[lbo-talk] Borat

Dennis Perrin dperrin at comcast.net
Sat Nov 11 10:47:37 PST 2006


Two for one, then I'm done for the day, Doug. Promise!

Sean:


> In so far as we can say Bert Williams was of the minstrel tradition, he
> certainly wasn't a fan nor its originator. I'm sure if he had been given
> the choice, he would have done something far more dignifying, but there
> wasn't much else for a black man to do in the theatre at that point except
> to dress up in black face as the white folks had been doing for decades.
> I'm sure you know more about the innovations he introduced into that kind
> of vaudeville, but his is hardly a comparable situation to that of Cohen
> and Borat. And seeing or knowing about Williams does little to make
> minstrelsy as a style of humor any more acceptable or less problematic in
> terms of the racist and nativist overtones in which it inevitably
> trafficked.

I agree with you, save for the Williams/Borat analogy, which I didn't make, nor would. I was simply talking about Williams' role in the minstrel tradition, which was exactly as you stated. And yes, I'm sure in a less racist time, Williams would have truly blossomed. It's a testament to his genuis that he achieved what he did in the period he performed.

Borat/Cohen, however, is well within the ethnic humor tradition. How effective or "racist" he is remains open to interpretation, and I plan to write a follow-up post exploring this point this upcoming week.


> Along these lines, I'll also mention that there is a controversy brewing
> here at GMU because a white student went to a Halloween party dressed in
> blackface, wearing chains and torn clothes. I'm sure this could be spun
> as some sort of subversive act, but some things can be considered in such
> bad taste that they are simply not funny.

Agreed, again. This sounds like something the Dartmouth Review would pull during the 1980s.

Now, Carl:


> I suppose you mean someone who is deliberately, not inadvertently, funny
> and someone who's still alive. That's a toughie, since that giant sucking
> sound you hear is today's US pop culture. But I'd have to say that
> probably the two funniest movies of recent decades were Albert Brooks'
> "Real Life" and "Lost in America."

Well, I meant anyone from any time. Still, I'm a huge Albert Brooks fan, and "Real Life" is among the best mockumentaries, in my view, along with "Spinal Tap" and Christopher Guest's other films -- "Waiting For Guffman" and "Best In Show."


> BTW, when did Thurber/Perelman become "high-falutin'"? And when, for that
> matter, was James Thurber ever funny? S. J. Perelman, OTOH, *was* a comic
> genius.

"High-falutin'" was meant to be tongue in cheek. Thurber was a humor writer. Ask the comedy playwright and sometime TV writer Mark O'Donnell, who wrote a fine appreciation of Thurber for the Voice many years ago. And yes, Perelman was brilliant, the most erudite jokewriter the Marx Brothers ever employed.

(From "Horse Feathers")

Secretary: The Dean is furious. He's waxing wroth! Groucho: Is Roth out there too? Tell Roth to wax the Dean for a while.

Dennis



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