Of research and vaudeville

The item on top of the work pile at the moment is a now very battered advance proof copy of a novel called The Little Shadows by the Canadian writer Marina Endicott, published in Canada last year and due for release in Australia in February. It's about a family in vaudeville, working the circuits along the border of the US and Canada; set from 1912-1917, it shows how their lives are affected by the forces of history.

With my curiosity piqued about vaudeville and its history in Australia -- obviously such an 'American' thing was going to make its way to Canada, but did it have a substantial history here? -- I went looking in the astounding new(ish) resource provided by the National Library, Trove, which -- well, go over there and have a look.

I spent many happy hours on this site last year and the year before when I was researching Adelaide and found, among other things, a great deal of family history buried among Family Notices and roundups from 'The Country', where the ferocious rivalry between my Scottish grandma and her bossy sister-in-law regarding the organisation of fund-raisers for the War Effort in Curramulka can be seen between the lines of often profoundly corrupted text.

Apropos of which, I decided early on that since this magical resource had been provided to me then the very least I could do was take an active part in the way it works: crowdsourcing to correct the scanned text, since obviously the resources don't exist for it to be done professionally. I decided that I would correct every article I used. There's no measuring this, but my guess is that, as with Wikipedia, the longer it goes on the more accurate it will be, as more and more people use it and contribute.

Anyway, vaudeville. Oh yes indeed. There's a thesis in this topic alone: 'Racism in the content and language of journalistic reportage of vaudeville in Adelaide, 1920-1940.' Here, for example, is a paragraph from The Advertiser of September 30, 1926:

CELEBRITY VAUDEVILLE. 

Special interest is attached to the Southern Revue Company, which will be appearing for the first time in Adelaide at the Theatre Royal next Saturday, under the J. C. Williamson management. Many of the members of Joe Sheftell's revue are even blacker than negroes are usually painted, but this is not true about the chorus girls, who are much fairer than their men folk. One of the members of the company remarked while in Sydney "how mighty good every one has been to us." This is the first impression gained of Australia by one of the darkest of the members. He also explained that in the Land of Liberty "culled" folk have to travel in their own special "Jim Crow" railway carriages, and are segregated in special hotels and restaurants. This company includes many talented performers, who have been a great success in both Melbourne and Sydney — Minta Cato, the colored soprano; Joe Sheftell, the producer; Bob Williams, the comedian; McConn, Saunders, and Williams, the nifty steppers, and the chorus girls.

Did you blanch over that word 'culled'? Language is a wonderful thing when it come to the return of the repressed. It took me a few seconds to work out that it was merely an attempt at phonetic approximation of the accent of the unnamed  'dark member' (oh dear, it just gets worse and worse) and his pronunciation of the word 'colored' (interesting that the Advertiser was using American spelling in 1926).  I also enjoyed the snide reference to the Land of Liberty, implying that we in Australia have no such unenlightened attitudes, oh my wordy lordy no.

And as for the forces of history, I couldn't help noticing the tour dates on this one, from The Advertiser of September 21, 1929:

VAUDEVILLE PERFORMANCE 

Trixie Wilson, the well-known ballet teacher, announces that the annual concert to be given by her students will be held in the Thebarton Town Hall on October 22. The programme will contain several spectacular ballets, solo dances, and vaudeville acts.

(And for anyone looking for ideas for fiction, there's a whole novel for you right there in the phrase 'Trixie Wilson, the well-known ballet teacher.') Unbeknownst to either the journalist or Miss Trixie, the 1929 Wall Street Crash was imminent: Black Thursday was October 24th, two days after the concert.

Vaudeville was a notoriously unstable and insecure profession even at the best of times, as Endicott's book makes clear, with acts being sacked and theatres closing down and impresarios going broke left and right. I wonder what happened to everyone in the wake of Black Thursday: to Miss Trixie, whose pupils' parents must have hurriedly reassessed whether the budget could stand ballet lessons? To those 'culled' troupers from three years before? To all vaudeville everywhere: the performers, the backers, the managers, the theatre owners, and the audiences, many of whom may have abruptly decided that going to the vaudeville was a luxury they could definitely do without? What happened to the nifty steppers, the Men of Mirth, the chorus girls, the acrobatic violinists and the 'Gypsy' dancers, in the wake of October 24th, 1929? Whatever did they do? Wherever did they go?

