Perspectives

First published in Column Eight on the 14^th Feb, 1993

I was disappointed to read that the distributors, Everard Films, had taken off the short film accompanying Strictly Ballroom, because of complaints.

Put together excellently, with the right amount of aplomb, this little piece of fantasy, The Singing Trophy, (about a hunter who can’t find the right sound amongst his chorus of singing heads), was a nonsense idea taken as far as it could go and no more. The makers expected their audience would see it for what it was: an extended joke.

Why there should have been complaints I can’t quite understand. Surely it wasn’t because animals were treated only as trophies? If that was the case, someone had lost their sense of humour.

The film in no way said it’s a worthwhile hobby to go out and kill animals just to tack their heads up on the wall. The hunter had no one to impress with his trophies except his taciturn father, and was in fact shown to be a fool, evidenced by the way in which he rather mysteriously wound up on the wall himself.

I hope we’re not becoming a humourless nation, which can’t see a joke when it’s right under its nose. With so many people crying about their rights, we’re in danger of losing our perspective. We all have room for improvement in our attitudes towards our neighbours, but losing our sense of humour in the process won’t help.

I’m reminded of a curious article I read a while ago on the film, Hook.

Someone in the UK claimed that the character of Captain Hook was disablist. In other words, because the villain was a disabled person this merely reinforced the idea that disabled people were different and in some mysterious way, evil.

Anyone who saw the film will recognise that the last thing you thought about with Captain Hook was his disability. If anything he proved the case for disabled people: they can do anything! Hook’s motivation in the story isn’t his disability, although he’s out for vengeance. Hook desires to rule.

The desire to rule twists the mind, not the body, and is an evil any person, able-bodied or disabled, is capable of indulging in.

Incidentally, I have made two errors of language in the above paragraph: one is supposed to say, ‘people with disabilities,’ or ‘differently abled,’ instead of disabled people, and ‘non-disabled,’ instead of able-bodied.

I understand the political desire that goes on behind such forced change of the language, but sometimes it’s the same as the approach taken to films like The Singing Trophy: dragging the howitzer out of the cupboard to swat the fly.

Real changes in the language come from the imaginative side of life, not from the propagandist.

*  *  *

Well, I’ve strayed a little from my subject, so I’ll stray a little further. I was pleased to read that Jennie Kjelgaard, the dancing teacher, has been made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Dancing. I was disturbed, however, to hear that this ball of energy was nearly 70!

I worked with Jennie many moons ago when I played for the Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production rehearsals. Along with Waric Slyfield, Jennie revolutionised the approach to producing these operettas. She even introduced a ballet into The Mikado. Inconceivable! And perhaps even more unheard of, she convinced a herd of left-footed male chorus members to dance.

For years the chorus had ‘danced’ two steps forward, two to the side, two steps back and two to home base. Jennie’s sparkling and witty choreography brought life to the Gilbert and Sullivan productions which, through too great an adherence to tradition, had become stale.

Good on yer, Jennie.

Sadly, I can find very little about Jennie Kjelgaard online – only brief mentions, or an obituary that doesn’t tell us anything about her career and personality. The same goes for Waric Slyfield, who brought great brilliance to the Dunedin theatre scene for a few short years. I had a brief connection with both of them in the mid-sixties, from memory, but neither of them stayed long in the city.