Retro-smut for a new generation

Is it just my imagination, or is the world getting cheesier by the day?

Or, am I becoming such a paragon of good taste and purity that nearly everything offends me?

Of the second question, I suggest there is no such fear. I remain as stalwartly crude and vile as I ever was.

At the same time there is something afoot I don’t understand, and that is the nouveau-trendiness of burlesque. You know, real burlesque, not sleazy Showgirls kind of very boring smut, or salacious lap-dances designed to bring off some poor sod who you know ain’t getting’ nothin’ nowhere else.”

No, I mean with bumps and grinds and hip thrusts and pasties and g-strings; cornball comedians; and well-past-their-prime ‘ladies’ sporting names like (and these are real) Tempest Storm, Blaze Starr, and the doyenne of ecdysiasts, Gypsy Rose Lee. Other stripper names I found inspired were Norma Vincent Peel and Bonnie Ann Clyde and her Blazing 45s.

Now, the point of burlesque, always, was that it was ‘meant’ to be cheesy. It was meant to offend towns and neighborhoods, and little kids (boys especially) were expected to have their eyes covered by caring parents if they walked past the ‘bur-lee-kew’ house so they might not be tainted by glancing at the posters in the street outside. Burlesque was smut for the workingman, and the girls who performed the thankless task were not the sorts of girls a decent chap took home to meet the folks.

In true old-time burlesque the performers never took it 'all' off, While the bumps-and-grinds were meant to simulate sex, they weren't especially overt. It was an era in which the only other titillation for a red-blooded lad was to be found in the underwear ads in the Sear's catalogue. Today, of course, you can see more when Brittney's exiting a car than you ever saw on a burlesque stage.

The theatres themselves were bastions of 'sin' for college boys, servicemen and the lunchbucket brigade, and not for anyone respectable, and assuredly not for decent women to ever, ever have anything to do with. Decent women were expected to shake their heads and tut-tut at the mention of the world burlesque. Such terms as pasties or bumps-and-grinds were unacceptable in mixed company. And the performers, while not prostitutes were considered ‘no better-than’ in middle class society.

And yet, I read an article in this morning’s paper about an exercise program for middle-aged, middle-class women that includes pole dancing, bumpin’-and-grindin’ and all other salacious aspects of the ‘art’ other than taking off your duds. Thank God my mother’s no longer alive, for she would be shocked. And yet, these matrons are somebody's mothers. They must be mortified.

A few weeks ago a burlesque troupe brought their act to this town. One of the newspapers hyped it up relentlessly. They interviewed dancers, and gave it feature coverage and presented it as some sort of retro art manifestation needed by society. They didn’t quite go so far as to suggest bringing the whole family, but nearly.

Well, if they are suggesting (as they were) that burlesque got bad press and was merely just good, clean fun, then they have missed the point. Burlesque was designed to be 'naughty dirty’ fun, or there was no reason to have it.

Ages ago I once went to a real burlesque show, at the old Victory Burlesque in Toronto (one of the last of the venerable Minsky Bros. Burlesque theatres in North America. My buddy and I went and had a great time. And it was smutty and fun. The next night we went to see Hair on stage. Somehow the juxtaposition of the hippie opera with its full-frontal nudity and poor old Victory Burlesque showed the times were indeed a’changin’.

Maybe they should be allowed to stay ‘a-changed.’ Otherwise, somebody’s going to want to bring back minstrel shows.