It is a common view that the chief unifying element of all
comedy is truth. Conduct an experiment: think of a comedian’s particular
routine that you appreciate, or even any single joke that is in your own quiver
of available party tricks, and consider it in terms of its function as a
courier of truth. Quite nearly every comedy category, and indeed very nearly
every joke you will be able to think of serves in at least partial support of
this notion, right down to humor that trades on racial, ethnic and heritage
stereotypes.
The underlying “truth” of Polish jokes is that Poles are
stupid, the underlying “truth” of Hispanic jokes is that Latinos are lazy, and
the underlying “truth” of black jokes is that they are, well, you name it. Flip
that ugly coin over and you can instead illuminate a righteous and difficult truth: when Robin Williams
was asked on a German radio show by a German radio host why there were no
great German comedians, Williams answered, “Because you killed them all.” The
underlying truths here are that a disproportionate percentage of Jews are
comedians and that Hitler’s Germany perpetrated a Jewish genocide. From its
ugliest ascriptions of what is truthful to courageous examples of plainly speaking
the truths of history’s greatest crimes, comedy that reaffirms
an existing truth in the listener’s mind can for good or ill deliver a powerful strike
to the funny bone.
I was having this discussion with a
friend, and he offered the hardly debatable observation that the left has always
been better at using comedy to promote their view of the truth than the right. And
why is that? Is it because more of the truth is on their side? Or, is it merely
that progressivism by its very nature is required to illuminate the folly of
the status quo? Some elements of both of these explanations are perhaps present,
but the larger factor I see is a preference of most audiences for folly to be
pointed out on those who aren’t already suffering. Cruel comedy can work, but
only if the joke’s butt is perceived as being able to survive the treatment. This is
why comedy roasts work. The person in the hot seat is typically a successful
celebrity, and whatever public gaffe is going to be rubbed in their face has
already been there before and can be processed anew without it appearing to be a
gratuitous swipe.
Pretend for a moment to appreciate slapstick and think that
a man slipping on a banana peel is funny. Now, which scenario makes it just a
bit funnier: if the man slipping on the banana peel is wearing a silk suit and
a cravat, or if the man slipping on the banana peel has a seeing-eye dog? The
answer is obvious. We much prefer the injury coming to a fellow who has other
deep advantages in life.
We don’t take particular delight in the further degradation
of the already downtrodden. The right contains industrialists, bankers and men
in silk suits and cravats, and the truths that a corporatist comedy orientation
would have to take would be against its antagonists: environmental advocates, university professors, scientists, intellectuals, the myriad poor and various legions of the hapless. Not a lot of laughs there. For most people, none of
those categories provide quite the satisfaction of our friend in the silk suit
making that three-point landing. Now if the seeing-eye dog could slip on the banana peel, you'd have some irony, but with the average person's preference that the recipients of their schadenfreude be able to withstand the storm, along with dogs in general being off limits as a joke's ultimate victim, we will always prefer the pratfalls of the rich and famous.
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