Hands Off My Tuts: “Funky Tut” and Cultural Sensitivity
Among the dozens of princess costumes I exhausted as a child, I also favored a Cleopatra dress that my parents brought back from a trip to Las Vegas. As I have not yet been able to visit Egypt, my time pretending to be the legendary pharaoh was heavily influenced by such cinematic masterpieces as Scooby Doo! in Where’s My Mummy?, The Prince of Egypt, Tutenstein, and Night at the Museum. Despite my surely comical antics, there remains a question on a much broader scale: How did an ancient queen’s aesthetic diffuse from Alexandria, Egypt, to small town Georgia?
Steve Martin’s 1978 song “King Tut” from Saturday Night Live brilliantly satirizes the commercialization of America’s experience with Egyptomania, a phenomenon defined simply as “the extreme fascination with all aspects of ancient Egypt” in Bob Brier’s book Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs.
In the midst of widespread (both around the country and throughout the decades) acclaim for the song, its modern resurgence has been marred by harsh criticism and outrage. Recently, this blatant satirization has been shredded as offensive and tone-deaf by students at Reed College. Those affected by the sketch have voiced their indignation through all mediums, from social media on Twitter and Facebook to radio and print interviews. The controversy has drawn national attention, though most have unsurprisingly written the ordeal off as dramatic and invalid, as much of the debate fails to recognize the initial sarcastic basis and informational context of the sketch.
After Howard Carter’s landmark discovery of King Tutankhamen’s ancient tomb in 1922, the world witnessed its most significant wave of Egyptomania, revived again half a century later at the tour of Treasures of Tutankhamen exhibition in Europe and the United States. Egyptian fashion became, and remained, a trend, and new cults of the goddess Isis surfaced after a hiatus lasting a milennium and a half. The vaudeville song “Old King Tut Was a Wise Old Nut” was printed and distributed quickly after the find, before excavators learned the Pharaoh was a teenager. Fans danced to “Cleopatra Had a Jazz Band” and “At the Mummies Ball.” On his lecture circuits in the 1970’s, archaeologist and former antiquities chief Zahi Hawass encountered believers in “pyramid power” who wore pyramid hats, slept under pyramid shapes, and swore that meat, if placed under a pyramid, would never rot (Egyptomania). People ate Yummy Mummy candies and King Tut Party Mix chips, smoked Blue Nile cigarettes, and sprayed King Tut cologne. Boris Karloff fascinated patrons in The Mummy, and Elizabeth Taylor dazzled in Cleopatra.
This type of American consumerism is infamous, and Martin cleverly prefaces his song with a brilliant element of sarcastic irony. In fact, his first line of the sketch- “I’d like to talk seriously for just a moment”- brings immediate laughter from the audience. His description of the context drips with sarcasm and mockery but lacks a biting or political tone that lends it an easy, affectionate humor. Not only does he twistedly lament the “trinkets and toys, T-shirts and posters,” but he also comments on the chosen style of music.
In the sketch, Martin dons recognizably Egyptian garb, surrounded by a gaudy set and backup dancers. The novelty song begins with a traditional-sounding Egyptian refrian before transitioning into a sock-hop style beat, an distinctly American style of music. The skit’s genre and tacky props contribute to its absurdity, perfected by Martin, whose own distinct, exaggerated style is vital to its success. The comedian makes himself a spectacle with his dramatic facial expressions and striking dance moves. However, the height of the sketch is Lou Marini’s emergence from the sarcophagus for a saxophone solo in gold face paint as Martin places a blender at his feet as an offering, again an excellent reference to the subject of consumerist culture.
This intentional tackiness of the performance draws the line between tactless and astute. By building upon a foundation of sardonicism, Martin is able to construct a sketch that is both playful and smart.
Regardless of its heavy reference of the time period and reliance on awareness of the context, “King Tut” is timelessly funny for its unexpected lightheartedness and cheesy spirit, something true of much of Steve Martin’s résumé. Comedians popular at the time, like Richard Pryor and George Carlin, often engaged in cuttingly political lectures, a far cry from Martin’s trademark silliness. He could stand in front of audiences with a plastic arrow through his head as confidently as his counterparts could as they delivered an act attacking capitalism or Richard Nixon. Though Martin was a highly educated philosophy major, he didn’t make it a point to establish his intelligence over his viewers. By portraying himself as unsophisticated or unknowledgeable, his brand of comedy more than fulfilled its sole purpose of making the audience laugh.
Though Steve Martin is undoubtedly successful as a comedian and even an actor, his musical talent is surprisingly worthy of celebrity in its own right. In his memoir Born Standing Up, he states that taught himself to play at the age of seventeen by slowing down old bluegrass records and re-tuning his banjo to discern each note. John McEuen, an eventual member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, a long-heralded country group, also helped Martin in his banjo endeavor. Martin opened for the band in 1970’s and later had them perform as the Toot Uncommons (a pun on “Tutankhamun”) in “King Tut.” Initially, Martin’s now famous banjo ability was used as a supplement to his acts to take up more time, performing satirical and goofy tunes to draw laughter. Since 2001, Martin has placed more focus on his music career, holding his own against bluegrass legends like Earl Scruggs. His collaborators consider him to be a master of a technique called “clawhammer,” something that Scruggs admits not even he can manage. His songs and albums have made way on the bluegrass charts, though Martin downplays it by saying, “I don’t know how many that means. It might have sold two.” Regardless of Martin’s opinions about his own music, his album The Crow won a Grammy in 2010.
