Back from the future, Yale art eats itself

At the turn of the last century, CD players, movies, and Rumpus didn't exist, but at Yale the Musical Times, the Record, and the Dramat did. In honor of our brand-spankin' new century, we at A&E dispatched three of our finest critics to the Manuscripts and Archives at Sterling Memorial to conduct an investigation into the Yale art scene of 1900. The following is the sick lovechild of their unique pop culture savvy and acute historical conciousness.

SHAWN CHENG/YH

From Stravinsky to Britney

Making predictions for music in the next century is dirty work, and I'm liable to have my most ridiculous claims quoted out of context in the year 2100 by some snotty A&E staffer who has a computer chip for a heart. Nevertheless, the situation calls for fortitude.

In an editor's note from Jan. 1, 1901, the Musical Times promised that in the coming century, "special attention will be given to illustrations, thus continuing a feature which has been so much appreciated of late by our many kind readers." I certainly will not scoff at this noble goal. After all, as a window into 20th century music, one could not do better than forecast an increased emphasis upon "illustrations." When the century began, many pop stars—Stravinsky, Wagner, Schoenberg—suffered from brutal bouts of ugliness. Cut ahead 50 years: Sinatra, Elvis, Little Richard. Three men who respectively defined the three visual attitudes for late 20th century pop stars: impossibly cool, impossibly sexy, and impossibly ker-ay-zee! Today, of course, MTV has made pop music an almost fully visual endeavor. Interested in fighting that trend? Direct yourself to the Edwin Vedder School of Cultural Irrelevancy. The rock will only increase its do-sie-do with the image in the coming century, and aspiring pop stars are required to have either great genes (à la Britney) or a deft plastic surgeon (à la Cher, and perhaps also Britney).

The television is capable of hiding undesirable characteristics as long as they are localized. In 1956, Elvis' suggestive hips were deemed a national threat to teenage morality; he thus consented to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show strictly from the waist up. Pop music's moral battle has long since been ceded to the hedonists, but the boon of selective filming has allowed many pop stars to play cover-up. Bonnie Raitt, having gone gray-haired on one side but not the other, spent much of the mid-'90s appearing in videos only from her more flattering profile.

The aforementioned Cher contractually mandates being filmed only through heavy filtering. And Santana collaborator Rob Thomas adopted in his "Smooth" video an Elvis-like policy of being filmed only from the torso up, cowardly hiding rock music's last great gut. In the coming century, however, such selective filming will become anachronistic. Like the wives of Donald Trump, pop stars will be diplomatically dismissed as soon as that ass starts sagging. Expect pure perfection, as pop music becomes a temple for the worship of an oft-replaced nubile pantheon. Call it the Menudo Model. From Britney to Christina to Mandy, this barely-legal train ain't stopping anytime soon.

Let us take one last look at the nasally endowed Bob Dylan, at the aggressively bespectacled Elvis Costello, at the tiny-eyed John Lennon. These useless relics will do just fine gathering dust in their Cleveland museum. Ninety-nine years ago, The Musical Times pledged to flee the "days of over-much technique bowing the knee to theoretical attainment." Those days are indeed behind us, but our genuflecting position remains. When we do humbly lift our heads to the television, we pray that she will be beautiful, and we pray that she will be 18. In the next century, our prayers will be answered like never before. —Abraham Levitan

From studies to nudies

Although today's Yale students are much more prolific in the performing arts than their counterparts at the last turn of the century, 1900 constituted a giant step forward in student drama. Until then, graduate students were mainly responsible for on-campus performances like 1900's production of the British comedy Ralph Royster Doyster. The 5/3/1900 edition of the Yale Daily News (YDN) gave the play a warm review, calling it "a comedy of much more historic than intrinsic interest." Since drama and academia were not as closely linked then as they are now, the YDN was careful to point out the fact that "the reproduction of old plays is an educational factor of the highest value."

Then, on May 24, 1900, undergraduates got their chance to take the stage. The Yale University Dramatic Association put on its first show, a production of the Second Shepherd's Play and a dramatization of Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale. The show was a resounding success, and, according to the YDN, "It was an important event, for much more was at stake than the amusement or approval of a brilliant audience." It proved that "Yale actors were capable of serious and even artistic work."

