September 28, 2007

What is a Funny Uncle?

When I first started working on what I thought was "Funny Uncles", I knew that I had to define the term, or re-define it, or even introduce it to people who had never heard it.

There is the wink-wink, nudge-nudge acceptance of funny uncles in some of the films of the thirties and forties: think of all the movies with the bumbling best friend, the British fop, dandies. Sex is not mentioned but alluded to - so sexual orientation would not be questioned.

Skating Scene from December, 2006 Funny Uncles Performance

I am sure if you are a great scholar - or even a mediocre one!- we could trace the not-the-leading-man type in drama, dance, fairy tales, etc. way back into history. My first introduction were the movies I mentioned above, with actors like Edward Everett Horton playing the fop to Fred Astaire's suave romancer. TV in the sixties (yes, I am that old to have watched the first run of almost everything on Nick at Nite) included characters like:

Wally Cox, Floyd on the Andy Griffith Show, and of course Paul Lynde on Bewitched as Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arther was literally an uncle and channeled, I am sure, aspects of his own inner-Uncle. Again, sexuality is not an issue for Uncle Arthur - he is asexual, kind of evil, kind of tart.

For me, a shift comes later in the sixties. We have a sexual revolution, and not that everybody who needs to comes flying out of their unique closets, but there is a release of what an actor can play as a character, and what he or she can say or do as themselves. Paul Lynde shows up in quiana, big print shirts on the original "Hollywood Squares" with his witty and arch, sexually-implicit responses playing no one else but himself. One foot in the closet, one foot dangling out.

So, with moments of sexual revolution, sexual revelation, Funny Uncles are no longer the same kind of funny. My father, who would have called Tiny Tim a funny uncle, because he "tiptoes through the tulips" was reassured of Tim's more-or-less straightness because he had Miss Vicki. But now, folks like Paul Lynde were pushing the boas and feathers and leather out of the closet, and this caused discomfort for men like my father, and a lot of other people.

So, after the radical sixties, especially after Stonewall in '69, the innocence of being a funny uncle was shattered: Liberace, who might have seemed obvious to most of us as a gay man, was noticed as much for his flamboyant outfits now as he was in a previous day, flirting with Totie Fields (google her) on the set of the Merv Griffin show! (Merv Griffin, don't get me started!)

So, it's now 2007:

There is the new fluidity among our under 30 crowd; gay, schmay! Bi, shim! Green martian, shmartian!

As I travel and teach, the experiences I had even ten years ago as an out and gay artist - where a presenter might ask me to "be less gay, could you?" or a student at a rural tech college would ask, "Why do you have to tell us your gay in your work? Why are you fulfilling the stereo-types?" - are different. We talk about sameness and difference in many ways, but mostly in ways that are about curiosity: What was it like to know a time when there wasn't HIV? Or one of my favorite moments: when asked to partner up with someone in the room most like themselves, the straight boyfriend of one of the community dancers makes a bee-line for the newly female-to-male transgendered guy who's about the same age but from a world apart.

What is the New Funny Uncle?

The Dance Exchange cast and I have found that anyone or any unit that might be deemed off, eccentric, unique, not normal could be a funny uncle or serve that role in a family. This includes people, pets, cars.

This include families of one entity.

This includes single-parented homes.

This includes mixed race, same gender parents.

This include adopted families, within or beyond cultural lines.

And.....

There is a component of humor to be a funny uncle:

It is through laughing, cajoling as well as our serious side that others can find their way to see more possibilities.

Funny Uncles allow us to see a different angle on life's situations.

There can be funny uncle moments accomplished by anyone: the right joke at the right time, the helping hand at the right moment.

When a family adopts funny uncle behavior, it is revealed through the dopey rituals and bonds between them that may not make sense to anyone outside the family unit. But these rituals unite the group: the automatic signing of the cross when the family dog passes gas, the slipping of foreign objects into mom's jello mold she makes for every holiday before it congeals (not to worry, whatever it is is big enough to not be mistakenly swallowed), the over-sweet way a parent says "I love you" repeatedly when a child is in tantrum mode.

For our definition, Funny Uncles aren't the negative connotation assigned it by some - not because we are in denial, but because I want to reclaim the phrase for the positive aspects. We have all known creepy folks, had creepy relatives and they are just Creepy Uncles.

So, more to come on all this. Probably some texts from the work next up - - maybe some great pictures of the company dancing.

AND more information about our BLOG IN on HALLOWE'EN October 31 at Busboys and Poets in DC.

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