How Burlesque Works

actually like one of my favorite dudes. Instrumental easy listening stuff and he does like soft rock versions of like no, he does instrumental easy listening versions of soft rock songs. So he makes soft rock softer. Yeah wow, like you can't even slip through your fingers, you know. But yeah, the Stripper is what it's called. And I'm sure you've probably heard it at burlesque shows, because we should come out and say I've never been to one, but you have. Yeah,

I went to one of New York City. Yeah, uh, kind of the home of burlesque. Sure, it's one of the certainly one of the capitals of neo burlesque New York in l A or where it started in the mid nineties. And I had a lot to do with where it started in the you know, late eighteen hundreds in early nineteen You're right, that is absolutely true. Yeah,

I went to one. Uh you know, it's fun. I like throwback stuff, and um, I just I appreciate people trying to bring stuff back, you know, especially like really old school stuff, not like eighties like clothing. Are you referring to my swatch? No? And what about my Ocean Pacific wind breaker? Wow? I didn't notice. No, I love eighties clothing. I'm just saying when I'm talking about bringing it back, I mean, like you know, the pantaloons and

the whole burless things. They definitely they have totally like gone all in and as a result, it's been successful. It's been a very successful burlesque revival. It's like a movement. Yeah, you can throw a stone in America and you're gonna hit a burlesque troop. Just throw it, close your eyes and throw it. You don't even have to throw it. Well, it'll hit a burlesque trooper. Um. And that's a pretty recent phenomenon. But it's kind of taken off like a rocket. Um,

but you're saying it's true to form, true to the original. Yeah, the one I saw was very much so. It was you know, sort of body and had some humor and um, of course strip tease action, but not like you know, the the strip club type of thing. It's it's supposed to be like kitchy can't be stripped teases typically, right, yeah, like titillating and body, but not, um, it's not just like a strip club strip no, no, no, no, not at all. It's like dancing and fun and you know,

it's a good time. People are laughing and have a good time, whereas strip clubs are kind of like scary to me, they are at least right. Um. So, you know, stripping actually came out of burlesque and then just kind of went off on its own direction. But it's still associated with burlesque. We'll we'll get into this. Um. Well, now, okay,

let's talk about the history of this. I should say, chuck that if you look into burlesque, especially neo burlesque, Um, there's a real discussion about whether or not it's pro feminist or counter feminist. Basically, yeah, it's pretty interesting. If you speak to um, a burlesque, a neo burlesqu ar, read their words or writing or whatever, um, you're going to find that they most likely identify as feminist or at the very least with feminism. Um. And that doesn't

always jibe with how feminists think of them though. Yeah, and especially these days with the new stuff they um, you know, these are productions by women, uh, costuming by women, produced by women, performed by women, which follows women in the audience, right, and then so it's empowering for a lot of women, Like that's part of the the attraction of it is it is it's women doing their own

thing and they're doing it and they're they're doing it. Well, it's it's you're right, there's a couple of schools of thought period about that. It's like, does a woman take her clothes off her money? Is that exploiting her? Or is that a woman who's very comfortable with her body and sexuality exploiting men for their dough? Right? But you just you just said the magic word to men, Like what is it seems to be like the baseline argument is whether or not burlesque is for the male gays

or for women empowerment. Yeah, well, I think when we look at the history, we'll see that it was generally run by men back in the day and now is more run by women, right, But originally it wasn't run by men. It was originally no, it was originally women producers back in the nineteenth century. And that's where you get the association of women doing this stuff um on their own. It's that's a true throw back to the original founding of it. So let's go back in time. Then,

let's go to the history of burlesque. Let's go over to Great Britain where it started. It's eight forty and here we are in England and ladies are very well covered up. It's the Victorian era. Like neck to ankle and skin is not in fashion, and so to see a woman show a little skin, even if it's an ankle,

is a very big deal, right. So imagine that if you went to a performance of a show and it was a kind of this weird satirical spoof of maybe a Greek comedy, but it was lampooning current cultural and political um items. But it was an all female troop and the producer's name was a woman's name, and the troop was wearing tights, their their legs weren't covered, right. That. That's what you call a cultural explosion, and people went

nuts for it, Yeah, they did. The word burlesque comes from the Italian burlesco, or even further back, burla, which means to ridicule um. And basically it's what like these days would call satire. Yeah, it was. They were spoofs. They would spoof the upper class and spoof operas and plays and Shakespeare and all those snotty snots that had hangups in the upper echelons of society. They would make fun of them. Yeah, like you wore a monocle, you're

