Comedy And Catharsis

Now that the hangover from two weeks of political orgy in the States is starting to wear off, it seems a good time to ruminate on the topic of comedy.  Certainly, there was comedy aplenty at the conventions and the two candidates emerging from them provide endless grist for the mill.

Our purpose here, though, having said all we want to say about politics for now, is to explore comedy itself.  What is comedy and why is something so profoundly human such a mystery?

The word "comedy" comes from ancient Greek (komos) and originally referred to a festival in which young naked men went hog wild, dancing and leaping around a giant phallus.  I don't know about you, but if most of us saw something like this today, we'd call the local insane asylum to offer remedial treatment.  Nevertheless, we'd most likely be laughing our fool heads off as we made the call.  Thus, the origin of comedy.

Aristotle spent a large part of his book Poetics pondering the nature of comedy.  According to him, comedy - and tragedy - were a means to achieve κάθαρση, or emotional release.  Releasing the emotions balanced the humors, such as blood, yellow and black bile, and phlegm.  Not enough of something?  You need tragedy.  Too much of another?  You need comedy.  An overabundance of all?  You need satyr (satire was not a form of comedy back then).  The physician Hippocrates even prescribed the theater for certain ailments.

Aristotle's Second Book of Poetics is lost to history, at least for now, but there are quotes that suggest he recommended laughing at people with deformities.  This was echoed by Francis Bacon, though we don't know if the reasoning is the same:

"Deformed persons’ take revenge on Nature for their impairments, by being void of ‘Natural Affection."

This view was known as physiognomy, the assertion that one's physical appearance is an expression of one's inner character.  Thus, by laughing at deformed people (who were obviously at war with Nature), we could ridicule and defame them, and thus take away their power.  In fact, ridicule and laughter have always been seen as a means to ward off evil spirits, though not everyone agrees.

In the film The Name of the Rose, there is a curious exchange between William, the protagonist, and Jorge, the antagonist:

Jorge Burgos: Laughter is a devilish wind which deforms, uh, the lineaments of the face and makes men look like monkeys.

William of Baskerville: Monkeys do not laugh. Laughter is particular to men.

Jorge de Burgos: As is sin. Christ never laughed.

William of Baskerville: Can we be so sure?

Jorge de Burgos: There is nothing in the Scriptures to say that he did.

William of Baskerville: And there's nothing in the Scriptures to say that he did not. Why, even the saints have been known to employ comedy, to ridicule the enemies of the Faith. For example, when the pagans plunged St. Maurice into the boiling water, he complained that his bath was too cold. The Sultan put his hand in... scalded himself.

William is clearly a believer in physiognomy, while Jorge is a Stoic, and they represent probably the most fundamental forces at war in Western culture.

In modern times, Robert Heinlein, in his book Stranger in a Strange Land, speculated that comedy is pain + distance, while in his movie Crimes and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen figures it as pain + time.  In both cases, they represent the modern proclivity of reducing everything to a mathematical formula, but the point is taken: comedy is pain.

At some level, everything that makes us laugh involves someone else suffering.  Ultimately, everything you and I have laughed at involves a buffoon (mental), a cripple (physical), or a humiliation (emotional).  You can name anything you choose as an example, and at the root of it is one of these three pains.

The only difference between comedy and tragedy is distance, physical, temporal or emotional.  We are in some way separated from the object of comedy by space, time or empathy.  If someone falls down and we are next to them, we tend to share the pain, but if we see it from a distance, it can be quite funny.  By the same token, we may be in sympathetic pain at the moment, but years later we laugh as we reminisce on the event. Finally, we may laugh at the event because we don't like that person and seeing them humiliated gives us a sense of pleasure.  Space, time or empathy.

We all speak of the healing power of laughter.  We know that the rush of endorphins leaves us feeling exhausted, but satisfied.  We love to laugh, which is why comedies and comedians are so popular. We rarely, though, step back enough to think about why we laugh and what we are laughing at.  And when we do, it is as puzzling as anything in the human psyche.

In a way, Political Correctness is the triumph of the Jorges/Stoics of the world.  Any object of comedy has become off-limits to the PC crowd. There is no denying that idiocy or retardation or deformities are very ancient objects of comedy, but like Jorge, we are forbidden to screw the lineaments of our faces in order to receive catharsis from them - to balance our humors, as Hippocrates might say.

For many years, I had a cat that loved to sleep on top of the VCR on the bookshelf.  One day, while I sat on the couch reading, she rolled over and fell to the floor flat on her back.  I started laughing uncontrollably, and that cat ran across the room and leaped at my chest with claws bared, then ran off into the other room to sulk.

No one likes to be laughed at, that is a given, unless you are getting paid for it.  And many of the PC crowd think they are doing the idiots, cripples and clowns of the world a favor by forbidding the rest of us from laughing at them.  But laughter is a defense mechanism.  It is our minds reacting to the saying, "There but for the grace of God go I."  It is as automatic as raising your hand to block someone throwing a punch at your face.  It is as uncontrollable as blinking or breathing.  Laughter is a release of tension.  Without it, we would all be far worse off.

