Dame Edna "forget Spanish"

[Timothy Mason]

Gabriella Modan wrote: --
 >
 > Meaning derives from context, and the excerpt posted on linganth did not
 > include the context in which it originally appeared, therefore we don't
 > really have enough inforrmation to interpret how the excerpt
 > works/doesn't work as satire, political commentary, humor, etc.
 >
The context has, perhaps been sufficiently given ; Dame Edna is a
moderately well-known figure, having appeared on numerous television
shows both in the United States and in the UK. Vanity Fair could assume
that their readers would know who s/he is.

However, this would still not answer one of the questions that has been
asked on the list ; is this good satire? The fact that many readers
would not understand it to be intended to be funny is, in itself, part
of the joke : satire excludes. It was seen as a part of Swift's 'A
Modest Proposal' that many of the first readers took it literally
(although whether this is true or not is moot).

But I want to try to be sympathetic to Humphries - not because I find
him funny, but because, after all, part of the sociological enterprise
is to achieve verstehen. Humphries is an exile ; he exiled himself from
Australia as a young man, and made something of a living by carrying to
the English the living proof that their prejudices about Australians
were true. One of his early efforts was a comic strip that appeared in
'Private Eye' for a very long time ; it related the adventures of a
young Australian from the outback arriving in London and making his way
in the big-bad city. Much of the fun was derived very much from the
archetypal play on the country-boy vs city slicker scenario. The main
protagonist was both hero and buffoon.

Which brings us back to the point that satire is, by its very nature,
ambiguous. Humphries, trying to escape from an Australia that he saw as
backward and uncultivated, brought the outback with him. He has now, as
one of the respondents to this thread surmised, become trapped within
his own creation ; Dame Edna has accompanied him into places which he
almost certainly never saw himself as visiting when he set out from Oz.

To steal from the anthropologist, Humphries can be seen as a case of
mutliple possession ; Dame Edna is of the Guésdé persuasion, and when
she takes over her cheval, Humphries, she uses him to say things that
can be understood as truths too vile to be uttered straightforwardly by
the man himself.

How we react to those messages is a central part of the ceremony. Those
of us who write irate letters to Vanity Fair are already part of the
show - and M. Humphries and the editors will be delighted to have
aroused such a reaction.

Someone asks whether Dame Edna is 'really funny' and concludes that she
is not. How, I wonder, do they account for the fact that large numbers
of people pay money to see her, and roll about in the aisles when she
makes her jokes? To these people, she really is funny. The reasons why
she makes them laugh are probably various - one imagines that a
hard-core racist might find herself sitting next to an idealistic
liberal - just as, say, my very conservative mother used to love Tom
Lehrer. It is among such complexisites as these that any analysis would
have to weave.

Best wishes

	Timothy Mason