#mummer's parade

[cashcoffeecup]

[gwydionmisha]

2023 Avalon String Band - "All Hands on Deck"

[gwydionmisha]

Mummers 2023 String Band 10 Quaker City

[gwydionmisha]

     2023 Fralinger String Band - "Scream Acres"    

[gwydionmisha]

Mummers Parade in Philadelphia 2019: Trump carries p-tape, Gritty saves America: Lobster Club

This is very old school Comics club in tone only with way better production values.

[gwydionmisha]

Mummers 2019

I managed to miss the first half hour of the parade, which I very particularly wanted to see, catching the tail end of the last fancy style costume.  Sigh.  I stuck it through the Giant Wench Brigades and into the comics proper.  I did want to say how much better the comics are than they were when I still lived at home.  It's way less half assed and inebriated, for example.  It's good to see so many more PoC performers, both mixed in and doing their own clubs.  A fundamental problem with the parade has always been the racism, and the more integrated the parade gets, the better it gets.  I have spent my whole life longing for the day I could watch the whole damned parade without being horrified and embarrassed by the city of my origin.  The one thing I miss is there used to be way more political commentary and protest in the comics, like a scaled down version of Carnivale parades in Brazil, but honestly I can see how it's a trade off and I'll take this over the unrelenting racism any day. It's good to see how many more women and girls are out there too.  One of the things I truly admire about the Mummer's Parade is it's one of the very few places in our society where a woman's age and body shape count not a bit beyond the division between adult parts and children's parts that exist regardless of gender in some performances.  It legitimately doesn't matter if someone is fat or thin or young or old.  Seriously, where else can you truly say that in any other sort of performance?

Boy there were a lot of Elvises this year!  On a related note, I'm wondering if the accidental replication of jailhouse rock themes is a reflection of the political zeitgeist.  I'm betting the Blue themed police one was really blue lives matter *Sigh* I noticed hog Island (once my favorite Fancy Brigade) did bring a lot of the old school political clowning. I did particularly like the student debt one out of the few less obliquely political ones, and it was well executed too.  The Lobster Club Trump one was way higher production values than old school Comics Division, but damned if it wasn't the sort of thing they would have done when I was a kid only half assed and way drunker.  Comics are supposed to caricature and speak truth to power.  They had a bunch of other more chaotic ones in similar more overt tone.  Good for them!

They made it all the way through the Comics without doing anything horrifying.  Perhaps the sensitivity training is working.  I opted to nap String Bands, as they are usually the most wincingly bad, but they rebroadcast during the gap between the Parade proper and the stage performances.  I had equipment trouble, but got to see most of the fancies after all on the live stream (one dubious performance in the portion I saw) and the string bands on facebook feed.  They had a really good Phantom, Beauty and the Beast,  the Wizard/Witch/Butterflies, Flying Dutchman, and a zombie ones, but also the usual horrifically appropriative, stereotyped, and/or racist ones. Sigh.  I know why String bangs are the most unwilling to move with the times, but it's still sad and disappointing.

Oh man the Fancy Brigades were relevant to my interests this year.  So many good ones: the Scotsmen, the Beauty and the beast, the space aliens, the Wonka, the marionettes, nightmare Before Christmas.  I wonder if the inevitable orientalist fantasy and the appropriated Native American one (appropriating from Native Americans was also super popular in the string bands this year.  Clearly there is a big gap in the sensitivity training).  I wonder if either was the same people did the horrible racist African jungle one last year.  Sigh.

Unfortunately, this year the feed was terrible.  Seriously, I wish there was some other option than watch a parade this length poorly live streamed starting at 6AM.  *shakes fist at PHL 17*  I was forced to watch some of it with garbled sound on Facebook, which I hate like scabies.  

[designgeekery]

I haven’t spent a New Years in Philly for like 6 or 7 years now. I’m actually really glad I didn’t witness the mummer’s parade. Yet another year of racism (brown face, and they even put brown face on children). Transphobia (holding up a sign with Caitlyn Jenner with the title “Fruit Loops” ie Wheaties Box). Homophobia (Gay man was beaten while walking his dog near parade). 

Yet this is a “family friendly” event. 

Yet every year this is the kind of behavior that happens. I wish the city officials would step up and put an end to this. It’s getting old reading news articles the next day on what these drunken asswipes did again.

[jamesholden]

Some of the pictures I took at the 2014 Mummer's Parade!