836. VILLAGE PEOPLE, "In The Navy"
Produced by; written by
Casablanca 973 1979 Billboard: # 3
College students and intellectuals--is there really any difference?--are always ironic, but American culture wasn't really reflexively ironic until the 1980s at the earliest. I'm tempted to date the turning point as the beginning of Late Night with David Letterman. One thing I know for sure is that it didn't begin with Bob Hope.
Most people under the age of thirty don't remember this, but if you grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, television was regularly punctuated by variety specials hosted by, among others, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. As one worked through childhood and adolescence, one of the fun things about watching these specials was seeing how those two showbiz veterans tried to stay "current." One can only repurpose Kathryn Crosby and Martha Raye so many times. I remember being as riveted by Der Bingle's duet with David Bowie on his last Christmas special as a teenager as I am to this day. But then again, there was the time Ol' Skinose tried to incorporate the Village People into his act.
It was pure 1940s radio: there's a new single to promote, and the established host works the act in question into his variety show. The only thing was the act in question was the Village People, and this particular Hope show was filmed live on an active-duty US Navy aircraft carrier. On the one hand, it was perfect; on the other hand, it was a built-in collision.
This is another one of those cases where I haven't had the guts to hunt up the inevitable YouTube clip. As a teenager, I remember the seamen in the audience being stonefaced, even menacing, as the VP went into their act. Odds are, there were probably a number of closet cases among them, but many were probably plain old het homophobes. The thing was, the guys in that audience (who were probably almost exactly my age, come to think of it) got the joke that Bob Hope didn't. They knew the song was saying they were all gay, whether they admitted it or not; Hope thought it was a bouncy little tune with a nautical theme, even though he had been playing "swish" for laughs for decades by that point. He was listening to the choruses; they were noting the release.
Okay, I may be overemphasizing this particular instance. A few years later, "Born in the USA" would be read in the same exactly opposite way. Even as recently as ten years back, the real YMCA was using the Village People's homocelebratory song about it to promote its clubs. Still, even as soon as ten years later, I'm not sure that something so unknowing would have happened.
Produced by; written by
Casablanca 973 1979 Billboard: # 3
College students and intellectuals--is there really any difference?--are always ironic, but American culture wasn't really reflexively ironic until the 1980s at the earliest. I'm tempted to date the turning point as the beginning of Late Night with David Letterman. One thing I know for sure is that it didn't begin with Bob Hope.
Most people under the age of thirty don't remember this, but if you grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, television was regularly punctuated by variety specials hosted by, among others, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. As one worked through childhood and adolescence, one of the fun things about watching these specials was seeing how those two showbiz veterans tried to stay "current." One can only repurpose Kathryn Crosby and Martha Raye so many times. I remember being as riveted by Der Bingle's duet with David Bowie on his last Christmas special as a teenager as I am to this day. But then again, there was the time Ol' Skinose tried to incorporate the Village People into his act.
It was pure 1940s radio: there's a new single to promote, and the established host works the act in question into his variety show. The only thing was the act in question was the Village People, and this particular Hope show was filmed live on an active-duty US Navy aircraft carrier. On the one hand, it was perfect; on the other hand, it was a built-in collision.
This is another one of those cases where I haven't had the guts to hunt up the inevitable YouTube clip. As a teenager, I remember the seamen in the audience being stonefaced, even menacing, as the VP went into their act. Odds are, there were probably a number of closet cases among them, but many were probably plain old het homophobes. The thing was, the guys in that audience (who were probably almost exactly my age, come to think of it) got the joke that Bob Hope didn't. They knew the song was saying they were all gay, whether they admitted it or not; Hope thought it was a bouncy little tune with a nautical theme, even though he had been playing "swish" for laughs for decades by that point. He was listening to the choruses; they were noting the release.
Okay, I may be overemphasizing this particular instance. A few years later, "Born in the USA" would be read in the same exactly opposite way. Even as recently as ten years back, the real YMCA was using the Village People's homocelebratory song about it to promote its clubs. Still, even as soon as ten years later, I'm not sure that something so unknowing would have happened.
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