is comedy inherently conservative?

If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and th sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy rises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Oedipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same time, blind and desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well." Sophocles' Oedipus, like Dostoevsky's Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.

morbz, i don't really feel like u and i have much to discuss re comedy

This discussion reminds me of one of the more ridiculous criticisms of Girls, namely that, OMG, all of the girls are white (because that's literally the first time there's ever been an all-white cast on a tv show)! There's almost an expectation that you discuss/confront issues of race/sexuality/class in comedy because to not do so is considered somehow racist/sexist/classist. Although an all-white cast is, in its own way, a comment on race. Basically, you can't win with this stuff if your material exists within the pop crit sphere, so you might as well go "edgy" and get some laffs.

"Girls" is a part of the Apatow comedy industrial complex, so it is inherently reactionary.

which is interesting because i felt like in the other thread that 30 Rock was being held under suspicion of being racist/sexist/classist really just for discussing/confronting issues of race/sexuality/class in comedy

xpost

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

cf. like every wake i have ever been to!

early today I loled conservatively @ a sissymanwhore post

Yeah, sd, that's what I mean about how you can't win for losing. Discussing it or avoiding it, you're taking a risk.

? that's not really what i was saying about comedy that deals with race and gender. first of all, i like comedy about those things because they are things i care about, and i am a narcissist. it's also not my intention to be saying Chapelle's Show is secretly equivalent to the KKK--i love Chapelle's Show and think Dave Chapelle is a thoughtful person, not particularly reactionary at all. i guess i have some misgivings about comedy as form? i don't know how to be more specific. but i am not suggesting comedy should be abolished because it's counter to the revolution or something, as if such a thing were even possible.

xxxp to Deric

for god's sake, i don't think acknowledging that race affects people's experiences and choosing to represent that in whatever cultural work is "losing"--i'm just speculating about genre limitations, maybe? should probably shut up.

the revolution is counter to the revolution too. there's always elements of society that you're trying to rehabilitate or keep, even as you're demolishing everything else. for everything that comes down something stays up and the revolution is responsible for perpetuating that. this is hegelian, i think - the dialectic is never resolved, it's just reintroduced in new terms

i think there is something at the psychological root of a lot of comedy that might lend itself to reinforcing the status quo -- like a lot of time a joke has to function by playing off of some widely understood truth or idea or social norm. if an idea or norm is inherently racist or misogynist etc., then yeah, a lot of the jokes constructed around will probably essential saying "check out this ridiculous situation in which our accepted ideas of this minority are defied." which by the way would be a horrible way to tell that kind of joke, usually it's done much more smoothly, but i'm not a comedy professional.

it probably IS counter to the revolution but fuck it because the alternative is stalinist sellf-crit sessions

also dying at dr. morbius taking offense at the idea of reactionary comedy

Oh no no no, horseshoe, my post about Girls wasn't meant to be at all accusatory. This discussion reminds me of those criticisms but it doesn't reflect those criticisms, if you get me. I was just pointing out an example that indicates what a tricky minefield it is to even go, like, post-racial in comedy (which I don't think is the intention behind the Girls casting, ftr).

lol sorry for being defensive; it's hard to come to terms with having started a thread

hahaha

I like this thread.

wow you really do almost never start threads (xpost)

also dying at dr. morbius taking offense at the idea of reactionary comedy

― jesus christ (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Monday, May 14, 2012 11:07 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that was delightful! (love you forever, dr. morbs!)

xp i like to piggyback on the insights of others

it probably IS counter to the revolution but fuck it because the alternative is stalinist sellf-crit sessions

― jesus christ (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Tuesday, May 15, 2012 4:06 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the alternative is necessary.