gonna get skewered in a in a burlesque show. Yeah. Um. And the burlesque show itself was lots of song and dance and um, musical numbers. Um. But it was. There were two aspects of it from the beginning that survived even to today. There's humor to its supposed to be funny um. And there was nudity of some form. Both of those were found in the first burlesque. Yeah. And depending on what nudity meant back then today, like the

nudity could be wearing tights. Yeah exactly. You know, here's my knees right like faint, prepared to faint right, um. Because yeah, this was the very buttoned up Victorian era. Um. So it was a pretty big smash in Great Britain, and the earliest plays made enough money, um that they shipped over to America. And in America there was a The first one technically was called The Black Crook, and it was a very big success. Yeah, the Black Crook. Like I said, it was Broadway, it was the eighteen

sixty six at this point. And uh, they had um pantaloons on. But the pantaloons only went down to their mid thigh, which is a big deal. So from they're wearing shorts in other words, yeah, you know, the big puffy pantaloons from the mid thigh down. They had nothing. They had no sleeves. They had the bodices with no sleeves. There's another huge deal. It sounds like exactly like the French illustration of like a can't hand answer. Yeah, pretty

much except more skin probably. Uh. And then the reviewers that went nuts for it, um, like some of them went nuts in a bad way and called it like filth. But other ones said, you know, remarked about there were no clothes to speak of, but they had never seen something like it's so amazing in their life. Yeah, it was like just quite a spectacle. And the the the reviewers that reviewed positively, uh felt the ire and pressure of the puritanical sect um, which was pretty loud back then. Uh,

And they changed their tune. So then you had nothing but bad reviews of these things. But they were loud, bad reviews, and that just drew more audiences. Yeah, but they were like noteworthy. People were going to these shows early on, which was a big deal. It wasn't just it did go back underground. But at first, like Mark Twain went to UH, one called the Four British Blonds.

It was a troop and he said, the scenery and are everything girls nothing but a wilderness of girls stacked up, pile on, pile away, aloft to the dome of the theater, dressed with a meagerness that would make a parasol blutch. Yeah, ta can turn of phrase, sure, Mark Twain, he was a great writer. But another show came along after that too, that was a really big deal. Right, this is technically um, I don't know. I guess it was maybe the one that really maybe the Black Crook proved that this thing

could be lucrative. And then the one that followed, ixion Um was the first true burlesque show to arrive in the US. Yeah. I think Black Crook was a little It was a Broadway show that just titilated, and so people said, who was who was the lady? Her name is Lydia Thompson. She was a burlesque producer. I think she was like, you guys want to be titilated? Yeah,

check this, let's do it for real. And she dropped a burlesque show on him, which, now that we're talking about this, I just realized I have been to a burlesque show in Vegas. Oh yeah, yeah. It was at uh uh one of the older casinos Circus Circus No, no, no, Golden Nugget. No, not that old. I can't remember, but it was. It was called Jubilee. It was boring. Yeah. Well, the one I went to was in like a tiny

little bar in New York. This wasn't neo. This is like straight up I think it had been performed ever since the sixties or something. Yeah, it was just I kept waiting for them to stop in the middle and be like, where's this kidding, here's the real show. But they didn't. It was so strange. I think everyone should go see Jubilee and just it's bizarre. Yeah, you know,

it sounds like one of those old Vegas shows. Um, so okay, so Ixion comes along and it's a it's one of those Greek comedies updated to lampoon contemporary society and culture. Um, and people love it. And you said Mark Twain went to one of these things that he went to more than one. That's really saying something because originally burlesque in the eighteen forties was created for the lower classes in the middle class, just to make fun

of the upper classes. When it comes to America, it's not just attracting the lower classes, it's attracting the middle classes. Is attracting upper class society, possibly in part because it's still making fun of the British. You know. Um, I don't know if it would have been quite as well received by the upper classes in American society if they

had come to make fun of America. But in very short order, within just a few years, Lydia Thompson's success, Um with her production, which by the way, netted six or gross six point six million dollars in two thousand, twelve dollars. And it's one first season. That's awesome. It was like three seventy thousand and in eighteen seventy dollars um. But based on her success, Americans started making their own

very quickly. Yeah, and um, it was in the eighteen eighties a short time later that the male uh managers and producers kind of took over because of course they were already doing uh, you know, producing things, but they saw that there was definitely money to be made. Right, Oh, hey, women, you you guys are living the dream. You're doing your own thing. You're being empowered. Now we're taken over. But

it was still too titillate uh into spoof. But uh, there was definitely a little more uh attention paid to the strip tease part of it, well, right, I mean, the the showing, the leg the costuming, the the just kind of um, just shimmying around on stage definitely started to come more towards the four but the strip teeth hadn't been introduced yet. The first stripper was a woman named Little Egypt, who did the first public strip um

at the World's Fair in Chicago. What was it called the the Houchiuchi seriously uh, and that caused quite a stir. It was still you you could find a striptease here there, but it was underground still like stag parties and stuff like that. Right, so burlesque was still there, were you. I mean, you went to a burlesque show, you're gonna be titillated. But still it was the lampooning, the hilariousness

of it. They were stand up comics. Yeah. Well, things really change when a producer named Michael, uh, Michael, leave it, love It, Love It. Yeah, okay, when he when he started like a modern producer. Yeah, you know, well he kind of was. He He claims he coined the term vaudeville, although if he claimed it, then it's probably not the case.

