The Id Within Us
HAT a large amount of American radio humour depends upon the studied insult! A master of the personal gibe, such as Alexander Woollcott, would have been at home in the Bing Crosby programme heard from 1ZB recently in which Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy were the guests. The ill-mannered manikin’s habit of puncturing the vanities of his associates with unsubtle comments on toupees, waistlines, faces and intellectual deficiencies seems to reveal something of a split personality in his creator. While Bergen is the polite, reserved, mild man, Charlie is the uninhibited guttersnipe. As I found myself listening for the hints of Charlie’s voice in that of Bergen, and not the other way about, it occurred to me that that horrifying sequence in the British film, Dead of Night, about the malevolent dummy who comes to possess his ventriloquist might not be so divorced from reality as it had seemed. Anyhow, I am convinced that much of Charlie McCarthy’s popularity comes from the fact that many mild men see ‘in him themselves released from the pressure of conventional politeness, the cocking of the snook at social ritual, the articulation of unspoken personal insults that the censor represses daily in their souls.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 543, 18 November 1949, Page 14
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204The Id Within Us New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 543, 18 November 1949, Page 14
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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