is comedy inherently conservative?

i hate how defending my dumb thread idea is going to force me to criticize all these things i like, like Louie.

I'd say "no," to the thread title, but not to the concerns raised by it. It's a tricky thing. Picking up on what Mordy said about power, I think comedy can either laugh up or down. (And of course it can sometimes be hard to tell which is which -- just ask Dave Chappelle.) What's most transgressive about comedy -- like, say, the first Eminem album -- is often also what's most brutal about it, and that brutality is most effective when it's least conveniently or even consciously aimed. See also the entire run of South Park, obviously. Does South Park subvert anything, or does it just reify existing power structures? The problem is that that question is always going to miss something essential about what makes comedy work. Funny South Park episodes aren't really more politically or socially defensible than lousy South Park episodes, they're just funnier.

Which doesn't answer the question, obviously.

what is more conservative dreams or comedy

i guess jonathan swift would make swift work of this thread question

xp whoa

btw every time I see live comedy I basically feel like I am watching someone have a nervous breakdown on stage, I can't really do it anymore

i hate how defending my dumb thread idea is going to force me to criticize all these things i like, like Louie.

No, but you're right. And that's the thing: there really isn't any comedy I can think of in the popular consciousness that isn't at least a little conservative. It's just a matter of degrees, and all of the degrees are worthy of criticism.

funny dreams for sure the most radical. unfunny reality sometimes the most conservative but also funny.

Humor has and always will be a reactionary force.

isn't the way that humor allows us to discuss and laugh about things that generally aren't allowed as serious topics a kinda radical element?

No. Humor acts as a mechanism of release and pacification. Energy that is potentially directed towards dismantling the existing power structure is used up in counterproductive emotions such as "laughter".

To be humorless is a necessary precondition for creating a better world.

I recently reread a bio of Will Gaines, which I had read in my teens and it lead me to idolize the dude and early MAD as the unparalleled liberal iconoclasts. Which, of course they weren't. They basically wouldn't hire female humorists, wouldn't allow wives on the legendary and exorbitant annual staff international vacations, used racial slurs, made horrible (and unfunny) jokes at the expense of Prohias and Aragones for their ethnicity, etc. All a reminder that one must not have too much love for heroes, who are fallible, including my favorites such as Tina Fey.

omg am i banaka?

xp

hey banaka, knock knock

banaka, i am sorry but you are wrong. laughter will be the song we sing as our consciousnesses are uploaded to the singularity. u didn't get the memo?

for real i think this used to bother me more when i was a self-styled revolutionary. it's probably a naive way to think about social change.

satire can be sort of conservative i guess. if everything is worthy of ridicule and scorn then why do anything differently than we do now? feel like this is often the case with british satirical humour. if you skewer everything then the subtext is to just keep going with the status quo. though you could probably get into a whole class thing about the kind of people who make comedy in britain, which is just boring imo.

the joke that the universe is cold + empty + meaningless > the revolutionary joke so i guess the question is whether the void is conservative or not

see my thing about "humorless" is that it's often slung at people who actually understand the machinations of humor (usually better than the people lobbing the accusation in the first place)

doctors who understand farts better than I do can be humorless ime

targeted satire isn't, though, is it? i am just thinking of "a modest proposal" here. it's some next-level imagining a worse world to invoke a better one.

xxxp

i think humorless tends to apply to ppl who take themselves seriously

I fart a lot tho, like all the time, people tell me about it all the time, like I fart more than most people

I think a more interesting model than swift for this convo would be rabelais but then again idk

yeah but not always xp

in day to day life isn't the funniest person often the most irreverent one?

i am often called humorless when i bring this up in real life tbh. but that's p accurate.

in day to day life isn't the funniest person often the most irreverent one?

I know from personal experience that there is a big diff between being actually funny as a craft and getting lols because you are in a serious situation and willing to say the most dumbshit thing available.

targeted satire isn't, though, is it? i am just thinking of "a modest proposal" here. it's some next-level imagining a worse world to invoke a better one.

xxxp

― horseshoe

yes, well this is the other side of the coin obv. satire can be qutie deliberately aimed at something and may be the opposite of conservative in any cases.

maybe 'comedy' is the art and 'humor' is the discourse? xp

didn't gabbneb have a *point of view* on comedy v. humor?

it wasn't what you just said, at any rate, Mordy; i am just free associatin

making jokes at a funeral is kinda sublime, esp if you are humiliated and frightened as you speak

tbh i think the world we live in pushing people to situate every fucking thing and idea and joke and object in the world on a left/right political spectrum is in and of itself kind of horrible and destructive, which is either why i should leave this thread alone or post more, i don't know

Some of the recent revisiting of the Beastie Boys got at this -- we were all really happy that they turned out to be such enlightened dudes, but otoh it wasn't being enlightened dudes that made them fun -- and funny -- in the first place.

