The Emmys have come and gone, but the campaign marches on—and everyone is a comedian! Or not. This continues my exploration of comedy and how it is misused and misunderstood.
Let’s start with the brouhaha over The Bear. For those of you who eschew television and/or streaming services (and both are annoying in their own ways), The Bear is a “comedy” series on FX that has achieved great acclaim. Full disclosure, I’m a big fan. There is general agreement that the acting is very good (it is), but there is less agreement about the writing, the stories, and most of all, whether or not it really is a comedy. The Emmys seem to think so. The series has been nominated and won in that category. Wikipedia (linked above) categorizes it as a “psychological comedy-drama.” I don’t know what that actually means, but I’m guessing that we are to understand that The Bear explores the panoply of the human condition through the metaphorical framework of restaurant work. Is it a comedy? “Yes, chef.”
But maybe not in quite the way that some think of comedy—as something funny. That seems to be the gist of the complaints. This article at the Daily Beast takes that on, but the writer, Sarah John, also doesn’t get it quite right. Comedy, as a dramatic form creates the semblance of, as Susanne Langer states, “a pure sense of life.” If tragedy is the exhaustion of a protagonist’s power, comedy is about the endurance of being. Laughter, or jokes, or pratfalls, or gags are just tools the dramatist uses—if they want. But laughs are neither necessary nor sufficient to qualify a play, movie or tv show as a comedy. All that is needed is a sense that life goes on. And what’s wonderful, harrowing, and sometimes even funny, about The Bear, is that life does indeed go on, even if the face of the most painful events and emotions. Here’s Langer at length:
“The illusion of life which the comic poet creates is the oncoming future fraught with dangers and opportunities, that is, with physical or social events occuring by chance and building up the coincidences with which individual cope according to their lights. This ineluctable future-ineluctable because its countless factors are beyond human knowledge and control—is Fortune. Destiny in the guise of Fortune is the fabric of comedy; it is developed by comic action, which is the upset and recovery of the protagnoist’s equilibrium, his contest with the world and his triumph by wit, luck, personal power or even humorous, or ironical, or philosophical acceptance of mischance.”
In comedy, per Langer, the WORLD is the villain. It can never be completely conquored, but it can be out-smarted, at least for a moment. Resilience. And the characters in The Bear could fill a 100 walk-in freezers with their supply of resilience. So, imho, it immanently qualifies as a comedy.
Jokes, gags, pratfalls, as I said above, are tools at the disposal of the comic dramatist. In the political arena, jokes function not so much to get laughs as to establish dominance. Politicians are mostly not a very funny bunch. They often lack the rhythm required to land a punchline. (For a masterclass, just watch compilations of Groucho Marx on YouTube.) Recently, a few politicians and their supporters have been trading jokes and they are not funny. The worst has to be Elon Musk’s tweet after the apparent assasination attempt against Trump. I won’t dignify it by repeating it. Suffice it to say that Musk was quickly shamed to delete it, but defended it in another tweet by saying that some people (i.e., Democrats) can’t take a joke. Saying this is the last refuge of the unfunny.
Of course, it wasn’t meant to be funny, but rather to signal superiority, which provokes not a laugh of joy, but a bark of aggression. We all recognize the evil “mwah-hah-hah” of the villain. It is the expellation of the predator knowing it has cornered its prey. What’s really funny is seeing that bluff exposed for what it is—puffery and impotence. But someone like Musk can purchase claques to guffaw at his angry mockery. Dominance by association. And that is what attracts a certain kind to follow (and vote) for someone posing as an alpha male. And as I said in the previous post on comedy, the “weird” play is a pretty canny method to deflate the faux alpha. But it provokes the same laugh—of dominance, not joy. So, it’s shelf life as a method is limited. We’ve already seen it wane. What we now see is the Democrats promoting joy—which is the vital expression of life not only going on, but thriving. And that’s comedy.
I leave you with this lovely bit that more or less captures everything I said and actually is funny.
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