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OTR: cancelled
A Wisconsin public radio troupe performed old radio scripts, reviving old stories for new audiences. It was popular for years, and you can imagine what fun the actors had – tearing into the chunks of ham on the page, or recapturing the timbres and slang of a previous era.
No more; it’s been cancelled. In the old and new senses of the word.
Wisconsin Public Radio is canceling its long-running weekend program “Old Time Radio Drama,” with station officials citing the “racist and sexist material” present in many of the plays of the Golden Age of Radio.
“Many of these plays and productions were produced more than 60 years ago,” Wisconsin Public Radio director Mike Crane said in a statement on Friday. “Despite significant effort over the years, it has been nearly impossible to find historic programs without offensive and outdated content.”
This is . . . remarkable.
The statement relies on the audience’s ignorance of the material. It depends on people thinking “well, yes, those are old shows; surely they’re shot through with racism and sexism,” without knowing anything about the subject. It’s the past! Ergo it’s gotta be offensive.
I’ve no idea what percentage of old radio shows survive in transcribed form, but we have a lot, mostly from the 40s and 50s. Yes, Amos ’n’ Andy was, well, Amos ’n Andy, but it was a rare show built around African Americans. For the most part they were invisible, aside from a few domestic servants – and we’ll get to that in a moment. You could say that the exclusion of Black voices from radio was racist, but that’s different than saying the material was racist.
“Life with Luigi” was an Italian immigrant comedy, complete with stereotypical characters who-a speak-a the cliched mama-mia lingo. But it loved its characters, and Luigi, for all his comic faults, was proud to be in American. But okay, it’s racist against Italians, so take that one off the table.
The Goldbergs: same thing. Fine, don’t do those, eliminate the most prominent Jewish sitcom, for reasons.
And that’s about all I got, at the moment. If some of the Hispanic accents in the 50s were a bit too broad, it might be because they were usually played by the same guy – it was his speciality – but the Latin cops with whom Johnny Dollar dealt were always smart and on the level. As I noted in another old radio thread, the 50s Westerns at their best were explicitly anti-racist when it came to the American Indians. If Tales of the Texas Rangers did a story about a murder that looked like the immigrant guy did it, the plot was guar-an-fargin’-teed to find blame with the jealous white rancher. Joe Friday, week after week, was pulling in white guys – I can’t think of a single ep in which the bad guy was a minority, and yes, I’ve listened to them all.
About those “domestics” – two of the most long-running series had prominent African-American actors as “servants,” and in neither case were they subservient. Eddie “Rochester” Anderson had Jack Benny’s number cold. Birdie, the maid on The Great Gildersleeve (played by Lillian Randolph) started out as a cliche, but in the hands of good writers – including John Wheedon, grandfather of Marvel writer-director Joss Wheedon – she became the de facto mother and wife of the household, and the only person who could tell the truth to Mis’t Gildersleeve. I’m not defending the fact that she was a servant – I’m saying that in the context of the times, in the late 40s and early 50s, an African-American character was consciously elevated to the role of the household’s indispensable pragmatist and emotionally centered adult, because the writers invested her cliche with humor, dignity, and humanity.
As for “sexism,” well, here’s a news flash: women in the old radio shows were unapologetically feminine, and occasionally confessed to silly desires for romance and marriage. But the medium also abounded with smart, canny sidekicks – detective shows, from Let George Do It to Mr. District Attorney to Micheal Shayne to Casey, Crime Photographer, were expected to have a clever, resourceful female assistants who helped solve the crime, and they were invariably more resourceful than the bullheaded Oirish cop who couldn’t tumble to what was really going on. In the anthology mystery shows like The Whistler, you were more likely to find razor-sharp women who cut their way through a man’s world to make their way. In the comedies, women were often the voice of reason – sardonic, knowing – in a way that makes the menfolk blustering fools.
There are literally hundreds of hours of mysteries and adventures and romances and sci-fi shows that still work today. And even if there’s an element that abraids modern sensibilities, isn’t it instructive to experience the tropes and conventions of a prior age, so one might know what the culture was like?
Or are we expected to assume that everything Old was Bad, and take their word for it, and nod as the Old and Bad is put in the vault, because the actual evidence would be so horrifying we couldn’t even? Are people today so fragile they cannot survive contact with examples of the old culture – but we’re supposed to believe them when they say they know exactly what the old culture was like?
I love this art form, and have been studying it for years. The idea that one can’t find enough scripts that aren’t racist and sexist is not only absolute nonsense, it’s a casual dismissal of vast swaths of American pop-culture history. It’s a libel, and its ignorance is matched only by its cowardice. You want to cancel the show, cancel the damn show. You want to quit your job at the Library of Congress, quit your job. Just don’t throw a lit match over your shoulder as you head for the exit.
Published in General
Waiting for the American Taliban (By which I mean the left) to set up the howitzers and blow the faces off the mountain, just like happened with the Buddhas in Afghanistan.
Of course, that was denounced as a crime against “world heritage”. I suspect the same people who did the denouncing in that case will be cheering on this case.
