252: Poultry Slam 2003

Ira Glass

In Danielle's house, ever since she was a girl, when holiday dinners come, they serve a meal that will probably look familiar to you. Picture main course, big platter, drum sticks, white breast meat, golden brown skin, stuffing, and gravy, and cranberry relish on the side. And in Danielle's family they have a name for this meal that she told me on the phone recently. The name for this meal is--

Ira Glass

Got that?

Ira Glass

Well, from WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. A special program today on the wonders of fish.

Actually, we can say the word here, and the word is poultry. And as you know, each week on our program we choose some theme, invite a variety of writers and performers to tackle that theme. And this week, as we stand now in that magical five weeks of the year, that magical five weeks between the turkey served at Thanksgiving and the turkey served at Christmas, a period when Americans consume nearly a fourth of all the turkey consumed in this country every year. And every year during this important time, This American Life brings you yet another program about poultry. That's right-- stories about turkeys, chickens, ducks, fowl of all kind, and their mysterious hold over us.

I'm Ira Glass. Coming up this hour, Act One: Duki. The story of a typical American family and imaginary poultry. Act Two: what poultry-positive program would be complete without--

Ira Glass

Yes, indeed. In the late 1960s, the winged warrior struck terror in the hearts of evildoers on radios all across this great nation. Today, my friends, he flies again. Act Three: Chicken Diva. In that act, an opera about Chicken Little sung in Italian, and-- no kidding-- able to make a grown man cry. Act Four: Trying To Respect The Chicken. The story of one woman's quest to try to give chickens the honor and the dignity that they are rarely accorded, even though the chickens resist her efforts.

Stay with us.

Ira Glass

Act One: Duki. So in Danielle's family, the power of poultry is so great in their lives that when they serve chicken or turkey, they call it--

Ira Glass

That's right. And they call it this for a reason. And the reason has to do with a stuffed hand puppet called Duki.

Now, Danielle, is a woman over 30 years old. Her sister Ashley is two years younger. Duki has been in the family since they were children.

Ira Glass

It's not unusual for older siblings to dominate younger ones. And as children, Danielle dominated Ashley. Ashley looked up to Danielle, fought to get her attention and her approval, and Danielle always, always got her way. Except when Duki was around.

Basically, Ashley would channel-- I mean, the word's kind of an anachronism in this context-- but she would channel Duki. She would become Duki's voice. She would speak as Duki. And Duki was sarcastic. Duki was selfish and bossy. Duki would insult Danielle. Duki would tease Danielle. Duki would give her painful nose squeaks.

Ira Glass

All right. I've been at Daniels apartment sometimes, and I've witnessed the following scene-- picture, please. Danielle has not spoken with her sister in weeks. She picks up the phone, calls Ashley in Michigan. Ashley answers. Danielle asks immediately, "can you put Duki on?"

And then Ashley essentially becomes Duki, puts Duki on the phone. Danielle talks to Duki for 15, 20 minutes. And then they both hang up. That's the whole conversation. And they both feel satisfied. These are adult-- Danielle is an editor at a big New York magazine.

Ira Glass

So I hope it's becoming clear why, if you eat dinner in the home of Danielle's family, if they're serving some kind of poultry-- you know, chicken or turkey-- if you were to ask anybody in the family, "what's for dinner," they'll tell you--

Ira Glass

Now, I thought I would try to book Duki to come on the radio for this program. So I contacted Danielle's sister Ashley and asked her, you know, "could Duki come on the air?" I received an answer back not by phone, but by electronic mail that for Duki to appear, I'd have to first go through someone named Yona Lu, who I could reach through Danielle and Ashley's mother. And when I talked to Danielle, I asked her about this.

Ira Glass

All right. As you might imagine, not everybody in the family takes all this so lightly. Danielle's father was never too keen on this.

Ira Glass

Well, I did finally snag an interview with Duki by calling Ashley.

Ira Glass

Duki, a stuffed hand puppet, now lives in New York City.

Ira Glass

Well, the story of a 27 year old graduate student who talks like a duck naturally brings us to the story of Chickenman.