I made that up. See um. But when he started producing, he basically put it in a three act format like the three act minstrel shows of days before, with Act one being um, just an ensemble entertainment UM skits, gags, jokes, fully dressed in formal clothing. Uh. Then Act two, which was like a hodgepodge of comic skits, and singing acts and things like that, and then finally act three, which was what they called a burletta, which was a full

one act musical burlesque. That was that's when they would usually like spoof Shakespeare or somebody. Right, So that format became the format for all burlesque shows to follow what was at the eighteen eighties. Uh yeah, okay, Um. And what he did was he took what was traditionally the burlesque show, which was this spoofy play, and condensed it into one act, the third act, and then added this other stuff exactly. So vaudeville and burlesque are kind of

co evolving at the same time. Apparently this man was patient zero. I hadn't heard that. But um, the vaudeville, for some reason had a little more of a better reputation burlesque. They weren't taking the clothes off, I guess so. But um, you found a lot of the same um elements, especially stand up comedy, and there were some, um, really great legendary comics like Jackie Gleason and um I hope yeah,

Read Skelton, W. C. Fields, Fanny Bryce, Funny Girl. UM who started out in burlesque graduated to Vaudeville and then went on to TV. Um just basically followed the media as it went. But some of those people, Um, they'll look down on burlesque, but they still exactly when they needed money, they would adopt the pseudonym and they could do a little burlesque to her. Because burlesque was a lot steadier income. It was virtually guaranteed income. Vaudeville was

a little more respected, but burlesque was guaranteed work. Yeah. And this writer name HERB Goldman wrote a book called Fanny Bryce, The Original Funny Girl, where he pretty much came out and said, like, by the time he got to Vaudeville your seasons, burlesque was the proving ground if you wanted to get in the show business. Yeah. For ladies and men. Men were the comics at the time typically Yeah, and um, we can thank burlesque also for um,

the word top banana and second banana. Yeah, I had to do with the comics in like a comedic group. The guy who was the straight man or whatever, like Mo, he would have been the top banana, and then Larry might have been second banana, and Curly would have been third banana. I thought you were talking about the Simpsons for a second, It's like Mo would be the top banana. Yeah, probably, I don't wonder who is the top banana in the sentence.

I don't think they followed that schematic. No, not at all. Oh god, So early nineteen hundreds nineteen o five, there began to be vaudeville style circuits going around sort of like a traveling circus, and uh, they played in rotations, so they became known as wheels. And they had the Columbia Wheel on the eastern US, the Empire Wheel on the western US, the Mutual Wheel, which I'm not sure

where that was probably the Midwest, Midwest. And then there was a fourth wheel called the Independent that actually went bankrupt because they were too dirty. They refused to change, so they would get shut down so much they just couldn't hang. Yeah, and that was the thing that would

happen um with the burlesque house. Um. And these wheels were basically just circuits that involved burlesque houses around you know, a certain region, and they were so established and these shows were so guaranteed to draw a crowd that these wheels were um. They would last for forty weeks. So you're getting a burlesque troop and you had steady work for forty weeks out of the year. That's just that's

your life, that's your livelihood. And um, this went on for like thirty years like this, So I mean, think about it. In show biz, there was for three decades a place where you could go and get steady work and basically make your career for your life, especially as a woman at the time, you know. Uh, and well we're in the nineteen hundreds, but from the eighteen eighties forward. Uh, like you said, comedy was mainly um, working class, and it kind of occurred to me that that laid the

groundwork for sitcoms. Oh yeah, because like the Family, like so many not most, but well maybe most sitcoms are kind of aimed towards like working class regular people, right, King of Queens. Not everything is a fresh princip bel air, right. You know, Well, that's that's kind of follows in the burlesque um tradition because they're making fun of the upper class by insinuating somebody from the lower lower middle class into the upper class to point out all of the

foibles of the rich. Yeah, I guess, I guess you're right. I never really thought I was trying to rack my brain for sitcoms based on rich people and most of well that's what I was just thinking. But they kind of mocked them as well. I don't remember Soberspon's being mocky. Oh yeah, I guess you're right. But think about it, like the most all sitcoms involved the working class mass. Those were working class doctors, and you know, like you took something from the upper class and put them in

the battlefield. That's working class. Now, King of Queen's Archie Bunker, Jefferson's, they were all sort of middle class to working class because no one wants to sit around watch funny rich people. Different strokes with rich people. But they pointed out the foibles a little bit too. Two poor kids though, Yeah, yeah, man, we are smart dudes. We just cracked the sitcom enigma.

