Born in Leicester, England, Julian Barnes worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary before becoming a literary critic and author. He has published more than a dozen novels (including crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh) and has been shortlisted three times for the Man Booker Prize.

In this excerpt from "MPTV," an essay about the televised proceedings of the House of Commons ("the best show in town"), Barnes defines the essential characteristics of the pantomime, a form of popular theater in England since the 16th century. "The British," Barnes says, "have managed to export some surprising things--cricket, marmalade, the humor of Benny Hill--but they have never succeeded in unloading the New Year pantomime on anyone else."

from MPTV*

by Julian Barnes

The panto has its historical roots in the harlequinade and was cross-fertilized by the Victorian music hall. In essence, it consists of a fairy tale--the story of Cinderella, Mother Goose, Alladin, Dick Whittington--that, while drawing on a traditional narrative line, is constantly updated by topical references, often of a satirical nature. Its central modes are farce and melodrama, with large openings for the miraculous and the sentimental; it aims itself simultaneously at small children, who follow its twists with an awesome directness of response, and at their accompanying parents, who are wooed by coarse double entendres supposedly above the heads of their offspring. It includes two elements with powerful appeal to the British: cross-dressing (the principal boy is always played by a girl, and the Pantomime Dame by a middle-aged man) and comic animals (who aren't played by themselves, either). It retains, if in an attenuated form, a worldview by which Britannia rules the waves and foreigners are a humorous supporting act.

Finally, it boasts a promiscuous permeability to modern culture, so that at any moment the stage is likely to be invaded by some two-minute television cult that the parents have barely caught on to. Darth Vader outfits jostle with TV magicians, old Empire racism with Green jokes, and all is resolved with much audience participation and a join-in-or-die singsong. Perhaps, on reflection, it isn't too surprising that the panto hasn't caught on in other countries.

It has always been a ramshackle, catchall, demotic genre. Parents returning to their first panto since they themselves were kids are apt to bemoan the debasement of this popular old British art form, but the truth is that it has always been debased--that's to say, various, eclectic, vulgar, referential, and topical. Whether one panto is actually "better" than any other is almost impossible for an adult eye to judge. Perhaps more to the point is that the pantomime is usually a child's first introduction to the theater, and that the allure of the tiered darkness, velvet curtains, and interval ice cream seems undiminished and undiminishable. Amazingly, the pantomime doesn't put kids off the theater for life.

Selected Works by Julian Barnes

• Flaubert's Parrot, a novel (Knopf, 1985)
• A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, a novel (Knopf, 1989)
• Letters from London, essays (Vintage Books, 1995)
• England, England, a novel (Knopf, 1999)
• Something to Declare: Essays on France and French Culture (Knopf, 2002)
• Nothing to Be Frightened Of, nonfiction (Random House, 2008)

* First published as "Letter from London" in The New Yorker magazine, March 5, 1990, "MPTV" was reprinted in Letters from London, by Julian Barnes (Vintage Books, 1995).