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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significant effort over the years, it has been nearly impossible to find historic programs without offensive and outdated content.”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
That is what he was just speaking of. Notice that he said:
Our dollars only came decades later. In the meantime, we were using Spanish and other coinage.
Si.
“The Mint was created in Philadelphia in 1792″
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Mint
A practice at least as old as the Roman Empire. 2 bits is a quarter of whatever currency is in use.
That’s fine. But not my point.
Which Harry Potter book was he in again? ;)
Nah, bro – get him to do it on condition we claim it’s a celebrity impersonation. And then point out in comments how unconvincing it is.
Cancellation is a cyber-Siberia.
Or the graduation ceremony from the Internet.
Get Adam Baldwin. If his career can survive his magnificent performance on “The Adventures of Tom Stranger, Interdimensional Insurance Agent,” he’s good for the distance.
The Producers:
“Don’t be stupid! Be a smartie!
Come and join the Nazi Party!”
Mel loved that couplet so much he dubbed himself for the voice of the actor in the original movie.
I have a two disc copy on laser disc. And a functioning laser disc player. Just in case.
Has anyone cited the old Soviet joke here? Maybe it’s buried in the comments but it’s worth mentioning. The citizens were prone to say (or whisper) that “under Comrade Stalin, the future is known; it’s the past that is always changing.” Maybe not so funny anymore.
The Spanish dollars were often struck with scoring to aid in accurate division.