His established muscial talent allowed him to write “King Tut” as an original song. After asking producer Lorne Michaels if he could include it on Saturday Night Live, Martin was overwhelmed at the scale of production Michaels implemented; it was one of the most expensive sketches SNL had ever performed. The song even peaked at #17 on U.S. Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.
Despite its overwhelmingly positive reception over the last forty years, social justice champions at Reed College were up in arms after viewing the classic musical sketch. Some students were horrified at the performance, which was shown in a Humanities 101 class to spur discussion and debate. Campus group Reedies Against Racism (RAR) quickly became the leading opponent, with one member calling the class “a cruel test for students of color” on public radio. The organization reportedly went to extreme lengths, implementing vulgar virtual attacks on “race traitors” and “phony ass white allies,” bringing a professor, self-described as a “gay mixed-race woman,” to tears at one point, and causing the cancellation of the first lecture in the 2017–2018 academic year, all to the dismay of many bystanding freshmen as well as disagreeing students and faculty.
“That’s like somebody…making a song just littered with the n-word everywhere…The gold face of the saxophone dancer leaving its tomb is an exhibition of blackface.” -Statement from a member of Reedies Against Racism to the student newspaper
Though the school is home to the most liberal makeup of students at any college and RAR seems to represent a smaller, more extreme segment of the student body, cries of cultural appropriation are not isolated to the Oregon institution. In an article from last October entitled “Maybe Don’t Dress Your Kid Up As Moana This Halloween?”, Cosmopolitan warned parents that “It’s on you to teach your kid not to be racially insensitive.”
“White girls have plenty of princesses to choose from — there’s Belle, Ariel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty … you get the idea. If your Caucasian son or daughter doesn’t get to be exactly what they wanted for Halloween, encourage them to take a step back and realize that they’re awash in privileges that the real Moanas and Tianas of the world will likely never see, because the world is full of racist assholes”. -Cosmopolitan
The controversial article advised the parents of white children to use Halloween as a learning opportunity and discourage their young trick-or-treaters from dressing in certain costumes of other races, specifically those of popular princesses like Moana, Tiana, and Jasmine, in an effort to avoid cultural appropriation.
Cultural appropriation has a blurred defintion today, and instances like these seem to police hollow offenses as opposed to more significant trespasses, like minstrel shows or blackface. The term originated in the 1970’s as a way for scholars to speak about the sins of colonial powers; for instance, the Napoleonic transportation of ancient Egyptian artifacts to London and 19th century removal of relief scultpures from the Parthenon have become sources of conflict between England and Egypt and Greece. The debates over the installations of various pieces in the British Museum cite cultural appropriation, asserting that English engineers and archaeologists have reprehensibly taken an important piece of another culture for their own gain.
Many featured current arguments lack support from the communities they claim to protect and even charge people that belong to cultures often wronged by history. Today’s connotation of cultural appropriation tends to revile those who engage in an effort of cross-cultural understanding. For instance, activists besieged the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston after the institution began offering an event called “Kimono Wednesdays,” in which visitors could try on a replica of Claude Monet’s wife’s kimono, worn in “La Japonaise.” The kimonos were made in Japan to be historically accurate for this specific occasion, and local Japanese-Americans supported the exhibit, as well as the Japanese consulate.
The respective crusades of Cosmopolitan and Reedies Against Racism undermine actual exploitations of culture. Dressing a little girl as Moana for Halloween doesn’t exploit the Polynesian civilization but rather exposes her to it in a positive, relatable way. Consequently, Steve Martin was obviously not mocking Egypt’s ancient past but rather the shallow commercialization of it by Americans.
Whereas some may have differing, more hostile opinions of the sketch, it makes a relevant statement regarding the tackiness of the American reaction to Egyptomania while brilliantly maintaining a lighthearted tone and funny façade. In fact, although the message is strong and clear, it almost takes a backseat to Steve Martin’s purely comedic performance; it is brilliantly subtle but retains its judgement.
The sketch draws audiences in with its promise of laughter, and it certainly delivers. We laugh because we recognize its truth- everyone has indulged the narrative of Egyptomania at some point or another, decorating with mummies for Halloween, scaring at a horror movie because of a pharaoh’s curse, or buying beauty products inspired by Cleopatra or Nefertiti.
Ongoing advocates of the concept of cultural appropriation seem to, in large part, nitpick more “localized” levels of transgression (like children’s Halloween costumes, or eyeliner and hoop earrings). The words “problematic” and “tone-deaf” are thrown around all too often in reference to these exact situations. Yes, offenses, to say the least, against culture have occurred throughout history and still happen now, and they should be remedied to the best possible extent. But they’re just not happening in a song performed by Steve Martin on a sketch comedy show.
