Friday 20 October 2017
News that Theatr Clwyd will be staging a musical in 2018 based on the imagined assassination of the commentator Katie Hopkins has, predictably, brought social media condemnation, largely from individuals who will never see the actual show.
The musical will, apparently, be based on the themes of celebrity, fake news and outrage and the character of Hopkins will never actually make an appearance in the piece.
Nonetheless, some sharp ironies are raised by this event. A theatre company gains advance publicity from lampooning the demise of a media creation who can, herself, only thrive through the oxygen of constant publicity.
The prospect of gleefully controversial commentary surrounding the phenomenon of a gleefully controversialist commentator is created. Accusations of bad taste are levelled in regard to the ‘victim’ of the satire – herself, the epitome of bad taste articulation.
Should anyone have any doubt about the tastelessness of Hopkins’ own pronouncements, they need to look at her unrepentantly callous musings on the fate of migrants or the murder of the MP Jo Cox.
Essentially, the question of theatrical taste has always been in the gift of the audience. Audiences, on the whole, tend to like a bit of controversy and reward tastelessness in the theatre by their attendance, while moral commentators also unintentionally boost publicity by creating a fuss.
Messy human experience
Drama, however, is intended to reflect the gamut of messy human experience, and certain depictions of those states will, inevitably, always seem in bad taste to someone.
In the UK in 1964, Joe Orton’s Loot (veiled homosexuality, death, mockery of the Church and Police) was officially deemed ‘tasteless and unpleasant’.
Moral outrage was whipped up in the cases of Edward Bond’s 1965 Saved (repressive society, fatal stoning of a baby in a pram), the last scene to be censored in Britain, or in 1980 in The Romans in Britain (cultural imperialism, male rape) which prompted a private prosecution for gross indecency. Revivals of Sarah Kane’s work (cannibalism and suicide) still prompt debates about suitability.
From the beginning, in the case of comedy, Ancient pantomime relied on the ‘Aristophanic convention of the phallus’ which (in the upstanding position) remains a taboo today. Comedy has always simply reduced people to ‘creatures who gratify themselves through talking…eating…sex…and excreting, often in fear’, so objections of obscenity and slander have long bedevilled comic drama.
Moreover, politically comic depictions of establishment figures from Aristophanes through to Spitting Image have drawn accusations of unacceptability. Tastes wax and wane according to contemporary mores. The Elizabethans, while churning out some of the finest poetry in the English language, were not above featuring displays of casual cruelty such as bear baiting or, as, in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta (c.1589) enjoying the spectacle of a bit of nun poisoning.
No sex please, we're British
Rape, mutilation, cannibalism and murder feature in Titus Andronicus (c. 1590) one of Shakespeare’s tragedies that proved extremely popular with his contemporary audiences. Restoration Comedies revelled in priapism and drunkenness but brought about a movement for moral and political censorship. For the Victorians it became very much about “No Sex Please, We’re British”.
At various times, the work of no less than Sophocles, Shakespeare, Moliere, Ibsen, Shaw, Pirandello, Strindberg, Lorca, Genet, Wedekind, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller have fallen foul of the taste-police for straying into the territories of marital infidelity, incest, violence, sex, or dangerous satire.
Perhaps the perceived tastelessness of the proposed Clwyd show is prompted by the fact that it is slated to be both a comedy and a musical. The fusion of comedy and music has always implied celebration and revelry and McLuhan’s notion of ‘the medium being the message’ (1964) may be what is causing specific accusations of bad taste in this instance.
The 1969 British musical Oh! Calcutta! (nudity, rape allusions, swinging, masturbation) caused quite a stir, while more recently in 2003, Jerry Springer: The Opera (adult baby, Christian parody, profanity, dancing Klu Klux Klan) had a similar effect. Springer contains presages of the Hopkins-themed show in that the Springer character is fatally shot and descends into hell.
Twentieth century musical cabaret spawned avant garde and counter cultural manifestations, celebrating variously, nudity, drugs, revolutionary politics and free love. From Dada Cabaret’s onstage urination to Paul McCarthy’s comically queasy mixing of bodily fluids and Barbie dolls up the anus, performance art has cornered the market in bad taste. Tasteless humour is still to be found in alternative and Queer subculture, and occasionally pops up on the theatrical Fringe in shows such as, say, Whoops Vicar is that Your Dick? (1991-1994) or F*ckboys for Freedom (2015).
In the end, bad taste is central to performance modes. Makers need to court controversy and the public craves opportunities to enjoy being both titillated and offended. As the great Mel Brooks replied when asked the question of how he answered critics who accused him of bad taste!
An expression of intent to which Hopkins, of all people, can surely only subscribe.
Monday 7 October 2019
Since finishing a period of secondment from the University as Director of Europe's largest political science organisation, European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), Martin Bull, Politics Professor, has been awarded a Special ‘Exceptional Contribution’ Prize.
Monday 7 October 2019
The University of Salford has today (7th October) awarded the renowned Bollywood singer, Asha Bhosle with an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree in recognition of her contribution to the field of music and her role in inspiring future generations to participate in arts and media.
Monday 7 October 2019
Scientists at the university have identified a new drug candidate (*) that is able starve and suffocate cancer stem cells, paving the way for new therapies to treat breast cancer patients.
