Notes From The Peanut Gallery
E-Book, Englisch, 253 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-9879627-0-6
Verlag: Self
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
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Chapter 1: How Do We Heckle? “If you’re right, I’ll do what you do. If you’re wrong, I’ll set you straight.” – Chremes “ … in my view, the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended, simply because one represents openness, the other represents oppression.” – Rowan Atkinson (Aka Mr. Bean) , in a speech against ‘The Religious Hatred’. Heckling’s Raison d’Etre: The first thing I would like to tell you, again, is that I have a website. Just trying to see if you are paying attention. Not a big deal but I think my blogs do pack a little intellectual, humorous punch that you will enjoy. You can visit me at: www.mikeschultz.org I welcome your feedback. Many of the audio-visual images discussed in HECKLE can be found there. It makes for an appropriate backgrounder to the book you are reading. Sure there are lots of examples of heckling on the Internet but my blog will help steer you through the quagmire and make sense of it all – in sport, in entertainment, and in politics - which is where most of the heckling takes place as I have said. About seven years ago, it was 2005 and early in the century, it became abundantly clear to me that there appeared to be a heck of a lot more heckling and complaining than there used to be. Call it a gut instinct but I think I’m right. The heckling seems to be coming from every corner of the world. Heckling has gone global and even viral. And what about the subtitle “Notes from the Peanut Gallery”? (A better subtitle might have been “Noise from the Peanut Gallery”) The ‘peanut gallery’ was a term applied to the upper echelons of the theatre during the days of Vaudeville (Aka ‘the cheap seats’). Performers who failed to please the patrons might find themselves showered with a stream of peanuts that had been purchased from the confection stand. These sacrificial peanuts were heckles from on high. The peanuts became the ‘report card’ for the performer. Of course if you sucked, that’s OK, you never went hungry, unless you were allergic to peanuts. The ‘peanut gallery’ went on to become the gallery of young kids on The Howdy Doody Show that was a big sensation in the 1940s through to the early 1960s. It was a TV show catering to Boomers and had a number of marionettes, puppets and clowns. Fast forward to 2012. The ‘peanut gallery’ still exists. It’s on the Internet. People are speaking out. People are daring to disagree. People are expressing their views in cyberspace. It is a fascinating subject – speaking out – and HECKLE is the word to capture the spirit of it all and the title of the book. Heckling Defined: The beauty of heckling is that anyone can do it. No, I don’t think you would put ‘heckling’ on your resume as a skill. That doesn’t mean all heckling is good. Just how might we define this act of social outspokenness and objection? Heckle simply means speaking out to embarrass and annoy by questions, gibes, or objections. One dictionary definition defines it as follows: to comb (flax or hemp) with a hatchel (Middle English, to comb with a hatchel, from hekel, hatchel, from Middle Dutch). It was a term very familiar to those in the textile trade, as we will see in the next chapter. It also means to torment with persistent insult or ridicule, badger, bait, bullyrag, hector, hound, taunt, informal needle, jeer or ride another person or persons. As an idiom it suggests waving the red flag in front of ‘the bull.’ Speaking up and heckling does come with inherent risks, as you will discover. French equivalents check in with words like ‘chahut’ meaning ‘uproar’ and ‘perturbateur’ meaning ‘troublemaker’. A 40 year-old Harraps dictionary provides the following: “Adversaire qui cherche a embarrasser le candidat.” Social sniping may come naturally to the French. After all, they had a revolution. Loosely translated it is an adversary who looks to embarrass the candidate. In the chapter on Politics I will discuss the important work of American filmmaker Joseph Strick in the 1960s in England. He captured a political campaign where heckling was commonplace. If you visit my blog you’ll see that heckling remains a challenge for the politician on the ‘stump’ (supposedly called the ‘stump’ when in days gone by politicians would step up on one of many freshly-cut tree trunks to gain visibility and to project their message). In Richard Gwyn’s two volumes on Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, we learn that Macdonald was