And if you were still in any doubt about the decline of newspapers as we know them ...

... then you obviously haven't seen the subject line of today's online update of The Age that just arrived in my mailbox:

Nixon, teen had sex: report

Showing my age, I responded initially to this as though it were some sort of long-repressed "news" about the behaviour of Richard Nixon. (Remember Richard Nixon?) Then I thought Gee this looks like the headlines I used to give my first-year Rhetoric students to re-punctuate in order to teach them how vital punctuation is to meaning.

(Nixon: teen had sex report
Nixon teen had sex: report
Nixon? Teen had sex! Report
Etc)

For those of you not up with these vital matters, the headline refers to one of the AFL's more high-profile serial sleazes and that girl who publicised those photos of Nick Riewoldt's willy, and who cannot, apparently, help herself to stay out of the news.

Osama bin Laden is dead. President Obama's chances of winning the next election are up through the roof. The Tories have just had a similar boost in Britain. (Now that really would be news: 'Millions of Brits look happy!') Victoria has just had its state Budget announced and the federal ditto is just around the corner. Global warming is on the rise, as is resistance to it, and countries in the Middle East are falling over one by one like dominoes. Africa continues to horrify. Greece and Portugal have gone broke. (Just typed 'borke': that too.) Which reminds me: the sacking of subeditors by Fairfax is major news in the sense that it marks a major stage in the decline of, erm, yes, oh right. And so what's The Age leading with? 'Nixon, teen had sex.' Given that subeditors are responsible for, among other things, writing headlines, perhaps in some cases their decline might be ever so slightly less of a bad thing, but not much.

You know what really drives me crispy about this one? (Apart from the decline of, etc etc.) That word 'teen'. Anyone who has ever seen any p*rn with actual words in it knows that 'teen' is right up there with 'panties' (EEWWWW) as far as the lubricious p*rn vocabulary goes, which Goddess knows is not very far but that only makes it worse.

I Do. Not. Care who had sex with whom, in any context, and I never ever want to hear about it ever again ever. Shag your socks off, people, with whomever or whatever you choose: just make sure it involves a nice hot cup of STFU at some point, and I mean for everybody.

And I don't want to hear it about anybody at all, much less Ricky Nixon. Being faced with the image this headline conjures up is not what I require from my broadsheet newspaper. But the whole notion of a 'broadsheet newspaper' is now a thing of the past anyway.

And meanwhile, back on Planet Janet ...

I missed Janet Albrechtsen's bizarre paean of praise to Tony Abbott's honesty, sexiness and social grace in yesterday's Australian and frankly I wish I'd missed it altogether, but since it has been called to my attention, here is an interpretation.

Her overall argument appears to be that, in general (and in spite of the ghost of the example of Mark Latham that is forever before us, and away from which few of us can tear our gaze), a propensity for physical violence self-expression holds irresistible sexual allure. If I were Abbott, I would be backing away from that one at a run and yes I am sure he is indeed fit enough to run backwards. NOW READ ON ...

[Abbott] has something that is rare in the hermetically sealed, carefully controlled politico-bubble of Canberra. It's called authenticity.

That will be why his pronouncements on climate change (or, rather, on the government's actions on climate change) suggest that he wakes up every morning and tosses a coin to decide whether he'll believe in it today or not, depending on what he thinks is more likely to win votes.

And I'm betting women kind of like that.

Really? How much? Double or nothing?

Sure, some will never admit it openly.

How handy for your argument, then, Janet, should anyone ever challenge you to prove it.

Aghast, they will tell you that his religious convictions about abortion, RU486 and stem-cell research jar with a modern girl's feminist choices.

They are not 'feminist choices', and here you are showing, yet again, just how little you know or understand about feminism. They are human choices, to which, feminists argue, women have at least as much right as, say, the 20-year-old Tony Abbott you refer to below, the one whose frankness about his abandonment of his pregnant girlfriend you find 'graceful'.

But sure enough, many of these same women may find themselves muttering quietly among their closest girlfriends that, secretly, they find Abbott attractive.

I've certainly known more than a few women to mutter that secretly they found Turnbull attractive. Abbott, not so much.

