Consider the Rubber Chicken
“That’s Pox,” said Greg. He was scrolling through pictures on his phone looking for a shot to show me of a recent trip. One of the pictures that slid into view was a slightly grotesque, definitely deranged-looking rubber chicken. Its bumpy legs were thrust straight as if it was being fired out of a canon. Its googly eyes bulged like Marty Feldman in fowl form. Its beak was propped open in what I could imagine was a terrified BOCK!
“He’s Adeline’s,” explained Greg, referring to his 9-year old daughter. “She named him that. I don’t even know where he came from, but she sleeps with him and everything. I know. Weird kid,” he said with a chuckle. His next swipe revealed a video.
“Oh! You gotta see this.” Greg clicked on the file. There was Adeline lazing around on a couch strewn with blankets and other kid items. She was twirling something around in her hands. Noticing her father filming, she suddenly zoomed the object straight for the camera. Pox coming in for his close-up. Giggling.
“Adeline, who’s this?” came Greg’s voice from behind the phone. More giggling.
“Pox!”
“Yeah? What’s his deal?”
The chicken somersaulted, the other end of his body coming to a stop in front of the camera.
“Holes!” chirped Adeline. “Three!” Video Greg is chuckling, in on the joke. He presses closer with the camera. A lurid lingering shot confirms that this particular rubber chicken is equipped with three apertures.
“Yeah? What do the holes do?” asks Greg, setting one up for his daughter like a reliable straight man. Giggling and Adeline flashes a wicked smile.
“Farts!” announces Adeline. Without any further encouragement she demonstrates: this one is wet like a raspberry; this one is airy and squeaky; and this one is rapid fire, staccato. Pox’s legs get pulled this way and that to animate the effects of each blast. The camera shakes with Greg’s laughter. Adeline stands up and hops around on the sofa with Pox performing his glorious one-of-a-kind symphonic flatulence. We’re all in hysterics on the other side of the phone.
“Yeah. That’s my girl!” says Greg with genuine pride.
“Someone should get those two an agent,” I say. And it occurs to me that this is the first time I’ve seen a regular person with a rubber chicken who wasn’t on TV. In a world of Legos and drones and fancy STEM toys and video games and inflatable bedroom castles, what the hell was a 9-year old kid doing with this comedy prop of olde?
I’m immediately transported back to the kitchen in the house I grew up in. I’m seven. It’s Monday night and I’m in my pjs and bathrobe sitting in a chair inches away from the tiny television set that lived on a snack tray in the corner by the table. It’s time to play the music! It’s time to light the lights! It’s time to get things started on The Muppet Show tonight! Just hearing that theme song was enough to expunge the day’s injustices and petty kid tyrannies. I would seriously consider having it played at my funeral.
For a half hour each week Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, and the rest of the Muppet gang put guest stars like Steve Martin, Carol Burnett, and John Cleese through good-natured indignities and silliness. Also, something always exploded. This was pretty much everything I could have asked for from network television. And then there was Fozzie Bear, the hardest, hackiest working bear in the biz. Styled off of a vaudevillian comic, Fozzie told schlocky jokes in a classic set-up-punch-line style while enduring ruthless heckling from the show’s crusty patrons Statler and Waldorf. A rubber chicken was one of Fozzie’s staple props. I can’t remember him actually doing anything with the chicken, but I also never questioned why he had it in the first place. It seemed totally appropriate: rubber chicken and/or Groucho glasses signified “comedian” the way star-shaped badge signified “sheriff.” It honestly never occurred to me that there was a whole story behind this bizarre icon of the comedy world, which is the same kind of blithe acceptance that leads to things like Peeps and Mariah Carey Christmas albums.
Apparently the genesis of the rubber chicken is as weird as the thing itself. One of the more inventive historical theories I came across put rubber chickens in a starring role in the French Revolution. Soldiers affixed chickens made of rubber to the ends of their muskets as either good luck charms or to taunt their enemies. Dear Monty Python, we have located one of your deleted scenes.
