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

  • From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2006 11:49:39 -0500

> [Original Message]
> From: Mike Geary <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 12/8/2006 10:45:44 AM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: T'AINT FUNNY, MCGEE
>
> AA:
> > Seinfeld is funny if one likes to laugh at others, which everyone likes
to
> > do.  When those same jokes are turned on one's self, it's less funny.
> > Seinfeld leaves me cringing.  It's a testimonial to the human race that
> > they can't laugh at something unless it's at someone's expense.
>
> You've never seen Seinfeld, have you?  If you had, you'd know that the
whole 
> premise of the show is self-mockery.  The characters make fun of their
own 
> pettiness and foibles and incoherencies, not those of others.  


Uh, unless the Seinfeld you watch is an older Seinfeld who mocks himself. 
One of the few episodes I saw involved a bakery and parking.  The minutiae
of life properly done is in fact funny, but this was just frustration in a
bakery while Kramer looked for a parking space.  For 30 minutes.  Maybe
that was not such a funny episode, which you'd never know from the laugh
track, but another one was someone (older, of course) going to a
proctologist and another show on masturbation, and another on older people
in Florida.  Those are the ones I saw.  Proctology kind of tickles the 6th
grader in everyone, and masturbation is like the drop-your-pants of
vaudeville.  Guaranteed for a laugh.   




>If you get a 
> chance to watch a re-run, mute your moralist-mode 


Moralist-mode is a euphemism for not liking my opinion.



>and you'll see your own 
> pettiness and foibles 



I don't have any pettiness and foibles.  



>and incoherencies mirrored in one or all the 
> characters and you'll get a good laugh at yourself.  


I never poke fun at myself.  



>Everyone I know who 
> likes Seinfeld finds themselves reflected there and they crack themselves 
> up.  


Yeah, like the Kramer of real life.  Kramer was poking fun at himself?



>Maybe I speak only for myself, but I think we're all just goofy drubs 
> trying to fool ourselves by acquiring accoutrements of importance. 
Seinfeld 
> says take another look at yourself, you're much goofier than you think.


You're right.  It's like no one can resist looking at themselves in one of
those closed circuit televisions in the stores, and it's our own face we
stare at in the group photos.  I don't have a problem with that except that
some of what he's showing in that group photo is nasty and mean spirited.  
I don't have a problem either with showing mankind's nastiness and mean
spiritedness, there's certainly plenty of it, and it's the basis of most
literature, except I don't think it's funny.  


>
> > Truly, in my opinion, really good humor is rare.
>
>
> I'm not so sure what really good humor is and I wish you would clarify
that 
> with some examples.  


I haven't seen it in a long time, but when I saw it, W.C. Fields' "The
Dentist" is roll on the floor funny.  So is John Cleese in Fawlty Towers
but I almost know them by heart so they're losing their edge.  Monty Python
is clever and sometimes insightful, not necessarily funny.  A Fish Called
Wanda with John Cleese was deadly.  Laurel and Hardy is funny in a
Bush/Cheney sort of way.  I remember thinking The Cemetery Club was funny. 
Can't think of too much off the top of my head.  I'll let you know as I
think of them or see any. 




>But as a psychological phenomenon, humor is, I think, a 
> Weltanschauung thing.  


That's where we disagree.  I think humor puts a certain distance between us
and our foibles, that's what makes it funny.  Jokes start out with "A guy
walks into a bar..."  Instantly we're detached from it so we sit back and
know there's a funny coming up.  When we sit back with Seinfeld, we know
it's safe because it's The Other we'll be laughing at, with maybe just
enough of an echo of ourselves so we want to hear more.  So we laugh and
laugh.



>To the degree your outlook on life embraces the 
> absurd, 


Life is meaningless but we need to pretend it matters.  That's my MO.



>to that extent, you'll find humor in life.  


Sorry, can't do it.  I can't laugh at meaningless.  I can laugh at funny,
not at meaningless.



>Humor is like God.  


Finally, we agree.  God has a heck of a sense of humor.  I would put him in
the practical jokester category.  



>For 
> some it is immanent in all creation.  One has only to open one's eyes to 
> find it.  For others, those whose God is the serious Other, 


That's me.  God is the serious Other.  Seriously zapping those little
humans left and right and they love him for it.



>humor is rarely 
> experienced indeed.  So seldom do droll thoughts arise out of Ought to 
> manifest themselves as the true nature of reality.
>


The true nature of reality, as found in the mirror.  True nature of reality
rises and sets on man's narcissism.  If only the fruits of that collective
narcissism didn't step on the toes of all of the rest of creation.


>
> >Seinfeld and Mario Puzo, perfect together.
>
> Never read Puzo, don't know.  Was he funny?  What do you find funny?
>
>

Now that's funny, Mike.  Mario Puzo the comedian, as mouthed by that old
standup Marlon Brando.   Seriously though, Puzo probably did more to end
the Mafia in the U.S. than just about anything else.  I read somewhere that
after they made the movie The Godfather, the real life Mafiosi couldn't
wait to tell all so they could be in movies, they'd pick the actors who
would play them.  Absolutely serious.  That's an example of human
narcissism tempering itself to some extent.  Most of the time we're not so
lucky.  We just wind up with bluer oceans, meaning less plant life in them
because man has dominion over the world you see...




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