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5. “Spectacular” Bodies
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An inspector for the London County Council visiting in the Palace Theatre of Varieties, an opera house that had been converted into a music hall two years before, duly noted that entertainment at the Palace featured “skirt dancers . . . ballet, etc., which involved the usual display of limbs encased in tights.”1 However, prominent among that evening’s exhibitions at the Palace were “Living Pictures ,” re-creations on the music-hall stage of paintings by Royal Academy artists such as Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Lord Leighton. Edward Kilyani’s Living Pictures allowed for the prominent display of simulated nudity, as models draped in muslin performed as still lifes in classical poses. On this occasion the inspector’s report for the “Spectacular” Bodies 5 You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. council demonstrated, as Susan Pennybacker observes, “a remarkable preference for aesthetic concerns over suppression of vice.”2 He found the pictures , or, as they were often called, “tableaux vivants,” to be “skillful and artistic living representations of well-known paintings and sculptures.” The inspector used the occasion to consider whether “the nude” could ever be cordoned off into an autonomous realm of the aesthetic:“Some people . . . would simply object to such public and complete display of the female form. It is a matter of difficulty to fix the exact point where propriety ends and impropriety begins. The borderline which divides the legitimate from the objectionable is not well-defined. I have endeavoured to report the facts as impartially as I can, and it is not for me, but for the Committee, to approve or condemn.”3 The inspector’s deference to municipal authority sidesteps the vexed question of where legitimate artistic endeavor ends and illicit entertainment begins. Here, the problem of separating legitimate entertainment from spurious pleasures is largely avoided by recourse to what is simply seen: the inspector need only report on what he witnessed. The controversy elicited by tableaux vivants, a frequent staple of the finde -siècle halls, was not to be settled by appeals to the self-evident. Tableaux vivants, or, as they were often called earlier in the century,“poses plastiques,” had long been a risqué theatrical attraction. However, the Living Pictures became a special focus of controversy nearly a year after the initial appearance of Edward Kilyani’s traveling troupe at the Palace Theatre in late . In August , Lady Henry Somerset, leader of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, entered a formal protest against the tableaux before the London County Council. She was joined in her protest by W. A. Coote, a leading official in the social purity movement in the National Vigilance Association ; his organization supported Somerset in challenging the renewal of the Palace’s liquor license. The Palace controversy involved many of the same citizens initially galvanized by the Maiden Tribute controversy and the effort to repeal the Contagious Diseases Amendment.4 Unlike the similar protest of purity workers over the presence of prostitutes in the Empire music hall in , the dispute over the Palace did not necessarily draw special attention to the authority of women philanthropists or purity workers; nor did it stop the Living Pictures at the Palace.5 Throughout the decade, controversy over tableaux vivants was often simply deferred, as if no one quite knew how to handle the entertainment . Protests could be quelled through compromise, since managers quickly moved to appease troubled authorities. Although the Palace liquor Tableaux Vivants at the Palace Theatre You are reading copyrighted material published by Ohio University Press/Swallow Press. Unauthorized posting, copying, or distributing of this work except as permitted under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. license was never denied, a member of Parliament wrote to the Theatres and Music Halls Committee the month of Lady Somerset’s public protest, warning , “[I]f you wish to conciliate public opinion, which I believe is becoming increasingly hostile to these representations, then prompt action on your part is desirable.”6 In response to these pressures, Palace manager Charles Morton quickly dropped what he considered the more risqué tableaux.7 Morton’s actions illustrate how controversy over the Living Pictures at the Palace could promptly shift from public scandal to uneasy, secret compromises . However, for a brief time in , the debate over tableaux vivants, as John...