From: howddgrhol@yaynnoo.com   
      
   Boron Elgar  wrote   
      
   >>What am I missing? Why are impressions so popular?   
   >   
   > They are ubiquitous and seem to exist all over the place. I just   
   > assume people enjoy them, from drag to politics to literary and   
   > cultural archetypes.   
      
   TV Tropes has a reference to the dancing bear effect, related to the old   
   saying that the appeal isn't about the quality of the dancing but that   
   the bear can dance at all.   
      
   Which I get, but it doesn't seem very sustainable.   
      
   I don't get drag as humor for that matter. I can understand how some men   
   like the glamour of dressing up in elaborate Beyonce costumes in the   
   similar vein as dressing up in a Captain America costume or a   
   painstaking historical reenactment, but I don't see how some people   
   found the Milton Berle act such a good humor. I think I recall from   
   watching MASH reruns that they dropped the cross dressing gag after a   
   season or two when it stopped getting laughs, so they seem to have   
   decided it wasn't sustainable.   
      
   But then I don't get blackface humor or the more recent ironic blackface   
   that is causing a bunch of stars some embarassment over the past couple   
   of years. It all seems so superficial, sort of like splicing sound   
   effects into a song without realizing the old rule that you can't just   
   replace a note with a Bronx cheer, it has to be a Bronx cheer that hits   
   the same note and tempo -- it's actually more work than it seems to get   
   it right.   
      
   I realize, like you say, there are some impressions that go farther than   
   cheap reproductions, but it sure feels like it has an especially high   
   concentration of laziness.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)