Everyone's like, we knew that, right. Uh So one of the big um parts of the comedy bits in burlesque was word play, and this is where Abbot and Costella, even though Who's on first wasn't invented, uh, in burlesque, it was definitely hone there. Oh I thought it was invented there. Now they that's where they like really got got their stuff down. Um. But it was very often uh, a lot of intricate word play, misunderstood words. Um. And I think we should do this a bit, the Cohen

and Cohen bit. Okay, you're prepared to do that. I am, Okay, I am, so I'll be uh, you be the caller, okay, and I will be the person who answers that a right, So I ring you up, ring, ring ring, Hello Cohen, Cohen, Cohen and Cohen. Let me speak to Mr Cohen. Oh, he's dead these six years, we keep his name on the door out of respect. Well, then let me speak to Mr Cohen. Well he's on vacation. Well then let me speak to Mr Cohen. He's out to lunch. Ah, let me speak to Mr Going speaking. Don't that was

pretty good? That was real good. We didn't even practice that. We should go on the road. Yeah, let's do that. Yeah, yeah we should. What do you think about doing some sort of stuff you should know tour? I think we totally should. I mean, we already have done variety shows and all we need is a strip tease act and we're burlesque. Well, let's do a variety show. Or like maybe a trivia tour or something like that. Let's hit the road, man, that's it. Did we just birth birthing idea?

I think? So? All right, okay, people can be like, come to Minneapolis, come to Kansas City. Man, you better not be wearing monocles because you're going to feel the sting. I think if we do tour that we should go to you know, all over Yeah, not just like oh New York in l A. No, No, we'll do like a little little tour. Yeah, okay that we'll do the

mutual circuit or the mutual Wheel. We'll do all three wheels. Um. So, burlesque developed to the point where they had a their own language, basically like many you know, industries in the entertainment business. Um, but you can guess my favorite. A jerk Yeah, the jerk was an audience member. A yak was a big belly laugh. Yeah, think about the yucks that came from that. Of course, that makes sense. Yeah, if you make a funny face as a performer, that's

a skull. A Mountaineer was a brand new comic that apparently came from the Cat's skill circuit up in the mountains there and then I thought this was interesting. The Boston version was a cleaned up version of the routine. Yeah, because the sensibilities of Boston nights are famous, famously touchy. And then you know, there's a whole list of vocabulary here, but we don't have to go through it all. Yeah. But I mean, like some of the terms that we

used again top, banana, yucks, jerk. This came from burlesque The Way to Go Burlesque, So, um, there's like kind of this, Hey, Dave. Burlesque is enjoying its first wave in the United States. Um, and then all of a sudden they have big competition. It's called movies and then worse than movies, talkies. Yeah, and burlesque is like, uh, what can we do that the movies can't do to

get people in to take off even more clothing exactly. Yeah, and that actually did it, because not only did that save burlesque and make it competitive against the movies, it actually kicked off the heyday. Once the the burlesque performers uh started taking off their clothes and doing strip teases, like real strip teases. That's when burlesque saw its golden era. Yeah. But again, these are nineteen twenties strip teases. So it's not like going to one of those filthy places these days, uh,

like a strip club. Um, we're talking Gypsy rose Lee and Sally Ran doing like the fan dance where you know they're they're so good with that fan. You can never quite tell what's going on behind the fan. I know, have you seen a fan dance? They're like very um the they just the keeping it placed and moving it as you move around on stage and cover yourself. Um, is that's art? I mean that takes work. No, of course it does, because if you showed too much, you

got busted, right, you gave your reveal too soon? Yes, and by busted, we mean like the cops would put you in jail. Perhaps, Oh oh, I see what you mean. And that was actually like pretty common apparently, like the burlesque houses would be shut down, the person headlining would

be arrested for moral for corrupting moral sensibilities. Yeah, there were these dudes, um, the Minsky brothers, A Billy Herb and Morton, and they were big time burlesque producers and uh they were your Yeah, they were rated a bunch um rate n became famous because they wrote a book and made a movie about it. But the night they rated Minsky's on the Notes. Yeah, but um, they said

it just became popular because of the attention. Like it was basically a cycle of uh, covering up too much audience dwindles, um, revealing too much audience booms, you get rated, so you start covering up again, and it just kind of kept going like that. Uh. There was a law in New York that you could be topless at that point as long as you didn't move. Supposedly that law

is still in effect. You don't move. I don't know about the as long as you don't move part, but you you can legally walk around New York topless mayon or a woman, um, and and not be breaking the law. Really. Yeah, so Splash was actually factually incorrect the movie Splash. Yeah, although I think Darrehina was like all the way naked when she comes out of the water the first time. Remember, yeah, they arrested her. Yeah. I love that movie. When I was a kid, I thought it was pretty great. Um.

