Burlesque
(pronounced ber-lesk)
(1) An
artistic composition, especially literary or dramatic, that, for the sake of
laughter, vulgarizes lofty material or treats ordinary material with mock
dignity.
(2) A
humorous and provocative (often bawdy) stage show featuring slapstick humor,
comic skits and a scantily clad female chorus; by the late nineteenth century
striptease was often the main element (the usual slang was burleycue).
(3) As
neo-burlesque, a late twentieth century revival (with rather more artistic
gloss) of the strip-tease shows of the 1920s.
(4) An
artistic work (especially literary or dramatic), satirizing a subject by
caricaturing it.
(5) Between
the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, a play parodying some contemporary
dramatic fashion or event.
(6) A
production of some kind involving ludicrous or mocking treatment of a solemn
subject; an absurdist imitation or caricature.
(7) Of,
relating to, or characteristic of a burlesque; of, relating to, or like
stage-show burlesque.
(8) To represent
or imitate (a person or thing) in a ludicrous way; caricature.
(9) To make
ridiculous by mocking representation.
(10) To in
some way use a certain type of caricature.
1650–1660:
From the French burlesque, from the Italian
burlesco (ludicrous and used in the
sense of “parodic”), the construct being burl(a) (joke, fun, mockery) + -esco (the adjectival suffix used in
English as –esque). The Italian burla may ultimately be from the Late
Latin burra (trifle, nonsense (and
literally “flock of wool”) and thus used to suggest something “fluffy” (in the
sense of being “lightweight” rather than serious) which was of unknown
origin. Alternatively, some etymologists
suggest burla may be from the Spanish
burladero (the protective barrier
behind which people in the bullring are protected from the bull). The verb burlesque (make ridiculous by
mocking representation) came directly from the noun and was in use by the
1670s. The spelling burlesk is archaic. While
the derived form unburlesqued means simply “not burlesqued”, preburlesque is a
historian's term meaning “prior to the introduction of burlesque performances”. Burlesque, burlesquer & burlesqueness are
nouns, burlesqued & burlesquing are verbs and burlesquely is an adverb; the
noun plural is burlesques.
The
original mid-sixteenth century meaning was related to stage performances and
meant “a piece composed in the burlesque style, a derisive imitation or grotesque
parody, a specific development from the slightly earlier adjectival sense of “odd
or grotesque”, taken directly from the French burlesque. The more familiar adjectival meaning (tending
to excite laughter by ludicrous contrast between the subject and the manner of
treating it) was in use by at least the late 1690s. As a definition that’s fine but in the hands
of playwrights, satirists and such there was obviously much scope, prompting
one journalist (a breed which seems first to have been described thus in the
1680s) in 1711 to clarify things in a London periodical:
“The two great
branches of ridicule in writing are comedy and burlesque. The first ridicules
persons by drawing them in their proper characters; the other, by drawing them
quite unlike themselves. Burlesque is therefore of two kinds; the first
represents mean persons in accoutrements of heroes, the other describes great
persons acting and speaking like the basest among the people.”
The meaning
shifted as what appeared on stage evolved and by the 1880s the typical
understanding was something like (1) “travesties on the classics and satires on
accepted ideas” and (2) comic opera which tended towards vulgarity. From this came the still prevalent modern sense
of “variety show featuring music, dancing and striptease” although some
historians of the industry link this use directly from the mid-nineteenth
century tradition of “scantily-clad performers who staged the sketches concluding
minstrel shows”. The implications of that
evolution didn’t impress all and by the early twentieth century, in the US, the
word “burlesque” had become verbal shorthand for “entertainment designed to
titillate, verging on the obscene while avoiding prosecution”. The term “neo-burlesque” (a revived form of
traditional American burlesque performance, involving dance, striptease,
dramatic performance etc) emerged in the 1990s, describing the stage shows
which sought to re-capture the once respectable spirit of burlesque as it was
performed in US clubs before “changing attitudes” saw the performances outlawed
or marginalized. Whether attitudes
really much changed among the general population has been debated by historians
but the US political system then (as now) operated in a way in which
well-funded groups could exert a disproportionate influence on public policy
and while this often was used by sectional interests to gain financial advantage,
some also decided to impose on others their view of morality; it was in the era
of the crackdown on burlesque shows the Motion Picture Production Code (the
so-called “Hays Code” which, remarkably, endured, at least on paper, until
1968!) was created as a set of “moral guidelines” with which the Hollywood
studios had to conform. So the “culture
wars” are nothing new and in the US, there has always been a tension between
puritan religiosity and political freedom, the two forces reflecting the concerns
and obsessions of those from the “Old World” of Europe who in the early
seventeenth century founded the settlement which ultimate became what came to
be known as “America”.
