Jerry Springer the Opera

As the sun set leaving a blistered sky behind, the parking lot fills and people crowd in line at Will Call to pick up their Saturday night theatre tickets. It's a packed house, unusual for Playhouse on the Square, our local theatre in mid-town Memphis on Cooper Street, just off Union. In this land of Elvis and churches, it's the American premier of Jerry Springer, the Opera, after a five year run in London where it debuted.

Neither the hot weather nor the content warnings are keeping anyone away for Jerry Springer, the Opera. These Memphians are proud to host the opera and the use of bad words has only increased their excitement and curiosity. A content warning notice is posted on the web, displayed at the theatre, and recited over the phone when you call the box office for tickets. "This show contains language some people may find offensive. A list of words and phrases sung in this show are available for you, so that you may consider your attendance at Jerry Springer - The Opera."

But, Memphians are mad for a raunchy fun time. Slim but bent, well coiffed silver hair matrons decked out Talbot's best are seated among nose and tongue silver studded teenagers with red, green and yellow hair wearing their best grunge. Add to the mix a contingent of previously middle class adults dressed in frowzy trailer trash attire complete with 50's hair, plastic jewelry, ear resting cigarettes, buck teeth and beer drinking, and you have a party soup of an audience.

As curtain time nears, someone in the audience begins the famous show chant, "Jer-ry, Jer-ry, Jer-ry, Jer-ry," with clenched fists pushing the air over his head. It catches on and by the time the lights go down, most of us are chanting and we don't know why.

If you want to see the bad words (and of course, you do), log into the Playhouse website. As "you must be 18 or older to access this information," you enter any date earlier than 1989 and you are allowed to read the statement, "Should you be disturbed hearing them sung in a high C, your appearance in the audience should be carefully considered...[words are listed]."
I'm sure the website has had a record number of hits.

It's a pretty good bunch of bad words and the warning is true. Unlike the televised show subject to censors' "bleeps", the bad words fly across the stage from beginning to end in arias, in banter and in song and dance numbers. The Greek chorus, the stage show audience of about ten people of assorted ages, sexes, races and weight conditions, binge on them.

It's a mighty performance, but John and I had entirely different reactions - he fell asleep in the second act, when the story line literally went to hell. I sat enthralled from beginning to end, mystified how the actors could sing all those bad words as if they were the romantic pleas of Le Bo heme. The opera reminded me of Shakespeare's farce The Merry Wives of Windsor on steroids with the NYC Rockettes in white Jerry wigs, pin stripe suits, tap shoes, high kicks and all. A standing ovation, complete with hoots of "Jer-ry, Jer-ry, Jer-ry, Jer-ry", greeted the actors at the end.

The Jerry Springer Show is in its seventeenth season. What is it's power to attract people to appear on it? The guests shame themselves and each other. Is it the chance to "be a celebrity", to get a free trip to Chicago and to stay in a fancy hotel, as one of the characters posits? Or, is it a chance to "be somebody" in an American culture that leaves so many people at the bottom, caught is a perpetuating cycle of poverty and invisible to the rest of us?

Perhaps, a larger question is why do so many of us watch the show? Why do we care about others' infidelities and guilty secrets? Are we drawn to the outlandish drama for the chance to vicariously live unleashed from the rules of decent language and behavior? Are we trying to understand our own sins? Do we feel reassured that we are not so stupid, ignorant, or morally bankrupt as those on the screen? Or, are we fatigued with our middle class lives, deadened by its mediocre sameness? Must we have these extreme performances to wake us from our comas? Does the show reflect back to us our cultural decay or is it a vehicle for self examination as the introduction to the opera asks.

Does the show make you angry? Does the idea of the show drive you crazy? Do you want to yell at me, "I don't watch the show, ever, ever!" Do you feel indignation surging up from inside your belly? Well, if you do, I do as one of Jerry's guests put it, just "Talk to the hand! I don't want to hear about it."