So Uh. The Minsky brothers are pretty infamous, so much so that Mary LaGuardia at the time, who was a moral reformer. He is the early Giuliani. Right, yeah, he it's exactly right, Like, let's clean this down up. Um he uh. He made a law where you couldn't publicly advertise using the word burlesque or the word Minsky. Yeah.

So like they were pretty infamous. They made the Mayor of New York man, well, they think we're the first ones to to Apparently the first raid in nineteen seventeen, there was a h performer named made Dix who, as she was leaving stage, was accidentally absent mindedly removing her clothing for the next act and just did it before

she was off stage, and the dudes went nuts. So she was turned around and went back out, and one of the I think it was Billy Minsky, was like, hey, let's see if we can make that accident happen every night. Oh yeah. That was the beginning of the whole thing, the beginning of like the full nudity, and that's what led to that first raid. So um, let's go back to the uh, the the strip teasers themselves, like you mentioned Gypsy rose Leie and Sally rand Um, whose names

are still pretty well known in the popular culture. And the reason why is because these ladies were superstars like they um catapulted from their burlesque routines into um, you know, starring roles in movies and in culture and society. They were written about, they were lauded. Um, they were just they were big deals. Like they they came about at a time and burlesque strip teases came about at a time when a significant portion of society was ready to um I love it. Yeah. And Gypsy rose Lee too.

She was um smart lady, and she didn't mind being smart on stage. She would perform, Uh these monologues were very high brow with a British accent and uh, or not a British accent, but like a you know, an upper class accent, like a finishing school accent, is how Julia Layton puts it. Yeah. And she would tell jokes, like really intellectual, smart jokes and uh, super witty, and she would do her strip tease. It was the first time that the strip teas and comedy were married right

in one and you know, at the same time. Like she would just kind of go around the stage and she'd come out and like all of these layers and petty coats and all that stuff, and then she would just kind of tell jokes or make witty observations as as she was slowly revealing these things, and then by the end of her act she was she had basically pasties on and it just wiled the crowd. Um, and she I want to see Gypsy? Have you ever seen that movie? No? It was I think a Broadway show too,

wasn't it right? I think it was her memoirs a book, and then they made it into a Broadway show, and then they made it into a movie, and um, I think it was. It says it was Natalie Wood who played her in the movie. I want to see it because she sounds like a pretty interesting person. Yeah, I haven't seen an uh. And then one of her probably the next biggest superstar of her exact era, which was the thirties, was Sally Rand, And you can thank Sally Ran for inventing the fan dance and the will dance.

Those were her two big ones. She had a bunch of acts, but her two big acts were. The fan dance was just two huge ostrich feathers that she used to cover up and just maneuver around. And then, um, the the bubble dance was like a five foot balloon that she just kind of rolled around. Um, yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, And dudes were like, what's behind the BALLU? Right? Pop? Yeah? Uh, so we'll continue on in the nineteen twenties right after this message. All right, so we're kind of back to

the twenties. I thought we were in the thirties. We're jumping around a little bit. Uh. A very cool thing happened in the nineteen twenties with burlesque, which was uh, it was no longer all white. Um. It wasn't integrated of course at the time, but there started to be all black burlesque clubs, all Latin clubs, all Chinese clubs, and really kind of spread. Like I said, though they weren't cheering the stage, but um, at least they were

like representing their cultures. Can close off the money, right you know? Well, you know you said something a little while ago before the break, um that like the men were like, what's like they wanted to balloon to pop. Um. With the advent of the strip tease coming front and center in a burlesque show, UM, the male audience increased tremendously. The ratio of men to women in an audience really

skewed towards men. It became more about the strip tease and less about the comedy, I think exactly, and so the the audience became increasingly um men and randy men. Yeah, and that's one of the reasons why burlesque still today um has a this kind of body um implication to you know what I'm saying, because at that point it kind of shifted some. Um, it became a little less intelligent, a little less comedic. And then these strippers themsel else,

we're funny. They were trying to get yucks and stuff themselves. But you would also, you know, you'd have like a stand up comedian and then a strip tease. And that was what the burlesque show kind of evolved today. And that was sort of the beginning of the end because a lot of the comics moved on to like you said, TV and film and took those x with them. I mean, if you look at the comedy at the time and still today, they're like elements of burlesque all over the place.

