Let Harpo Do the Talking for Once

“The only tradition in our family was our lack of tradition.”
~ Adolph (Arthur) “Harpo” Marx.

I am so up to my eyeballs in Marx (Groucho, that is) right now that I scarcely have anything to say, and I have even less time in which to say it.

I present my paper on Groucho’s performance of Jewishness (in terms of posture, vocal presence, gender subversion, and humour) on the 15th (next Wednesday for those of you without a calendar and only the fields by which to plan your wholesome little lives). That means that, along with preparing for my tutorials and class for Monday (curse that rotten day!), I now have about four days to prepare a paper, practice my “performance” of that paper (yes, we are getting graded on showmanship), select less than ten minutes of Groucho clips that illustrate my points, construct my Power Point presentation, and do enough extra research that I can handle the questions and critique… Oh, and skim all of the class materials so I can try to use one or two of the readings, and thereby pretend that I actually got something out of the 27 hours I have sat in stunned and depressed boredom in that class. (Well, OK. Maybe a few of those hours were not that bad... Like break times.)

Well, I have no doubt that my presentation will be a performance… It is just down to whether it is a performance of intelligence and competence, or one of incompetent lollygagging— that remains to be seen.

This evening, I started Daniel Boyarin’s Unheroic Conduct (a fascinating and heavily theorized exploration of how Jewish non-masculinity has been constructed), and I am enjoying it very much. Tonight I am also re-reading the particularly “Jewish” passages of Harpo Speaks! (Did you know that Harpo Marx took a tour through Germany on his way to Russia six months after Hitler came into power? Suffice it to say that he cut his plans short and got the hell out of the joint. Being the only Jewish kid in an all-Irish school had taught him enough to know when the odds were against Jewish safety.)

Thus, I have very little to share. Right now, my life is all Groucho, all the time.

I have been discussing Groucho’s manhood (yes, in both the figurative and literal sense) with everyone I meet, and have a pretty good grasp on it (no dirty thoughts there, please). A colleague asserted that Groucho could not practice classical gender subversion, as he was so heavily male because of his moustache. Ah, I responded, but why such a fake moustache? What was he trying to hide? Why couldn’t he grow his own? Perhaps this a part of performing Jewish blurred maleness, like the stage Shylock's long tressed-wig. I even threw him a reference to some hefty tome on hair and sexuality, which is currently lying on my living room floor. I do not remember the name of it, or of the author, but it has already served me well.

You can see that I beginning to enjoy myself. Groucho can be happy that his masculinity is once again some woman's play-thing.

So, I am on my way out of my last term in classes (possibly EVER), and I am enjoying my research, but I am running on empty (just a little bit). I tried to come up with something good for this entry, but the only thing I could easily find in entertainment history for March 9th was Bob Hope’s film debut (1938), and for the 10th the first Warner Brothers film (1918)… Both very important things, but not really up my alley.

Bob Hope, bless him, was many things, but Jewish was not one of those things.

Oh, well… Next week I have a good tribute to Sidney Chaplin (the elder), so that’s something to look forward to. For now I will leave you with a little something from my reading:

“My sex education was direct, no punches pulled, and vividly illustrated. I learned a lot more about the subject and its ramifications than most twelve-year-old boys. But the method had its draw backs. For years I couldn’t eat pickles.”

And if you want to know what that means, you’ll have to read Harpo Speaks!