Although
often hardly “respectable” theatre, burlesque has a long tradition in
performance and almost its techniques will long pre-date recorded history. The essence of the form was based on an exaggerated
“sending up” or a derisive imitation of a literary or musical work and can be
anything from a friendly joke to vicious ridicule. Historically most associated with some form
of stage entertainment, burlesque was distinguished from parody in being
usually stronger (though not always broader) in tone and style and often lacked
the edgy subtlety of satire. It was the
Athenian playwright of Ancient Greece, Aristophanes (circa 446–386 BC), who the late Medieval scribes
declared “the father of comedy” and while that was a little misleading, he
would occasionally use the device of burlesque in his plays though the satyr plays probably were the first
institutionalized form of burlesque.
Empire Burlesque (1985) by Bob Dylan (b 1941).
Early
in his long career, Bob Dylan must have noticed the press seemed to be more
interested in discussing the stuff about which he didn’t comment that that
which he’d taken the time to explain. Whether
or not that’s a factor, Dylan appears never to have explained the meaning
behind the title of his 1985 album, Empire
Burlesque. Although some speculated
it may have been a metaphor for the nature of “the American Empire” (however
defined), there’s nothing substantive to support the speculation and a more
grounded theory came from the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) who recounted
how Dylan had once told him: “That was the name of a burlesque club I used to go to when
I first came to New York, down on Delancey Street.” Ginsberg thought it “a good title” for an album.
Intriguingly,
the satyr play was a kind of coda. In Greek
theatre, the convention was to present four plays in succession: three
tragedies (though not necessarily a trilogy) with a satyr play appended as the
final piece. Typically, in a satyr play,
a mythical hero (who may have appeared in one or all of the foregoing
tragedies) was presented as a ridiculous personage with a chorus of satyrs (creatures
half man and half goat (or half horse) with prominent, erect phalluses (it was
satyr imagery which in Europe made the goat a symbol of lust and, two millennia
on, cynical Berliners would refer to the notoriously philandering Dr Joseph
Goebbels (1897-1975; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) as “the he-goat of
Berlin”)). As far as is known, the satyr
plays almost always were ribald in speech and action as well as in costume and
their purpose has been debated by historians.
While classical Greek tragedy is almost wholly devoid of comedy (in the
sense of set-pieces although there’s the occasional sardonic quip or grim
observation that would have enticed a laconic guffaw) the satyr play concluding
the tetralogy would have worked as a sort of palliative burlesque after the
catharsis of three acts of fear, loathing and, not infrequently, death, Their dramatic function clearly was a form of
comic relief but coming immediately after three works of earnest
high-seriousness, they must have has the effect of “calming the senses” of the
audience after the intense, exalting spiritual experience of the tragedies. That’s interesting in that it implies it was
thought desirable to return the audience to “earthly life” and remind them what
they had just experienced was not “reality” and their emotions had just been
manipulated by a technique. It all
sounds rather post-modern and in a similar literary vein, the “clowning interludes”
in Elizabethan plays can also be seen as a type of burlesque; in William
Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) A Midsummer
Night's Dream (1590) the interpolation of the play of Pyramus and Thisbe
performed by Bottom and his companions was the bard making fun of the “Interludes”
of earlier types.
An expanded
vista derailing the Pronomos Vase (red-figure pottery Ancient Greece, circa 400
BC) believed to depict the whole cast and chorus of a satyr play, along with
the playwright, the musician Pronomos, and the gods Dionysos and Ariadne. The scene is thought to capture the figures after
a performance which, in modern use, would be thought a “behind the scenes”
grab. The vase was discovered in 1835 in
a tomb in Ruvo di Puglia, Italy; it’s now on permanent display in the Museo Nazionale
in Naples.