Oh for sure, you know, but I mean again, we're talking like burlesque hata Hey day, like even more than its first wave from about the twenties to the sixties. And what's interesting is um that the women involved, like um Gypsy had a movie made about her. Another one who came a little later in the fifties, she was huge. Her name was Blaze Star. Yeah, with two rs like Brenda Star uh and Blaze Star. Um. Have you ever seen that movie Blaze with Paul Newman and uh Lolita David. Yeah?

Was that that was about her? And she did this really well known strip tease where um, there'd be like a sette and she would just kind of maneuver around it and everything and do your strip tease and end up on it and then smoke would come out and streamers would come down. Smoke would come out from between her legs. The one I saw it didn't but it was for TV, so they may have. She may have altered it some. It looked like it was for TV. Um, but it was, I mean pretty good stuff. Yeah. May

West famous screenstar. She started off in burlesque, and she's one of the early ladies who embraces her sexuality and say, hey, man, look at me, right, I'm a sexy lady. So it's extremely popular. It's it's about as mainstream as it can be. And then it's also kind of maybe hastening the sexual revolution along a little bit um and then it basically

is killed. It's eaten by its own offspring. So the reason burlesque went away in the sixties was because access and availability of pornography became much more widespread around that time, and guys didn't need to go to burlesque shows any longer. Yeah, I guess, uh, you could call it the natural progression of things that continues to this day. But yeah, hardcore porn was available, and uh, it really died out pretty quickly after that for a while, like for a solid

like forty years. Yeah. And there was a the one noteworthy UM throwback or aspect revival of it. I guess it was in nineteen seventy nine Broadway show that was pretty successful. It had more performances. It was called Sugar Babies starring Mr Mickey Rooney and MS and Miller Classic and Um. It was a period piece, a backstage period piece UM set in the nineteen thirties during the heyday of burlesque shows, and it was about a burlesque troupe

in its performance. Yeah, that was you know, things come back around owned and people become fascinated with the old stuff. That was like the late seventies was the perfect time to revive a nineteen thirties style thing. I think it was a really big hit. But yeah, and they were into the fifties then too. Remember the greaser thing with Grease? Oh yeah, yeah, Seana, uh yeah, performing it would stock?

Did they? Yeah? They did, didn't they? Yeah. It always baffled me until I sort of realized that, you no, like ten or fifteen years after something's popular, people are into it again, like Happy Days and Seanna, No, that wasn't Happy Days. Yeah, good stuff. So Chuck wrote about here seems like another a good time for a break because we're about to go into the neo burlesque revival. Agreed, So Chuck, you're back. So um. We'd say sometimes that

you know, something didn't really go away, it just went underground. Yeah. I don't think that's necessarily the case of burlesque. I think it like went away. I think you would have been hard pressed sure to find a burlesque show in

the United States. Yeah. Um. And but in the mid nineties, two different groups independently revived it um and there were two people who were basically at the heart of it um Billy Madley in New York and Michelle Carr in Los Angeles at about the same time in the nineties revived burlesque. And it certainly didn't hurt that people like Ditavantises were marrying Marilyn Manson and becoming Internet famous for their throwback nineteen thirties style. But now you add tattoos

to that equation. Yeah, it seems to be a lot of that, Yeah, with the burlesque scene now burlex scene. Yeah, so let's talk about the neo burlesque scene. You've got to keep in mind that burlesque already had this um. Like I said, it's just kind of a body reputation because the striptease was introduced in Pushed Front and Center. Um, And so there's certainly an element to that, like the the striptease is definitely still part of the neo burlesque scene.

But um, there's also as Julia Layton points out, it's it's more you could call a lot of it more performance art um or there's certainly elements of performance are in the modern neo burlesque um act yeah, for sure, you know. Yeah, and they're also um with neo burlesque, they are ah, shining the light on people who may have not been on stage before, like plus size women, or they would play with gender. Um, there's a performer called world Famous. I want to say b O B.

Here's it just Bob? I think, I think b O B. Whatever you spell your name with an asterisk capital bob and an asterisk that you're kind of calling attention to it. Yeah, and uh, b O B was a former drag queen even though she was a woman, so she called herself a female female impersonator. Yeah, so just basically messing with these conventions. Um. That was a male performer name uh tigger with an exclamation point. Yeah he's still around, is he?

That's what I figured. And he had a very famous strip teach routine where he would be a priest courting an altar boy. So they're definitely like pushing the boundary still. Oh yeah, and that was that definitely is the heart of burlesque as it was originally created. I mean like it's satirical, it's biting, it's um. It criticizes the powers that be UM and uh, there's there's one out there.