Chickenman first soared the radio airwaves from 1966 to 1969. Nearly every day there would be a new episode. These were these short little things, each one two minutes long or so. Starting on WCFL here in Chicago, but spreading to over 1,500 radio stations. Three times, by the way, that's three times the number in the public radio network. According to the people who syndicate Chickenman, it has been translated into German, into Dutch, into Swedish. It is still on the air, they say, in several dozen markets.

Chickenman. Chickenman existed years before National Public Radio existed as a national network. Chickenman will continue probably years after we're all gone. Like the mighty cockroach. Like-- I don't know. Like the bagel. Like [? Haleva. ?] Chickenman endures, will endure.

Well, let's hear what all the fuss was about.

Chickenman Show Announcer

Now another exciting episode in the life of the most fantastic crime fighter the world has ever known.

Chickenman Show Announcer

Benton Harper, employed as a shoe salesman for a large downtown department store, spends his weekends, his only two days off, striking terror into the hearts of criminals everywhere as the white winged warrior called Chickenman. How did it come about that Benton Harper, weekend winged warrior, selected the visage of the chicken in his crusade against the forces of evil? Now it can be told.

[DOOR OPENING]

Chickenman Show Announcer

Be listening tomorrow for another exciting episode in the life of the most fantastic crime fighter the world has ever known.

Ira Glass

I love these. You want to hear another? We have time for another. You want to hear another?

The thing I love is how completely low key the performances are. It's like they're not even trying. It's a complete aesthetic. All right. Let's hear one more before we continue with the next act.

Chickenman Show Announcer

Now another exciting episode in the life of the most fantastic crime fighter the world has ever known.

Chickenman Show Announcer

The office of the police commissioner of Midland City.

[PHONE RINGING]

Chickenman Show Announcer

Well, say, that Chicken Missile really works nifty. Will the Midland City Fire Department recommend that a Chicken Missile receiver be installed in what's left of Midland City Hall?

Be listening tomorrow for another exciting episode in the life of the most fantastic crime fighter the world has ever known.

Ira Glass

Well, thank you very much to the creator and voice of Chickenman, Mr. Dick Orkin. Always very strange to talk to him on the phone to get permission to put these things on the radio because he sounds just like Chickenman.

A collection of all the Chickenman episodes is for sale at radio-ranch.com, that's radio hyphen ranch dot com.

Coming up, it ain't over till the fat chicken sings. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues.

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme and bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, during this period of greatest poultry consumption in our nation-- the two weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas-- we bring you stories of chickens, turkeys, ducks, fowl of all kind real and imagined.

We've done this poultry show so many times year after year in November that today's show is basically a greatest hits of chicken stories from many, many years past.

Ira Glass

We've arrived at Act Three of our program. Act Three: Chicken Diva.

Chickens are what we make of them in a lot of ways. If you could possibly need further evidence of that after those first two acts we just heard, we have this story from Jack Hitt.

Jack Hitt

Oddly enough, it wasn't Susan who was obsessed with chickens, it was Kenny, a pal who worked backstage at the 92nd Street Y in New York. His house was filled with chicken cups, chicken masks. He got the whole staff onto chickens, including Susan. For a time there in the 80s, poultry-related jokes and references became the fast way to get a laugh at the Y.

I guess most of us are condemned to see nothing more than the easy comedy of chickens, but Susan Vitucci saw something else-- their potential greatness, their hidden beauty, their grandeur. One day she glued together some finger puppets for a 10 minute rendition of the Chicken Little story for her nephew. That was 14 years ago. Today it is a full length opera enjoyed by a cult following whenever it goes up in a workshop or cafe or small theater.

It's still performed with finger puppets, but now it has a complete score written by a noted composer, Henry Krieger, who did Dreamgirls. The Chicken Little opera he wrote with Susan Vitucci is called Love's Fowl. Needless to say, that's F-O-W-L.

Jack Hitt

Susan and I are sitting at Henry's baby grand piano. Henry's guest is his Maltese terrier named Toby.

OK, listen carefully. Because once Toby gets going, he actually harmonizes with Henry and Susan.

[MUSIC - HENRY KRIEGER AND SUSAN VITUCCI SINGING IN ITALIAN]

[DOG WHINING AND HOWLING TO MUSIC]

You may have noticed that this libretto is in Italian, just like a real opera.

