[lbo-talk] Re: Dull, dull, dull

Jacob Conrad jakub at att.net
Mon Aug 4 23:43:40 PDT 2003


Joanna wrote:


> Brian wrote:
>
> "Humor has to have some cruelty in it to be any good. Thus,
> right-wingers have the freedom to make fun of poor people, sick people,
> women, gays, blacks, Native Americans, and everything else. All we let
> ourselves do is make fun of people in power."
>
> I don't know about that. I'm not sure that humor has to have cruelty in
it: "Did he say blessed are the cheesemakers?"....but it helps if it's funny. Terry Jones (I think that's who) has written some completely hillarious (and true) stuff about the war on Iraq and Bush's justifications.
>
> I think the "left" fails to be funny because:
>
> --it's impossible to be funny when you're self-righteous
> --humor requires creativity and there's plenty of sheepfulness on the left
> --humor requires a bit of relaxation, which is hard to come by if you're
plugged into unrelenting activism and public displays of distress.

I don't think that humor needs to be _cruel_ to be effective, but it does often have an element of aggression (seems to me that one of those smart, bearded German-speaking Jewish guys from central Europe had a lot to say about that). Humor is hard to do, hard to get right. On one end, it shades easily into scary anger and hostility, like a lot of bad stand-up, and on the other into inoffensive blandness, like newspaper comic strips. That's why so much attempted humor falls flat, and why stand-up, which looks so easy, is really so difficult. Recall Spy magazine from the 80s, how hilarious it was when it first came out, and how quickly it ran out of steam. Lenny Bruce's biographer pointed out that developing a well-crafted routine is equivalent in terms of thought and effort and judgment to writing a novel. Everybody's funny sometimes, but being consistently funny is a real art; most people know this and are content to leave comedy to the pros.

Is "the left" more lacking in humor than other political factions? Maybe. Certain kinds of humor run counter to left moral commitments in a fairly direct and obvious way, as Luke pointed out. Leftists also tend to frown on aggression (at least "officially"), and this is perhaps inhibiting to humor. If you take all of the aggression out of humor, you're pretty much left with puns and wordplay. If you allow any aggression at all, the question then becomes _how much_ aggression to allow, a matter of finely calibrated judgment. Humor serves various functions. It releases tension, perhaps its most common use, but it's so closely linked to anger and aggression that it's often used to put people in their place. Humor softens aggression, but also allows it where its more direct expression would be impermissible. It's no accident that the charge of humorlessness is most often preferred against feminists.

Jacob Conrad



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