From: boron_elgar@hotmail.com   
      
   On Tue, 27 Oct 2020 17:44:50 +0000 (UTC), Howard   
    wrote:   
      
   >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.   
      
   Thousands of years of history in staged cross-dressing. Berle loved to   
   steal other people's bits, but hell, drag even pre-dates him....   
      
   Shakespeare liked it, too, even beyond the prohibitions about women   
   being on the stage.   
   >   
   >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 understand the objections to Blackface. Times change, along with   
   cultural sensitivities. They just do.. You put me in an audience that   
   hears a "Take my wife" type of joke from the performer on stage and I   
   will make my objections known very loudly.  Nothing hypothetical about   
   that, either. I have let comics know if they have stepped over the   
   line that I have determined. Happens at the highest levels I saw Jon   
   Stewart a couple of fears before he left TDS and I was rather   
   disturbed by some of the jokes he made.   
   >   
   >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.   
      
   Granted, I have no experience whatsoever with performing impressions,   
   never finding them interesting enough to pursue, but in some ways   
   almost any sort of acting might be thought of as impressions.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)