A Spectre is haunting comedy...

[gary webb]

This is a great discussion. It is very interesting your description of the
Onion, and how through social media it is necessarily being consumed by
people who have no conception of what it is truly about... Comedy is like
Jazz, Comedians play for an audience, an audience made up of people whom
"dig" what is going on... Comedians usually hone their craft as they go
from nightclubs to stadiums, i.e. HBO Specials, etc. They expand their act
to a larger audience, but one can argue that the ever larger audience more
or less "digs" what is going on... The consumption of Comedy is changing I
suppose, and ironically though it is presented on a global level, that
all-inclusive audience contains people who have no conception of what is
actually going on, and they are naturally going to resort to anger and
confusion... I think Seinfeld's comments are a little ridiculous for a
Comedian... Comedy isn't PC, Comedians are supposed to offend people, why
tip-toe around an audience? Go right at them... That was true of
Aristophanes on down to Lenny Bruce...

On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:36 PM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks, Laura. Actually, I think I kind of make the same point you did
> here about how the finger-pointers are (in an oddball way) serving the
> long-term cause of comedy when I called them a necessary aspect to any
> great comedy: the Square Left Out of the Joke. But you put it much better
> than I.
>
> MT
>
> On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:14 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>> I agree with you, Mark. My real issue with most comedy out there is that
>> it's just not very funny, precisely because there are few, if any,
>> boundaries left. Maybe, in an oddball way, the finger-pointers are serving
>> the long-term cause of comedy by putting the boundaries back. As Michael
>> Flanders, of the old comic singing duo, Flanders and Swann, once quipped:
>> "The purpose of satire is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusions,
>> and cosy half-truths. And our job, as I see it, is to put it back again."
>>
>> I think odious PC tongue-clucking, in general, is related to the broader
>> phenomenon of crowd-shaming:
>>
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?_r=0
>>
>> Personally, I refuse any calls to pile on to any online shaming campaigns
>> of public figures, in their various guises: "You won't believe what [blank]
>> said." or "Demand that [blank] be fired for his [blank] statement," etc. I
>> decry laws and policies, never people. If a public figure brags about how
>> great the KKK is, it's my right to feel revulsion. But I support free
>> speech, even if it's Limbaugh or O'Reilly or Palin or McCain or any of the
>> Bushes doing the speaking.  Maybe it's because in the 18 years I worked in
>> the construction industry, during which I was called honey, baby, bitch,
>> cunt, dyke, Jewess, Jewish cunt, etc., I learned to either ignore the slurs
>> or respond with dignity. When I was sexually harassed or threatened with
>> rape or even murder, the system was so out of whack that the focus was on
>> saving MY job, not getting the other person fired. And, you know what? I
>> was still able to discern that there was a broad range of intent and
>> intelligence, even among the slur-makers.
>>
>> Are there exceptions to what I'm saying? Of course there are. That's the
>> cool thing about humans - we're nuanced, self-contradictory, and constantly
>> evolving. No point in defining any of us by a few random statements.
>>
>> Laura
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>
>> From: Monte Davis
>>
>> Sent: Jul 6, 2015 10:12 AM
>>
>> To: Mark Thibodeau
>>
>> Cc: pynchon -l
>>
>> Subject: Re: A Spectre is haunting comedy...
>>
>>
>>
>> I have some broader and more ambivalent misgivings about how the
>> progressive version of "more outraged than thou" has accelerated with
>> social media... but very little ambivalence when it comes to comedy, which
>> has been a "firewalled" space to say *anything* in a lot of cultures for a
>> long, long time before the First Amendment. See court jesters, satyr plays,
>> carnivals & Lords of Misrule, giggly scandalous children's rhymes, etc etc.
>> IMHO that has been and remains a good thing: if there's anywhere the
>> Voltairean "...but I will defend to the death your right to say it" should
>> be absolute, it's comedy.
>> To put it another way: my own preference when I vehemently object to
>> expressions of racism, sexism, etc. is to prioritize targets with actual
>> legal/political power...
>> Followed at quite a distance by random celebrities NOT in the sphere of
>> comedy/ satire...
>> Followed by the random racist/sexist/etc bozos in my face who attempts to
>> sweeten his venom ingenuously with "Hey, just kidding! You [bien-pensant
>> advocacy label here] are so humorless!"
>> Followed, at the very very bottom of the priority list, by those who
>> explicitly fly the cultural flags/tags of comic/satiric performance. Too
>> many of my own cherished progressive tenets started out and/or gained
>> momentum there.
>> On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 2:46 AM, Mark Thibodeau <jerkyleboeuf at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> I wrote this for my blog a couple days ago.
>> I realize it may rankle some here in terms of its implications, but I
>> would really appreciate feedback from a group of people whom I am pretty
>> much certain are, for the most part, a lot smarter than I am.
>> So, by all means... critique away!
>>
>> Here's the link:
>>
>> http://dailydirtdiaspora.blogspot.ca/2015/07/thats-not-funny-manufactured-crisis-of.html
>>
>> Thanks in advance for your help!
>> Mark T. aka Jerky LeBoeuf
>>
>
>
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