When she learned this year’s Hasty Pudding show would be set during Manifest Destiny’s heyday, president of Native Americans at Harvard College (NAHC) Erica A. Scott ’06 decided to negotiate some terms of agreement for “Terms of Frontierment.”
So Scott met with the Hasty Pudding president earlier last fall to discuss potential racial stereotyping. The Pudding writers were extremely receptive and considered all possible affronts, Scott says, from incorrect terminology to offensive costumes.
The show’s producer, Romina Garber ’06, says the writers had no problem keeping the show clean of potentially offensive elements. “We never edited any Native American jokes out of the show,” she said in an e-mail.
Still, the Pudding took more precautionary measures, presenting the NAHC with two free tickets to the show. And NAHC seems satisfied with the final product.
“NAHC is thankful that they made a concerted effort to make sure the show was funny and provocative as opposed to offensive, since there is a fine line between humor and offensiveness,” Scott said in an e-mail. “Luckily the HPT didn’t cross that line, so I enjoyed the show very much.”
Potential crisis averted.