I could definitely imagine bringing together Ricochet’s proven reserves of amateur acting for radio and creating “The Cancelled Show”, each episode connecting to the main theme. Sort of like this:
Each episode could have an invited guest from outside Ricochet who has become famous or notorious because of being cancelled.
.
I think Ebony is different. His skills aside, he was the only character who seemed to be from a different species, and was drawn in the horrid style of the time. Eisner made him smart and resourceful, but the depiction – even if it was the convention of the time – was horrible.
If “The Cancelled Show” was on vintage TV, it would open something like this:
(A montage. Brendan Eich is driving across the San Francisco Bay Bridge, and into the underground parking of the Transamerica pyramid. JK Rowling is being chauffeured to a gala event in Edinburgh. Louis CK is about to go onstage.
A flock of giant blue Twitter birds start forming ominous hunting packs, like Hitchcock’s The Birds.
While Eich, Rowling, and CK are still speaking, robotic arms drop their photos into a file drawer: CANCELLED.
As they step out of their respective public events, the flocks of blue birds start their pursuit.)
I can tell you exactly how it will play. At some point in the future, whether through culture, law or medical science, abortion will end. And when that happens, the people of that time will look back on now in the exact same way that the social justice left looks back at slavery. Actually, not true. It will be more the way we look at Nazi death camps, because with slavery, at least the point wasn’t to kill each and every one of them.
And anyone who supported abortion, tolerated abortion or shouted their abortion will be seen as the slave owners. Their statues will be torn down, their legacies obliterated, their family names ruined. I hope the people protesting now live to see it.
Tried to watch Trading Places last Thanksgiving – for my money, one of the funniest movies ever – and the young people left the room. “It’s racist and sexist.” Had to defend All in the Family on a Facebook thread. “It’s racist.” (I probably don’t have to tell anyone here that All in the Family dealt with many difficult issues in a very funny way, and although Norman Lear was a liberal, he didn’t shy away from poking fun at liberal hypocrisy too.)
I’ve heard Bill Maher, Larry the Cable Guy, and Chris Rock all say they won’t play college campuses any more.
It’s really sad.
As I recall, Cleese seems to be an avowed leftist, at least these days.
Yes to everything you state and cite.
However under the Chinese Communist Party, people will be too busy reciting the slogans of the week, and attempting to maneuver into positions of leadership to ever miss these programs.
Entertainment is, after all, a vile and ridiculously bourgeios theft of our free time, which as all good comrades understand, should be spent building up the welfare of the State.
It is amazing to me that the one person who seems to have escaped from the comedy dullness-through-censorship routine is Chappelle. He remains as honest and aware as ever. His popularity has been undiminished – or perhaps is increasing.
Aaaaaaand they’ve lost all the suburban moms.
Well of course. Any kind of “cancelling” of Chappelle would be racist.
We can hope.
A leftist who periodically grumbles about what all that leftism has done to both his country and to the freedom for people to see his intellectual property. I’ve also seen that in recent years with a few Hollywood types, who can identify the problem of censorship/cancel culture, but can’t bring themselves to admit which side is causing the problem, and really would like to blame Trump, if only they could figure out how to make the case for him controlling the media (I even saw one where the complainant was trying to act like it was still 1981, and somehow the current level of censorship rests primarily on the shoulders of fundamentalist Christians….)
I understand that Cleese made enough of a stink that they’ve restored the episode to the streaming services.
…at least until he ages out of the desired demographic. People knew about Bill Cosby’s shenanigans for three decades, but it was the combination of him getting too old for the younger woke generation to care about, and his decision to go after the media celebration of hip-hop culture ethos that cost Cosby his immunity card. Chappelle’s still has a good 10-15 years left as long as he can remain a money-making property for other people (if he stops being as funny, he could fall victim earlier than that, as Kevin Hart did with the Oscar committee two years ago).
The number of fanatical “Fawlty Towers” fans apparently was big enough to offset the number of cancel culture fanatics pressuring the BBC. Most entertainers and/or their shows and movies aren’t as fortunate.
“Yeah, sure, that’s what Bozzle Waitthorpe thought about himself, too.”
“Who?”
“Exactly. He’s been erased.”
Existing is violence. These people do not want to be at the other end of real violence.
JSOC, where is thy sting?
Teddy backed Eugenics, he’s got to go, too. Cuz, ya know, history.
It would not be consistent of them to not have a double standard.
This is a line worthy of Milan Kundera.
Oh very well, but what am I going to do with all these matches and accelerant?
He’s on the hit list though.
But let’s not kid ourselves. Like it or not, NPR, unlike PBS, is a powerful brand name that could probably make its way in the world without subsidies. Think of the way Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniels, and Ruger can license their brand names to market unconnected products to people…well, like us. It’s no different with the upper middle class left; NPR is in a class with Apple Stores, Whole Foods, Tesla, and Shiseido. In capitalist terms, they won.
But don’t feel bad, friends: PBS, which no doubt had stronger brand equity than NPR 30 years ago, is now a nostalgia item, like Polaroid film or leg warmers.
‘Strewth, but no institution will admit to not needing a subsidy.
I had to look him up on Wikipedia. It seems that might be a compliment.
I could make a list.