While Abbott is known in today's neutered world of politics

This, of course, is nasty code for the inoffensive-looking and quietly spoken Kevin Rudd. Who, when last one looked, had a wife who looks like she has lots of fun, plus an assortment of happy-looking children.

for his off-the-cuff clangers

'Clangers' are the opposite of 'neutered', got that? Yeah, see, some of us think of Abbott's clangers .. erm .. no, I can't go on.

*Sticks fingers in ears, sings LA LA LA very loudly*

he is also a complicated mass of contradictions

About things like whether or not he believes in AGW from one day to the next, you mean? Or perhaps whether or not people should be allowed to choose whether or not they're ready to be parents?

The antithesis of the political nerd,

More nasty code for K. Rudd.

he is a head-kicker with a brain and a heart.

If either his brain or his heart were working properly, he wouldn't be a head-kicker. QED. Head-kicker. A kicker of heads. Think about it.

Sounds kind of interesting, doesn't it?

Um, no.

There is a candour to Abbott that is disarming.

Perhaps it disarms you, Janet. Personally I find it very, very arming.

He has admitted that as a 20-year-old, he was callow and unprepared for fatherhood. "I was psychologically unready for parenthood: that is the sad truth about me at the time. I just wasn't ready for it," he told The Bulletin in 2005

*Waits for other shoe to drop*

*Crickets chirping*

Try lining up the men in Canberra. Now look for the one who is the quintessential Aussie bloke

Because as we all know, the quintessential Aussie bloke is what we want running the country. No women, no poofters and no bloody foreigners thank you very much. Nobody with glasses, either. Or who speaks Mandarin. Especially not who speaks Mandarin.

try telling me, girls, that this mix is not even a little bit fascinating.

Janet, this mix is not even a little bit fascinating.

Compared with, say, Rudd.

THAT was unexpected!

So carefully controlled is his exterior,

Some of us call that 'grown up'.

few have any idea about the real Rudd.

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *Sound of sinister organ music*

He could not be more different from the new Opposition Leader.

Well, quite. And how fortunate we all are that that is the case.

I was going to say something about Albrechtsen's misty-eyed paragraph about Abbott's self-described 'love rug' and her hint (made via Nigella Lawson so it wasn't actually really Janet who said it, was it) that women who don't like Tony Abbott must be lesbians and everyone knows lesbians are, you know, icky. I was going to say something about it. But it is too, you know, icky.

As an old hippie myself I have neutral feelings about hair. I am far more interested in what is inside the hair or the absence thereof. It's this article's disturbing 'Doesn't being a hairy boxer make Tony sexy!' approach and its dreadfully clumsy attempts at effective rhetoric for propaganda purposes that are the real turnoff here. That, and the viciously unpleasant insinuendo about Rudd, and Planet Janet's generalisations about 'women', to whom she refers throughout not as 'we', but as 'they'. So it's not her that's thinking all this crapola about how sexy Abbott is, oh no. It's just 'women'. Because of course any real woman is far more interested in alpha-male body hair, head-kicking and punch-throwing skills than in wanting to keep her own freedom and live her own life in her own body.

Won't somebody think of the children?

At the top of page 4 of yesterday's Adelaide Advertiser, there was a report, rhetorically framed in full-on tut-tut mode (the phrase 'shocking behaviour' was used and it was not a quotation), about sexually inflected behaviour among SA primary school students, with 42 reports of actual sexual assault.

Now, I agree that this is appalling, though anyone with any kind of clear memory knows that sexually motivated behaviour in the later years of primary school has been around forever and was often quite nasty, not least because in my day and earlier, you didn't talk about it, and if you had, you would not have been believed. Being a girl was, in that respect, almost as much jolly fun as being a woman. And as for British boys' schools ...

But this is not to the point. The point was political reporter Michael Owen's tone, which was dominated by that tabloid-journalism favourite, horrified righteous indignation, that we have all come to know and love so well.

Owen reported that SA Education Minister Jane Lomax-Smith had ascribed the children's behaviour to the fact that 'today's students [are] increasingly exposed to inappropriate forms of media.'

The article had a big black headline:

Alarm over lewd students

At the top of Page 5, directly opposite, there was an item about the revamping of the high school science curriculum, for students in Year 10 or younger, to make it more "relevant". And the big black headline on this one?

Formula to sex up science


*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*