GERT AND DAIS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 253, 28 April 1944, Page 7

GERT AND DAIS

Sir,-"Materfamilias" has the space of an article in which to disagree with me, and I must confine my remarks to the space of a letter. : 1. If "Materfamilias" is comparatively unacquainted with American humour how does she know that the American listeners get other and better comedy than the McGee programmes? 2. I think "Materfamilias" makes too much of national barriers in comedy (there are Rabelais and Don Quixote; and I know a child who wanted to see a picture of a goblin and turned down

as unsatisfactory all those offered till he saw some in some humorous Japanese pictures). "Materfamilias" says that if one nation could laugh at another’s humour that would do much toward promoting world unity; and yet ‘she puts down clowning as childish, though it is the most universal of all comedy. 3. I still maintain that if one laughs at Gert and Dais one is not appreciating the comedy of those programmes. .Gert and Dais are not satire, 4. I have always enjoyed the best of the Easy Aces programmes without knowing the counterpart in real life. Here again, I think "Materfamilias" has missed the point if she regards Jane Ace’s silliness as the crux of the comedy. In a few of these programmes Jane . Ace has risen to the height of the classical fool with cap and bells who points out the folly of those who laugh at her. 5. If I had children who liked see« ing the glorious wreck of things going smash without a few years of weekly picture-going, and if I regard a psychologist friend as an authority, I should certainly call in her aid.

JOCASTO

(Dunedin).