fun to be around. He loved to be with the people and was very much at ease with constituents. In Volume 1, Gwyn recounts an episode when Macdonald was, in the early 1860s, out on the ‘stump’, and making an address to fellow Canadians from a manure spreader. Someone, a heckler in the crowd, let him know that it was a manure spreader. Macdonald’s retort to this was “This is the first time I’ve stood on a Liberal platform.” It’s important to know that Sir John A. was a Conservative. Now if only Canadians can just get a national holiday to commemorate Sir John A. Much of heckling’s history deals with politics. It deals with the fight for independence, the opposition to authority, and the democratic ideal of speaking out, free speech and ribbing the opposition. Today we see it more prevalent in entertainment, particularly at comedy clubs. You Tube loves to wallow in comedy heckling. HECKLE is a handbook for would-be comedians and actors. It is also a mainstay down at the ballpark because we all know how painfully slow a baseball game can get leaving the fans to hurl out their comments with the regularity of pitches. Before comedian Phyllis Diller died recently at the ripe old age of 95, she claimed that hecklers never had a chance with her since her delivery was so rapid-fire. I remember seeing Ms. Diller in the flesh at Toronto’s Canadian National Exhibition in the early 1960s by the CHUM AM radio booth. She was a hoot and an original. She certainly didn’t remind one of Beaver Cleaver’s mom. You can learn more about her and other female comedians in Yael Kohen’s recent book We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy. As Ellen Degeneres said: “The reason women don’t play football is because 11 of them would never wear the same outfit in public.” You see, female comedy has a place. So as the old saying goes, ‘god is not the problem, it’s his fan club.’ For those of us taking life too seriously perhaps it is the adage that ‘while man makes plans, god laughs.’ You don’t see a lot of heckling in the church, the mosque, the funeral parlor, or the courtroom. But I can tell you as a student of heckling and an educator that there’s plenty out there and no one is safe. Barriers and taboos, like the Berlin Wall, are coming down daily. People are, in the words of Peter Finch in NETWORK, ‘mad as hell and are not going to take it anymore’. Take what you may ask? Bullshit, silliness, lies, authority, incompetence and bullying. People love to heckle because they stand by the philosophy that they have the right to think and speak for themselves. Some like to think they are the spokesperson for the group or audience. (Aka: the ‘heckler elect’). Most of us prefer to have the choice to heckle if we think it is warranted. Done well it’s an art form, a passion, a craft, a pastime, an expectation – to be a good heckler is to be a good communicator. When done well – it’s witty, engaging, funny, spontaneous, and entertaining. It reveals a person’s social conscience. At its worst, when done poorly, it bullies, harasses, annoys and is just bad manners. It feels like more than protesting. It can be vulgar and venomous. What was your first or most recent experience with heckling? Was it funny or was it offensive? Hecklers can be a major pain in the ass for those within an earshot. Not so reluctantly, hecklers appear to have the ‘killer instinct’, they tend to swim with the sharks and damn the torpedoes. That established, we could agree that some heckling is justified but not all heckling is necessarily good regardless of where you might be gathered with others. Consider the culture or country you live in and the level of tolerance that exists for you to speak out and up. Can you or are you encouraged in expressing yourself? Alternatively, do you feel you must ‘grin and bear it’, ‘bite your tongue’ ‘hold your fire’ and ‘just stifle yourself’ (as Archie Bunker used to tell his All in the Family wife Edith). Boredom is really impatience. People appear very impatient these days. A focus on self and rise in self-righteousness are the active ingredients that allow impatience to thrive. The heckler usually says what the rest of us are thinking. However, the heckler will either alienate the crowd or gain followers depending on the quality of their outburst. In entertainment, hecklers are every comedian’s nightmare. In the audience there always tends to be one person ready to need attention. Do we live in an ‘attention deficit society’? If you look at or listen to audiences 30-50 years ago you will see a certain respect and etiquette being displayed. Polite crowds. Attentive crowds. Performance is followed by polite...