I think a more interesting model than swift for this convo would be rabelais but then again idk

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, May 14, 2012 10:35 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ooh la la!

j/k tell me about french humor!

can we talk about this guy?

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/authphoto_330/14934_kafka_franz.jpg

tbh i think the world we live in pushing people to situate every fucking thing and idea and joke and object in the world on a left/right political spectrum is in and of itself kind of horrible and destructive, which is either why i should leave this thread alone or post more, i don't know

― kitty shayme (some dude), Monday, May 14, 2012 10:39 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't really mean "conservative" like Fox News, fwiw, al. then again, i don't really know what i do mean.

i guess i mean "deeply rooted in/committed to the world as it is"

conservative: the dark impulse in humanity to call forth totalitarianism? that's a kinda of death drive.

reactionary?

which, when it comes to race and gender can be troubling

xp yeah and reactionary might have been better

banaka, i am sorry but you are wrong. laughter will be the song we sing as our consciousnesses are uploaded to the singularity. u didn't get the memo?

― Mordy, Tuesday, May 15, 2012 3:31 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The "singularity" as popularly depicted is a technolibertarian fantasy. We are cyber-collectivists.

As we said, "humor" acts a release/pacification tool, a much more insidious opiate than even "religion".

When our goals are achieved, there will be no need for either.

if i can't laugh i want no part of your cyber-collectivist revolution

yeah and reactionary might have been better

Was just going to say that! Because in some literal sense comedy is reactionary, it's built around reactions to disruption.

I know from personal experience that there is a big diff between being actually funny as a craft and getting lols because you are in a serious situation and willing to say the most dumbshit thing available.

So OTM it should be printed on a tshirt and distributed to every practitioner of comedy, professional or otherwise.

comedy is ENTIRELY reactionary i think.

at least if we're talking performative comedy

But I think what you do with the reactions, how you channel them, makes a big difference in what kind of comedy it is.

bullshit. xxp

Of course if "comedy" is confined to either live mainstream stand-up or sitcoms, that might be true.

if i can't laugh i want no part of your cyber-collectivist revolution

― Mordy, Tuesday, May 15, 2012 3:43 AM (41 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Then the "joke" is on you. There are more "fulfilling" (for lack of a better word) states of being than "joy" "humor" "fun" etc. etc.

Why must humanity be reduced to such a limited emotional palette? Can we not better than we are?

i also don't particularly find the daily show very funny, maybe I am just quite tired of Jon Stewart mugging it up and thinking that's a good joke.

i don't find it funny at all, just kind of annoying and full of super obvious jokes that don't provide much insight into anything other than making the audience feel like they 'got' the joke and feeling smug

i find someone like anthony weiner deeply tragic and think an argument could be made that using him as the butt of jokes is very cruel- he is obviously a deeply damaged and broken person, as easy as it can be to mock him. does it make it okay because it is pointing 'up' the class/power structure? love your enemies, etc

Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (420 of them)

lol now that's some subversive shit

is it conservative when i make 420 jokes to my baby

answer to op is probably it depends. If yr a wasp- yes.

american conservaives are authoritarian at heart, and there's nothing funny about that shit. you're either contemptuously spitting on those below you (which is disgusting) or kissing the ass of the people above you. i don't think it has the right palette to make good comedy.

answer to op is probably it depends. If yr a wasp- yes.

― Mordy , Wednesday, July 31, 2013 1:07 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

?

here he is, 'bringing down the house':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUdco-_bBeI

I'd say it's pointed, but whether the arrow is pointing up-class or down-class makes a difference.

the problem is usually when people who think their arrow is pointing up-class still end up - necessarily, because comedy is inherently conservative - pointing it down-class at another group of people

I have no trouble believing that lex has only been exposed to reactionary humor.

Brit-specific, but Jonathan Coe on Boris Johnson is very good on this:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n14/jonathan-coe/sinking-giggling-into-the-sea

(I feel kind of sorry for Harry Mount, the writer of the book that's notionally the subject of the review)

Read this @Merrillmarkoe piece on why comedy is truly a woman’s arthttps://t.co/IfmqFiDXCf

— Yael Kohen (@YaelKohen) November 21, 2017

Andrew that was a great read and definitely can be extrapolated on to the Daily Show etc

where's the weird dissertation about humor that Tracer (?) posted lo those many years ago, about humor being the moss growing on rust or some old bullshit

― catbus otm (gbx), Friday, August 17, 2012 6:38 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"moss growing on rust" = it me

that essay is by bergson, a hero to deleuze - it's called "laughter: an essay on the meaning of the comic"

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4352/4352-h/4352-h.htm

it is one of the greatest things i've ever read, about anything. in it you could see an argument for an inherent liberality of comedy, in that it punishes unthinking conformity or rigidity of habit:

A man, running along the street, stumbles and falls; the passers-by burst out laughing. They would not laugh at him, I imagine, could they suppose that the whim had suddenly seized him to sit down on the ground. They laugh because his sitting down is involuntary.

