[A few years
ago, I had a lot of fun writing an
April Fools series. Foolishly, I haven’t done so since, but this year have
decided I won’t get fooled again. So this week I’ll be highlighting and
AmericanStudying a series of funny figures and texts. Share your own funny
favorites in comments and I’ll add ‘em to the crowd-sourced weekend post—no
foolin’!]
On what we do
with comic art that’s just not funny any more.
Tastes vary, de
gustibus non est disputandum and all that, and it’s likely that no two
people will find precisely the same works or comedians funny. But I think it’s
fair to say that even if we don’t all find the subjects of my prior posts this
week equally hilarious (besides my professed lukewarm take on The Interview, I’ll also admit to being
left mostly cold by the Three Stooges and their non-stop violence), we can all
recognize the humorous qualities of their works, their successful uses of
various comic styles, techniques, and appeals that have endured across the
decades (and in Mark Twain’s case more than a century) since their initial release.
While researching the Keaton and Chaplin post, for example, I found myself
laughing at numerous moments—and recognizing the wit and inventiveness in many
others that didn’t make me laugh. Many of the fundamental qualities of humor,
that is, seem to me to be consistent, universal, and enduring.
But not all of
them, which brings me to one of the most popular
and successful forms of American comic art throughout the 19th
and well into the 20th centuries: the minstrel show. Minstrel
shows certainly used many of the comic styles and techniques I’ve traced
throughout the week’s posts: physical and screwball comedy, wordplay, satires
of historical issues and popular current trends, and more. Yet they did so
through one overarching and (to say the least) troubling element: the creation
and deployment of exaggerated, ridiculous, bigoted and awful stereotypes of African American identities
and communities. Most of the minstrel shows’ performers were white comedians and performers in “blackface,”
taking the parody to another level still; but even with those few prominent
African American performers, the central use and abuse of racial
stereotypes for comic purposes remained the same. And again, despite our
collective association of such shows with 19th century America, they
continued and evolved well into the 20th century, such as in the
hugely popular Amos ‘n’ Andy
radio and television programs.
So what do we do
with such comic works, ones that depend for their humor on choices and elements
we no longer (I hope and believe) find the slightest bit amusing? By “we”
there, I’m thinking not about scholars (who can of course always study and
analyze such past works) but about a more collective community, American
audiences more broadly. For one thing, we can consider how some elements of
these works might have come down to our own moment: I’ve seen arguments that
both the Martin
Lawrence Show and Tyler
Perry's hugely popular character Madea (among other contemporary
works and artists) have minstrel elements to them, for example; while I don’t
know either of those well enough to opine on them, the question is always worth
asking and engaging. And for another thing, it’s equally worth considering what
stereotypes or bigotries remain more mainstream or acceptable in our own comic
works: earlier this year I read a provocative
piece that argues that Matthew Perry’s Chandler Bing from Friends was fundamentally homophobic (and, more exactly,
depended on such homophobia for much of his humor); and whether we agree or
disagree with that argument, it’d be important to think about which 21st
century comic works might look as dated and un-funny to future audiences as do
the minstrel shows to us.
Last fools
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Funny favorites you’d share?
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