WARNING! Graphic Content by Mr. Fish

Author:Mr. Fish
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: USC Annenberg Press

Thank You Masked Man (Animation), 1971, Lenny Bruce

Fish:

Because you have interviewed and/or published so many of the most important and influential thinkers and artists of the mid-20th century, I thought it might be smart to get your perspective on why, when it comes to contemporary culture, artists and writers and poets and painters and social philosophers, either by accident or by deliberate design, have been removed from the national debate about who we are as a species and where we are going as a society.

Krassner:

I’m going to have to plead the Fourth on that [the Amendment that guards against unreasonable searches and seizures].

Fish:

Well, let me give you an example about what I mean. Besides the obvious superstars of the time, people like [Lenny] Bruce, [Marshall] McLuhan, [Norman] Mailer, [John] Lennon, [Mort] Sahl, you also had television personalities like Millicent Martin in 1963 on That Was the Week That Was singing a song, dressed as Uncle Sam, called, “I Want to Go Back to Mississippi,” which contained the lyric:

Where the Mississippi mud

Kinda mingles with the blood

Of the niggers who are hanging

From the branches of the trees

Krassner:

Wow.

Fish:

There’s even a refrain that describes a “butter-colored moon” and “cutting up a chocolate-colored koon.” Now, what’s remarkable about that is how brutally frank the social commentary was delivered and how bluntly the satire was played and how it was broadcast on mainstream television. Remember, this was not a nightclub or some underground cabaret somewhere—it was on the BBC.

Krassner:

Well, I did recently see a repeat of something from MAD TV—it was a sketch where there was a group of black actors who were all dressed as pimps waiting at an audition. It was a takeoff of the old Snickers Bar commercials, but instead of saying Snickers the announcer says, “Gonna be here for awhile? Have a Snigger’s Bar.”

Fish:

That’s different, though. That’s more like a parody that addresses the laziness of the culture and the inability of decent society to acknowledge the broader implications of racism in general, whereas the piece on That Was the Week That Was pointed a very direct finger at how ugly the prejudice is able to manifest itself in very specific acts of race-based violence within American society. In fact, the song states clearly, “If you ain’t for segregating white folks from the black, then they won’t hesitate to shoot you bravely in the back.” In other words, [the TW3 segment] handles the issue with much more seriousness instead of merely playing it as farce.

Krassner:

I think Dave Chappelle does more of what you’re talking about.

Fish:

Maybe, but [he does it] in an atmosphere much less open to the free expression of ideas, that’s my point. When you’ve got the management at the Laugh Factory [in Hollywood] fining performers for saying “the N-word,” then the bar is lowered on what qualifies as dissent and what passes for social criticism. When there is nothing but debate surrounding how you should be allowed to say something, then there never comes a time when the content of what you actually say is assessed.

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