Jack Hitt

You may recall that when you last heard of Little, back in kindergarten, she was just an average barn door fowl who had an acorn drop on her head, which she mistakenly understood to be the sky falling. Her alarms excited her friends, Goosey Loosey, Turkey Lurkey, and Ducky Lucky. And they join her for a journey to the king to tell him the important news. On the way, they meet up with Sly Fox. Little's pals eagerly accept his invitation for dinner, literally, as it turns out. Fortunately for Little, hunger is not enough to distract her from her mission, and she tracks on.

When she meets the king, he tells her that the sky's not falling-- it's just an acorn. So the enlightened Chicken Little returns to her coop, and that's where the story ends. What are we to take away from Little's experience? I like to think it's that Little is rewarded with life, precisely because she went off on this Quixotic mission, totally in the grip of a wrong idea.

[SINGING IN ITALIAN]

The children's fable barely figures into the story. It's just one small episode in the life of Chicken Little, now known as La Pulcina Piccola. After the acorn incident, she goes on to become an internationally renowned figure in almost every field imaginable, a diva of politics, academe, theater, art, daring-do. Like Venus, she arrives from some other world, transported on a scallop shell.

But the triumphs of her life began after a youthful love affair with a fighting cock ends bitterly, and she consoles herself, as we all do at some point in our lives, by plunging into Shakespeare. She becomes an overnight sensation as an actress, celebrated all over the world for one role. Juliet? Cleopatra? Ophelia?

Jack Hitt

I can assure you there's nothing like watching a four inch tall finger puppet crying out, "a horse, a horse-- my kingdom for a horse" in Italian. Not to mention that that puppet is a chicken, surrounded by a whole supporting cast of poultry and other avian supernumeraries. Susan says that, artistically, there's something special about chickens.

Jack Hitt

Except for La Pulcina. In the opera, she moves into the field of archaeology, masters it, needless to say, and makes a great discovery-- the last tomb of Gallapatra. But not before she sails the seven seas, is ship wrecked, gets rescued-- but it's by pirates-- and then she meets the pirate king.

Jack Hitt

Let me repeat that lyric for you in a purer translation. "Although I stand before you, a chicken, who is dripping wet, I am proud and I am yellow." OK. Back to Susan.

Jack Hitt

Keep in mind that all of the action-- like everything that occurs in every Susan Vitucci production, ever since the first one for her nephew, and continuing to this day-- occurs among characters created by sticking a small painted Styrofoam ball onto a larger painted Styrofoam ball, poking in two map tacks for eyes, gluing on a tiny felt beak, and then impaling the whole thing on top of one of those really old fashioned clothes pins that a forties cartoon figure would clamp to his nose around a chunk of Limburger cheese.

[SINGING IN ITALIAN]

And I could go on.

Susan has written, or she puts it, "translated" La Pulcina Piccola's diaries, which detail the other adventures that happened in between those in the opera. There are 60 pages so far, excerpts of which have appeared in Clothes Lines, the official fan club newsletter of the opera.

Love's Fowl has a strange effect on people. I didn't understand until Susan loaned me a videotape of one performance. To be honest, I thought I would be annoyed at the intentional irony and hokiness of the puppets. But there I was with my three year old daughter, who loved the show, watching a plastic bird pantomime one of the simplest human moments, but also one of the most profound-- the confession of a great love. In this case, with a cock robin.

Jack Hitt

And after they've agreed to fly together, and they're soaring in the air, Cock Robin is shot and killed, murdered by a jealous sparrow. I couldn't believe it, but I was getting choked up, especially when Cock Robin appeared on the stage, his Styrofoam body spray painted black for the lament, has little magic marker eyes drawn as x's. I gathered my daughter in my arms and held on tight, as I was helplessly drawn into an expression of the grief and suffering of this little sad bird.

In this era of slick special effects, there was something unexpectedly liberating in the marriage of this crude medium-- painted Styrofoam balls bobbing up and down behind a cardboard box-- and the high melodramatic art of Italian opera. Picture it.

[SINGING IN ITALIAN]

I want a subscription to that newsletter.

Ira Glass

Jack Hitt is a writer who lives in New Haven.

[MUSIC - "FINGER LICKIN' GOOD" BY THE BEASTIE BOYS]

Ira Glass

Act Four-- Trying To Respect The Chicken.

