What is Burlesque?

 Article Summary I wrote for a class.

In the 2011 Burlesque Bible Vol. 1 article “Embracing the Taboo” Kirsty Lucinda Allen writes about the history and nature of Burlesque. Burlesque, by its nature, is tricky to define. Misinformation abounds.  There are few reliable historical sources about the performers and their acts. What there is; is usually biased, fictional, or simply doesn’t make sense to us; relying on in-jokes and social conventions we no longer have.

To understand burlesque it helps to know that the word means literally ‘in the style of a joke’. To burlesque is to ‘make mockery of, exaggerate, satirize’. Burlesque has been around for centuries and in many different forms such as poetry, prose, musical theater, and now as performance art and striptease. Some examples of literary burlesques include Aristophanes, Chaucer, Dickens, and Mark Twain.  Many burlesquers through their performances challenge social norms and standards of acceptability in a playful manner. Their acts will often focus on gender, social class, political and moral issues with larger-than-life flamboyant displays of femininity and/or masculinity, use of spectacle, censure, and parody. The genre has been subject to many interpretations over time and is constantly changing. Burlesque is both low-brow, literate, looks to both the future and the past, is profound and profane, bizarre and seductive. Allen writes “It (burlesque) holds a mirror to the face of the masses so that society might be observed from a new perspective-often where the truth hurts.” By being the risk-takers and pushing the limits of accepted behavior burlesquers influence pop culture and set trends. It has influenced fashion from women wearing pants to the retro pin-up girls of today.

Burlesque in the 18^th and 19^th century took the form of musical comedies where women played the leading(male) parts. The goal was to get laughs, burst illusions, and show off legs that weren’t usually seen in public. This era was also a time of women starting to take control of their financial and political lives. This scared people and entertainers would become the scapegoat. In the 20^th century striptease would become part of burlesque and it started moving from female to male drag into female to female drag. Burlesquers were parodying their own sex.  Theater managers used the appetite for scandal and sex to sell tickets. New also to the 20^th century was the celebrity of the burlesquers. They were lauded and reviled in turn by the public who couldn’t get enough of them.  Until recently entertainers, esp. women, were considered to be little better than prostitutes and thieves; the new found fame gave burlesquers more opportunities to make better money or just marry well.

Burlesque has been routinely banned and regulated throughout the recent centuries. As the nudity aspect increased; so did the outcries of indecency and exploitation that continue to this day. Burlesque is often thought to be just high class stripping and sometimes, it is. It’s important to not romanticize the burlesquers of old. Many of them burlesqued because that was the only way to make a living, let alone a decent one.

If you really want to know what burlesque is, go take in a show. “Burlesque is an ongoing reaction, in action.”