There's obviously been "radical" humor in one sense or another for like forever. Most notably, various elements of absurdism, surrealism (though clearly not all surrealism), dada, etc. Street theatre too. Satire has historically been part of the arsenal of all sorts of social movements, both left and right. The idea that every instance of this has been secretly "conservative" is pretty far-fetched. I can think of some very funny radical poetry as well (and some very funny conservative poetry, for that matter...)

lol horseshoe i've started even less threads than you have i bet. and unlike mine this one is actually interesting

horseshoe you make me laff but strike me as essentially right-on. perhaps you are your own one-woman corrective.

I really like this thread, too, but I think I'm likely to mostly hang back and watch people hash this out. It's in the realm of stuff I think about a lot, but my thoughts are probably more conducive to a long essay than message board posts.

while conservative humor (ideological + political) can be funny, i'd like to see a funny thing written/said/created by the 'American right wing' in the last 4 years

this is kinda the perfect place to discuss something like 'is comedy inherently conservative?' imho. an essay would just get dreary and tedious

I mean "inherently conservative": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dario_Fo ?

You probably have seen right-wing comedy, Mordy, that your brain was unable to process as comedy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Firesign_Theatre ?

I'm picking really obvious examples, but that's sort of the point...

i guess 30 rock

left-wing humor is some of the MOST reactionary!

In re: writing an essay, I just mean in terms of getting my thoughts in order, not in terms of generating anything publishable or that other people would actually want to read.

strongo i have no idea what you mean by reactionary.

positioning itself in reaction to something else

i'm not going for some inscrutable high-minded definition here

i mean i don't want to say that harpo marx running around disrupting a cruise ship is in any way left-wing or "radical" but i have a hard time branding it as meaningfully "conservative" (which i do know what that means) or "reactionary" (which apparently is being used in a way i fail to understand entirely except maybe "at the expense of somebody" which doesn't mean comedy is conservative, but does mean that comedy is often *mean*)

i mean everything is "in reaction to something else"

unless what you mean is that comedy is somehow not as creative a force as other sorts of artistic or cultural production, or is more directly or obviously parasitic, which i also think isn't true.

http://blogs.amctv.com/movie-blog/steve%20martin%20comedy%20not%20pretty%20better.jpg

just saying that (most performative) (and most written) comedy generally is not concerned with nuance, self-skepticism beyond the most surface sort, empathy with the other (whether that other is heathen liberals or consumerist god-squadders or non-white people or whatever)

note that i dont generally see this as a failing on the form's part

also i just double checked to make sure i wasn't nuts and "in reaction to something else" is pretty much not the definition of "reactionary" anywhere.

but does mean that comedy is often *mean*

It very often exists at one end or the other of the "mean/toothless" continuum, with lots of grey (like, at least 40 of them) generally ignored.

yeah, you're probably right. obvs my question is facile, but i feel like some of the ways people have taken it up itt are interesting.

xxxp to sterling

I think comedians would be the first to admit (or brag) that comedy is a pretty lacerating form of expression. It almost by necessity plays on the scapegoat dynamic, even if the scapegoat is the comedian him/herself.

i feel like there are probably several actually specific enough to be useful questions being asked itt; one of them has to do with the potential gulf between the comic's intentions and how her comedy is received (the chapelle dilemma)

My joke got sonned in a Droid phone beef.

one of them is Abbott's angle, where there's been kind of a preservation of the status quo in humor, especially because jokes are told about a group of people who are not telling the jokes themselves.

xpost

strongo: i sort of agree with you that almost by definition the best comedy lacks a certain nuance (even if it has other sorts of nuance). but i don't agree that comedy isn't concerned with self-skepticism because that's an entire genre, among which woody allen films form a sub-genre all their own, or a sub-sub genre even. and if you don't have empathy with the other explicitly, there's certainly a great deal of fun to be had with lack thereof (sienfeld, larry david, etc) and more importantly i don't think that any of these traits are particularly conservative or anti-conservative or whatever.

but doesn't a lot of humor come from ppl telling jokes about themselves? xp

fine but that doesn't negate abbott's point, which was abuot the reification of what women are arising out of "women be shopping" type jokes.