Four more pages to go on the new Art d'Ecco story! Then I've just got to wallop the book into some sort of coherent order and do a few splash pages...
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Monday, March 06, 2006
Can You Play a Pianny?
Here's another page from the Knuckles-waiting-to-be-published pile. Cornelius' views on whether the Goon Show was anti-Semitic or not differ from my own; I always thought the dodgy "Yid" gags were mitigated somewhat by Peter Sellers being Jewish. (And the fact that they all spent quite a bit of time fighting Hitler when they were younger.) But I think it made a pretty good strip.
Four more pages to go on the new Art d'Ecco story! Then I've just got to wallop the book into some sort of coherent order and do a few splash pages...
Four more pages to go on the new Art d'Ecco story! Then I've just got to wallop the book into some sort of coherent order and do a few splash pages...
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About Me
- Roger Langridge
- London, United Kingdom
- Eisner and Harvey Award-winning cartoonist responsible for The Muppet Show Comic Book, Thor the Mighty Avenger, Snarked! and Fred the Clown. Would like to save the world through comics.
Ray Ellington and Max Geldray were both Jewish (or of Jewish descent) too. I think probably the "Jewish piano" thing probably is more anti-Semitic-seeming thing than the stuff in the Goons, and as a resolutely atheistic (and lefty, non-miserly) Jew I do find it somewhat offensive and not honestly very funny or clever.
ReplyDeleteBut hey, whatever. Here's an interview with Spike in which he talks about it:
http://www-staff.mcs.uts.edu.au/~hugh/spike.html
Remember Spike Milligan's series, Q, on the ABC? My earliest recollection of the show was the sketch in which someone plays the 'jewish piano', a cash register. Spike: "That's right, yes. And we had so many letters; a letter from the Chief Rabbi. I said, `Look, please, I'm not antisemitic, I couldn't be, I wouldn't have fought in the war if I was'. `It's very disturbing to Jewish people'. `I'm so sorry; what can I say?'" But at least Milligan used other religions for a springboard into surrealism: "Two vicars, with suits, knock on this door, the door opens. They say `we are Jehovah Burglars'. `Oh yes'. `Yes, we are being persecuted by the police, for our beliefs'. `Oh? What are your beliefs?' `We believe you've got a lot of money'. "This sort of sketch was the essence of the show: "There were no jokes, just situations all the time."
Of course, we all know about your experiences with SM :)