To make
things difficult for students, there are linguistic traps in the terminology
and despite the similarity in the spelling, there was no connection whatever
between satyric drama and satire and some seem convinced there may have been
none between it and Greek comedy. For
structuralists, it can be a difficult field to study because over the centuries
so many contradictory texts and commentaries emerged and that’s at least partly
attributable to the influence of Aristotle (384-322 BC) who looms over the
understanding of Greek theatre because his writings came to be so revered by
the scholars of the late Medieval period and especially the Renaissance. As far as in known, the Greeks were the first
of the tragedians and it’s through the surviving texts of Aristotle that later
understandings were filtered but all of his conclusions were based only on the
tragedies and such was his historic and intellectual authority that for
centuries his theories came to be misapplied and misused, either by mapping them on to
all forms of tragedy or
using them as exclusionary, dismissing from the canon those works which
couldn’t be made to fit his descriptions.
The Pronomos Vase as displayed in Naples.
Nor was burlesque
confined to drama; it was the most common structure used in the mock-heroic poem
to ridicule the often overblown works of romance, chivalry and Puritanism. Dripping often with irony and a confected grave
decorum, the classic example is English poet & satirist Alexander Pope’s
(1688-1744) The Rape of the Lock (1712),
cited by some (however unconvincingly) as the spiritual origin of “high
camp”. Also, because the gothic novel
often was written in such self-conscious “high style”, the form lent itself
naturally to burlesque re-tellings, something exploited to this day in
Hollywood which has often made sequels to horror films in comedic from. The burlesque (in the sense it was a
descendent of the Greek satyr play) could also be positioned as something
transgressive although it must be wondered if this sometimes was a product more
of the commentator’s view than the positionality intended by the author. This aspect of burlesque is explored in the
genre of literary carnival when a technique is borrowed from the Socratic
dialogues (in which what appears to be logic is deconstructed and proved to be illogical).
Carnivalesque elements are inherent in burlesque
(and can exist in satire, farce, parody and such) and a theory of Russian
philosopher & literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895–1975) was that in its
disruption of authority and implication of possible alternatives, carnival in
literature was subversive and the use of burlesque in the form was a
concealment (in the sense of avoiding the censor’s pen) of what could be a
liberating influence; Bakhtin’s particular target was the “suffocatingly sacred
word” in Renaissance culture but his theory has more generally been applied.
The noun amphigory
(burlesque nonsense writing or verse) dates from 1809 and was from the
eighteenth century French amphigouri of
unknown origin but presumed by most etymologists to have been a jocular coining
although there may have been some influence from the New Latin amphi-, from the Ancient Greek ἀμφί
(amphí) (on both sides) and the Greek
γύρος (gýros), derived from the “turning
of the meat on a spit” (as a calque of Turkish döner into Greek). The
notion was of “making the whole” (ie “circle on both sides”) but a link with
the Greek -agoria (speech) (as in
allegory, category) has been suggested as a simpler explanation. The word “amphigory” found a niche in
literary criticism and academic use (recommended for students wishing to
impress the professor) to describe a particular flavour of burlesque or parody,
especially a verse or other text in which the impression is for a while
sustained of something which will make sense but ultimately fails, an oft-cited
example being Nephelidia
(literally “cloudlets”) by the English
poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) in which the writer parodies his
own distinctive style.
In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage
(1926), Henry Fowler (1858–1933) noted the wide application of the words often
listed as synonymous with burlesque (caricature, parody, travesty etc), citing
the not uncommon use of burlesque to describe a “badly conducted trial” or “a perverted
institution”, adding the two critical distinctions were (1)
burlesque, caricature & parody have, besides their wider uses, each a special
province; action or acting is burlesqued, form and features are caricatured and
verbal expression is parodied and (2) travesty differs from the others both in having
no special providence and, in being more used than they (though all four may be
used either way) when the imitation is intended to be or pass for an exact one
but fails. Were Henry Fowler alive to
see TikTok and such, he’d realize not many are reading his book.
