Yesterday, an acquaintance observed her weekend will be dedicated to watching as many “stupid comedy” movies she could fit into her Saturday and Sunday evening plans because, days after April Fool’s Day and a year into the pandemic, that is what her emotional bandwidth would allow for. No Christopher Nolan-esque philosophizing, no tragic heroes of the Oedipus sort. Just plain old comedy with a plot like chewing gum, the staleness of which amplifies with each scene.
When asked why she coupled ‘comedy’ with ‘stupid’ in her weekend equation, she remarked that doing so was her way of keeping her dignified self in check. After all, who would take a Proust-reading PhD candidate seriously if she were to remark on the merits of Seinfeld’s Kramer and then proceed to explore the hawthorns and cattleyas of Swann’s Way?
“Not I,” said the non-fool.
Foolishly so.
We often find ourselves in such preemptive posturing: lest we be taken for the fool, we pad our decisions concerning the comical and label them stupid as a way to soften the landing with the crowds whose attention we seek and whose dispositions we desperately seek to please.
It begs the question why comedy has become closely intertwined with stupidity. And if set against the backdrop of a daily morning prompt–“Do you want to live in a tragedy or a comedy?”–might we think of comedy differently?
Might we, for instance, view the fool not as one who is stupid and lazily lacks the ability to think for themselves, but rather, as George Leonard writes in his epilogue to Mastery:
How much more intriguing life would be if we gave ourselves permission to play and a place to do so non-judgmentally, tenderly, unabashedly . . .
Why don’t we?
Perhaps it could be that we don’t give comedy its proper dues because we are accustomed to imitating in our lives the literary counterpart to comedy: tragedy.
In observing our near-obsessive affinity with tragedy (and thereby the tragic hero) as the proper story arc in literature, American scientist and scholar Joseph Meeker wrote decades ago in The Comedy of Survival that an alternative–the comic hero–may be better fit to help us survive and endure Life, as a way to “live on beyond the theatrical curtain fall,” as Mandy Brown points out.
“Comedy demonstrates that man is durable even though he may be weak, stupid, and undignified […] At the end of the tale [the comic hero] manages to marry his girl, evade his enemies, slip by the oppressive authorities, avoid drastic punishment, and to stay alive. His victories are all small, but he lives in a world where only small victories are possible […] Comedy is careless of morality, goodness, truth, beauty, heroism, and all such abstract values men say they live by. Its only concern is to affirm [the human] capacity for survival and to celebrate the continuity of life itself, despite all moralities. Comedy is a celebration, a ritual renewal of biological welfare as it persists in spite of the reasons there may be for metaphysical despair […] Comedy muddles through, but seems to care little for such weighty matters as progress and perfection.”
Swapping stupidity for playfulness; improvising with things we haven’t a clue about (in my case, sourdough bread baking, cooking, acting classes); finding humor in life, despite its tragic undertones; laughing off the pain. Confirming, after all, we are all frail humans.
One finds in comedy, if earnestly sought, not stupidity but perhaps even a dose of philosophy. That said, here’s Kramer, for your weekend viewing pleasure 😉
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