RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,202
(I studied comedy, pt. one)
Whom the Gods would destroy,
they first exalt. Think about
that a while. It bears study.
I studied comedy; I mean
deeply, into it, delving. It's
always been a sideline of
mine, and, bearing such
scrutiny, it's exposed a lot
of things to. This is a little
off from the usual things I
write of here, but it's just as
important.
-
Today, as it is, everything
gets misconstrued; a person
can't go 2 feet into verbalizing
some cool opinion - even if
it's an authentic comedy line -
and won't some nitwit wearing
today's perfect bib be bewailing
the splatter or the mess on that
bib, which the supposing offense
of the comment has left. It's
malarkey, yes, of course, but
everything now comes with an
agenda, and the type of people
this society has engendered are
the type for whom scolding
others is their daily satisfaction.
Scolding others, that is, for not
hewing the line, for stepping
out on their own to say or do
something not stipulated in the
agenda-guidebook proclaimed
by the thought-Nazis running
between their bathroom breaks.
Hey! Look what they produce!
Ick!
-
Comedy is nuance; timing, stance,
delivery; expression; delivery; and,
sometimes too, recovery. Anyone
normally talented and attracted to
that activity knows this. Others
(most people) just gape; responding
to the stimulus of 'something' that
they get as 'must be funny?' I laugh
at everything. I CAN laugh at
everything, because I see the
entire, frisked-over world as one
big, flat joke. It probably came
from China, this laughter. Have
you ever seen a Chinese comedian;
well, no, you won't see one on his
or her's home turf, say Chang Noti's
Beijing Comedy club - because the
place is probably ringed with Sino
cops. No one ever uses the world
Sino anymore but, 50 years ago it
was everywhere. I wonder what
happened to that? Sino-Soviet
relations? Top-ranking Sino
legislators? Sino-American press
reaction to the continued plague
disease coming out of China.
Probably because it reeks of
See No Evil and the rest, except
that their 'Evil' has got us by
the balls. Six-trillion people
jammed into a comedy club
nation that holds 350 only,
and only if they tow the line.
No where to go, and nothing
to laugh at. Hey! No! That
sounds like America!
-
It used to amaze me how so few
people laughed at the absurdity
of American society. By the end
of that 1960's decade, the jokes
were enormous - we had run the
gamut from Kennedy and Oswald,
Selma Saigon, water cannons on
protestors to Harold Robbins
novels, musicals like 'Hair,' the
insane crowds of cheering fools
everywhere, TV idiots, Lt. Calley
and the My Lai Massacre, to
numerous strange assassinations,
Nixon, Agnew, Wallace, and we
top it off with doinky humans
walking on the moon. Man!
Those foul creatures get around!
Back in the 1950's Redd Foxx,
much later seen by us all as
Fred Sanford, of 'Sanford and
Son,' was what was called on
the circuit a 'dirty comedian.'
Foul, lewd, obnoxious, the
whole gamut of no-no's. But,
he was black, and HE could
make black jokes, 'n-word'
jokes, and poke holes in his
entire Afro-Nation, as we say
today. He muttered, and spit
and spoke weirdly; gruff and
low. The LP's of his shows
portray this perfectly, and I
listened over and over to
his pacing, his presentation,
and his subject matter. He was
able to hit things other couldn't,
because he was black and foul.
-
He got away with stuff because
the sub-current of his work was,
often, black poverty. The opposite
of the same comedy circuit
routines of, say the early work,
in Greenwich Village, of Bill
Cosby, whose comedy was of
another level of, say, California
black - higher up the 'economic
scale.' His big album was 'Why
Is There Air?' - which isn't
exactly the sort of question
poor blacks asked. Redd Foxx
had one routine, pretty outrageous,
that - if one thought about it -
carried an entire subtext of the
coarseness of black horror and
poverty. A white person could
never do it : Two babies are
talking, a white baby, and a black
baby. The white baby asks the
other, 'What do you like better,
breast-feeding or the bottle?
Without waiting, the kid adds,
'I like the breast.' The black
baby thinks a moment and says,
'I like the bottle better.' The white
kid says, 'The bottle? Really?
Why?' - and the black baby
says, 'Well, with the breast, the
cigarette ashes keep falling into
my face.'
-
That's a very delicate joke, one
that leaps the great divide of two,
at times warring, cultures. The
comforted, secure white baby
contentedly sucking on the
perky, white, breast of its
mother, and the other, the
black baby, uncomfortably
poised beneath the gaunt and
scraggly face of its mother and
her poverty-drooped breasts,
probably inflicted with drugs
and under-nourishment, whose
cigarette ashes, long and overdue,
drop into the baby's face. It's
a culture picture, related in a
very pictorial way to present
the point being made, without
anger or real sarcasm except
through the crafted eloquence
of a brusque and direct voice,
with pause and with emphasis,
as and where needed.
-
There was another one, back
sometime in the 80's by, I think,
Eddie Murphy - another sort of
evil but black comedy, which made
it OK. It touched on all the proper
points of old Americana (The Little
Rascals), and took out after a form
of black culture : but only he could do
it. A white man trying it would have
been lynched. Yet, like Foxx's joke,
deconstructing it brings it all to the
fore. The Little rascals had one or
two black kids, of the southern-slave
Stepin Fetchit ilk, and the usual
porridge of normal white kids -
the chubby dolt, the fastidious
nerd, the cynical schemer, and
the innocent. And then there was
Darla, a sort of Betty Boop in
the making - some 11-year old
pre-boob temptress who usually
drove Spanky and Alfalfa crazy
with an early version of boy-lust.
One day n school the teacher
announces a spelling and grammar
lesson, wherein each kid has to
use the word given to them in a
sentence, after spelling it. The
first goes to Spanky, and the word
is 'businessman.' he stands up,
spells it correctly, and says 'My
father is a good businessman.'
All good, The next is Alfalfa, whose
word is 'automobile,' which he
correctly spells, and says 'my father
bought a brand new automobile.'
The third is Stymie, one of the
black kids. His word is 'dictate.'
Befuddled and clumsy, he stumbles
through spelling it, 'd-i-c-t-a-t-e'.
Trying to use it in a sentence, he
is stuck; he turns towards the back
of the room, where sits Darla, and
says, as his sentence, 'Darla,
how my dictate.'
-
So, you see (and I'll go on one
more time this on this subject),
the point how almost scientific
the approach of comedy need to
be for its subject matter to work;
whether perfectly appropriate or
needing a specific lens by which
to be viewed. It's all really soft,
crafty, and secretive too. When
I first came across that Rascals
joke, I immediately sensed the
other shoe getting ready to drop.
The innocence of this society
had surely died, and other means
of messaging were taking over.
-----
PART TWO follows
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