[lit-ideas] Re: T'AINT FUNNY, MCGEE

From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "lit-ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2006 21:30:52 -0500
> [Original Message]
> From: Mike Geary <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 12/8/2006 5:51:17 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: T'AINT FUNNY, MCGEE
>

> I, too, think that John Cleese is hilarious in Fawlty Towers.  But I'm 
> shocked that you do.  The show is based on pure venom.  Cleese plays the 
> most vile, vicious, supercilious, bigotted, sycophanic character created 
> since Moliere.  How you can laugh at someone so cruel to others is beyond 
> me -- well, it's not beyond me -- I love it, but it's beyond me how you
can 
> love it while condemning everyone else for laughing at cruelty.  But you
do 
> find it funny, so there you go, you find it funny despite your
preachments.
>


We're talking about different Fawlty Towers obviously.  Basil isn't vile or
vicious.  He's just dense and afraid of his wife and continually at the
mercy of his own stupidity, a sort of Everyman.  If he was vile or vicious,
he wouldn't be funny.  He'd be vile and vicious.    



> AA:
> > Life is meaningless but we need to pretend it matters.  That's my MO.
>
> Yes!  Yes, but it's the pretension that makes life so funny.  Don't you
see? 
> We pretend all this matters -- we have to or we'll never be able to go to 
> work everyday, then we'll never be able to pay the rent, then we'll never
be 
> able to get laid, and that's REALLY all that matters (for guys anyway) --
so 
> we pretend to ourselves that being a responsible, stable, adult
contributor 
> to society matters, but we know it's all a crock of shit and HUMOR, that 
> most subversive of all dispositions, throws it all back in our face (a
lot 
> of 'all's in there -- that happens when I preach).  I'm not talking about 
> jokes, I'm talking about the attitude that finds almost everything in
life 
> funny, but even jokes are a kind of lowbrow recognition that life is not 
> what we were taught it is.
>


I agree that in the end it doesn't matter, but most people don't believe
that.  Most people think something matters.  Often it's money.  Money is
downright an idol.  No humor in it at all.  I can't think of any jokes
about money worship.  Can you?  



>
>
> > Moralist-mode is a euphemism for not liking my opinion.
>
> I don't think so.  I think it's a straight forward complaint about your 
> freewheeling judgments of the motives of others.  I agree with many of
your 
> positions and disagree with many -- as you apparently do with me.  And 
> that's the way it should be.  When I was still Catholic, I was a moralist 
> supreme.  Thank God, I'm no longer Catholic.  Now only occasionally do I 
> moralize.  And I'd better stop now before I start moralizing about 
> moralizing.
>


I assume by freewheeling judgments you think it's fine to hit ('spank')
children and it's someone's right to take drugs when pregnant and all the
rest of it.  Most of humanity agrees with you, so you are vindicated on
this one.   Personally, I can't figure out why it's domestic violence if
the wife gets hit but it's not domestic violence when a child gets hit. 
Children are not considered domestic?  Never mind, I'm moralizing again. 



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