Wed Sept 26 Everybody’s Elvis / Research Methods Pt1
Reading Monitor: light to moderate; two short essays for the first half of the class, no additional reading for the second half (though there will be an interview to listen to of about 25 minutes); as always, read this page thoroughly.
[Assignment due next Monday–based on what follows on this page, and what happens in the class. See the instructions elsewhere. No shortage of opinions will be generated in this class…this should be quite easy to do.]
Opening Anecdote: The Story of Houdini and Doyle
No, not the detective series recently streamed–though it is based on the same two individuals. But note that there is a film called Fairy Tale: A True Story (1997), telling a related story about these two figures.
Harry Houdini was a very successful ‘illusionist’ and ‘escape artist’ in vaudeville in the early 20th century. His ‘act’ was to escape from handcuffs, from strait-jackets, from padlocked trunks hanging from cranes in mid-air, in publicity stunts that would then pack the theatres he was appearing in. He also had an ‘avocation’–he hated ‘spiritualists,’ who were very popular at this time, and who conducted private seances with ‘mediums’ who communicated with a ‘spirit world’ filled with the dead. Houdini spent time, money, and his fame exposing these ‘performances’ as illusions, very much along his line of ‘business.’
Arthur Conan Doyle was a very successful author, creator of the first truly successful ‘rational detective,’ Sherlock Holmes. And yet, he was also a great advocate of the ‘truth’ of spiritualism, of another world (and we’re not talking about a ‘heaven’). He even believed in ‘fairies’ (see above).
The thing is–Doyle didn’t believe Houdini was capable of doing the things he did, by trickery. He believed that Houdini was in fact capable of passing his flesh through the metal of the handcuffs and chains, the cloth of the straitjacket, the walls of the chest that held him.
A long set-up, I know, but here’s the pay-off, in a ‘reported’ exchange between the two (paraphrased…):
Houdini: But it’s a trick, Arthur. It isn’t real. I’m not ‘passing through’ the material objects. It’s just a trick….
Doyle: Well, of course, you have to say that, dear boy. You’re in ‘show business.’
Something is going on here, about performances and audiences, and definitions of relationships… And what is ‘the show business’? Can nothing be ‘real’ in practice?
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The Class–for ‘Real’:
Today’s class will review two ways of doing research into performance and popular culture–the ‘performance ethnography’ and the ‘oral history/interview.’ These are methods that you can make use of in your own research for this course, and in general when you’re examining any kind of performance. If you have covered this elsewhere, or they otherwise seem familiar, then this will be a ‘refresher’–and in any event, this class will still allow us to talk about a few examples of this subject, in Ontario, and right now….
I will admit up front that this class (and next week’s about minstrelsy) include my own writing, research, and experience. That will be the end of it for the course, but my intentions are to talk about the research process, and whether I’m doing the research, or the subject of that research, there is something to learn from the experience. Or so I believe!
Part One: The Performance Ethnography
Or, really–a critical/analytical description of a performance event. This is best described by way of example. It is not something you’ll be unfamiliar with, but it still needs to be discussed.
Performance Ethnography – Case Study #1: The Collingwood Elvis Festival:
Some of you will have attended this Festival, and some others will know about it. I attended one year, some time ago, for an essay in Canadian Theatre Review, which I attach here. I describe the experience, and I draw some conclusions, all provisional, and all in a relatively brief essay (you’ll be pleased to read that word ‘brief’).
When you are thinking about ‘Elvis’ as an example of ‘popular performance culture’ think of this phrase, from John Fiske’s book Understanding Popular Culture (see bibliography): ‘the producerly text.’ This is a text that is so ‘malleable’ in its meaning, so easily re-used in a different context that gives it a different meaning, that it becomes incredibly widespread in its use, but to very different purpose. The first chapter of that book is all about…’blue jeans’…the ultimate pop-culture ‘producerly text,’ that is important as a sign of solidarity for the working class, and with a logo, a very exclusive and expensive sign of a privileged class (or was)…. Can this be applied to Elvis?
Here is a pdf of other images I made when I attended the Elvis Festival:
One final note: Of course there are images and video clips of Elvis everywhere. I recommend you take a look at his early work. On ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ the most popular show on American Television in 1956 (a ‘vaudeville’ show), Elvis performed, and he was cautioned against using his hips. You can see him barely holding back…. I would also suggest you look up Little Richard and Chuck Berry–both of whom were enormously influential in the history of rock and roll. They were, however, musicians of colour–Elvis was their substitute…. We’ll talk.
Performance Ethnography – Case Study #2: The Psychic Fair:
I doubt any of you have attended one of these. I did, and again, for an essay in Canadian Theatre Review, which I attach here. I describe the experience, and I draw some conclusions, all provisional. Of course there is much, much more out there to look at related to Psychic Fairs–but I caution you that they are often either promotional materials/’puff pieces’ for a spiritualist, or meant to expose the ‘trickery’ of the form–in other words, created by either Doyle or Houdini….
You can read this as well, though we won’t spend as much time talking about it. It’s here as an ‘outlier’–you can question what performance really is from this example:
These two readings will indicate what I will want to talk about in the first hour of this class. These are non-traditional events, but they include and concern ‘performance,’ and they raise questions of audience-performer relationships, the significance of ‘venue’ in that relationship, the significance of ‘belief’ in what is happening in that relationship.
Both have something to do with: (1) ‘the show business’; (2) amateur and alternative performance; and (3)–though describing something that happened recently–the past. I ask that you be prepared to offer your opinion on these three points, and anything else that strikes you as important in your understanding of the words ‘popular,’ ‘performance,’ and ‘culture.’
Also–an important contextual image to bear in mind as you look at these: each piece of writing is a distillation of a day’s worth of accumulated evidence, which in each case includes hundreds of images, a notebook filled with an almost non-stop stream of note-taking during my day at these events, and a box full of related research conducted before and after.
***
Part Two: Oral Histories and Interviews
[No readings! One interview to listen to (we hope). This hour is a demonstration and discussion]
What do we remember about past performances, both those we ‘attend’ and those we ourselves ‘perform’? We remember more than we think we do, but we remember differently depending on the way we are asked about them, and each time we are asked. This is not ‘your computer’s memory’–it is a changeable thing. We all have histories–that is, narratives that we have told ourselves so often, we just automatically remember the narrative, and say that again. And again. Only when we’re telling the story again, and asked different questions, and engage in a different dialogue, do we remember new and differently. If this is obvious to you–that’s good. In my experience, it isn’t obvious to a lot of people I interview. Or myself, for that matter….
Recently, I was myself interviewed by two people who are studying two kinds of popular performance–the ‘sideshow’ and the ‘exposition/Expo.’ I was not interviewed because I performed in these two forms, but because I attended examples of each–a ‘sideshow’ at the CNE in 1967, and both Expo 67 (in Montreal), and Expo 70 (in Osaka). Yes, I’m that old.
I have invited these two Interviewers–Sanja Vodovnik and Jessica Watkin–in to talk with us about this process of interviewing (and not only me!). We hope to post here excerpts from that interview, of about 25 minutes (with a trick ending…). We won’t play more than a couple of minutes in class. It’s a representative sample….
In addition, we will take the opportunity to create our own Case Study: Interviewing 101, using Teaching/Research Assistant Sarah Robbins as a subject.
No readings are necessary for this part of the class. We will provide something more about interview techniques in the General Bibliography a bit later in the term.
END.
Performance and Popular Culture 