And now there's a UM lady name Honey Wild who does a Margaret Thatcher Regie, I've heard of her, and at one point she there's a man um bent over and on his bottom is the word labor and of course with the you like the Labor party and Margaret Thatcher spanking it with a riding crop. So this is like it's burlesque as it was originally conceived by the women in the nineteenth century who produced the earliest shows, but it's melded with the heyday from the twenties to

the sixties. Um, where there's stripped ts and they there's different acts. There's comedy elements to a stand up comedy as well. Um so yeah, but it's also contemporized. Feel like you've got Margaret Thatcher well fairly contemprised, right, It's more contemporized than say like Greek comedies. And then um, I saw one by the Devil's Playground Troop. They do a Star Wars for Less, complete with slave layer. Of course, the job of the hut makes an appearance very disturbingly. Um,

there's like a Stormtroopers. It's it's like, you know, I'm sure nerd Heaven. Yeah, you're you're marrying several different things there. Yeah, and you hit. You know you you mentioned it when like you kind of see a lot of tattoo culture involved in this. UM. It does seem like the neo ber lesque movement pulls in from a lot of different fields, like like tattoo culture, feminist porn um, the the original

burlesque stuff, performance and drag queens. UM. All these different cultures kind of come together and um are are created put into acts now neo burlesque acts. Yeah, it's it's it's a cultural movement, even more so than just a performance, you know, it's it's bigger than that now and took um I said, Uh, this neo burlesque um kind of incorporates drag queen aspects to show like there are um,

the fluid gender um. It makes an appearance a lot um And that's kind of appropriate because drag drag clubs and drag queens and just drag acts definitely grew out of burlesque UM, either as a parody of burlesque or just from it as its own thing. Yeah, yeah, totally. So it's it's had a huge cultural impact. Yeah. The drag shows I've been too definitely just smacked of true burlesque.

The camp out the at the Yin Yang um, and so it's very it's it's kind of neat that neo burlesque takes all of the things that burlesque spawned and just kind of brings it back together. Yeah. I think burlesque is about acceptance. They're not a very exclusionary group. That is neat A neat way to put it. You just summed it up. So anytime you have a cultural movement, Chuck, that means that you are going to have cultural critics

about it. Well, no, I mean we talked about the running a file of feminism, um, and I mean that's certainly I don't necessarily have a lot to speak to on that because I don't really know what the answer there is. I've just seen from what I've seen, it seems like the burlesque performers are like, you're not getting this.

This is not about titilating men. If that's really what you think it is, go to more burlesque shows and you will see and feminists, um, feminist critics of burlesque say, it doesn't matter how you dress it up, you're still stripping and there's still men who are just you know, objectifying. Yeah, in the audience. Yeah, but who wants to hear what too stupid middle aged dudes have to say about it. I feel like we shouldn't even have an opinion. Well,

there you go. I think that's what I was trying to say, is I mean, this is more just bringing up like there's a discussion going on in it. From that viewpoint, it doesn't seem like it could be rectified. It's more just like enjoy it or don't you know? Yeah, I agree, Um ah, that's an opinion. Uh well I've already said I agree because I've gone to a show where two and it's fun. Yeah. Well there you Uh. The other thing that happens when there's a cultural movement

going on is you learn it. You can make a little dough off of it because it's gone mainstream to a certain degree. And if you live in a major city, or maybe even a minor city, you'd likely have some sort of burlesque class or school situation going on there. Right, Atlanta's got a burlesque school. Um, They're all over the place and basically just encouraging ladies to get out there

and have a little fun. Uh. There's one teacher named Vivian Vum that says she teaches a room full of librarians to bump and grind, and I bet it's a blast. And that's another Those are two more words that we can thank for burlesque. Four bump and grind. Those were original terms for part of the act. Right. The grind is making a circle with your hip. I wish people could see moving your pelvis back and forth. Bump and

grind came from burlesque. This or just a video podcast. Uh. There's a burlesque performer named Michelle Lamore whose um work is cited in the introduction of this article. She does something called Beethoven's Fifth Symphony watched where yeah, it's pretty impressive, where um, she comes out in like a coat and tails and um, nothing else pretty much Yeah, and uh sits in front of a sheet music stand on like

a nice piano bench with her facing the audience right. Uh, and then twerks the Beethoven's Fifth And she actually has an instructional DVD called Booty Camp. I believe what torque is that a new word for an old thing? The DVD is called booty Le. No, it's a new thing. I don't think it's an old thing. No, people have been twerking forever. They used to call it like you know, backing that thing up or whatever, Like, twerking is not a new thing. Are you sure? Because twerking is like

