The last time I was in Britain (January 2005) the BBC was set to televise the latest smash hit from London's famous West End theatre district. No, it wasn't another adaptation of Noel Coward or Ibsen, nor was it an updated twist on a Shakespearean classic. It was, in fact, Jerry Springer: The Opera.
You may be scratching your head at the seemingly odd juxtaposition of "high brow" opera with the lowest of "low brow" talk shows, but I urge you to keep in mind the characteristics of postmodern art we have been discussing the past couple of weeks. Art forms in the postmodern vein blur the lines between high and low subject matter, they display as sense of playfulness, they mix genres, and seemingly everyday items are elevated to artistic subject matter. In this way, I argue Jerry Springer: The Opera represents a quintessentially postmodern approach to artistic performance.
This is not to say it was aired without protest. In fact, the BBC received its highest number of complaints ever even BEFORE the show was broadcast. While extremely foul language and sexually explicit content were the main objections given in complaints, as a sociologist I have to wonder what else might have been going on. After all, the BBC regularly airs full nudity in mainstream shows and is very accommodating of foul language, and the British tabloid media is world-renowned for the "trashiness" of its content. What else then was going on? Did the blending of high and low, the stretching of comfortable divisions between what was art and what was trash, the blurring of boundaries, touch a raw nerve with the British public? What differences might there have been between those who embraced talk show opera and those who dismissed it? Did they have different levels of education, different class backgrounds, different levels of cultural capital?
For those of you who are curious, Jerry Springer: The Opera made its debut State-side in Chicago in 2007. It played last January at New York's Carnegie Hall with the esteemed actor Harvey Keitel in the lead role, and is currently in production in numerous cities across the US. As an opera, it was fair, but I wish I'd seen Bat Boy: The Musical instead...
--Gabriella Smith
