Gallows humour
We'd a punch-up on the radio today. Sort of. One of our callers was distressed when she happened to see a Punch and Judy show in Portrush which featured a hanging scene, complete with gallows. The puppeteer, from , joined us to defend the Punch and Judy tradition against the suggestion that it might encourage impressionable young children to mimic the violence they see on the stage.
Apparenty, is rooted in Pulcinella, a hook-nosed, cowardly buffoon who was a popular character in Italian touring comic plays of the 14th century. Now you know. But does this kind of slapstick comedy really represent a threat to the moral health of the nation's children? Is Mr Punch any more culpable than Tom and Jerry? And what about the long traditon of pie-throwing humour? Or the violent scenes in some of the Shakesperean plays we sometimes require young people to read as part of their schooling? Violence has played a role in theatre since the . And comedians and comedy writers have been making us laugh at people slipping on banana skins (and more subtle variations of that classic comedy vehicle) for centuries.
On the other hand, we know that young children often copy what they see -- on television particularly. And I can see someone raising other concerns about some of the stereotypes a character like Punch may perpetuate -- carrying a stick, with a hunched back, a hooked nose, and a rasping voice. In any case, Liz was clearly not as when she witnessed some of his antics on the beach in Portrush. Her concerns are worth examining in the wider context of how we, as a society, deal with subtle ways in which violence is justified or normalised.
As part of that examination, we also need to consider the views of those who believe that comic-book representations of violence may play a in challenging the active expression of violence by children and young people.
Speaking of violence and role-models, Zinedine Zidane will be appearing on French television to talk for the first time about what provoked his headbutt on Marco Materazzi. We still don't know what the Italian player said to the French caption just before the incident. Some ±«Óãtv programmes have hired lip readers to translate the footage. Five Liev's deaf lip reader thought Materazzi said "you're the son of a terrorist whore", while the experts for the Ten O'Clock News think the word "liar" was used followed by "an ugly death to you and your family" -- this on the day the Zadine's mother had been taken to hospital.
Even if those insults were used, would they justify -- or even mitigate -- ZZ's assault on Materazzi? A question for tomorrow's show.
Comments
I heard that and was going to phone but probably wouldn't have been put through, or I'd have been cut off for airing what I think.It involves one of the characters mentioned and a different set of gallows.Not Punch, not Judy, not the policeman, not Captain Franko, not Tom, not Jerry. Yes you've guessed :-)
Punch and Judy violent? That's comedy. I also remember laughing with The Three Stooges and their pie throwing humor, Benny Hill, Monty Python [and their slapstick comedy]. Those were light compared to what we have today.
As for the Head Bumping by Zidane. Many people in Miami Florida have been talking about two things, what made Zidane head bump Maserati and what made Kim Jong Il launch rockets.
I tend to be rather moderate when it comes to issues like political correctness, and I think we have benefited from a certain amount of collectively minding our Ps and Qs.
This however is quite daft. Without a certain level of appropriate agression man would not have survived as a species, and I think that instead of running a million miles from a punch up, we need to re-evaluate our attitudes to it entirely.
We have become a more violent society, this is a proven fact. But is this because of Punch and Judy? Or is it more likely to be that as we have moved away from the 'normal' agression levels of such puppetry and escalated our levels of acceptance with Road Rage games and the like, none of it seems real any more.
When Judy hit Punch or vice versa, you felt it: you recoiled, you knew it was wrong when it stepped over the mark. We have lost those moral parameters now, and perhaps we need more Punch and Judy shows, to remind ourselves that violence is real
I remember hearing somewhere that the original Punch from the Commedia dell' arte was actually based on a real man who was a particularly vicious serial killer in Italy who liked to bury his victims in different parts of his house.