NOW TELL US WHAT YOU REALLY THINK!
(Waits for laugh...)
Nearly fifty years ago, for reasons long lost to memory, a colleague, not then and not now someone I would call a friend, even in that modern and singularly hep Facebookish way, was at my apartment and watched the premiere episode of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, over my shoulder, on a yellow plastic, 9-inch screen black and white Panasonic television set that was ubiquitous among comic book talent in those primitive days.
To be sure, as memory serves, that premiere wasn’t all that funny. And to be clear, this colleague of mine never actually laughed, in any normally recognizable as hilarity manifesting itself physically way. Rather, at various times in the course of what felt to me like an occasionally interminable and frequently obvious ninety-minute broadcast, in reaction to what was apparently supposed to generate laughter, he pointed at the screen and said, and I quote, “That’s funny!”
This was my first experience that I can recall with what has come to be called “Clapter,” which I would define as recognizing the attempt, often by a professional, at comedy, a stab at generating a laugh, but not actually reacting to it neurologically; because the joke was flat, or you just didn’t get it, or perhaps you were so humor free that comedy was just something you pretended to enjoy because, you know, everybody else seemed to, right?
More recently, a mere two or three years back, I took my wife to see THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG. For those unfamiliar with this apparently metastasizing franchise, this is a comedy ostensibly depicting a performance of a disastrous local theater company’s attempt at a murder mystery, all slapstick, miscues, scenery disasters and physical comedy, as the title indicates.
For reasons which will become clear, I told Laurel absolutely nothing about what we were about to see.
It’s worth noting that my wife is a drop dead gorgeous 72-year-old, who presents as chic and sophisticated, not to mention ladylike, a woman of detached coolness and tacit reserve. This is a complex presentation, if not an outright façade, not the least because, despite that chic appearance, her choice in movies runs to classic westerns, war movies, and contemporary body count pictures.
Her taste in comedy runs to JACKASS, and just about anything involving massive destruction, near drowning, groin kicking, and dogs. She can watch Buster Keaton ‘til the cows come home, as a perfect example, just so you know she can dig the classics, too.
In sum, I am married to a modern-day version of a Carole Lombard character come to latter day life.
Suffice to say, when, in DODGEBALL, Rip Torn started throwing wrenches at Justin Long, she lost her shit and was unable to speak coherently for the rest of the movie. And in that regard, don’t get me started on RENO:911: THE MOVIE.
None of this is to say that she doesn’t enjoy mature witty word play, but Johnny Knoxville getting kicked in the balls beats all that Noel Coward stuff hands down.
So, we’re at the Ahmanson, and THE PLAY THAT GOES WRONG proceeds, and, as I anticipated, shit was lost. It might be worth mentioning that when this happens, she really loses it, with tears streaming, and noises emerge from this 5’2,” nicely turned-out blonde that resemble nothing more than a pelican getting a nonconsensual colonoscopy. Really.
At this, two utter twats, contemporaries of ours seated behind us, began to mutter in contempt, dismissive of my wife’s laughter. They were not amused by the play, and my wife’s reaction struck them as, I suppose, an overreaction to what they knew in their heart of hearts was unamusing unacceptable lowball twaddle aimed at the worst sort of lowlifes.
I turned around, suggested politely that they go fuck themselves, and proceeded to take delight in Laurel’s own uncontrolled delight. This aspect of her character is, I might add, one of the ongoing joys of my marriage.
All this is to say that comedy, and the laughter that should or does follow it, are subjective enterprises. What makes you laugh—uncontrollably, and without thought—is yours to own and cherish. It’s that loss of control that makes what makes you lose your own shit so damned special.
This should be blatantly obvious, but, as I learn daily, much of what I regard as a taken for granted given is far from universally accepted as a part of what passes for modern social intercourse.
As victim culture, along with its mercenary accomplice, performative morality, have become the deciding factor in what is and isn’t acceptable discourse, comic or otherwise, comedy has come to be identified as a form of potentially vicious barbarism masking as entertainment to be wielded against any number of vulnerable subsets in modern society.
We’ve all grown accustomed to hearing comedians, admittedly most of a certain age and temperament, complaining about audiences too easily offended by what are now regarded as verboten transgressions in performance.
Comedy has become, according to many professionals, a minefield of social terrorism, a battlefield in a war between that above mentioned performative morality versus a barricade manning transgressive cohort, the latter frequently losing the struggle in the name of what is defined as acceptable to social justice in any given moment.
Falling victim to this, of course, is actual cleverness, genuine wit, material provoking uncontrolled laughter. Actually funny shit which might yes, offend has been displaced by clever adjacent and prissily chickenshit non jokes. Perfectly safe, perfectly innocuous and a “do no harm” commitment worthy of Hippocrates seem to have become the yardsticks by which material is judged.
THE NEW YORKER, as ever a reflection of white middle class sensibility as seen through the filter of the bubble of New York manners and self-delusion, is the perfect reflection of this apparently unstoppable flood of tiresomely unfunny shit.
None of this is in any way improved by the right wing’s comically counterintuitive insistence that their radio personalities, those sneering opportunistic engines of cruelty, are satirists in the service of loyally opposing that shibboleth, and it pains me to type it, the words having been so drained of actual meaning and value, “political correctness.”
