FWD [forteana] Polari revival

From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Tue Jul 15 2003 - 10:20:37 MDT

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    Someone said a while ago they wanted Polari to make a comeback - vada well!
    -

    < http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,997545,00.html >

    Lavender linguistics

    Back in the 1950s it was the language of the gay community, a secret code
    that could help you pull - and keep you out of prison. Now, writes Liz Gill,
    it's making a comeback

    Monday July 14, 2003
    The Guardian

    Polari: "Ooh vada well the omee-palone ajax who just trolled in - she's got
    nanti taste, dear, cod lally-drags and the naff riah but what a bona eek.
    Fantabulosa!" Translation: "Have a good look at that homosexual nearby who
    just came in. He's got no taste - awful trousers and tasteless hair - but
    what a lovely face. Absolutely fabulous!"

    John Foster would not need the above translation. As a steward in the 1950s
    merchant navy he spoke Polari every day for seven years, at sea and on
    shore. For him and thousands of other gay men it was both a means of
    expression and a protective code.

    "Everything was illegal in those days and you had to be very careful," he
    recalls. "I always looked straight, I never minced about, so dropping in the
    odd Polari word would be a way of checking the other person out. If you
    liked the look of someone at the theatre, you might say to them, 'That was a
    bona scene, wasn't it?' If they were straight they wouldn't pick up on it
    but if they were gay there might be a shriek of recognition: 'She's camp,
    this one.'"

    Now 72 and a retired electronics supervisor living in Southend, Foster
    rarely speaks Polari apart from the odd word with old friends. Until
    recently it could have been expected to die out with his generation. Today,
    however, there is an upsurge of interest in what has become known as
    "lavender linguistics". Paul Baker, a lecturer at Lancaster University, has
    been researching the dialect for six years and has written three books on
    the subject, including a dictionary of more than 200 words and phrases.

    "I first heard Polari when the Julian and Sandy tapes from Round the Horne
    were re-released," he says. "I thought Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick
    were incredibly funny but it also seemed extraordinary for them to be using
    this gay slang in a Sunday afternoon family programme back in the 60s. As I
    tried to find out more about this language, I discovered that almost nothing
    had been written down. A piece of history was going to be lost before long
    if we didn't preserve it."

    Ads in the gay press, and "generally making a nuisance of myself everywhere
    I went", produced nearly two dozen interviewees aged from 50 upwards. "All
    of them remembered it fondly, even proudly. They'd been taught it by older
    men almost as a way of passing down the values of gay subculture from one
    generation to the next. They were also often given camp names, usually
    women's, as if they were being given a new identity and a sense of
    belonging."

    The origins of Polari probably lie in the 19th-century slang Parlyaree used
    by fairground and circus people, as well as prostitutes and beggars, and it
    also has links to the older vocabularies of other stigmatised groups or
    outsiders such as thieves' cant, cockney rhyming slang, yiddish and the
    lingua franca of sailors. Usage reached its peak in the repressive 1950s
    when being gay was illegal and dangerous: men lived in constant fear of
    blackmail, exposure and the humiliation of electric shock and hormone
    "treatments", as well as imprisonment. The fact that the spies Guy Burgess
    and Donald Maclean were gay further fuelled public paranoia.

    "A language that protected you and acted as a kind of 'gaydar' was very
    useful," says Baker. "It was also a way of poking fun at that repressive
    society. Using feminised names like Hilda Handcuffs or Jennifer Justice for
    the police was a way of removing some of their power. Being ironic, blase,
    making a joke was a way of coping. It was also very frank: it had to invent
    words for practices for which there were no heterosexual equivalents."

    By the 1960s, the political climate had begun to change and Polari became
    less concerned with cautious contact-making, and more about gossiping with
    friends, particularly about potential sexual partners.

    Chris Monk, a 64 year-old former nurse from Chelmsford, learned it in his
    late teens. "It's an age when your brain just soaks up information, but the
    words were generally short and easy to remember anyway. There was something
    joyful about it, and it felt very daring. You could say 'bona cartes' ('good
    cock') in a crowded pub without anyone else twigging.

    "You can be very bitchy in Polari, sometimes just by changing your tone. If
    you say 'vada that eek' in a high-pitched, excited sort of way it's praise;
    if you say it in a slow drawl it's derogatory. But there aren't many words
    for emotions: they had to be kept buttoned up. You made light of your
    feelings because displaying them would attract attention and arouse
    suspicion."

    The Julian and Sandy sketches were in effect the language's swansong. "They
    rather gave the game away," says Baker. "What was the point in using Polari
    if Aunt Beryl listened to Round the Horne and was able to get the gist of
    what you were saying?"

    The fact that there was no great outcry - indeed the show drew audiences of
    nine million at its height - also suggested that the climate was changing.
    In 1967 the recommendations of the Wolfenden report were implemented and
    homosexuality largely decriminalised. The removal of the need for secrecy
    was followed by a backlash against the old camp stereotypes.

    "The gay liberation movement saw a swing to the other extreme," says Baker.
    "Everything had to be very masculine and butch, so a generation gap
    developed."

    Today, however, there is increasing interest among gays in their cultural
    background. When the Brighton-based organisation Glam (Gay and Lesbian Arts
    and Media) held a Polari event recently they expected only older men to turn
    up. In fact, says Joan Beveridge, "it was interesting to see how many young
    men in their 20s came. It was as if they wanted to acknowledge the
    historical element in their community and that something like Polari helped
    form it.

    "Some people say, why bother if it's lost, we don't need it now, we're all
    accepted. Others argue that it's part of our history - and besides,
    circumstances can change and one day a secret language might be needed
    again."

    Some pink parlance

    Bona: good or well
    Cod, coddy: bad or amateurish
    Dally: sweet, kind
    Dish: 1. Anus; 2. Attractive man
    Drogle: a dress
    Eek: a face
    Fortuni: gorgeous
    Joshed up: looking your best
    Lallies: legs
    Naff: 1. Tasteless; 2. Heterosexual, possibly an acronym for not available
    for fucking
    Nanti: none or nothing. Eg, Nanti dinarly: no money. Nanti worster: no
    worse. Nanti pots in the cupboard: no teeth
    Omee: man
    Palone: woman
    Omee-palone: homosexual
    Palone-omee: lesbian
    Screech: mouth or face
    Sharda: what a pity
    Sheesh: showy, fussy or unnecessarily affected
    Vogue: a cigarette

    · Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang by Paul Baker, Continuum
    £12.99. Polari: the Lost Language of Gay Men, Routledge £55 .Glam: 01273
    707963.

    -- 
    Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com >
         Alternate: < fortean1@msn.com >
    Home Page: < http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Stargate/8958/index.html >
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