Are We Too Refined?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 539, 21 October 1949, Page 10

Are We Too Refined?

B tee: oh notoriously, hug chains. Tommy Handley did more than that. He danced them up and down in front of the microphone and made them ‘positively glitter. Trying to dissect the reason for Itma’s almost universal success, and disregarding for the moment the obvious appeal of such genuine comic creations as Colonel Chinstrap, one remembers that the main bursts of spontaneous and appreciative laughter came from the current comments and the vulgarity. From everything in fact that stemmed from life itself. Tommy Handley’s references to ahything from the meat ration to the price of coal, the jokes about, say, Sir Stafford Cripps or Mr. Aneurin Bevan, brought an immediate and almost rapturous response. Comments on these men and these affairs were so greeted because they were concerned with the daily business of living: If that business had its gtim aspects, there was a certain relief in being able to laugh in company with others who were experiencing the same circumstances, The men we can laugh at come automatically nearer to heart and affection. We become more sympathetic and therefore more understanding of their particular difficulties. The man of destiny who from his pedestal commands only réspect or fear, has nothing in common with the common man. ; Our own radio, however, has adopted a different policy and our men of affairs are kept aloof. The freedom ot the newspaper cartoonist, the writer,

, a> oe and even the vaudeville artist is denied the broadcast programme. Itma’s occasional excursions into the vulgar scored because they took the innuendo or the involved double entendre in their stride, calling for the sudden burst of laughter, never the snigger behind the hand. There is nothing intrinsically bad about the so-called low joke if it is seasoned with wit and good humour. The BBC accepted this as they accepted the fact that maturity is not attained through’ successive layers of cotton wool. It is surely useless, then, to assume that New Zealanders are more, or less, than other men. If a Tommy Handley were to grow up in our midst, would he be given the opportunity to develop his own very special brand of comic: genius? Ted Kavanaugh, Itma’s script writer, is a New Zealander. Would he get a job in an organisation where any suggestion of indigenous comment (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) is apparently viewed with all the horror that a Victorian maiden aunt might have shown at the idea that one of her ankles was showing? This is not a plea for such cheapjack stuff as was heard recently from an imported stage troupe when most of the audience experienced that squirming discomfort caused by a complete lack of taste or finesse. But it is a sug"age that there is a tradition in this eld as in others. It is a tradition based on a complete understanding of men and of manners. And it goes from people like Tommy Handley and Marie Lloyd right back to that man Shakespeare,. | OA eee

Sycorax