Long-Dead Comedians and their fans on tumblr -
- Thread starter Durable Mike Malloy
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Heh, I meant to post one where they were humping, but I forgot where I found it and don't care to look.
Somehow I don't think this freak will attempt to ponify W.C. Fields.
When I first stumbled on this mess, I wouldn't have been at all surprised to see John Bunny and Flora Finch ponified and humping, as ponies do.
But no, you're right; not every deceased comedian suffers equally. WC Fields doesn't appear to receive much love from the tumblr crowd at all, poor fellow. I guess they don't go for the acid-tongued misanthrope with a genuine nasty streak.
It's Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin, Keaton and Langdon who really bear the brunt of it - I guess the otherworldly, oddball characters are vulnerable to the fan who gets caught up in headcanon, conflates the characters with the actors themselves, inappropriately sexualizes everything and lets the whole mess bleed all over real-life social norms.
I mean, fucking Langdon. The man was a genius who pioneered the comedy of audience discomfort in ways that seem vertiginously risky even today. But try to tell me that anyone sexually fixated on this character [eta: terrible music warning on that link] doesn't have more than a couple of screws loose. Moreover, he's relatively obscure - it takes effort to dig up content over which to fangirl. Seriously, the fuck?
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Damn. Although I should know this already, nothing I like or love is safe from the internet. I wouldn't have guessed Buster Keaton or Laurel and Hardy would be disgustingly remembered like this. Kinda surprised the Three Stooges didn't get an influx of crap since that movie that came out in 2012. But I'm not willing to look for stuff to prove myself wrong.
Wow. As far as tumblr and deviantart crap goes, this is actually pretty vanilla, though I had no idea there were so many internet weirdos with fixations on old school comedians. What's next? Are we going to find a furry who's obsessed with what Eddie Cantor would have looked like if he were a cartoon dog? Anyway, it is interesting, given that OPL also appreciates the humor of Red Skelton. I wonder how many of these other people were raised by extremely old parents who got them into these things...
You know, I bet you're on to something with the really old parents thing. Advanced paternal age is an autism risk factor. And
, Ol' Banjo Eyes has been ponified to hell and back. Goddamn, you're on a winning streak, albeit one where the prize is a sick and queasy feeling.With the tumblr fangirling, I'd put good money on the special-snowflake effect, too. One is too precious and quirky to identify with a contemporary fandom, and being madly in love with a dead guy lends a girl that certain je ne sais quoi.
Non?
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DrChristianTroy
kiwifarms.net
So I assume we just haven't found the Lenny Bruce/Denis Leary slashfic yet.
rosebud slave
kiwifarms.net
my exact thought was "this I what happens when you have kids late in life and don't consume any new media."You know, I bet you're on to something with the really old parents thing. Advanced paternal age is an autism risk factor. And
With the tumblr fangirling, I'd put good money on the special-snowflake effect, too. One is too precious and quirky to identify with a contemporary fandom, and being madly in love with a dead guy lends a girl that certain je ne sais quoi.
Non?
It's just Rule 34 in action, folks.
Aw, it's still interesting - for certain values of "interesting," maybe - to distinguish between things that have been Rule 34'd for the sake of Rule 34, and sincerely-produced content.
Moreover, I didn't initially appreciate how neatly "tumblr fans of long-dead comedians" partition out into distinct fanbases.
On one hand, you have the tumblr snowflakes who are too unique to go in for SuperWhoLock like the normal creepy ladies do. They not only fixate on L&H, Chaplin, Keaton and Langdon, but also Al St. John, Charley Chase, Todd, Pitts and Kelly, Harold Lloyd, various It Girls, *~so spooky ladies~* like Pola Negri and Theda Bara, and of course Josephine Baker who stamps almost every square on the SJW-fangirl bingo. They also get snappish when legitimate film scholars react dismissively to their headcanon.
On the other hand, there are the autistic manbabies - occasionally a womanchild - who grew up with very old parents and no new media. The ponifiers seem to belong to this group, mostly? They're also keen on Abbott & Costello, the 3 Stooges, Jack Benny, Jackie Gleason, Ed Wynn - who is really bizarrely persistent in pop culture somehow? - the hillbilly-themed variety show Hee Haw, OPL's favorite Red Skelton, and Two Words: Ethel Merman.
And I guess I'll just bung in some observations that don't really merit a standalone post.
- Both groups seem keen on Eddie Cantor, but only the latter has much affection for Al Jolson.
- Both like the Marx Bros., but the former mostly go for Harpo (otherworldly oddball) or Chico (conflating the onscreen character with the actor in real life).
- Both go in for "I Love Lucy," with the former taking things in the SJW-fangirl direction and the latter simply enjoying the slapstick.
