Comedy By Association
I saw a bizarre ad for the Bang Improv Theater in the latest hard copy of the Onion.
It shows George Wallace standing in the doorway, fighting against integration, and printed over the photo is "bad improviser." Beside that is a picture of Rosa Parks riding the bus, fighting for integration. According to them, she's a "good improviser."
Huh? Both these acts were planned, not improvised. I don't see what they have to do with the subject at hand, even tangentially. Because we like what Parks is doing, and hate what Wallace is doing, does that make it okay to assume she's good at whatever she attempts, and he isn't?
(My guess, by the way, is that Wallace, being a professional politician, used to appearing in public, was the better improviser.)
If you bring in the ad, you get $25 off your first class in improvisation. 1) That class sure sounds expensive, especially considering it's a subject hardly worth learning. 2) I'd like to take the ad in (they're about a mile from where I live) just to ask them what the hell they were thinking.
posted by LAGuy @ 1:44 AM
4 Comments:
Both Wallace and Parks were engaging in political theatre, and they wanted it to look improvised, so I guess the judgment is that Park did the right thing so she's a "good" improviser.
The dangling adjective.
Its like calling Hitler a bad orator. Apparently he was a greatly effective one orating about things we generally agree are bad.
Is it generally accepted that Rosa Parks' action were planned as a test case and not just a tired woman who wouldn't move [I mean, among regular people not blogs]
So then we should say that Hitler was a bad good orator!
"I don't shoot a man for being incompetent in the Devil's work. I shoot him for being competent in the Devil's work. Admiration for his technique is part of the process."
- Larry Niven
Interesting comment that "they wanted it to look improvised." In my experience, the best improvisors are the ones who aren't really improvising, but are good at making it look improvised.
I think it's well-established that Ms. Parks' actions were partially planned. A few months earlier, another young black woman did the same thing, but it didn't get traction because she had a questionable background and turned out to be pregnant (and unwed). Ms. Parks was, I believe, a secretary for the local chapter of the NAACP. Therefore, there was probably some contemplation of the tactic in advance. Of course, it would be improvised to the extent that she had to wait for the occasion to arise that, although she was seated in the "black" section of the bus, when the bus filled, she was told to give up her seat to a white patron. When she refused, she was arrested. She only approached the NAACP with the case after she was arrested, however.
Sound like a pretty good case of some planning, some improvisation.
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