Parental Advisory

[venta]

Does anyone know anything about The Vagina Monologues ?

I'd been told, by people who I'd regard as reliable, that they were extremely funny. Last night, I accidentally found a performance on the telly. The 2 minutes I watched seemed to consist entirely of a woman explaining how she'd "reclaimed" the word cunt, and then repeatedly saying it in different silly voices.

Which the audience seemed to find hilarious. Which I found incomprehensible. It's not like I found it offensive, it just... wasn't funny.

[One Notional Kudos Point to anyone who realises why I suddenly remembered about this :) ]

Comments

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

The current Sluggy storyline?

[triskellian]

If what you watched was on Channel 4 around midnight, I think it was a programme about The Vagina Monologues, not the thing itself, if that helps at all?

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

Most of what I know about TVM comes from this guy's perspective.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

This particular extract sounds like the kind of humour that will be funny if it makes you uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable. So it's all a question of where the Gaussian curve peaks :-)

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

I almost went to see TVM in London a week or two back, but the plan fell through. So no help at all here, sorry.

I actually know someone who's been in the Vagina Monologues...

[condign.livejournal.com]

I've not been to see it, but gather it's the kind of neo-feminist celebratory empowerment thing that would drive me up a wall. (iwillfearnoevil did one of the monologues in a performance in Atlanta--feel free to drop her a line and tell her I recommended you, she'll talk your ear off.)

It disturbs me that, from what I've heard from my friend acting in it and what I've read, I'm likely to agree with Slate or Salon.com. I'd make a guess at it being Puppetry of the Penis with mental instead of physical exhibitionism and delusions of intellectual and artistic merit. But then I'm the old codger who keeps trying to explain that one can aspire to gentlemanliness without sexism, and a gentleman doesn't listen to women repeatedly saying 'cunt' in public.

(And what the hell does it mean to 'reclaim' a word, anyway. I've got as good a claim on that one as anybody*, and I'd have handed it away for free...)

*Possible exception being anyone who owns the URL...

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I have an evil plan. One day I will get dressed up and attend The Vagina Monologues alone. If any lady questions me about it then I will say "Oh, my girlfriend's also going to see it tonight, it's just that she lives five thousand miles away." Worth doing for effect alone whether it happens to be true or not. (If it happened to be true then it's not a particularly evil plan as evil plans go.)

Broadly I think I am in favour of at least the principle of TVM, whether it turns out to be worthy or unworthy, on the grounds that anything which can get people to consider the issues involved and reduce the mystification about the organ has probably got to be a good thing. Not convinced that this is a strong argument, mind you.

I look forward to the inevitable sequel, the Anus Monologues. (The Anal Anthologies, maybe?) Or would discussion of prostate glands be dragging the tone of conversation down too far for anyone's comfort?

Ah, this must be one of your evil plans...

[condign.livejournal.com]

...drawing me into this conversation has made me decide I must see The Vagina Monologues merely to make certain that everything I believe about the play is true.

I'm sure this was your evil plan, Venta. Anyone care to come along?

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

[One Notional Kudos Point to anyone who realises why I suddenly remembered about this :) ]

That'd be:

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