[lbo-talk] About the joke "The Aristocrats"

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Oct 1 08:06:54 PDT 2005


Dennis Perrin wrote:
>
>
> I can't bring myself to watch it, either. Even though my book is,
> apparently, prominently displayed on-screen, I still have no desire to
> listen to this joke told countless times.

I plan to buy the DVD, but I have no interest in being trapped in a theatre watching it. I'm interested in seeing how certain of the comics handle the joke, but not necessarily in the whole movie.

The trouble with the 'deep' commentary on it is that such commentary is possible on _any_ text, play, or movie. That quality of 'close reading' had begun to turn me off on the tradition I had mastered in grad school, the 'new criticism,' even before I got soured on the politics of that tradition. But I could take a paragraph from a WSJ editorial and find as much depth in it as in _Hamlet_, _Mansfield Park_, & _War and Peace_ combined. :-)

Carrol



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