{"id":197,"date":"2015-12-29T19:56:10","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T02:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/?p=197"},"modified":"2020-03-04T14:35:23","modified_gmt":"2020-03-04T21:35:23","slug":"innuendo-in-pantomimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/2015\/12\/29\/innuendo-in-pantomimes\/","title":{"rendered":"Innuendo in Your Panto (and Elsewhere)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dewdney Players, the community theatre group that I belong to, is rehearsing hard for a production of a pantomime version of Cinderella<\/em>. In Canada, the genre is referred to as \u201cBritish pantomime\u201d, presumably in an effort to plausibly deny ownership or association. Many would regard this is a wise strategy.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cmime\u201d\u2014acting without words. The word comes from the Greek word \u201cmimos\u201d meaning \u201cimitator\u201d or \u201cactor\u201d, and the word \u201cpantomime\u201d originally referred to the actor, not the performance. But the history of pantomime is better left to another day.<\/p>\n

(British) pantomime is a strange beast. The principal boy is played by a (usually long-leggedy) girl, and an older female character (Cinderella\u2019s stepsisters or Aladdin\u2019s mother for example) is played by a middle-aged man. I\u2019m proud(?) to say that I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

What is Innuendo?<\/h3>\n

The online Oxford Dictionary has this definition: \u201cAn allusive or oblique remark or hint, typically a suggestive or disparaging one\u201d. A little dig into older dictionaries reveals that relatively recently the word\u2019s 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\u2019s definition).<\/p>\n

Innuendo is an Innuendo of Sexual Innuendo<\/h3>\n

Today, many people (me included) interpret \u201cinnuendo\u201d as \u201csexual innuendo\u201d. I make this brave statement based on the content of web pages that discuss innuendo. (If the statement is incorrect, it\u2019s because it\u2019s based on faulty use of \u201cinnuendo\u201d by many wonderweb posters.)<\/p>\n

Innuendo relies principally on double entendres<\/em> which in turn rely principally on puns. Example: \u201cIf I said you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?\u201d<\/p>\n

A favourite innuendo remark of mine was delivered <\/a>by The Todd in Scrubs<\/em>. It\u2019s totally juvenile, but for some reason, makes me chuckle.<\/p>\n

Actually, much sexual innuendo is juvenile\u2014it\u2019s certainly among the less sophisticated forms of humour, but that\u2019s what makes it such a great component of pantomime\u2014there\u2019s nothing sophisticated about pantomime humour.<\/p>\n

What About Political Correctness Though?<\/h3>\n

That\u2019s the thought that prompted this article. Much of pantomime\u2019s humour is predicated on ugliness, wickedness and stereotypes (stepmother, stepsisters, buffoons, etc.), so I wanted to see if and how pantomime scripts have adapted.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s 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\u2014this despite (in the case of Cinderella<\/em>) Prince Charming being a prince for crying out loud!<\/p>\n

A mid-2000s production of Snow White<\/em> in south west England triggered an exchange of letters in the newspapers because\u2014they 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<\/em>?<\/p>\n

What about the wicked characters? In Aladdin<\/em> (and ignoring Disney), Abanazar is the \u201cbaddie\u201d. He\u2019s usually portrayed as being of Middle Eastern stock. The story is, after all, adapted from The Book of One Thousand and One<\/em> [Arabian] Nights<\/em>, and although the story is set in China, Abanazar has long been portrayed as being in Egypt. So it\u2019s 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\u2026). Yet panto producers are struggling to stage Aladdin<\/em> now because of racial sensitivities\u2014they\u2019re scared that the audience is going to perceive Abanazar as an Islamist terrorist.<\/p>\n

What Does That Leave?<\/h3>\n

Without cross-dressing and authentic characterizations, what elements of pantomime have been left untouched by PC purges?<\/p>\n

The predictable cheesy jokes seem to be unscathed, but let\u2019s face it, there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t able to participate beyond (possibly) obscuring the view of the people behind them.<\/p>\n

There are some elements of pantomime that I haven\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

And of course, there\u2019s still sexual innuendo aka double entendre.<\/p>\n

The Long and Short (Oo-er Missus!)<\/h3>\n

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\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to base a whole genre on double entendres<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll get there in the end.<\/p>\n

It’s Your Turn<\/h2>\n

What\u2019s your opinion of British pantomime and the way it\u2019s having to change? What\u2019s your opinion of double entendre, innuendo and pun as humour devices? Let me know by leaving a comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u201cBritish pantomime\u201d, 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… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[490],"tags":[8,7,29,11,10,9],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-commentaries","tag-double-entendre","tag-innuendo","tag-panto","tag-pantomime","tag-political-correctness","tag-pun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1600,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions\/1600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}