Laughing Without Seeing

Laughing Without Seeing

   Some months ago, The New Yorker reviewed a series of books about our television habits, what we watched over the years and why.  The piece opens with this: "The program you are about to see...seeks to throw a humorous spotlight on our frailties, prejudices and concerns.  By making them a source of laughter, we hope to show -in a mature fashion- just how absurd they are."  Imagine seeing that cautionary warning appear before a television show today.  That show was All In the Family, one which took years to even be approved by CBS executives, who feared a backlash.  Within a year, the show became Number 1 and would stay there for five years.*

   In the review, what Archie Bunker started carried on to Tony Soprano and Walter White, where "fans saw him as one of their own."  As reviewer Emily Nussbaum says, "Archie was the first masculine powerhouse to simultaneously charm and alienate viewers, and, much like the men who came after him, he longed for an era when 'guys like us, we had it made.'  Archie represented the danger and the potential of television itself, its ability to influence viewers rather than merely help them kill time."

   Later on, she points out that, "to critics, the show wasn't the real problem: its audience was...most bigoted viewers didn't perceive the program as satirical. They identified with Archie's perspective, saw him as winning arguments...seemed to be even more appealing to those who shared Archie's frustrations with the culture around him, a 'silent majority' who got off on hearing taboo thoughts said aloud."

   So it is said today with a few comedians, some more outrageous than others, some willing to push into territory that is close to offensive.  Just one example might be Jim Jeffries, an Australian comedian who drinks beer on stage and considers no subject taboo. Watching him (clips are available on YouTube) you almost want to turn him off...almost.  On one of his takes on Christianity he questions how God put two white people, naked white people he adds, in the middle of a jungle, had them make children upon children on which ALL the billions of us are descended, and despite the incest that had to follow, no mental illnesses or deformities occurred.  Yeah, makes sense, he says ( he makes no bones about being an atheist).  Ouch...but then you walk away thinking, hey, I never thought of that.

   This isn't easy on artists, be they comedians or songwriters or actors.  Making an audience think without having them walk out, having them laugh and questioning WHY they laughed later...tough stuff and some comedians don't hold up as well as others (the Laugh Factory in Hollywood has had an on-staff psychologist for the past 3.5 years).  "Often," said The Week which told of her, "she stands in the back of the club watching her clients perform.  It can provide clues as to what's hurting them."

   One book writes of how comedy is our outlet to subjects we simply can't discuss, or don't feel comfortable discussing, which was much the same topic in an essay by Paul Graham way back in 2004.  Think of Rwanda (as one report in The New Yorker said, "At no other time in the history of our species were so many of us killed so fast or so intimately; roughly a million people in a hundred days, most of them butchered by hand, by their neighbors, with household tools and homemade weapons--machetes and hoes and hammers and clubs."  Even now, when some questioned ISIS being so brutal and still proclaiming to be Muslim, Jerry A. Coyne wrote in NewRepublic, "Yes, ISIS is based on a strain of Islam that's 'barbaric,' (but) if ISIS is not Islamic, then the Inquisition was not Catholic."

   What we want to or do NOT want to face is sometimes exposed in comedy, subjects of a broad nature...politics, being gay, even religion.  But even within our relationships, subjects such as intimacy or feelings, abuse or dementia,  unhappiness or a feeling of being "trapped," even preparing for death and what will come after, are all brushed under the mat.  Too difficult to talk openly about, perhaps later, another time...like never.

   As shocking as some material is, we each have our own editing mechanism.  We can walk out, turn it off, or politely pretend to chuckle with the rest of the audience only to grumble later.  But every now and then, someone steps up to the plate and introduces something so radical that we gasp and turn red and pretend we don't want to hear or see anymore...and it becomes a hit, maybe not instantly but if it's something that needed to be discussed, that is on the minds of many, that isn't so shut out that we simply don't want to know (say, how a slaughterhouse works), then perhaps it was something that simply needed someone brave enough to say it (think back now on how tame and dated All In the Family appears, something recognized in the hit series, The 4400, when people from all different times and years disappear, only to reappear together as a group with no memory of what happened, only noticing how many things have changed since they left).

   We may prefer to watch Walter White or Archie Bunker from the safety of our room, able to laugh and able to think that we know someone with that same sort of personality.  But then, maybe when we leave a party or a dinner, we might each leave with a tinge of a thought that we wished we would have been a bit more sincere...and talked about a few things that perhaps were bothering us a bit.  ah well, maybe later, maybe another time...maybe never.


*Some interesting tidbits about the show emerged from the reviewed book, Sitcom, by Saul Austerlitz.  For one, Archie was supposed to be played by an aging Mickey Rooney, who declined because of the material.  Michael ("Meathead") was originally Irish and wore beads then became a "clean cut jock," and neither was played by Rob Reiner.  The show was shelved for two years until a new CBS president, Robert Wood, arrived and wanted to get rid of the Lassies and Green Acres, a "rural purge," as the book labels it.  But credit Norman Lear (who purchased the rights to the original version from Britain, sight unseen) and wouldn't budge to the changes CBS demanded...language, scripts and scenes all remained as planned in Lear's writing.  The rest in history...