Dame Edna "forget Spanish"

[Patrick, Peter L]

one response to this might be that the allegedly-comic
character (I've never found Barry Humphries very funny,
but that's neither here nor there) is simply spelling
out what Hal Schiffman would call covert American language
policy. Doing it through a fake-posh Australian cross-
dresser's persona does cloud things up a bit, but one
could hardly say he is very far off base. It seems in
keeping with other things this character does which fall
under the heading of "satire" -- a genre that is always
intended to make a point, whether or not a funny one,
but never intended to be taken literally.

	The question of what Vanity Fair intends readers
to think by publishing it is another one -- I don't read
the magazine so don't really know who their readership
is supposed to be -- perhaps they *are* the sort of people
who will miss the point of satire.

	Still I don't know what good it does to take satire
as if it were literally intended, and object to that literal
reading. It ignores the probability that there must be a
subversive message there -- a message that is probably more
or less in agreement with what the objectors believe.
In other words, to say "Object to this because it is racist,
classist and linguicist" etc. is to be oblivious to the fact
that Humphries has already pointed that out indirectly.

	It reminds me of cases when a reviewer misses the point
of an analysis or passage, and "corrects" the author in review
by giving their "own" analysis -- which is basically the same
one, or indeed is derived directly from the one, that they missed
or misunderstood in the work they're reviewing. (This recently
happened to me as author, reviewed by a leading creolist who
somehow managed to miss quite a few points I thought I had
explicitly made, and it was quite infuriating-- but I doubt
Humphries will be quite so thin-skinned as I am!)

	I suppose one could argue that identifying prejudice
indirectly, without also directly condemning it, lays a humorist or
other performer open to the claim that they share the prejudice
they are making fun of, and might lead others to share it, or
endorse readers' existing prejudices. This is a rather philistine
argument, it seems to me, which assumes that making social and
political prescriptions in a pedagogical manner is an artists'
responsibility.
	We really have no idea whether anti-Spanish/anti-Hispanic
prejudice is going to be increased by such satire or reduced--
but we can predict that if enough people share the literal reading
and object, the subject of ethnic-linguistic prejudice may be put
off-limits for satire in the arena where it was published.
	Why that would be a useful thing escapes me...

Peter L Patrick
Dept of Language and Linguistics
University of Essex
patrickp at essex.ac.uk


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Laura Miller [mailto:lmille2 at wpo.it.luc.edu]
> Sent: 06 February 2003 22:45
> To: linganth at cc.rochester.edu
> Subject: Dame Edna "forget Spanish"
>
>
> This may be of interest to some.
> Laura
>
> Original Message From Cesar Chavez Institute <cci at sfsu.edu>
>
>  If you haven`t seen the cover of this month`s Vanity Fair
> magazine (Feb.  2003), you`ll be pleasantly surprised to see
> Salma Heyek on the cover, but  that`s where the niceties end.
> In an advice column entitled "Ask Dame Edna",  the author,
> Ms. Dame his/herself, replies to a letter with some of the
> most shameful racist remarks I`ve ever read in a magazine of
> this caliber. We thought you might be interested in reading
> what the Dame thinks of Latinos and what the editors and
> Vanity Fair allowed to be published, so here you  go:
>
> "Dear Dame Edna,
> I would very much like to learn a foreign language,
> preferably French or Italian, but every time I mention this,
> people tell me to learn Spanish George W. Bush speaks
> Spanish." Could this be true? Are we all going to have to
> speak Spanish?"
> -Torn Romantic, Palm Beach
>
> "Dear Torn,
> Forget Spanish. There`s nothing in that language worth
> reading except Don Quixote, and a quick listen to the CD of
> Man of La Mancha will take care of that. There was a poet
> named Garcia Lorca, but I`d leave him on the intellectual
> back burner if I were you. As for everyone`s speaking it,
> what twaddle! Who speaks it that you are really desperate to
> talk to? The help? Your leaf blower? Study French or German,
> where there are at least a few books worth reading, or, if
> you`re American, try English."
>
> MiGente, we want you to use your power in numbers to tell
> Vanity Fair what you think of this columnist and her/his
> words. Send your letters to the editors at: vfmail at vf.com
>
>
>