epepke
Philosopher
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2003
- Messages
- 9,264
I watched the video, and it seems to me that the main problem is that he isn't very skilled at what he was doing, and he wasn't really all that skilled at burlesque. Which is a shame, as the UK used to be quite the place to do burlesque, but it seems the collective British anus has tightened quite considerably.
It's difficult to pull off burlesque even when you do it well, but it's important to do. Goldie Hawn, Andrew Dice Clay, Carol O'Connor, Sherman Hemsley, and Richard Pryor did exceptionally good burlesque, but still stupid people criticized them, because they were too stupid to get the commentary. To have someone do this is especially important given that so many are too stupid to get it. The stupidity of the reactions is where the performance art is. He just wasn't skilled enough to pull it off.
As a result, most people with that kind of edge will stick to sharp satire, with just enough of a wink that it doesn't get them into too much trouble. Stephen Colbert was good at this. I'm sure he still is, but he won't be doing the Colbert Report any more.
He does at least clearly and directly explain that he is doing a character. This doesn't make people smarter, unfortunately. One must already be smart to get it. But I guess to have a career, one must play to idiots.
One of my favorite examples of this is the "South Africa" episode of The Goodies. I once bought a book in Soho about The Goodies which said that the BBC had marked tapes of this with "Do not show: Racist." The episode, of course, is totally and appropriately anti-racist. That is the value of burlesque: it is opposite to that which it portrays, and it gets to the point in a way no other performance can.
But it doesn't work on people who seriously believe in the stereotypes that it is against; they just see it as more of reality. There are people who really believe that all or most men are like that, and so they see it as badness. Similarly, there were people in the 1960s who really believed that all or most black people were like Richard Pryor's portrayal, or that all or most women were like Goldie Hawn's dumb blonde, which was the reason that Pryor and Hawn constructed their characters: not to encourage their group to behave like that, but to put some doubt into the minds of those who held those stereotypes. It exists precisely to make those who think that women are dumb or black people are animals, by being pushed as a reductio ad absurdum to realize how ridiculous their beliefs are.
The "South Africa" episode showed when the BBC were seriously, without irony, presenting a show called The Black and White Minstrels. This is the last of the series, in 1978:
That was not burlesque. That was toe-tapping family entertainment, and the blithe acceptance of that sort of thing was what "South Africa" was about. I'll add that the first time i went to England was not too long after that, in 1982, and I met lots of people who thought that Apartheid South Africa was a paradise.
Not that this is particularly British. My own countrypeople seem oblivious to the fact that California, especially Silicon Valley, is built on the backs of starving Mexicans. But this is about Britain, and the stereotype about "lad culture" is so strong that people will take this seriously. It's a bit like America was in the 1980s. To far too many people, the idea of "lad culture" isn't a prejudice or a stereotype; it's reality.
One has to be very, very good and probably independently wealthy to attack the stereotypes effectively, and this guy just isn't.
It's difficult to pull off burlesque even when you do it well, but it's important to do. Goldie Hawn, Andrew Dice Clay, Carol O'Connor, Sherman Hemsley, and Richard Pryor did exceptionally good burlesque, but still stupid people criticized them, because they were too stupid to get the commentary. To have someone do this is especially important given that so many are too stupid to get it. The stupidity of the reactions is where the performance art is. He just wasn't skilled enough to pull it off.
As a result, most people with that kind of edge will stick to sharp satire, with just enough of a wink that it doesn't get them into too much trouble. Stephen Colbert was good at this. I'm sure he still is, but he won't be doing the Colbert Report any more.
He does at least clearly and directly explain that he is doing a character. This doesn't make people smarter, unfortunately. One must already be smart to get it. But I guess to have a career, one must play to idiots.
One of my favorite examples of this is the "South Africa" episode of The Goodies. I once bought a book in Soho about The Goodies which said that the BBC had marked tapes of this with "Do not show: Racist." The episode, of course, is totally and appropriately anti-racist. That is the value of burlesque: it is opposite to that which it portrays, and it gets to the point in a way no other performance can.
But it doesn't work on people who seriously believe in the stereotypes that it is against; they just see it as more of reality. There are people who really believe that all or most men are like that, and so they see it as badness. Similarly, there were people in the 1960s who really believed that all or most black people were like Richard Pryor's portrayal, or that all or most women were like Goldie Hawn's dumb blonde, which was the reason that Pryor and Hawn constructed their characters: not to encourage their group to behave like that, but to put some doubt into the minds of those who held those stereotypes. It exists precisely to make those who think that women are dumb or black people are animals, by being pushed as a reductio ad absurdum to realize how ridiculous their beliefs are.
The "South Africa" episode showed when the BBC were seriously, without irony, presenting a show called The Black and White Minstrels. This is the last of the series, in 1978:
That was not burlesque. That was toe-tapping family entertainment, and the blithe acceptance of that sort of thing was what "South Africa" was about. I'll add that the first time i went to England was not too long after that, in 1982, and I met lots of people who thought that Apartheid South Africa was a paradise.
Not that this is particularly British. My own countrypeople seem oblivious to the fact that California, especially Silicon Valley, is built on the backs of starving Mexicans. But this is about Britain, and the stereotype about "lad culture" is so strong that people will take this seriously. It's a bit like America was in the 1980s. To far too many people, the idea of "lad culture" isn't a prejudice or a stereotype; it's reality.
One has to be very, very good and probably independently wealthy to attack the stereotypes effectively, and this guy just isn't.
)
