By Monica Showalter
Is nothing sacred to the left?
Suddenly, St. Joan of Arc has been rewritten into a transgender icon, according to wokester elites in the arts, who’ve decided to culturally expropriate the Catholic saint and national patroness of France for the god of transgenderism on multiple fronts. They’ve even expropriated from the title of Robert Graves’s most famous book, I, Claudius. Instead of being the Maid of Orleans, the Liberator of France, and a great symbol of feminine chastity, beauty, innocence and courage, she’s now some creature whose bravery consists of contemplating her genitals and displaying her wokeness in the trendy new definition of heroism. It’s similar to a trend seen several years ago, when every historic character was suddenly declared ‘gay’ in a bid to normalize gayness, when the facts in most cases were simply not there.
According to the Daily Wire:
Critics swarmed Twitter following an announcement from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre about a new play — “I, Joan” — that portrays the legendary martyr Joan of Arc as “a legendary leader, who in this production, uses the pronouns ‘they/them.’”
The Globe shared a statement “on identity” from the theatre’s artistic director Michelle Terry, who argued that Joan of Arc had been presented in that way in the past. “Regardless, theatres do not deal with ‘historical reality’. Theatres produce plays, and in plays, anything can be possible,” she added.
Here’s the tweet put out by the Globe to advertise its new oeuvre:
We see a sultry, sexily unwashed image of a shirtless figure with huge broad masculine arms and wrists, combined with bound breasts, and an androgynous face with sensuous red lips partially concealed by chain mail to convey mystery. So the new Joan was either a boy who claimed to be a girl, or a girl who claimed to be a boy, with perhaps the latter more likely as St. Joan famously cut her hair short and wore soldier’s armor and chain mail to go into 15th century battle to save France. They are claiming “non-binary.”
It’s an incredibly insulting reading on St. Joan, who was never all about worshiping herself. “I, Joan”? That’s so gross. It was always “Joan for France,” and Joan for others in the story of St. Joan of Arc, which was why it was so compelling. The historic Joan (and there are records) was so compassionate, so considerate of others, she never wielded weapons herself while in battle. She was known for her focus and compassion for those wounded in battle. As a child, according to Mark Twain’s biography of her, and it is a good one, she gave up her porridge to homeless vets roamring around the country in the wasteland that France had become in the wake of the Hundred Years’ War.
As for Joan’s wearing of men’s attire and cutting her hair short, there was a reason for that, too, according to historical records: She was extremely beautiful. She wore the armor and cut her hair to deter rape, which was a live possibility in Medieval-era France. Subsequent artistic depictions of her as boyish or homely in centuries that followed are unintentionally inaccurate. Joan was beautiful.
According to the National Catholic Register, they know their reading is fake, but they don’t care:
In a statement Friday, the play’s artistic director, Michelle Terry, said, “History has provided countless and wonderful examples of Joan portrayed as a woman. This production is simply offering the possibility of another point of view.”
Terry argued that play adaptations make “anything possible” because “theatres do not deal with ‘historical reality.’”
The play, which is described by the theater as “queer and full of hope,” opens on Aug. 25 and will feature actress Isobel Thom in the leading role. Thom identifies as non-binary.
The play will follow Joan’s role in the Hundred Years’ War between France and England, although it is unclear what historical events will be included.
It’s a wretched confusion of poetic license and the changing of a few details for dramatic effect with outright lies. The creators claimed that Shakespeare did it, so they can, too. But poetic license is hardly the same as turning a story on its head. Poetic license was in the way the award-winning Sound of Music film changed a few details, making the captain figure a martinet instead of the old softie he was in real life, to intensify the drama and conflict in the story, or the way singer Gordon Lightfoot did the same in his ballad “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which had a few details altered, to make the song more emotional.
The “I, Joan” monstrosity is grossest of all when we read what its creators had in mind as they sell their play to the public:
The men are all fighting, again. An endless war. From nowhere, an unexpected leader emerges. Young, poor and about to spark a revolution. This is Joan.
Rebelling against the world’s expectations, questioning the gender binary, Joan finds their power and their belief spreads like fire.
Join us in the wooden ‘O’ and feel the heat of the sun and the pulse of Joan’s passion. With open hearts and raised voices, dance and cheer with us as we rediscover Joan’s story. It’s alive, queer and full of hope.
Written by Charlie Josephine (Bitch Boxer) and directed by Ilinca Radulian (Co-Director, Richard III, Globe).
This production includes strong language.
‘Oh if we can just quiet the world for a moment. And listen within. There’s a voice guiding you. And until you can hear it, I’ll be it for you.’
So the voices guiding Joan were never the voices of saints telling her to save France in battle, they were “voices” that told her to go alter her gender. And everyone has these voices, everyone needs to change sex for … wokesterism. They’ve cut out God and holiness entirely from the story of St. Joan and replaced it with the delusional voices of trangenderism as the new god.
It doesn’t get more loathesome than this.
It probably won’t go over well in France, to say the least, where St. Joan is the country’s national patroness. A few will probably notice that it’s the English pulling this wokester crap, putting Joan to death a second time, same as they put her to a grisly, fiery death in the historic event.
The rest of us can’t stand it, either. Mark Twain, who was likely an atheist, spent thousands of hours researching the life of the historic Joan and found in his research the unmistakeable conclusion that something dramatic and spiritual had happened.
According to Dr. Kelly Scott Franklin, writing in Catholic World Report:
Mark Twain was still alive when the Church beatified Joan of Arc in 1909. To a certain extent, his novel remains a puzzling act of devotion from a complicated man. For the great American author, there was no one like St. Joan. He marveled at her confidence in God’s Will, her courage, her simplicity. And in her he saw an example for all time. We can hear Twain’s own voice in the words of his narrator describing Joan: “It took six thousand years to produce her; her like will not be seen in the earth again in fifty thousand. Such is my opinion.”
St. Joan deserves a lot better than she’s getting from the wokester patrol trashing her story in England. She got it with Twain, who was America’s greatest writer. She’s definitely not getting it with these wokester clowns at the Globe.