The dispute between Mr Ron Robinson and GTV concerning the broadcast of "Stretched Out Magazine" has not attracted much correspondence in your columns. The absence of public interest in this matter must be attributed to the fact that the programme was a boring re-hash of those from previous years.
The format of "Stretched Out Magazine" is not original. The copy-cat attempt to raise a laugh by drawing on material such as BBC's "That's Life", Reader's Digest's - "Pardon, Your slip is showing," and late night and other American Television programmes, has fallen flat on its face. Our cultural artistes, like our leaders within society at large, must know that there has to be a balanced combination of international imitation and national invention; and not a dominance of the former to the abandonment of the latter.
This local programme is not the sincerest form of flattery for the simple reason that the overseas material provokes laughter whereas ours is completely devoid of humour. Foreign programmes reproduce the freudian errors created by misplaced and misspelt words with hilarious result.
'Stretched Out Magazine' seeks to emulate this effort by merely identifying typographical errors in the local newspapers and spelling errors in public notices. This poor attempt at humour becomes pathetic when Mr. Robinson proceeds with a didactic explanation to viewers as to what should have been the correct spelling. The only saving grace is that he cannot be faulted for killing the punch line ...... since there is none!
The "interviews" with public officials, the format of which is also borrowed from American and British television, is repetitive and unimaginative. So too is the skit on Santa and his bag of goodies. The objects plucked out of the bag mirror the earlier attempts at lampooning the public figures, and for viewers Santa Claus is transformed into the Sandman.
No material was directed against the late Mr. Desmond Hoyte. This no doubt was in deference to his recent passing, but this sensitivity does not explain the omission of any attempt to parody the opposition politicians.
In any event, the desperate search for material to fill the vacuum resulting from Mr. Hoyte's demise resulted in a fiasco involving the expatriate manager of the Pegasus Hotel. Viewers must have been bemused at the inane projection into the public realm of what must have been a private joke between the manager and the producers of the programme.
The harsh reality is that we have not in Guyana met the oxymoronic challenge of producing serious satire and humour. The bawdy humour of second rate Cultural Centre productions may provoke embarrassed guffaws; and local cartoons (except for those of Harris) are politically incorrect and humourless.
Someone inclined to emulate the good jokes garnered by the New York cab driver will find a wealth of material in our rum shops.
So apart from the Vodka and cutters, here is a third reason why I attend these watering holes. So in your search for material, Ron, you must leave no rumshop unstoned.
At the local newspaper level credit must be given to the Wednesday Ramblings in the Stabroek News which meets the vigorous demands of a weekly satirical column. Some worthwhile satire was also found in the QC Magazine and the Guyana Bar Review but these are not current publications.
It must be recognized that the 'Link Show' and 'Stretched Out Magazine' made their initial impact not because of their satirical content but because of the historical context in which they emerged. They came at a time when any attempt to lampoon the establishment was taboo and when there was a general stifling of public expression critical of the State.
The programmes found a ready-made audience which craved comic relief as an antidote for repression and provided an escape valve for pent-up frustration.
To this extent, the producers deserved credit for their courageous good timing. However, with the passage of time which saw the removal of censorship and the emergence of run away local television broadcasting with uninhibited public participation, sometimes comedies in themselves, the challenge for producers of satire became a very daunting one.
The 'Stretched Out Magazine' has failed dismally to rise to the challenge.
The attempt to graft into our now open society the repressions of a past era has produced an anachronistic farce. Writers of thriller novels have demonstrated that creative, imaginative scripting is possible. They have adjusted to the demise of the "Evil Empire" and are producing `unputdownable' works with contemporary plots. Our artistes must get real yet contemporaneous.
'Stretched Out Magazine' has another year's time to do its homework and to emerge as a national institution. If at Christmas 2003 we are inflicted with the same drab programming, viewers will persist in the lament that "they ain't ready yet" and the only person who will be tickled will be the Minister of Crops as he surveys the production of more corn.