(~5 minutes to read)
Dewdney Players, the community theatre group that I belong to, is rehearsing hard for a production of a pantomime version of Cinderella. In Canada, the genre is referred to as “British pantomime”, presumably in an effort to plausibly deny ownership or association. Many would regard this is a wise strategy.
Pantomime has a long history, during which it evolved from silent acting to talkies, and in doing so, confused the heck out of North Americans who had adopted the modern meaning of “mime”—acting without words. The word comes from the Greek word “mimos” meaning “imitator” or “actor”, and the word “pantomime” originally referred to the actor, not the performance. But the history of pantomime is better left to another day.
(British) pantomime is a strange beast. The principal boy is played by a (usually long-leggedy) girl, and an older female character (Cinderella’s stepsisters or Aladdin’s mother for example) is played by a middle-aged man. I’m proud(?) to say that I’ve played both an ugly stepsister and Widow Twankey in past productions. Other features of pantomime include cheesy predictable jokes, audience participation and mild sexual innuendo.
What is Innuendo?
The online Oxford Dictionary has this definition: “An allusive or oblique remark or hint, typically a suggestive or disparaging one”. A little dig into older dictionaries reveals that relatively recently the word’s use was more frequently employed in law than elsewhere (although a 1964 reprint of the 1944 edition of the Pocket Oxford Dictionary contains only a variant of the current Oxford Dictionary’s definition).
Innuendo is an Innuendo of Sexual Innuendo
Today, many people (me included) interpret “innuendo” as “sexual innuendo”. I make this brave statement based on the content of web pages that discuss innuendo. (If the statement is incorrect, it’s because it’s based on faulty use of “innuendo” by many wonderweb posters.)
Innuendo relies principally on double entendres which in turn rely principally on puns. Example: “If I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?”
A favourite innuendo remark of mine was delivered by The Todd in Scrubs. It’s totally juvenile, but for some reason, makes me chuckle.
Actually, much sexual innuendo is juvenile—it’s certainly among the less sophisticated forms of humour, but that’s what makes it such a great component of pantomime—there’s nothing sophisticated about pantomime humour.
What About Political Correctness Though?
That’s the thought that prompted this article. Much of pantomime’s humour is predicated on ugliness, wickedness and stereotypes (stepmother, stepsisters, buffoons, etc.), so I wanted to see if and how pantomime scripts have adapted.
It seems that during my 20+year banishment to the colonies (aka my emigration to Canada), political correctness has committed pantocide in the UK. Those involved in pantomime are having to self-censor or be damned, and the pantomime as it came to be known and tolerated if not loved is being forced to evolve into a sterile shadow of itself.
Let’s take the principal-boy-played-by-a-girl component. With the normalization of same-sex relationships has come the perception that a lesbian liaison is being portrayed—this despite (in the case of Cinderella) Prince Charming being a prince for crying out loud!
A mid-2000s production of Snow White in south west England triggered an exchange of letters in the newspapers because—they used dwarves to play the dwarves! Apparently, the correspondent said that it was demeaning to dwarves and the show should have used [racehorse] jockeys instead. Would you take your children to a show called Snow White and the Seven Jockeys?
What about the wicked characters? In Aladdin (and ignoring Disney), Abanazar is the “baddie”. He’s usually portrayed as being of Middle Eastern stock. The story is, after all, adapted from The Book of One Thousand and One [Arabian] Nights, and although the story is set in China, Abanazar has long been portrayed as being in Egypt. So it’s as natural to show Abanazar as being of Middle Eastern stock as it is to depict the bad guy as an Englishman in Hollywood movies. Changing his ethnic origins would be like portraying Jesus as a white European (oh wait…). Yet panto producers are struggling to stage Aladdin now because of racial sensitivities—they’re scared that the audience is going to perceive Abanazar as an Islamist terrorist.
What Does That Leave?
Without cross-dressing and authentic characterizations, what elements of pantomime have been left untouched by PC purges?
The predictable cheesy jokes seem to be unscathed, but let’s face it, there’s no end of other cheese boards that the panto-goer could patronize in order to feed his habit. And the jokes must be carefully vetted for hidden meanings that might offend someone.
Audience participation? Many (music) concerts provide that, as do sports venues (in Europe at least). In any case, audiences are frequently watching the show through their smartphones, so they aren’t able to participate beyond (possibly) obscuring the view of the people behind them.
There are some elements of pantomime that I haven’t even mentioned so far, such as slapstick and using well-known songs with re-written lyrics, but even they have to be carefully vetted to ensure that the new lyrics contain nothing offensive and that the slapstick features nothing that could harm the actors or the audience.
And of course, there’s still sexual innuendo aka double entendre.
The Long and Short (Oo-er Missus!)
So cross-dressing on stage has declined just as overt cross-dressing has become accepted in public. Authentic characterization is being frowned upon even as visible minorities (race, colour, creed, abilities) are being celebrated. Pantomimists’ hands are being tied behind their back (figuratively speaking, I hasten to add, for the benefit of the PC people opposed to bondage!), and they must look for new ways to keep the traditions alive with the few tools still available.
It’s hard to base a whole genre on double entendres, but we must keep our peckers up and try. We can employ cunning linguists to write alternative lyrics for the songs; we can give the PC advocates a good stiff talking-to; we can have bigger climaxes to the stories; we can have a mass debate about how to revolutionize the pantomime genre.
We’ll get there in the end.
It’s Your Turn
What’s your opinion of British pantomime and the way it’s having to change? What’s your opinion of double entendre, innuendo and pun as humour devices? Let me know by leaving a comment.