speaking freely
by Douglas Messerli
Karl Eccleston and Brian Fairbairn (screenwriters
and directors) Putting on the Dish / 2015 [7 minutes]
Polari, or alternate versions of that word, “Parlare, Parlary, Palare, Palarie, and Palari,” was a cant slang used by those who worked in the “underground” of British and Irish culture that can traced by to the 16th century and was used extensively throughout the 19th century by circus performers, professional wrestlers, merchant navy sailors, criminals, and sex workers. It was even appropriated by street puppet performers connecting it with the Punch and Judy puppet tradition.
Polari’s linguistic roots come from the Romani, the gypsy culture, mixed with London slang that embedded backslang, rhyming words, sailor phrases, and thieves’ argot, later expanding to include words from Yiddish, quickly transforming itself from a rather small lexicon of about twenty or so words, to develop a much larger vocabulary by embracing mainstream British English words spoken backwards, rhymed or twisted inside out such as cod for “bad” and riah for “hair,” or by using associative words such as lattie for “room, house, flat or a ‘room to let’” or nanti for “not” or “no,” etc.
When in the 20th century it was picked up by homosexuals to protect
themselves from police surveillance, it extended its vocabulary to include
numerous gay terms—some of which have been assimilated back into normative
language and even embraced by US speakers—such as “camp,” “mince,” “butch,”
“fruit,” “chicken,” and “cottaging.”
Since homosexuality was illegal in Britain until 1967 it became a
necessary tool to communicate in public without most individuals being able to
comprehend what was being said or “dished.”
In nearly all cases it was a way to avoid the ears and eyes of the sharpy, charpering omis or Lilly law”—the
police. But just as often it clearly allowed gay men to quickly recognize one
another in an otherwise hostile environment.
When homosexuality was legalized in 1967, most gay men dropped Polari
and by 1980 the argot had basically disappeared except as a remnant of the
past. Like US men abandoning their gay camp chatter (in which men often
referred to one another with female monikers and spent long evenings attempting
to be witty in an Oscar Wilde-like manner), British gay men saw Polari as a now
unnecessary affectation that delimited their acceptance into the society and
equality to their heterosexual counterparts.
To
many gays the kind of language journalist Peter Burton evoked in his memoirs Parallel
Lives—
As feely ommes...we would zhoosh our riah,
powder our eeks, climb into our bona new drag, don our batts and troll off to
some bona bijou bar. In the bar we would stand around with our sisters, vada
the bona cartes on the butch omme ajax who, if we fluttered our ogle riahs at
him sweetly, might just troll over to offer a light for the unlit vogue
clenched between our teeth.
translation: "As young men...we would style our hair, powder our faces, climb
into our great new clothes, don our shoes and wander/walk off to some great
little bar. In the bar we would stand around with our gay companions, look at
the great genitals on the butch man nearby who, if we fluttered our eyelashes
at him sweetly, might just wander/walk over to offer a light for the unlit
cigarette clenched between our teeth."—
represented something they were only too glad
to be rid of.
Yet
for a few today there is a kind of charm, an aura of the past, and a great deal
of fantabulosa (“wonderment”) of a language now nearly lost.
Between 1965 and 1969 Kenneth Horne hosted the popular BBC Radio program
that featured Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddick, and Betty Marsden, with scripts
by Marty Feldman and Barry Took that used numerous elements of wordplay,
including Polari and other campy verbal gymnastics.
In
1990, moreover, musician Morrissey released his album Bona Drag with
songs in Polari and his hit single “Picadilly Palare,” whose lyrics included
the Polari phrase So bona to vada, with your lovely eek and your lovely riah.
In
1998 Todd Haynes used Polari in his 1998 film Velvet Goldmine in a
flashback to 1970 in which a group of characters converse in Polari, their
words being subtitled.
If
nothing else, Polari is important to archivists as a treasure of British and
even World War II military gay life (in the 1994 documentary Coming Out Under Fire one soldier speaks of using rhyming words
and phrases by Dorothy Parker in a gay underground military newspaper
originally titled The Myrtle Beach
Bitch).