doing individual cheeks. Yeah, I'm positive. Cheeks is another word that came out of burlesque as a as a euphemism for bottoms. Cheeks. No, it's definitely not new, since there have been cheeks. Cheeks have been Okay, you manipulated for entertainment. Okay, well then yes, it's a new word for it, and it's it's Yeah, there's some people who excel at it on the internet, like Carmel Kitten. Look her up because she is hilarious. I guess in a way she um

it's like superhuman. Yeah, she has preternatural control over her bottom muscles, her butt muscles. I keep saying bottom Like there's two year olds that listen to our podcast. I feel like I have no control. Well, you can work at it, all right, I can do it. Yeah. I can work on my ears too, as you know from the Natural Selection podcast. No, but check check out Carmel Kitton.

She's hilarious. She she um tworks in random places and then she'll say, the place that she's working at as she's tworking, so she'd be like tworking in the library, tworking in the library, and like um, when she does the tworking library, she looks at the camera and goes she puts her finger up to her mouth while she's tworking. She could probably make some money if I think I've made a lot of money working it subway working. Yeah,

I think she's making it through YouTube ads. But yeah, she's probably you know, she could replace Jared on subway by somebody used to Wells North Jared, Well, he was. That whole thing came out last week when he was defending them for putting h oh, that's stuff in the bread, toxins in their bread. Yeah, but I mean he kind of has to. He's a very rich man because of them, and a very fit man. He's lean. Good for him. He's still a nerd well sure, but he knows he is.

He's Jared. I'm not a fan of Jared. Nope. How do you dislike Jared? It's like disliking a friendly horse or something, you know, like what the he could the horse? I ever do to you? That just debugs me. Jared, you are the first person I've ever met that didn't like Jared, although I don't really talk about him a lot now that I think of it. Yeah, if if I saw Jared on the street, I would punch him

in the face. And I'm a non violent person. Well, Jared's deer clear a chuck because you do something to him that he don't like. Actually, i'd meet him at it. Go oh dude, can I get my picture made? Well? Yeah, see with Jared, He's like, I heard what you said about me, So I guess that's burlesque. If you want to know more about it, again, throw a rock, go talk to the person that it hit, because it's probably a burlesque trooper. Apologize and say hey, where are you

guys performing? And go see a show. Support neo burlesque unless you are critical of it, and in case don't, yeah, I don't go yeah. Um. And if you want to know more about burlesque, you can type that word into the search bart house to first dot com. And I have one more point. I was wondering, what's the difference between cabaret and burlesque. I don't know, they're virtually one and the same. Cap well, which was first burlesque. I think they co evolved, but I think burlesque was. Yes,

I think burlesque was technically first. Maybe cabaret was the French version. No, it's not. I think the big difference is the cabaret is a little more focused on singing and dancing and like the band, but it's almost the exact same. Burlesque was more about comedy and skits and yeah, all right, okay, So I did say first bar a little while back, which means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this um inquisition statements sexy. No, not

sexy at all. Hey, guys, recently listened to The Inquisition show, and I had a story. I'm a reform Jew and in my high school my rabbi told me a story about visiting Spain. She was there on a scholarly trip of some kind and befriended a local Catholic woman. My rabbi eventually talked about Shabbat and the lighting of the candles and the prayers. The woman said she had a similar family tradition and invited my rabbi and her peers

to dinner on Friday. Before dinner, she and her family went into the basement of the house and basically performed a Shabbat service. The prayers were Jewish prayers, uh, though the woman performing the service didn't know that. All she knew was that on Friday, the family went to a hidden place that was sort of secret. After looking into it, they found research saying Spanish and Mexican. Uh, Crypto Jews aren't uncommon people who had converted during one of the

Inquisition but kept their traditions secretly, which we talked about. Um. This woman had no idea why she was doing what she did, but she continued to do it. Uh. And that is from Brittany, And she says, PS. While I do love your show, everyone else in my life hates that I listen. It's like word Jared to those people. I recently visited the UK and went to Warwick Castle with my boyfriend. Oh yeah, we're despised at Warwick Castle.

They keep vultures there and I would not shut up about defensive vomiting sky burials in Old World and New World vultures. I'm surprised my boyfriend didn't lock me in the dungeon. Huh. So that is from Brittany. Brittany, keep on keeping on, you know, Yep, you just keep on sighting stuff you should know. Eventually all these haters will fall away in in cycle out of your life, and you'll get a good boyfriend exactly. If you want to tell us why your boyfriend or girlfriends thinks, you can

tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can join us on our YouTube channel to search Josh and Chuck, send us an email The Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and as always, joined us at at Home on the Web. Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com