"The Dutch sociologist Hannah Gorth argued in her groundbreaking study, "Laughter's Reinforcement of Social Inequities: A Guide to the Guffaws That Imprison Us All" (Fahrenheit Press, 1977), comedy cannot be accurately defined until some form of social re-adjustment or substantial reform takes place. "To laugh or to create laughter," Gorth wrote, "in the present environment is tantamount to performing pantomime in a slaughterhouse."
OK. Why am I not surprised that this woman committed suicide?
There's no question that comedy is essentially conservative, the question is "what does it seek to conserve?" The status quo? No. It seeks to conserve our sense of our selves as fundamentally animalistically equal. It seeks to blow away pretense and the often absurd logic of ideas. Thank God.
To say that class society makes laughter obscene or beauty impossible is to take away any possible basis for a revolution. No revolution is ever going to come out of a guilt trip. If I'm going to get guilt, give me Christianity, rituals, the whole fucking full-blown production. Just don't tell me a better world can be created as a result.
Joanna