In 2015 writers and directors Karl
Eccleston and Brian Fairbain released their 7-minute short, which seems more
like an hour long given its linguistic demands, in which two men are seated on
a bench, bearing the camp names of Roberta (Neil Chinneck) and Maureen (Steve
Wickenden), Roberta reading from Anthony Burgess’ The Clockwork Orange, published in the same year, 1962, in
which their encounter is set. Maureen who has already read the book shows his
disdain for it, at the end of their encounter giving away the entire plot with
his quite nasty final words: “They cure him in the end.”
But in between these two rather everyday
occurrences lies a whole world of mysterious events for the outsider since the
two, recognizing one another as gay (Roberta responding early on, “I've got
your number ducky.”) set out on a gossipy adventure in Polari as they describe
the life of a mutual friend Pauline Marsh (perhaps in everyday life named Paul
Marsh since camp names were often feminine versions of their original male
ones).
Because this film depends almost entirely
upon the language instead of any action other than their occasional ogling of
passersby and Roberta’s final expression of his anger, I think it is necessary
to provide the viewer with the entire script. I should tell you that I first
attempted to capture what I orally heard by toggling back and forth between the
movie and the empty computer page, but it was nearly impossible, given the
actor’s Barnet North London accents and my own lack of acquaintance, except for
a handful of quickly-acquired words, of Polari. Fortunately, I eventually found
the entire script printed out on the internet. I feel it necessary, if for no
other reason, to catalogue a language and film which my soon disappear from
memory, to quote the entire script.
putting on the dish
MAUREEN
I've read that.
It's all gobbledygook. Ending's naff too.
Got three drags and a spit, doll?
You from round here then?
ROBERTA
More or less.
MAUREEN
Eine's the place to be. (A beat) Ooh bona
batts. What size are your plates then?
ROBERTA
Ten I think.
MAUREEN
(cheeky)
What about your luppers? They size ten too?
ROBERTA snorts.
MAUREEN
Bet you'd play the strillers real bona.
ROBERTA
This your usual spot then?
MAUREEN
How do you mean?
ROBERTA
I've got your number ducky.
MAUREEN
Where's your flowery then?
ROBERTA
Clitterhouse Road.
MAUREEN
Oh I've a bencove up that way. Pauline.
ROBERTA
Pauline Marsh?
MAUREEN
That's the one. Can't swing a cat but hit a
cove.
ROBERTA
How is Pauline?
MAUREEN
She's had nanti bully fake. Dyed her riah, her
ends are a real mess.
ROBERTA
Nanti bona. I hope she vaggeried straight to
the crimper.
MAUREEN
Well that's where she'd just been. The palone
tried to give her an Irish. Moultee palaver. Pauline told her to shove her
shyckle up her khyber.
ROBERTA
Oh she didn't say that.
MAUREEN
Mais oui ducky, oui. In your actual English.
ROBERTA
She's all wind and piss Pauline. Is she still
with Phyllis then?
MAUREEN
Oh no. Haven't you heard?
(slides over)
She's been a real bonaroba. Blowing the
groundsels, ling grappling dilly boys, trolling the backslums. She had to be
Battersea'd twice last month.
ROBERTA (shocked)
She didn't.
MAUREEN
Pauline's a stretcher case. Trolled in one
nochy to varda Phyllis plating some schinwars she'd blagged in the brandy
latch.
ROBERTA
(deadpan)
Dish the dirt!
MAUREEN
Oh it's all over grumble for Pauline. Nanti
dinarlee, up to her elbow in the national handbag and she'd only just gone in
for a remould. They had to refake her entire basket.
ROBERTA
(distracted)
Speaking of baskets.
MAUREEN
Oh Gloria. That'd stretch your corybungus.
ROBERTA
Fortuni.
MAUREEN
Mind you it's the dolly ones that disappoint.
ROBERTA
Mmm.
MAUREEN
I was seeing this HP from Sheffield once.
Plates the size of bowling pins, I thought I was in for a real bona charvering.
ROBERTA
Nada to varda in the larder?
MAUREEN
Oh, bijou. 'You needn't put the brandy on for
that,' I said when I saw it. Mind you, she was heavy on the letch water. I had
to use the Daz to get her Maria out my libbage.
