PENNY ARCADE - Sex & Censorship ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At one point (where audience comment was "allowed") during Penny Arcade's Sex & Censorship show "Bitch, Dyke, FagHag, Whore", my girlfriend had to use all her energy to convince me not to shout out "Hey Penny, ever consider yourself as an alternative Donahue?" Mind you you, I *like* Donahue. I don't watch it much but he is a great communicator and so is she. Both of them target an audience that did not include me or my friends. Maybe it wasn't meant to. This is why I clammed up - because she was getting a message across to people that would otherwise still be ignorant. Most of the audience would have walked out (no kidding) if the messages were delivered dryly in lecture form. Come to think of it, how many of us fell asleep during school/uni lectures? There is genuine warmth in her passion but her anger has resulted in her being blinded to the messages of visionaries such as Laurie Anderson (whom she blatantly slandered) - I had to exercise control here too :-) I will shout a racist/homophobe (ex)friend of mine along to a repeat performance because the novelty and humour might get him listening for once. People who truly think for themselves, people look over into the dark abyss just for the hell of it, to test their mettle, to challenge their identity and their sanity, are much less likely to be carried away by the sentiment of the show. Remember at the end of the show (when she does her strip show to the accompaniment of "gay" music with the (quasi?)intellectual babble on the video screens) that an effect of the video is to give "politically-correct" justication to the pervert in us. But what a cultural ambassador! If you don't learn anything new from the rhetoric (and I *did* learn stuff, it is just that the new facts were few and far between) then maybe you'll learn something about communication. As Jon Holdsworth said, borrowing a term from a friend: "I enjoyed being a psychic vampire" :-) __________________________________ Review 1/4/94 by MrScribble@prop.taz.net.au An agent of the Undesirable Propagation Unit