The Rise of the New
Burlesque
by Croydon J Hounslow
The closure of the Lord Chamberlain's
office in 1968 marked the abolition of formal censorship in the UK
theatre and a widespread relaxing of restrictions on the nature of
material available for public display on the stage. This stroke more
than anything else paved the way for entrepreneurs such as Peter
Stringfellow and Paul Raymond to bring strip bars featuring full nudity
into the mainstream where they found a receptive and affluent audience
ready to spend exorbitant amounts of money on sex entertainment and fund
the industry's rapid expansion into the multi billion pound market of
today. Before the restrictions were lifted, however, the sex
entertainment industry took a very different form, and one of the
unforeseen effects of deregulation was that a certain singular and
esoteric style of performance dropped rapidly out of vogue, and for a
number of years pretty much died out.
They type of burlesque of revue theatre
that developed as a response to the regulations and restrictions imposed
by the Lord Chamberlain's office on theatre performance, had a peculiar
charm that is about as far from the predictable and soulless routines
favoured by modern strippers as is possible to get. In a world much less
saturated with sexual imagery than the one in which we live today, a
society indeed which now looks quite coy and prim from our
'sophisticated' viewpoint, burlesque striptease emerged as a means of
exploiting the loopholes left by the censors rulings to create a type of
show that was sexually titillating but stopped short of any illegality.
Thankfully for those involved in the industry the public's threshold of
sexual stimulation in those days was considerably lower (due at least
partly, no doubt, to the restriction of sexual material in daily life by
censorship laws) and so shows which would no doubt be viewed as
unbearably tame by the average customer at Stringfellows or Sophisticats
today were viewed as scandalously lurid and explicit which, of course,
is the main selling point of sex entertainment in general.
The charm of these performances, brought
about by this social conflict between the firm, proscriptive hand of the
state and the human impulse toward sexuality and sensuality, is
something almost entirely lost in modern day striptease. It may shock
you to learn this, dear reader, but in the course of my career as an
investigative journalist I have, on occasion, visited strip clubs. The
modern strip bar, unencumbered by any concerns of censorship finds
itself able to cut straight to the chase; the point of the exercise is,
of course, to exploit the wallets of the (almost exclusively) male
clientele as quickly and for as much money as possible. The consensus
seems to be that the best way to do this is via a mechanically performed
unimaginitive routine that dispenses with all artfulness and subtlety
and cuts straight to the pink bits as quickly as possible. In fact these
days we seem to get all of the strip and none of the tease.
Thankfully, as fashion's fickle finger
slowly rotates looking for a new muse, the early 20th century is
emerging as this years new source of inspiration and/or shameless
pilfering. With high-profile artists such as Christina Aguilera and
Outkast making forays into the gin-joint iconography of prohibition-era
America and longer-standing clubs and bars such as Lady Luck and Volupte
enjoying a surge of mainstream popularity on this side of the atlantic,
the phoenix of burlesque is beginning to rise from the ashes and its
singular charm and humour, along with an old school sex appeal that
revolves around that which is left to the imagination, rather than
flashed in the face.
About the Author
C J Hounslow works for the
UKs favourite free dating service
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Copyright 2006
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