 1, 45-60.
Forsyth, A., & Megson, C. (2009). Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present. Palgrave Macmillan.
Freimuth, V. S., Quinn, S. C., Thomas, S. B., Cole, G., Zook, E., & Duncan, T. (2001). African Americans' views on research and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Social science & medicine, 52(5), 797-808. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-9536(00)00178-7
Hoffman, K. M., Trawalter, S., Axt, J. R., & Oliver, M. N. (2016). Racial Bias in Pain Assessment and Treatment Recommendations, and False Beliefs about Biological Differences between Blacks and Whites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(16), 4296–4301. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1516047113
Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Columbia University Press.
Paget, D. (1987). Verbatim Theatre: Oral History and Documentary Techniques. New Theatre Quarterly, 3(12), 317-336. doi:10.1017/S0266464X00002463
Ritchie, J. (2015). Voices of the Marginalized: Documentary Theater and Social Justice. In Contemporary American Theatre and Performance, edited by D. H. M. Houghton, 123-140. London: Routledge.
Smith, A. D. (1992). Fires in the Mirror. Anchor Books.
Smith, A. D. (2008). Let me down easy. Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
US Department of Health and Human Services. (2020). Disparities in Healthcare Quality among Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups. Retrieved on 23 Sep 2024 from www.hhs.gov.
Weiss, P. (1965). The Investigation: Oratorio in 11 Cantos. Suhrkamp Verlag.
Willet, J. (1964). Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic. Methuen Drama.