- Both like Jerry Lewis, whom I am always surprised to realize is not, in fact, dead. The former seem keen on the Dean-and-Jerry era, the latter appear to prefer his solo oeuvre.
- Weirdly, neither group seems to overlap much with the B-Western fandom. This is very odd to me, because plenty of old-time showbiz types like Bert Wheeler, Anita Louise and Al St. John had long and productive twilight careers on cowboy shows. You'd think the former group would stalk their favorite actors through all stages of their careers, and the latter's old dads would've been into Westerns too. But no, not really.
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My sides, my fucking sides. Perfect reaction image.
I may be wrong here, but I would imagine Ed Wynn's persistence may have something to do with his Disney work (The Mad Hatter and Uncle Albert in Mary Poppins, for example). Although, I'm not exactly sure how much he is talked of beyond that on tumblr...
Looks also have some thing to do with it. WC Fields isn't ugly, but he doesn't have the physical It Factor that makes them flock to a person. Which reminds me, I learned about the guy when I was about 6 in an issue of Dynamite magazine where they had an article about old school comedians. (It was a comic that highlighted his spats with the dummy, Charlie McCarthy.)
You know, I wonder if we are actually in meta-Ed Wynn territory now, like Choose Goose from Adventure Time is suspiciously reminiscent of that Terrytoons goose based on Ed Wynn, and the king from Wreck-It Ralph was based on Disney's Mad Hatter who was voiced by Ed Wynn?
There was so much cross-fertilization between live comedy and cartoons in the 30s, but animated characters based on like, Jimmy Durante and Eddie Cantor and Walter Catlett seem to have died out while Ed Wynn lives on and on. It's weird.
Well, this just baffles me more and more. I mean, think of how many autistic people love quoting Monty Python. WC Fields has so many fantastic lines, you'd think he'd appeal to the tumblr-dwellers with the very old parents, even if the old drunky nose look isn't killing it with the creepy ladies. But nope - nothing but crickets.
And hey, "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man" is really something, yeah? Pairing WC Fields with a damn puppet put a keen edge on that weary, antagonistic quality - there's a sort of fourth wall brinksmanship going on, like the fuck, audience, you actually enjoy this? I first saw it at a film festival when I was in high school, and something about the hostile onscreen spectators versus the receptive real-life crowd kicked me right in the feels.
W.C. Fields seems like the kind of guy who wouldn't be all that nice to geeks and would insult them just for existing. (Monty Python is a lot more geek and oddball friendly.)
In many ways, he was the great-grandpa of today's insult-slinging, in-your-face stand-up comics, or even more closely, performance-art comedians like Andy Kaufman or John Belushi who didn't care whether audiences "got" their act.
I thought I'd post some dumbass Team Keaton vs. Team Chaplin merch for purposes of general amusement, but ended up falling a bit further down the fandom rabbit hole and now I feel kind of sad and creeped out.
So, here are some Buster Keaton-themed lady undergarments printed with taglines from the 1930 talking feature "Free and Easy." Decontextualized, they're mildly suggestive but nothing to write home about; in context, they provide a glimpse into a specific fetish of which I would have preferred to remain unaware.
"Free and Easy" is an infuriatingly bad movie. Watching sad drunk Keaton slur through tired third-rate jokes is downright cringey - it's almost physically painful to see talent being squandered like that. Like why would anyone want to buy flirty undergarments celebrating an objectively bad movie that marked the start of a deeply unhappy chapter in their favorite actor's career and personal life...oh.
The pervasive hurt/comfort fetish among tumblr's lady Busterphiles is unpleasant and impossible to unsee, once you see it. I was going to link some choice examples but there's no point - browse any Keaton tag and it's everywhere.
Initially I was surprised that this fandom even existed; now, I'm surprised by how poisonous it is.
So, here are some Buster Keaton-themed lady undergarments printed with taglines from the 1930 talking feature "Free and Easy." Decontextualized, they're mildly suggestive but nothing to write home about; in context, they provide a glimpse into a specific fetish of which I would have preferred to remain unaware.
"Free and Easy" is an infuriatingly bad movie. Watching sad drunk Keaton slur through tired third-rate jokes is downright cringey - it's almost physically painful to see talent being squandered like that. Like why would anyone want to buy flirty undergarments celebrating an objectively bad movie that marked the start of a deeply unhappy chapter in their favorite actor's career and personal life...oh.
The pervasive hurt/comfort fetish among tumblr's lady Busterphiles is unpleasant and impossible to unsee, once you see it. I was going to link some choice examples but there's no point - browse any Keaton tag and it's everywhere.
Initially I was surprised that this fandom even existed; now, I'm surprised by how poisonous it is.
Never have I felt more sorry for Buster Keaton than I do now. Say, are there any weird fandoms for George Burns and Gracie Allen?
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