Dame Edna "forget Spanish"

[kathryn Woolard]

Thank you, Peter. I couldn't agree more, but I couldn't have said
this nearly as well as you have.

Kit Woolard



At 10:51 AM +0000 2/7/03, Patrick, Peter L wrote:
>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
>>
>>
>>


--
**************************************************
Kathryn A. Woolard		kwoolard at ucsd.edu
Department of Anthropology, 0532
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093-0532

Office phone: 858/534--4639                Fax:
858/534-5946
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