Summary

Em and Jesse discuss the life and plays of Hrotsvit, the strong voice of Gandersheim and the first named playwright in western Europe. Small content warning, we do discuss rape in this episode, but not explicitly.

Annotations and Corrections

1/ For those too young to remember Benny Hill, this is what Em is talking about.

2/ Buster Keaton falls out a window about 25 seconds into this compilation. There’s also a very late in life Buster Keaton in the film version of A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to the Forum–it’s the last film he was in and he is still wonderful. [This montage is so great! Some things worth noticing: the ladder trick is an ACTUAL lazzo from early modern Italy (and let’s be fair, has probably existed since the invention of the ladder). The moment when Keaton misses the building and falls through the awnings–he was supposed to make it to the other building, but when he missed, he created a new lazzo. (Tom Cruise recently did a building-jumping stunt, missed the building, and crushed his ankle.) The house facade falling on Keaton (from Steamboat Bill, Jr., 1928) is absolutely real. It’s probably Keaton’s most famous–and most copied–stunt, but most people do it with a fake façade. Keaton used a real wall and a TINY window. –JN]

For reference, his given name was Joseph Frank Keaton (later he changed his middle name to Francis). The version of his nickname origin story is a version that he told; others sources suggest he was a bit older (18 months vs 6 months) and the nickname was given by another actor named George Pardy.

I’m pretty sure we have linked to Charlie Chaplin dancing with the globe previously, but go ahead and watch it again (actual dance starts around 1:45). And if you haven’t seen it, just go watch Modern Times.

3/ Minstrelsy was a 19th century phenomenon consisting of comic skits, musical acts, and the like, primarily depicting Black people as played by White actors. Here, you can hear the great Tom Lehrer riffing on what he calls the “Southern” song. (And before Jesse can mention it, it’s a little unfair to call the laws of the South “Medieval”–the Middle Ages were a long and complicated time and in many ways better to people of color than the South was. But it rhymed.)

Jesse: Minstrelsy=Blackface=terrible history of US entertainment. Great commentaries on this fact appear in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled and Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles, while great commentaries on the continued use of Blackface can be seen here (from SNL).

For a reminder that voice minstrelsy still exists, or if that’s behind a paywall, try this, and, of course, Hari Kondabolu’s The Problem with Apu.

Em: We previously linked to RZA’s jingle in episode 15, but here it is again.

4/ Want to hear all of Carmina Burana? Click here. Composed by Carl Orff, text by a lot of people.