Long before the satirical comedy of "The Daily Show" and "The
Colbert Report," the comic operas of W. S. Gilbert and Arthur
Sullivan were the hottest send-ups of the day's political and
cultural obsessions. Gilbert and Sullivan's productions always rose
to the level of social commentary, despite being impertinent,
absurd, or inane. Some viewers may take them straight, but what
looks like sexism or stereotype was actually a clever strategy of
critique. Parody was a powerful weapon in the culture wars of
late-nineteenth-century England, and with defiantly in-your-face
sophistication, Gilbert and Sullivan proved that popular culture
can be intellectually as well as politically challenging.
Carolyn Williams underscores Gilbert and Sullivan's creative and
acute understanding of cultural formations. Her unique perspective
shows how anxiety drives the troubled mind in the Lord Chancellor's
"Nightmare Song" in "Iolanthe" and is vividly realized in the
sexual and economic phrasing of the song's patter lyrics. The
modern body appears automated and performative in the "Junction
Song" in "Thespis," anticipating Charlie Chaplin's factory worker
in "Modern Times." Williams also illuminates the use of magic in
"The Sorcerer," the parody of nautical melodrama in "H.M.S.
Pinafore," the ridicule of Victorian aesthetic and idyllic poetry
in "Patience," the autoethnography of "The Mikado," the role of
gender in "Trial by Jury," and the theme of illegitimacy in "The
Pirates of Penzance." With her provocative reinterpretation of
these artists and their work, Williams recasts our understanding of
creativity in the late nineteenth century.
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