Burlesque Then and Now
– A Lesson on Anatomy and Agency
Robert
C. Allen’s Horrible Prettiness serves
as a comprehensive record of the history of burlesque in America. Like many, he
attributes Lydia Thompson’s landing in the U.S. in the mid-19th century
to the beginnings of American burlesque, replete with all the uproar, critique,
and confusion which a radical feminine display seems always certain to arouse.
Please know that I do choose my words carefully. Arousal was, and continues to
be, a big part of the perceived “problem” with burlesque. Of course, Thompson
and her troupe, the British Blondes, did not remove a morsel of clothing on the
stage, and though their performances are today understood as being burlesque
(indeed they share some elements with contemporary burlesque performances), our
understanding of the art form is drastically different.
Today when
we walk into a venue looking to see a burlesque show, what are we really asking
for? A few basics are almost always present: there will be costuming,
movements, and striptease. Usually, but not always, there will be choreography,
concept, and pasties. Now compare this to Lydia Thompson’s burlesque or, for
that matter, American burlesque from the time of her landing until the turn of
the 20th century. There was scripting and singing like in a parodic
play. There was bizarre-for-the-time costuming and women playing men’s roles. There
was no stripping. This is especially remarkable, as what many conceptualize as
one of the cornerstones of American neo-burlesque was then absent.
However,
Thompsonian burlesque and neo-burlesque share the name of an art form, a mode
of expression that, somehow, has survived so many reinterpretations,
appropriations, shut-downs, start-ups, and triumphs. It seems to me that some
of the most recognizable threads woven into the fabric of burlesque, from
Thompson to Trixie Little, are surprise, sexuality, and feminine display. The
fact that burlesque persists and, indeed, thrives through the centuries is
because of these three elements, at the very least. In New York in the 1860s, Thompson
and her troupe occupied male roles in plays, dressing and “acting like” men –
somewhat. Thompson paired tighter-than-average pants with a shortened dress,
and the resulting effect was something like magnificent horror bound up in fascination
and repulsion simultaneously. Here is this woman in the 1860s who, at a time
when women were largely deprived of their sexuality, not only exuded femininity
(Thompson and her troupe members were considered very beautiful by many at the
time), but masculinity. Whoa. Reflecting on this odd and
enthralling dichotomy which burlesque performers brought to the stage, William
Dean Howells writes in an essay dated from 1869: “[T]hough they were not like
men, [they] were in most things as unlike women, and seemed creatures of an
alien sex, parodying both. It was certainly a shocking thing to look at them
with their horrible prettiness, their archness in which was no charm, their
grace which put to shame” (Quoted from an essay dated 1869. In Allen, page 25).
Yes indeed: When life gives you lemons that are like oranges and limes, your taste
buds say “extraterrestrial.”
“Othering”
is a word I am going to use to describe the process of rendering a person or
group of persons strange, exotic, and different. It’s a useful process for deeming
someone or something inferior. Allen descriptively illustrates how burlesque and
its performers have historically battled against systematic subjugation. The bourgeoisie
tried to deem burlesque a “low art”, something only the lower classes would see
and enjoy. Mayor LaGguardia outlawed burlesque in New York in 1937, in an
attempt not so unlike Mayor Giuliani’s efforts to “clean up the city” by
removing any “polluting”, “amoral” and, surprise surprise, sexual influence
from Times Square. When Lydia Thompson and the British Blondes landed in New
York, critics used the language of a contagious foreign disease to denounce it.
Yet
repulsion and fascination often go hand in hand. Indeed, some of the same
reporters who outwardly denounced burlesque, both during and long after
Thompson’s time in the States, could scarcely mask their inability to look
away. The “horrible prettiness” was captivating for many even as their
ingrained moralities told them it was wrong, that it was subversive, and thus dangerous.
This is all part of the process of othering. Think of the sideshow, in which
people pay money to marvel at the Elephant Man, the pinheads, the Siamese Twins.
Not surprisingly, foreign and “exotic” women from Algeria, Japan, Persia,
India, and Java doing the “cooch dance” were a major attraction at the Midway
Fair. Allen bluntly states that “The
cooch dancer is not like a freak, she is one” (235). A woman’s display of her sexuality
was something just as foreign, exotic, alluring, and simultaneously repulsive
as a blue person, or a supposed human-animal hybrid. Anthropologists who were
trying to introduce the American public to the science of ethnology and
ethnography (and legitimize their work) defended the presence of these strange,
enticing performers as good “subjects” for study. They also offered to measure
fairgoers’ heads so that they could know their place on the Social Darwinian
scale. Sigh. I am not always so proud of my predecessors.
Nonetheless,
early anthropologists defended these “others” in a way, by legitimizing their
presence and keeping the authorities from shutting it down. After a white
fairgoer found out that his head circumference made him superior to people from
every other part of the world, he could bound along down the Midway Plaisance
stretch of the Chicago fair, marveling in delighted disgust (or disgusted
delight) at the exotic dancers (pun intended). As long as these “attractions”
were just kept plenty far away from the more “respectable” Anglo-Saxon-sanctioned
exhibitions at White City, even people from the upper tiers of society, or
evolution, or whatever, could feel good about coming to see them.