Sure, it's one thing to take a fictional character like Chicken Little and make her into a star. Try doing that with a real chicken. Just try.

Ira Glass

In a world where chickens get no respect, Tamara Staples treats them the way the humans treat those we revere most. She takes their portraits lovingly. Her shots are like fashion photographs, beautifully-lit, color backdrops. They're beautiful.

Ira Glass

In a way, it's like Tamara Staples is running an odd little cross-species science experiment, one that asks this question: what happens when you try to treat a chicken the way we treat humans? Even if it's just for the length of a photo shoot.

What happens, it turns out, is that you learn just where the thin line is that divides human beings from birds. All right. Maybe it's not such a thin line, but it's definitely a line, and, like most city people, I had never thought about it. About where it lays, about what it might be, what it might consist of, until Tamara and I headed out to a farm.

[ROOSTER CROWING]

[CHICKENS CLUCKING]

Ira Glass

We're at the Davidson's Dairy Farm, about an hour and a half northwest of Chicago. Family members present-- Paul, who's helping Tamara choose a bird to photograph, his sister Laura, who's studying photography at a nearby university, the grandfather, George Cairns, a veteran breeder, their father, Dick, who seems the most skeptical of this whole project, but who patiently shows Tamara and her assistant, Dennis, the milking barn as a possible place to set up and shoot.

Ira Glass

Tamara takes us all outside the barn-- so dust won't get on her photos-- and shows them her shots, name dropping the names of some big chicken people, people whose birds she's photographed. Including Bob Wulff, editor of The Poultry Press. Dick notices that a bird in one photo has crooked toes.

Ira Glass

Fact is, while city people usually go nuts when they see Tamara's pictures, a lot of chicken breeders don't like them. And to understand why, to fully comprehend this little culture clash here in America, we have to leave the barnyard for a minute and flash back to something that happened back at Tamara's apartment in the city.

Tamara showed me this old red book from the turn of the century. This is a book the seal of the American Poultry Association in gold on the front. And then, right there in gold letters--

Ira Glass

Tamara flipped past the engravings and illustrations of chickens of all types and breeds. These were show chickens, standing the way that chickens stand in competitions. Then Tamara pulled out one of her own photos to compare, to show me how her poses do not meet the standard in the book.

Ira Glass

That's for them. For herself, for her city customers, she uses the others. OK, back to the barnyard.

[CHICKEN SQUAKING]

Tamara and the Davidsons decide to set up the photo session in a room that's usually used to store feed for the cows. It takes about 45 minutes to set this up. That 45 minutes includes dismantling and moving a wall of hay that is probably 10 feet high and 15 feet long. This takes five people.

Then in comes the power and the fancy lights and the cloth backdrop that gets hung from the steel pole. The backdrop is ironed first with an iron and ironing board brought from the city just for that purpose.

Ira Glass

It was cold. Well below freezing. So cold that the Polaroid film that Tamara uses for lighting tests would not fully develop.

Ira Glass

Our first bird is a white Cornish, a show bird who belongs to George. His show bird is used to being picked up and handled. Part of preparing chickens for shows involves handling them a lot so they'll be calm with the judges.

Ira Glass

Tamara has the Cornish stand up on a stack of little red antique books-- kind of unsteady.

Things go well for a while. She gets a half dozen good shots of the bird. Expressive shots. More personality than Standard of Perfection, George tells me. The bird's chest isn't high enough, it's body is not turned correctly to the camera. And then the bird stops cooperating. He gets tired. Paul has a suggestion.

Ira Glass

Laura grabs a hen and waves it at the flaccid cock. The cock does not rise. I can say that on the radio, right?

Ira Glass

They try this and that, nothing with much success. Finally, with one shot left, Paul suggests putting a hen into the picture with the rooster.

Ira Glass

Not Standard of Perfection. Even these perfectly bred Cornishes could not achieve the Standard of Perfection today. And even in this goofy, un-bird-like situation, an hour of watching them makes clear just how hard it is to ever get birds to hit the standard. Which is to say not only do we completely dominate every aspect of the lives of chickens-- their births, their feed, their eggs, their slaughter-- not only have we bred them to human specifications to meet human needs, but we have created a standard for what it means to be a chicken that most chickens can never meet. That's what the standard means. We judge them as chickens, and we find them lacking. If they had brains to understand this, they would be right to feel indignant.