In all likelihood, rubber chickens made their comedy debut sometime in Great Britain in the 1800s. Joseph Grimaldi was a famous performer who revolutionized the art of clowning and pantomime, a mainstay of English theatre at the time. Grimaldi often stuffed his costume with rubber food props, including chickens, for bits punching up on the hypocrisies and excesses of the upper-classes, which always killed. I’m sure nothing burned the Duke of Bumbleton like a Grimaldi joke about his silver chamber pots and plump chestnuts, complete with visual aids.
But the rubber chicken most commonly associated with comedians like Fozzie Bear flopped onto the American scene in the early 1900s with the arrival of vaudeville. This popular entertainment fare prefigured the modern variety show with its diverse mixture of acts: singers, acrobats, animal acts, jugglers, and, of course, comic performers. Vaudeville was fast-paced, visceral and physical, and easy to understand. In this respect, vaudeville appealed to a general audience likely to be full of both English and non-English speaking spectators. A dog wearing a top hat and tuxedo coat performing backflips through a hoop transcends the language and taste barriers. Vaudeville was the TikTok of the 1900s. Comedians ruled vaudeville; it was their Wonka chocolate factory, a kind of anything goes playground for a style of humor that was heavy on slapstick and physical gags and light on anything particularly “thinky.” Vaudeville comics deployed the rubber chicken as a funny weapon knitting together the threads of violence and humor that show up in movies like Home Alone and Happy Gilmore. You can imagine how it went on those vaudeville stages: sometimes you needed a rubber chicken to punctuate the bit, sometimes you needed it to punctuate the side of your comedy partner’s face. Either way: hilarity guar-AN-teed!
You would think that something as dopey and odd and kind of forgettable as a chicken made of rubber could not be improved upon. Clearly you were not paying attention when the Slanket (blanket with sleeves) came into our lives. In 1939 the Loftus Novelty Shop opened its modest doors to the public in Salt Lake City, Utah. Inside consumers could purchase any number of unique magic and novelty items such as sneezing powder, card trick sets, and, yes, rubber chickens. Thanks to the advent of latex and the evolution of injection molding machines, items such as the beloved rubber chicken could be cheaply, easily mass produced. Loftus became a wholesale business in the 1960s, claiming rubber chicken dominance: to date, the company sells between 10-20,000 rubber chickens each year. As President Jim Rose said in a 2013 interview for Modern Farmer (real thing), Loftus chickens are simply superior to the competition. Loftus rubber chickens are soft and pliable. They can be tied into a knot! The yellowness of the body and red of the comb are carefully calibrated to be vibrant and eye-catching. Rose goes on to describe them as “warm and inviting,” which begs a few more questions about “market research” and “focus groups” and what kind of unholy happenings are going on behind closed doors in the Rose homestead. I judge not.
The rubber chicken has outlived its usefulness in performance, though you might make the case that someone like Maria Bamford or Jenny Slate could rock one of those things in their acts like it’s never gone out of style (Loftus orders skyrocket!). But then I think about Adeline and the silliness and wacky fun she has with Pox and I think that’s the secret to its outlandish longevity. It makes us laugh just by existing. It begs for us to get creative and imaginative. It offers the kind of absurd, childish joy that is precious, timeless, and vital.
Lens Zen!
Boom-shacka-LILAC-a!
A rainy London spring in New England gifted us with tulip-pa-looza and lilac nation. Can you smell these photographs? Every yard was a scene-stealer with these lovelies dangling their perfumed locks over fences and walls. If only I could camel them up and enjoy them in February. *Sigh*
That is so interesting the genesis of the rubber chicken! You have one up on me as I don't think I have EVER seen one of those things in person not being held by Fozzie or other onscreen character.
Last year my family and I visited a town for their hot mineral springs, but we also walked around the cute old timey Main Street area. One of the buildings was a straight up vaudeville theater that seemed to still be in operation! My 12yo was asking "what's vaudeville?" and so what I replied was, "it's sort of the original SNL!"
I would say out of the current crop of SNL players, Sarah Sherman is the one who is the most vaudeville with her very outlandish visual gags and exaggerated vocal delivery. But you don't see that kind of acting nowadays huh? Another great article Sheila and thanks for stirring fond memories of my family trip!
Only you would dance all this together so perfectly and teach us and make us laugh in the process. A pox upon us all!!! 💜💜💜