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The
difficulty in assigning synonyms to “burlesque” is that things are not only
nuanced but historically variable; what would in one time and place have been
thought satirical might in other circumstances be called a parody. The earliest known use in English of the noun
parody was by the playwright Benjamin Jonson (circa 1572-circa 1637)
who would have understood it as something close to the modern definition: “a literary work in which the form and
expression of dignified writing are closely imitated but are made ridiculous by
the ludicrously inappropriate subject or methods; a travesty that follows
closely the form and expression of the original”. Parody was from the Latin parodia (parody), from the Ancient Greek
parōidia (burlesque song or poem),
the construct being para- (beside,
parallel to (used in this context in the sense “to mock; mockingly to present”))
+ ōidē (song, ode) and from the
technical use in theatre came the general meaning “a poor or feeble imitation”,
in use by at least the late 1820s. So,
depending on the details, a parody could be a type of burlesque but might also
be described as a satire, ridicule, lampoon or farce. It was Benjamin Jonson who in 1609 debuted
his “anti-masque” an innovation which took the form of either (1) a buffoonish
and grotesque episode before the main masque or (2) a similarly farcical
interlude interpolated during the performance (if performed beforehand, it was dubbed
an “ante-masque”. One variant of the anti-masque was a burlesque of the masque
itself and in that sense there was a distinct affinity with the Greek satyr
play.
So in
literary use, synonyms for burlesque must be applied on a case-by-case basis, caricature,
parody and travesty all used variously to refer to the written or preformed forms
imitating serious works or subjects, the purpose being to achieve a humorous or
satiric purpose. In this context, burlesque
achieves its effects through a mockery of both high and low through association
with their opposites: burlesques of high and low life can thus be though a kind
of specific application of irony. Caricature,
usually associated with visual arts or with visual effects in literary works,
implies exaggeration of characteristic details, analogous with the technique of
the political cartoonist. Parody
achieves humor through application of the manner or technique (typically
well-known poets, authors, artists and such), often to an unaccustomed (and,
ideally, wholly incongruous) subject while a travesty can be a grotesque form
of burlesque, the latter also nuanced because travesties can be intentional or
just bad products. All of these forms
can be the work of absurdists, that genre ranging from the subtle to the
blatant and they may also be spoofs.
Spoof was a neologism coined in 1884 by the English comedian Arthur
Roberts (1852–1933) as the name of a card game which involved deception,
trickery and nonsense. From this the
word came to be used of any sort of hoaxing game but it became most popular
when used of literary works and staged performances which is some way parodied
someone or something but the point about the use of “spoof” is should describe
a “gentle” rather than a “biting” satire, elements of the burlesque thus often
present in spoofs.
South Park's take on Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025). Somewhere in probably every South Park episode, there are switches between parody, satire, ridicule, lampoon and farce with elements of the burlesque often in each.
A
distinction certainly is drawn between political burlesque and political
satire. Political burlesque is a
particular application of the satirical which relies on parody and exaggeration
(often absurdist) to mock political figures, events, concepts or institutions
and the purpose can range from the merely comic to the subversive, the two
poles not being mutually exclusive. In
the burlesque, a politician’s traits, patterns of speech or behaviour (scandals
are best) are explored and sometimes exaggerated to the point they become
obviously ridiculous or absurd, the best practitioners of the art using the
amplification to take things to a logical (if improbable) conclusion and while
it can be done almost affectionately, the usual purpose is to draw attention to
flaws such as incompetence, corruption, indifference to others, hypocrisy or ideological
fanaticism. Essentially a political
cartoon writ large, it’s a popular device because in masking the message in
humor, there’s usually some protection from a defamation writ, witness the
relationship between the animation South
Park and Donald Trump. The tradition is old and evidence is at least
hinted in graffiti unearthed in Ancient Rome but material from in recent
centuries is extant and techniques of the English artists William Hogarth
(1697–1764) and James Gillray (1756-1815) remain in use to this day, illustrating
the way political burlesque is best understood as a sub-set of political satire,
separate but (often) equal as it were, the differences in tone, method, and
degree of exaggeration a matter of tactics rather than strategy.
