Sit down, Comic

What's a comic's job? Number one job is to be funny. But too often, stand-up and TV comedians decide they want to be a social influencer. They seem to confuse sarcasm in aid of a political stance with being humorous. It doesn't work. How much "ally-ship" can a good joke survive?

Preaching is inherently non-amusing. You, Stand-up Comedian, are heir to a long line not of preachers but of the opposite. You represent the begging-to-differ folks. Your forebears are clowns, jesters and jocose performers for royal courts in which kings and queens had to be amused -- but not openly challenged. 

Court jesters got away with saying the unsayable, the unpopular, by cloaking it in word-play and subversive artifice. Too often today's comics want to be social commentators and influencers: they're talking to their tribe. So they don't subvert ("turn under"), they parrot the correctness slogans of the tribe. 

But that's no surprise. since mainstream media, TV specials and comedy clubs want comics to please a hip, "woke" crowd. So the comic seems to feel safe focusing their act on personal grievance, since a grievance culture is what we now live in and people relate to it; audience members curate their personal brands of victimization. 

What a distance the comics have come from their jesting antecedents, whose role was to challenge prejudices, not to follow the crowd -- but to challenge cleverly, subtly, with double-entrendre. Sadly, stand-up today mostly rises only to single-messaging, confusing propaganda with humour, and reacting to the threat of cancel-culture. When that fear rules, it's better for the comic to sit back down.

It was more entertaining when comic-as-social-critic lampooned and laughed at the prevailing message, the "right thought" of the moment. The comedian is not supposed to prop it up. Let the social-improvers do that, the self-appointed dictators of values.

It's a cultural loss when the comedy community joins that crowd, because we need humour more than ever to play its subversive role in boosting mental health. Transgressive laughter heals; correctness fosters anxiety. So do your traditional job, Comedians -- transgress!

It's better than merely parroting correctness, or being a weepy fish shoaling with the grieviance crowd. 

                   

See also: "The Comic in Tragic Times" -- https://satiricalscene.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-comic-in-tragic-times.html

There May Be a Shortage of Workers, But Don't Go Short of Humour

Is the current shortage of staff (in retail, wholesale, transport, airports, ferries, health care, construction) linked to a reluctance of upcoming generations to seek employment? A preference of graduates (or drop-outs) to keep living with parents (citing existing rental unaffordability), while dreaming of careers "working online", i.e. never having to step away from the computer screen? 

Does the worker shortage (and shortage of qualifications for positions of responsibility) also result from changes in the education system? What do schools teach, today? They've given up on Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic, that's obvious. Those are replaced by texting, TikTok and "oral traditions". Arts and Science (literally and originally, meaning "skill and knowledge") have been replaced in the K-12 curriculum by subjects like Safetyism, Competitive Victimhood, Neuro-variance (Curating Your Moods), Gender-rights, Data Violence, and Dysphoria (the state of feeling dissatisfied). 

Students certainly aren't being groomed to be satisfied with customer service work or jobs involving skill, physical labour, or commitment. (On-again off-again gigs are always short-term, for when you want to be off again. This is called work-life balance.)  

Does this sound like a typical aging person's grumpy assessment of the "younger generation", as offered since time immemorial? Yes, indeed. Yet, some things are different now: the technology-driven ones (retreat to life on-line) and ideological ones (creating mediocre education through PC virtue-notions of equity, diversity,  inclusion ... and colonials' exclusion). 

Maybe the healthiest thing is to keep a droll sense of humour -- our best armor against "dysphoria". Some folks choose to be "On the Droll":  

On the Droll | Mad Swirl

Some kids choose to drop out of school.

 

The Last Stoics Standing Are the Elderclowns

The CLOWN is an ambiguous figure. S/he goes two ways. The ELDER clown, wearing the famed double mask of theatre, is a seasoned expert at perfecting dual comic-tragic presentation -- being old enough to have seen all sides of life. A clown (also known as the "wise fool" or "holy fool") is a philosopher. Elder ones are often of the Stoic school. 

Do schools of philosophy match phases of the life span (and maybe also the eras of human civilization)? Infants are still at one with nature, and humanity's earliest mind-body lore is pagan. Beyond early childhood, which schools match which phases of life?

Adolescence: Nihilism (Morality has no factual basis.)

Early adulthood: Existentialism (Life has no inherent purpose, it's up to the individual to create meaning. Wear weird clothes.)

Early middle age: Hedonism (Pleasure is tops. Seize - and share - the most you can get while you can get it.)

Later middle age: Empiricism (with a topping of Rationalism. Face facts, be logical. Top up your pension, slim down your diet.)

Senior years: Stoicism (Acceptance, inner balance, calmly knowing what you can and can't control, and seeing the humour in it all even in the face of death).