Yet the He Man Woman Haters Club members become desperately butt hurt when their dearly held representatives are mocked, in a risible echo of those college talent bookers offended by comedian’s often barely transgressive material. Not to embarrass myself, but this amuses me. Not, to the point of hilarity, mind. Amused.
Fear of actual uncontrolled response to comedy has created an entire subculture devoted to what can only in the most charitable of moods be described as “humor.” This material, vaguely amusing, clever adjacent, is devoured with gusto by an audience that seems to have no clue what uncontrolled hilarity set free looks, feels or sounds like.
These are people who are actually under the mistaken impression that replying to a remark with “Now tell me what you really think” is clever, as opposed to the confirmation of life sucking banality that is truly represented by such a response.
Such people are unworthy of any further consideration. They contribute nothing, and have likely never had an original thought, let alone engaged in anything resembling critical thinking, in their barren, vacant and minimally experienced lives.
Trust me on this.
We live and function in a culture that rejects expertise in science, in math, in general knowledge. So naturally it should come as no surprise that such is the case with comedy, as amateurs, bereft of talent, let alone even a whiff of comic gifts, have become the instrument of showing those of us blessed with, if I may flatter myself briefly, a certain quick wittedness, where to get the fuck off the love train.
As professionals are devalued, the amateurs have overtaken the franchise, and have committed the capital crime of fatuously first mistaking, then misrepresenting facetiousness as wit…hence the viral growth of that most loathsome iteration of modern digital discourse, the meme.
I first became aware of this phenomenon decades ago, when I heard the word, without quite grasping its meaning. I had it explained to me by a woman of my acquaintance, which frankly didn’t really clear it up for me. My only marginally piqued curiosity didn’t find her explanation interesting enough to pursue the issue, and that was that.
It really wasn’t until I became as marginally adept as I am today in the wonderful world of social media that I came to understand that memes were simply the modern-day equivalent of the sort of humor adjacent crap that derives from the endless repetition, say, of a hack comedian’s tiresome catchphrase.
From Joe Penner’s “Wanna buy a duck?” to J.J. Walker’s “Dyno-Mite!” and so very much more, drunks and idiots over the decades have amused themselves immeasurably by repeating this drivel, only occasionally surprised at the perplexed justifiable indifference generated by this meaningless time stamped and long expired bullshit.
To be even more concise, it seems to me that memes, as they present themselves on the digital stage, are the perfect vehicle for the sort of person who cracks up at a bumper sticker and permanently brands their car with this momentary “cleverness,” or buys and wears whatever is the “I’M WITH STUPID >” t shirt of the moment.
Rented witlessness by renting halfwits.
As noted above, we are surrounded by a horde that can’t distinguish facetiousness from wit, nor snide from clever. And that ignorance of comedy, of how comedy actually works, of that fear of actual comedy, has created a belief system about humor that quantifies the repetitiousness of one time and one time only at that, barely funny catchphrases, with that bumper sticker/t-shirt permanence.
My now voting age granddaughter spent much of the first year in which she could put a sentence together telling us the same joke. Over and over again, to her gasping for breath hilarity. With all due respect, I come to her defense by pointing out she was barely three years old. She was a lot funnier by the time she was nine, and her timing has continued to improve to this day.
This modern humor bereft community, with no real grasp of comedy but with control issues that make NASA jealous, indulges in the same endless repetition of what was a far from riotously funny image/idea in the first place, like that three-year-old who remains convinced that funny once is funny forever. She outgrew it. They seem unwilling to do so.
A perfect example of this is Bernie Sanders dressed for the bitter cold January weather at the Biden inaugural. That shit wasn’t worth a second look or second thought, but it sustained the wit free for what felt like fucking forever. So many iterations, so many brutally pointless restatements of just how funny it was in the first place(?)to see an old man dressed for the winter.
Comedy gold.
I loathe catchphrases. I don’t have anything on my bumper. I avoid t-shirts with text to discourage engagement with strangers. And for me, the very existence of memes is a dangerous democratization of a craft, a skillset, a pursuit that is best left in the hands of professionals. As they used to say, “Don’t try this at home.”
And yes, of course, there are professional comedians out there who offend and outrage me. Fuck them…by which I mean I don’t waste my time with shit that doesn’t make me laugh—and that shit most definitely includes punching down and pointless cruelty. You’ve been welcome to the likes of Andrew Dice Clay and all that came after—as for me, avoiding such crassness, such insidiously worthless shmuckery bereft of self-knowledge, is a healthy lifestyle choice worthy of an after school special.
That claque of comedian tends to attract a humor challenged Brozilla clapting crowd, anyway. And in that regard, memes, and their vast and endless pointlessness, are an unacknowledged consequence of allowing the inherently humorless, not to mention those with an outright hostility to hilarity, to dictate policy in regard to that very thing of which they have little or no understanding beyond its mechanics.
And entre nous, I deeply suspect that underpinning much of this fear, this rejection of actual comedy, is the sneaking suspicion, solipsistic as it may be, that they’re the butt of every joke they don’t get.