Consequently, it is not his sudden change of attitude that raises a laugh, but rather the involuntary element in this change,—his clumsiness, in fact. Perhaps there was a stone on the road. He should have altered his pace or avoided the obstacle. Instead of that, through lack of elasticity, through absentmindedness and a kind of physical obstinacy, AS A RESULT, IN FACT, OF RIGIDITY OR OF MOMENTUM, the muscles continued to perform the same movement when the circumstances of the case called for something else. That is the reason of the man's fall, and also of the people's laughter.

Now, take the case of a person who attends to the petty occupations of his everyday life with mathematical precision. The objects around him, however, have all been tampered with by a mischievous wag, the result being that when he dips his pen into the inkstand he draws it out all covered with mud, when he fancies he is sitting down on a solid chair he finds himself sprawling on the floor, in a word his actions are all topsy-turvy or mere beating the air, while in every case the effect is invariably one of momentum. Habit has given the impulse: what was wanted was to check the movement or deflect it. He did nothing of the sort, but continued like a machine in the same straight line. The victim, then, of a practical joke is in a position similar to that of a runner who falls,—he is comic for the same reason. The laughable element in both cases consists of a certain MECHANICAL INELASTICITY, just where one would expect to find the wide-awake adaptability and the living pliableness of a human being.

but you could also read in it an argument for conservatism, as sympathy must be put aside for a moment in order for laughter to function:

Here I would point out, as a symptom equally worthy of notice, the ABSENCE OF FEELING which usually accompanies laughter. It seems as though the comic could not produce its disturbing effect unless it fell, so to say, on the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm and unruffled. Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion. I do not mean that we could not laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for instance, or even with affection, but in such a case we must, for the moment, put our affection out of court and impose silence upon our pity. In a society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter; whereas highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every event would be sentimentally prolonged and re-echoed, would neither know nor understand laughter. Try, for a moment, to become interested in everything that is being said and done; act, in imagination, with those who act, and feel with those who feel; in a word, give your sympathy its widest expansion: as though at the touch of a fairy wand you will see the flimsiest of objects assume importance, and a gloomy hue spread over everything. Now step aside, look upon life as a disinterested spectator: many a drama will turn into a comedy. It is enough for us to stop our ears to the sound of music, in a room where dancing is going on, for the dancers at once to appear ridiculous. How many human actions would stand a similar test?

and what's more it follows a herd instinct:

Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo, Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another, something beginning with a crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain. Still, this reverberation cannot go on for ever. It can travel within as wide a circle as you please: the circle remains, none the less, a closed one. Our laughter is always the laughter of a group. It may, perchance, have happened to you, when seated in a railway carriage or at table d'hote, to hear travellers relating to one another stories which must have been comic to them, for they laughed heartily. Had you been one of their company, you would have laughed like them; but, as you were not, you had no desire whatever to do so. A man who was once asked why he did not weep at a sermon, when everybody else was shedding tears, replied: "I don't belong to the parish!" What that man thought of tears would be still more true of laughter. However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary. How often has it been said that the fuller the theatre, the more uncontrolled the laughter of the audience!

and reinforces the unspoken codes of society:

Society will therefore be suspicious of all INELASTICITY of character, of mind and even of body, because it is the possible sign of a slumbering activity as well as of an activity with separatist tendencies, that inclines to swerve from the common centre round which society gravitates: in short, because it is the sign of an eccentricity. And yet, society cannot intervene at this stage by material repression, since it is not affected in a material fashion. It is confronted with something that makes it uneasy, but only as a symptom—scarcely a threat, at the very most a gesture. A gesture, therefore, will be its reply. Laughter must be something of this kind, a sort of SOCIAL GESTURE. By the fear which it inspires, it restrains eccentricity, keeps constantly awake and in mutual contact certain activities of a secondary order which might retire into their shell and go to sleep, and, in short, softens down whatever the surface of the social body may retain of mechanical inelasticity. Laughter, then, does not belong to the province of esthetics alone, since unconsciously (and even immorally in many particular instances) it pursues a utilitarian aim of general improvement. And yet there is something esthetic about it, since the comic comes into being just when society and the individual, freed from the worry of self-preservation, begin to regard themselves as works of art. In a word, if a circle be drawn round those actions and dispositions—implied in individual or social life—to which their natural consequences bring their own penalties, there remains outside this sphere of emotion and struggle—and within a neutral zone in which man simply exposes himself to man's curiosity—a certain rigidity of body, mind and character, that society would still like to get rid of in order to obtain from its members the greatest possible degree of elasticity and sociability. This rigidity is the comic, and laughter is its corrective.

but it really is worth instapapering and reading from the beginning

lol 'the weird dissertation about humor'

ty!

Before 1960 or so, few comics eyeing mainstream audiences broached politics in any way. (Will Rogers was a different cat, but very savvy; he needled his own inclinations, as in the Democrat "no organized party" joke.)