ROBERTA
Oh, vile.
(beat)
What about her? Do you think she's so?
MAUREEN
What, her? Oh she's in the life.
ROBERTA
You think so?
MAUREEN
Ooh yeah. Just vada her mish. Mauve. Moultee
mauve. Not to mention her farting crackers.
ROBERTA
I'd clean his kitchen, I would. Has she always
been that way then, Phyllis?
MAUREEN
She's a walking meat rack. Real fantabulosa
bit of hard. We used to act dicky together at the croaker's chovey. Noshed me
off once while I was giving a fungus his drabs.
ROBERTA
That's skill, that.
MAUREEN
Oh she used to do it all the time. When we
were at the exchange together she'd one lill on my colin and the other on the
switch. She didn't even get off the palare pipe.
(Beat)
Sad to think of her in the queer ken really.
ROBERTA
What do you mean?
MAUREEN
Well she'd a run in with the lily law, didn't
she?
ROBERTA
Oh dear.
MAUREEN
Sharpie flashed his cartso in the carsey.
ROBERTA
(Finding it increasingly amusing)
I hope she kept her ogles front.
MAUREEN
Well she's got amblyopia, hasn't she? She can
practically only vada sideways.
ROBERTA
What did the beak say?
MAUREEN
He was ever so harsh. Asked if she was sorry.
ROBERTA
Was she?
MAUREEN
Only that it wasn't worth the look she got.
I suppose we'll all end up in the charpering
carsey soon.
Nearly got nabbed myself the other week. I'd
just finished plating a chicken in that cottage ajax Clackett Lane, you know
the one. Meesest eek I've ever seen but what a cartso. I'm mincing outside
wiping my screech when who do I bump into but one of your orderly daughters.
"There's a pouf" in there I said. Nabbed her with her kaffies down I
spose. She'd have never vardered it coming. Must have been a right fericadooza.
Sharda.
ROBERTA
You're disgusting.
MAUREEN
What?
Oh go on. Put your fakements in your little
shush bag. Off you scarper.
ROBERTA leaves.
MAUREEN
(holding up his book)
You forgot your glossy.
ROBERTA stops, turns, looks. After a beat he
storms back. He snatches his book but MAUREEN holds on to it. Their eyes are
locked.
MAUREEN
They cure him in the end. [Roberta spits on
Maureen’s face.]
Even
with just a few words of the private gay argot one can perceive, after Maureen
breaks the ice by asking for a cigarette and light, that the two men’s
conversation concerns their mutual acquaintance who has evidently dyed her hair
badly and been told by a hairdresser to wear a wig. Pauline had evidently
broken up with his lover Phyllis, has been trolling for boys in the slums and
gotten arrested, causing the end of the relationship.
After a brief conversation about the size of the penis of a passing boy
and Maureen’s belief that it’s the pretty ones who disappoint, he recounts a
past encounter with an effeminate man from Sheffield with feet the size of
bowling pins—suggesting he might also have a large penis—with which he was
highly disappointed (Oh, bijou. 'You needn't put the brandy on for that,' I
said when I saw it.), it being so small (bijou).
When
they return to their discussion of Pauline having landed up in prison, he
suggests they all might get caught one day and describes how after having
fellated a young man (a chicken, often suggesting someone underage) with
a most gentle face but with a large penis (Meesest eek I've ever seen but what
a cartso.) in a public toilet, the police suddenly showed up as he was wiping
off his mouth. He escaped them, so he recounts, by telling them there was a poof
inside, running off as the cops entered the cottage to arrest the boy who
had not yet rolled up his pants.
It
is this revelation that so angers Roberta, who calls Maureen disgusting, rises,
and leaves, returning only for his book (in which the gangs speak their own
version of argot), before expectorating on his former Polari conversationalist.
The
title of this film, Putting on the Dish, means in Polari the act of
applying lubricant to one’s bum, but here the lubricant is also the substance
that allows their words to easily flow from their lips, in this case a language
that frees them from outsider friction. But in this case the dominant talker
has perhaps spoken too freely, demonstrating that he has little concern for
those who share his plight.
Los Angeles, February 1, 2021
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and
World Cinema Review (February 2021).
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