This is
quite similar to what happened to burlesque after the infamous Astor Place Riots,
which Allen is not alone in identifying as one of the most important factors in
changing the way in which theater was perceived, advertised, and attended. The intermingling
of audiences, with rich and poor on different tiers of the same venue, would quickly
diminish. The Riots, taking place in the middle of the 19th century,
were a manifestation of the inherently chaotic make-up of the theater: men and
women (who were actually or imaginably always prostitutes*) from all levels of
society mixed at the same theater, with the unruly and highly entitled “pit”
composed of mostly lower class individuals. A lesson was learned: “rich”
entertainment was forever separated from “poor” entertainment.
Guess
which side burlesque fell on? Possessing the very same sort of wonderful
exoticism and “otherness” as some of the side-show acts at the fair, burlesque became
associated with pollution, sex, fascination, and, most unfortunately,
inferiority. This was especially true as the act of striptease was increasingly
introduced into burlesque acts. Women who exhibited their bodies, were aware of
them, and used the images which they
created were quite alien to many. I would go so far as to posit that the type
of fear they instilled in their onlookers – mixed in with admiration and
fascination and even desire - was enough to cause many to want to subjugate
burlesque and its performers. But there is good news, because not only have
burlesque and burlesque dancers survived the waves of critical backlash,
conservatism, patriarchy, and subjugation which have been cast their way since
the 19th century, but as Bonnie Dunn insightfully points out,
burlesque is increasingly becoming a part of the theater world. Indeed, all
sorts of people go to burlesque shows, sometimes paying for a pre-sale ticket
and a minimum-service table. Bonnie’s weekly cabaret variety production Le Scandal is one such show, which
incorporates burlesque acts by well-known New York-based performers and sells
out week-after week with a lot of overflowing demand.
Even
irresponsibility must be taken and understood in context. The objectification
and commodification of a sexualized, exoticized other, paired with the literal
loss of the performers’ voices, is what Allen signifies as a supposed “demise”
of burlesque. He marks the turn of and progression into the 20th
century as a timeline on which burlesque de-graduates into something
subjugated, something marginalized, something disempowering for those on stage.
A complex interplay of causes, which Allen details quite well, had turned burlesque
into a wordless art form. This transformation is only literal. He jumps into a
figurative understanding of this development without looking at the other ways
in which burlesque performers use choreography, costuming, and concept to
communicate with the audience. He attributes the loss of the performer’s voice
to the loss of her agency. This, to me, is a serious irresponsibility, but one
that should not be taken offensively. To Allen’s credit, he does write Horrible Prettiness is the 80s, when no
one really knew what burlesque “was”. It had become sort of marginalized, sort
of lost. I remember Tigger! telling me after a show at the Museum of Sex, that
he was doing burlesque before anyone even called it that. In our interview on
Tuesday, Bonnie Dunn corroborated that there was this sort of lapse in the public
understanding of burlesque.
Anyone who has given any thought to what
burlesque “really is” should know that it is a tough concept to pin down, as it
is inherently fluid. Many acts reflect a current state of affairs; or rather,
offer parodies of current affairs, from world politics to pop culture, from
local news pieces to gender roles. Burlesque can and does take many forms, and
I believe that the continued interest in this art form depends on its variety,
its edginess, its spunk. In line with the term “horrible prettiness,” burlesque
performers and performances are often so admired for their dual nature: they
are often larger than life, yet they are part of it; they rely on the everyday in
order to draw out the exaggeration, the parody, or the act of it. They are surreal in their expression of reality.
All of
this is done without what Robert Allen identifies as the key tool of individual
agency: a woman’s voice. In Dr. Lucky’s History of American Burlesque course
this past Tuesday, one student pointed out the possibility that Allen could
have been trying to represent himself as a feminist. She suggested that, by denouncing
the loss of the performer’s voice and linking that to the so-called “demise” of
American burlesque, Allen may have been trying to express his advocacy for
women, for female performers, and for burlesque in general. But come on, there
are a million ways the modern burlesque dancer can, and does, express herself,
a point, and/or a motif, which include movement, facial and bodily gestures,
costuming, disrobing, and music choice. Bonnie Dunn says that burlesque is so
much fun because every last part of an act is customizable to a performer’s own
needs and desires: “You can make your own music, your own costume, your own
choreography.” All of these elements (and more) must come together well in
order to execute a poignant, sexy, memorable act. And that, my friends, takes
talent. That, my friends, is what makes burlesque a living, breathing, surreal
art form which has and will continue to thrive through the centuries.
*On page
139, Allen offers some thought-provoking insight on the idea of the prostitute:
“The prostitute…was not defined in any narrow legalistic sense…but rather and
more loosely included any working-class woman whose dress, demeanor, or actions
transgressed bourgeois notions of feminine propriety and respectability… The
prostitute constituted, in Lydia Nead’s words, ‘an agent of chaos bringing with
her disruption and social decay.’”
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