These days, the drama community at the University continues to get even more ser-ious and artistic. According to Annabelle Steinhacker, ES '00, who has acted in several campus productions, "The plays that have gone up recently are highly technical and dramatic pieces. It's rare that you get something that's under two-and-a-half hours long and funny."

Today's drama scene also works with a productivity that would have shocked Yale students a century ago, with numerous productions often running on a single weekend. No longer does the Dramat represent Yale's entire performing arts world—now it is contested by the many other independent undergraduate productions vying for performance space, which is in short supply.

If things continue at this frenzied pace, the 21st century could have grave implications for the performing arts at Yale. Productions will get increasingly bizarre and abstract, eventually resulting in a sensational five-hour "gala of multimedia and nakedness," as Steinhacker puts it. Lack of space will force students to perform this piece in the middle of Whalley Avenue, causing the ever-vigilant New Haven Police Department to prohibit Yale students from all future theatrical endeavors. The Administration will see this as an opportunity to improve Yale's tarnished reputation in the sciences and will only permit shows to go up if the cast is entirely robotic. By the year 2100, all Yale dramatic productions will bear a striking similarity to Disneyworld's Hall of Animatronic Presidents. Enjoy the golden age while it lasts. —Eliot Rose

From obnoxious to self-conscious

There was a time when every man on the Yale Fence was named Dink or Dicky or Digby and every woman at Yale was a Vassar girl getting her MRS and it was okay to say things like this about women. In those days, the Yale Record was considered funny.

The Record's January, 1900 issue is shockingly crude. One cartoon features a black waiter, his face lopsided with lips, tripping over a mound of dining hall chits. The caption: "One slip too many." Another depicts a dark fopling sitting before a white professor scribbling on the chalkboard—or should I say "black bored."

Another Record modus offendi was the one-liner; always unsigned, always very classy. For example: did you hear what the first line of the "bushmen" constitution is? "Wee the people." And how lovably wee they are, as we soon learn. Take the poem, "My Caddy": "And now as day by day flies past/And we together rove,/So I have come to find at last/That there's but one I love:/My caddy." Or take this bit of dialogue: "He: The caddy called me an incompetent amateur.

She: How insolent—what did you do?

He: I put that caddy just 40 feet."

But the po' folk don't need their betters to ridicule them. Take a look at this witty tramp. He's just told the "lady of the house" that he is a soldier. "Whatever do you mean, my dear?" "I am first lieutenant an' chief of de commissary department in de vast army of de unemployed." Now that's an army I'd let conquer me any day. They're hilarious! And the Record just keeps 'em coming. A judge asks a "tramp," "Here! What do you mean by saying that you `entered into rest on December 4, 1860?'" To which the tramp spits cannily back, "Dat waz de date of me birth!" And let's not forget the "boss" who asks a tramp, "Are you a mechanic?" The latter rejoins, "No, ser, I'm a McCarty."

When the Record wasn't making sport of blacks, the Irish, Jews, and the poor, it was just plain loopy. "Bray" tells "Funnell," "Metempsychosis? No, sir, I think it's a horrible belief. Fancy my becoming a donkey in my next incarnation!" Funnell replies, "Nonotondus, eh?" In another two-line episode, "Digby" tells "Tooter," "If Butler succeeds in defeating the Boers, he will get the garter." Tooter cracks, "Yes, Lady Smith's garter."

Of course, if you leaf through the Record today things sure have changed. No more ads for "Ripans," the wonder-drug that cures every ailment. No more discussion of the junior class prom. And no more digs at the Irish, that scourge of the white race. Nevertheless, it's still full of references to black street slang, throwing "bitch's" around like a big-city pimp. The only substantive difference between the present Record's brand of racial humor and that of the Record 100 years ago is that our contemporaries are more archly self-conscious. That may seem to those of us with integrity like a cop-out. But arch self-consciousness is probably this particular article's only chance for success. So start laughing 'fore I bitch-slap yo' ass.

—Ian Blecher

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