But of course, this is a city person's perspective, and that means it is completely wrong-headed from the point of view of anybody who actually raises birds. Standing in the cold feed room, I had a long, long talk with George about this. George is 80 years old. He's been raising birds since the-- I guess the Calvin Coolidge administration. And he says the whole fun of raising birds is raising them to the standard.

Ira Glass

George tells me that when he's breeding a new batch of birds, he'll hatch 65 of them, and only one or two will be anywhere near the Standard of Perfection. That's how hard it is.

Ira Glass

That's right. The fads. Like Cornishes these days are supposed to have shorter legs than the real Standard of Perfection. Vertical tail feathers are out in all sorts of breeds that really should have them. In the country, among the chicken breeders, they think about a lot of things you never get to in the city.

Ira Glass

George gives me a pamphlet that he's written up. No doctor has actually checked him out to prove the cancer is gone from his body. He's actually got no hard scientific proof that this really works, but he says God told him that this is the way he should be spending his time. And it has cut into his bird breeding a bit.

George leaves, off on other business. Tamara is finished hanging and lighting the next backdrop. And the rest of us begin with the second bird, a bird called a Brahma, with elaborately patterned brown and white feathers.

[BIRD CLUCKING]

Our second bird demonstrates the great distance between bird, instinct, and intelligence. And the demands of modern fashion photography, which is to say, of civilization. Called upon to do human tasks, even rather passive ones, a bird remains a bird.

Paul carries the huge hen onto the fragile little set Tamara has built.

Ira Glass

"I'm scared of this one," she says, quietly, as she adjusts her camera. The chicken is so big-- nine pounds, the size of a small consumer turkey-- that she has to pull the camera back. the Davidsons are looking at her skeptically. Paul asked pointedly if she's ever shot a bird this big.

Ira Glass

This combination of coddling and threats might motivate an aspiring supermodel, or an eager puppy. But this, after all, is a chicken. Laura tries to lure it up with a handful of corn.

Ira Glass

Someone during this ordeal, a funny thing happens. All the Davidsons, who all started off skeptical, they are completely engaged. Dick suggests a pose that is pure art concept, a pose that could not be further from Standard of Perfection. Laura lures the bird with corn, Paul smooths feathers, and when the bird quivers or moves a wing, three people jump in to fix it back up.

Ira Glass

It wasn't until this point that I realized that I came into this sort of expecting the bird to be more, well, more human. Partly, I think, because I had never really thought about this one way or the other. But partly because Tamara's photos make chicken seem so thoughtful.

Ira Glass

Those photos are a lie.

[PEOPLE CLICKING TO GET BIRD'S ATTENTION]

Ira Glass

Fact is, you can try to give chickens respect. You can try to treat them dignity, and photograph them the way you'd photograph anything or anyone that's serious, but the chickens will not care. You can make them look dignified, but it is a brainless, bird-like dignity, and it is ephemeral.

Ira Glass

We pack up our gear and move the massive wall of hay back into place. As we do this, chickens hop by. Brahmas, Americanas, mixed breeds. They seem utterly uninterested in us. They cluck at each other, there's feed to eat, hay to nestle in-- they have better things to do with their time. And you know, there's nothing that makes you realize just how inhuman chickens are than spending a day trying to make them seem human.

[CHICKEN AND COW SOUNDS]

Ira Glass

Well, the stories in today's program were produced by Alex Blumberg, Susan Burton, Blue Chevigny, Julie Snyder, Alix Spiegel and Nancy Updike. Musical help from Mr. John Connors. Thanks also to Larry Josephson and Jay Hedblade. Elizabeth Meister runs our web site.

Tamara Staples' photographs of chickens are now in a book called Fairest Fowl: Portraits of Championship Chickens. Susan Vitucci's opera about Chicken Little is available on CD at www.pulcina.org. That is Pulcina spelled, of course, P-U-L-C-I-N-A.

Ira Glass

WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who decided he did not want to come onto our program after he asked just one question--

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

Announcer

PRI. Public Radio International.