Imagine a world without laughter.  It seems rather dull and unlivable to me.  Yes, the objects of laughter feel hurt, but the fact of the matter is that everyone laughs at some point, and the object of laughter now will be laughing later, and the cause will be one of the three we all laugh at.

Comedians are people who professionally hurt themselves for our laughter.  The best comedians turn the pain on themselves so we can achieve catharsis through laughter.  It is a uniquely human occupation, and a strange one.  But it is absolutely necessary.  Without balancing our humors, we will sooner or later have quite real pain ourselves.  We need that release and without it we die.

As the great British Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean famously said on his deathbed, "Dying is easy.  Comedy is hard."

You're Gonna Have To Serve Somebody

In order to sit atop the food chain, you must become a predator.  There are no two ways about it.  It doesn't matter the industry or discipline, if you want to reach the highest echelons of power and fame, then the price is nothing less than all you have.

And there is no greater price than integrity.  Once you have sold that, then you have nothing left to call you own.  If you have talent (can make the bosses rich), but are unwilling to sell your integrity, then you will be allowed 'success', meaning that you can feed your family and maybe buy a house and/or a car, but that is the limit of your rise.

One of the reasons I went into media was that I could work in any industry.  I could go anywhere, do anything and experience all that the world had to offer, because I had a skill that was necessary to every market...the ability to craft high-quality communications.  As a consequence, I have delved deep into the petroleum industry, the medical industry, the financial industry, the religion industry, and the entertainment industry.

I have put my hands deep inside a human body.  I have climbed to the bottom of oil tankers and played with ROVs.  I have sat in board rooms on Manhattan's lower east side with views of Hudson Bay.  I have worked side-by-side with household names.  In every case, the price is the same.

It always starts the same way.  You are given tastes of the top.  There are limo rides from JFK to the Meridien at the base of the Twin Towers.  There are private jets.  There are dinners for ten where the wine bill alone is $5,000, and there's more silverware at each place-setting than the average family owns altogether.

And then there's the parties.  Hot and cold running bimbos.  Horizonless pools overlooking LA.  Snack trays and punch bowls full of prescription and non-prescription drugs.  Orgy scenes that make anything in the film Caligula seem overly modest and sedate.  And should you require a brief respite, there's the Montana mountain home with a 12-person jacuzzi, maids and butlers, and beds pre-heated by the 'skin pillow' of your choice.

This sets the hook.  You get addicted to the lifestyle, not to mention anything else.  You don't move in the same world that 'normal' people do.  You don't stand in lines or fight for scraps.  You make the scraps.

But at some point, the Moment of Truth comes.  You are presented with the keys to the next level.  You have seen what is waiting.  You are ready to throw integrity to the wind to put your name on that mountain house or have the pilot's number on your speed dial.  You are hungry to make Maxim' in Paris your personal breakfast stop, where the Eggs Benedict is your Egg McMuffin at $53 a pop.

So as you stare at the bottom line and all the legalese blurs behind your daydream of fame and wealth, and you take pen in hand and start to initial the bottom corner of each page, somewhere in the back of your mind, a small, almost vanishing voice says, "But at what price this?"

At some level, you are aware of the photos and videos of the orgies and nights in the jacuzzi.  Somewhere there are photos of you playing strip pool with hookers and straws up your nose.  You know, even without verbalizing it, that the road back from this point will mean wading through your sins.  This time, though, it will involve all the wrong people seeing and judging those sins, even though everyone standing in judgement of you secretly wishes they had been there too.  And maybe that's why it gets so surreal.

What few people ever realize, though, are the connections between the severe emotional tragedies in your life and the contract sitting in front of you.  Whether the tragedies were created, or simply taken advantage of, they are used to control you.  They are milked for every drop of emotional anguish that can be inflicted on you.  At some point, most people will surrender thinking they have nothing else to lose.  They will develop personas that hide the vulnerable True Self from further harm and take over the public face of the individual.

The potent combination of desire and fear combine on the bottom line of that 50-page contract sitting in front of you.  You think to yourself, "If I sign this, not only will I have the good life, but the power to slay my personal dragons."

Ah, and the revenge.  Yes, the revenge lies at the bottom of everything.  With power and money, you can get back at all those who hurt you, who made you feel inadequate, ineffective and unconsequential.

With these powerful motivations, you hurriedly march through the contract to the last page, and there, shining like a beacon in the darkness, is a single line with your name neatly typed under it.  Just one more quick scribble and your bank account will swell, your power will increase, you will have it all at your fingertips.

Within seconds of signing, you realize you've lost it all.  You feel the profound loss of having traded your soul for paper.  Suddenly, all the people who were just fawning all over you begin to act as if you aren't there.  They have what they came for: your pound of flesh.  You know instinctively that the way back is far more treacherous than anything you braved to get here.

The vision of fame that you had moments before turns to sharks ripping the flesh off your bones.  You are now fodder for the masses and any sense of privacy and individuality have fled the scene.  You are left with only two choices: wield the sword you picked up, or fall on it.  In either case, someone must die for your choice.

It dawns on you that the reason people who have it all never look happy is because of what they lost to gain what they have.  For what does it profit a man that he should gain the world but lose his soul?  Everyone wants it until they have it.

Show me anyone who is rich and famous, and I will show you an empty vessel.
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