As an umbrella
term, “political satire” has a wide vista in that it can be subtle, dry, ironic
& biting, deployed with wit & understatement but it can also switch to
(some would say “descend to”) the burlesque in becoming loud, exaggerated and
even grotesque in fusing elements of slapstick and farce. While burlesque amplifies absurdity, venality
or whatever is being critiqued, satire need only “point it out” and some very
effective satires have done nothing more than quote politicians verbatim, their
words “hoisting them with their own
petard” if the mixed metaphor will be forgiven. So, all political burlesque is political
satire, but not all political satire is burlesque. The companion term in politics is vaudevillian
and that describes a politician for whom “all
the world’s a stage” and politics thus a form of theatre. Their performances can (sometimes
unintentionally) sometimes seem to at least verge on the burlesque but usually
it’s about attracting attention and a classic exponent was Boris Johnson (b
1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) who was said to have been influenced by Ronald
Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989).
During the 1980 presidential campaign, a reporter asked Mr Reagan: “How can an actor
run for President?”, receiving the prompt reply: “How can a
president not be an actor?”
Some have of course been more adapt than others at “flicking the switch to vaudeville” and Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime
Minister of Australia 1991-1996) whose vocabulary was rich (if not always
refined) used to use what he called his “dead cat strategy” which referred to
introducing a shocking or controversial issue to divert unwanted attention from
other, more embarrassing or damaging news. It was most graphically expressed as “tossing a dead cat on the table”.
Lindsay
Lohan in burlesque mode in I Know Who
Killed Me (2007). Neglected upon its release, IKWKM has since been re-evaluated as a modern giallo and has acquired a cult following, sometimes see on the playbill of late-night screenings.
As popular entertainment, burlesque performance enjoyed a
revival which began in the 1990s and in the twenty-first century it’s now an
entrenched niche as well a minor industry in publishing. By the 1960s, what was called burlesque had
become rather tatty and the common understanding of the term was something not
greatly different from a strip club with a slightly better class of drunk in
the audience, the women there to disrobe in the hope of encouraging the sale of
expensive alcoholic. What in the 1990s
was dubbed the “neo-burlesque” was not a reprise of how things used to be done but
a construct which might be thought a more “women-centric” interpretation of the
discipline and while there will be factions of feminism which won’t take that
notion too seriously and dismiss as “false consciousness” the idea of women
publicly taking off their clothes as a form of “empowerment”, the latter day
performers seem to treat it as exactly that.
Despite the criticism of some, burlesque seem now to verge on the
respectable and, internationally, there are various burlesque festivals and a
Burlesque Hall of Fame (the grand opening, perhaps predictably, in Las Vegas).
Burlesque and the Art of the Teese /Fetish and the Art of the Teese
(2006) by Dita Von Teese (stage name of Heather Renée Sweet, b 1972). Perhaps surprisingly, despite the phrase “the art of the teese” being at least
potentially a piece of “ambush marketing” piggy-backing on the success of the
acclaimed (48 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list) book The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump and Tony
Schwartz (b 1952), Mr Trump didn’t sue Ms von Teese. Maybe he’s a burlesque fan-boy.
In the
modern era, no figure is more associated with the neo-burlesque than Dita von
Teese and her janus-configured book Burlesque
and the Art of the Teese / Fetish and the Art of the Teese is similar to Mr
Trump’s magnum opus in being a hybrid: part memoir, part instruction
manual. This significance of publishing
the burlesque and fetish components as separate sections was presumably to make
the point that while there’s obvious cross-fertilization between the two
disciplines and for some the former may be a stepping stone to the latter,
there is a clear distinction, one a piece of performance art, the other a
deliberate statement of deviance; decisively one must step from one into the
separate world of the other. Ms von
Teese’s book documents the “dos & don’ts” of each “calling” and. as she
explains, the point about the neo-burlesque was it was less a revival than a
re-defining, the thematic emphasis on style and glamour rather than sleaze,
more aligned with the image (if not exactly the reality) of the Berlin cabarets
of the 1920 than the seedy Soho strip joints which once so tarnished the brand.
