How the left degraded comedy
Philip M. writes from England:
I cannot remember seeing, in my time reading VFR, anything about your thoughts on the state of comedy, an interesting subject and one which tells us much about the state of a society.
I have for some time noticed that stand-up comedy no longer makes me laugh. It seems almost entirely disgusting; toilet humour or jokes about bestiality, incest, or child abuse. I don’t know if things are so bad in America, but this type of comedy has permeated the culture of the young and has had, I believe, a more devastating effect on society than any terrorist bomb. Taboos exist for a reason, and once you start laughing at something you are half-way to trivialising and ultimately accepting it.
It struck me whilst watching some stand-up on TV the other day that I had lazily bought the line that this was part of the process of “dumbing down,” and in doing so I was letting the Marxists, the keepers of the new unwritten constitution in this country, off the hook.
In the early ’80s a new wave of comedy came to Britain, known as “alternative comedy.” This swept away the old tradition of comedy, typified by the likes of the blunt Northerner Bernard Manning, which had been overtly sexist (mother-in-law jokes for example), “homophobic,” and made foreigners the butt of the joke. It may have been offensive to some theoretical minority, but it was rooted in our culture and history and our experience of real life.
“Alternative Comedy” was Marxist inspired, and it made it a cardinal sin to make any such jokes. In the new order only the British, whites, and men were allowed to be the butt of the joke. But comedy is very culture specific, and by eradicating much of the shared British experience, they only have the lowest common denominator to fall back on—observational comedy about sex or eating pot noodles. There are no higher shared cultural experiences which comedians can draw on any more, because such humour is “exclusive,” discriminatory, and therefore forbidden.
Likewise the power of PC and the liberal establishment has all but killed satire. When I was younger I used to love the satire of “Private Eye,” Britain’s version of “The Onion.” To be funny satire must pick on the powerful, but satire nowadays dare not transgress the powerful dogmas of the age, and as such can only pick on the weak and defeated and the safely oft-ridiculed—Christians, conservatives, traditionalists, the upper classes, George Bush. To me this feels like delivering the coup de grace to a wounded animal—neither funny nor brave. By only picking on the now dead, safe, pre ’60s establishment, such humour has the appearance of something that has been preserved in aspic and which bears no relation to the real, far more frightening modern world. It is like the lame attempts at government-approved satire in the former East Germany.
I have also noticed a new trend within left-wing comedy which pokes the most vicious and accusing finger at the white underclass for their fecklessness and stupidity. Twenty years ago “right-on” comedians would not dream of making jokes about single mothers or people living on state benefits. They were the oppressed, and as such were patronised by the left. Not any more.
I sense in the attacks on the underclass a venom from those on the left because they are bitter. Society has been created in their image, and they had smugly imagined that by now Britain would be a peaceful egalitarian utopia. This has not happened, and the festering sore that is Britain’s underclass is a constant reminder of their failures. So they now take a different line—it is not their dreams that were wrong, it is just that the lumpen proletariat with their stupidity have wrecked the chance of utopia which should be theirs by right. We were just not good enough, we did not measure up to their dreams. We have proved ourselves unworthy of the great ideological riches they were trying to bestow on us. And they hate us for it.
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March 17
Tim W. writes:
Compare the delightful comedies of the Golden Age (Bringing Up Baby, My Man Godfrey…) with today’s Hollywood funfests (American Pie, Zack & Miri Make a Porno…) and it’s obvious that comedy ain’t what it once was. Can anyone imagine Bob Hope going on stage and using the “F” word or making jokes about genitalia?
Have you ever seen the films of the late French comedian Jacques Tati? They’re something of an acquired taste. They make you smile rather than laugh out loud. He created a character named Mr. Hulot, a nice, friendly gentleman who rarely speaks, who smokes a pipe, and who accidentally causes havoc wherever he goes. Mr. Hulot is a bit old fashioned and ill at ease around the trappings of modern society.
In the 1958 award-winning film Mon Oncle, Hulot lives in a very traditional Paris neighborhood with old architecture, street vendors selling fish & vegetables, bistros and wine stores. When he visits his sister and her rich husband, in their new ultra-modern house filled with the latest space age gadgets, he nearly wrecks the place. His old neighborhood is seen as preferable, with residents who know each other by name, who help each other out when needed, and who are real people.
In Playtime (1967) Hulot goes to modern area of Paris to apply for a job and gets into similar trouble. There’s a group of American tourists there, and they all want to have their photo made with a vendor selling flowers, which is the only thing there that looks like traditional France. You occasionally get a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower or other Paris landmarks, but only as a reflection from the distance in a window. There are some travel agency posters in an office showing various destinations, and all the posters look the same (gleaming skyscrapers, modern trains) except for a small photo in the corner (a skier for Sweden, Big Ben for London). The impression delivered is that modern global society is wiping out traditional national characteristics.
Tati passed away in the early 1980s, and I have to think he’d be even more dismayed today with what’s happening in France and the rest of Europe. If you ever have some free time, take a look at some of his films. Modern audiences don’t “get” them since there are no sex jokes or humiliating situations. The films are pleasant rather than laugh-out-loud funny. Other good ones are Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1954) where he vacations at a coastal resort and Trafic (1971) where he has the unenviable task of delivering an experimental sporting vehicle to an auto show in Amsterdam.
QR writes:
I’m sorry I don’t remember which race realist blogger said this a few months ago:
“As for alternative comedians, I think it’s time we went back to whatever they are the alternative to.”
Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 16, 2009 11:16 PM | Send