At the Philosophy Cafe the elder-philosophers consider themselves the Last Stoics Standing -- while also falling down laughing. 

Visit the Cafe at Just Jests:

https://justjests.blogspot.com/2022/12/chapter-one-epictetus-was-street-corner.html

Uneasy lies the head that wears the frown

Remember Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks, which raised silliness to new heights of art? “Silly” means “innocent, simple, foolish, imprudent”, from Old English and Old German “seely” and “saeli”, which mean luck and happiness. During anxieties around wars and pandemics we need a Ministry of Silly Jokes. We need a Humour Boot Camp in which “these boots are made for silly walking”.

Because humans are built for laughter it's contagious: someone starts, another joins in, and soon everyone's doing it. Obviously there's some evolutionary advantage here, promoting social peace and mental health. The jolly news is that you can even do it at home alone, for private peace and health. Tell yourself a joke out loud and see whether you resist giggling. (Don't worry, no one's watching.)

Psychologists make serious studies of humour. There should be a special U.N. Institute for it. “He laughs at his own jokes” might seem like a put-down, but maybe he's a clown of genius. There should be a Nobel Prize for that. Jokes, jocosity and jests probably save more lives than mood medication does. They are mental vitamins.

Language seethes with inbuilt humour. Did we build it in, or is it one of the ways Nature keeps us evolving? Humour is pre-verbal, philosophical. Or maybe philosophy (“love of wisdom”) is laughable. How confusing. (Blame it on the scape-joke.)

It doesn't have to be a side-splitter, it could be a mere chuckle a day that keeps the Black Dog of depression away. We say “I had to laugh when …”: lucky you if you had to laugh. Sometimes you have to weep, but you can escape depression if you (drum-roll for the eye-roll ...) just o-pun your mind to silly ("seely") thinking.

    

(See also: https://justjests.blogspot.com)

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The Rules of Laughter

A magazine recently invited essays about “how we negotiate cultural expectations around what it's acceptable to laugh about”. 

Laughter is defined in dictionaries as a spontaneous physical outburst of sound and upper body movement in response to something amusing. It may be spontaneous, but in today's social climate you must control it anyway. Only acceptable laughter is welcome, and the rules are getting stricter about who can laugh at whom about what. If you get them wrong you may find the consequences non-funny. You could be sued -- seriously.

So here are some tips to guide you through the Rules of Laughter:

Do not laugh at anyone marginalized. “Clowning” is marginal behaviour by definition, clowns being characters on the margin -- but forget definitions. Don't even laugh at your own feelings of marginalization. It may trigger someone. Others may see themselves in you (or worse, to them, not see themselves in you).

Do not laugh at anyone identified as “BIPOC”. “Bi-” has nothing to do with seeing both sides of things, especially the funny side. “BI” in this context means single of attitude, which as a definition may seem funny-peculiar but is not considered funny-humorous. (Grasping the difference is no joke.) 

And by the way, never laugh at jokes considered to be "off-colour". Jokes have to be ON colour, but don't call them jokes, call them social commentary. Certainly they can't be funny if People Of Colour aren't laughing. So people of no colour (PONC), whoever they might be, can't laugh either.

Do not laugh at any remark which may be construed as political. Your laughter might be interpreted as happy agreement, or shocked disbelief. Either may cause others to feel happy or shocked in turn which might lead to a chain reaction of ... reactions. So do NOT react to anything using spontaneous upper body sound and movement.

Do not laugh at something if laughter would make you sound Privileged. Remember that the slightest smile may, in some circumstances, be taken as a blazingly lit-up billboard of Supremacy. If this seems ridiculous, hide that thought. “Ridere” is Latin for “to laugh”, but there are many ridiculous things you're not allowed to laugh at it (see above re. “triggering”). In fact, also do not use these Latin-ist words: it may be construed as “privilege”, which has the same Latin root as “private”, by the way ... and private jokes are politically unacceptable. They don't meet the "inclusion" rule.

Do not laugh at other people's allyship, even if you find that ludicrous Frankenstein's monster of a non-word a source of merriment. “Ludens” is Latin too by the way, it means playing ... but sorry, I forgot: NO LATIN, no matter how bons are those mots. (Better skip the French too, unless of course you identify as Francophone.) 

Do not collapse into hysterical giggling at the stress of losing track of these rules. Don't even giggle silently behind your hand. Do not whinny like a hysterical mare if you are female (in the narrow sense of person with a uterus), and if male, do not honk like a crazy loon (I mean, a loon experiencing mental difference). And do not even think of cross-laughing, no matter how shared you think everyone's craziness is. 

Do not laugh at anyone's gender, or lack thereof, for whatever they wish to engender with their genderisms, it won't lead to the birth of mirth. 

In summary, always keep a straight face ... er, a rainbow face. I didn't mean, you know ... straight ...