Thursday, January 26, 2023
Friday, January 20, 2023
No, but seriously....
Hi,
I'm Andrew.
I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.
If you have enjoyed this essay, please consider backing me on Patreon (pledging £1 each time I publish an article.)
Thursday, January 19, 2023
The Black Joke
If something makes you laugh, it is a joke.
If something makes you laugh a lot, or makes a lot of people laugh, it is a good joke.
The question I will turn to tomorrow will be "Are rude jokes ever okay?" with particular reference to the oeuvre of Mr Ricky Gervais and Mr Jimmy Carr.
"I love a good bum on a woman, it makes my day
To me it is palpable proof of God's existence a
posteriori."
It comes from a patter song by the legendary poet and chansonner Jake Thackray, in which a husband complains at very great and verbose length about the fact that his wife talks too much. ("She is one of those women who/will never use three or four words when a couple of thousand will easily do.") Jake's biographer and interpreter John Watterson (aka Fake Thackray) says that the first eight words constitute the best opening line of any song, ever.
What is the difference between a weasel and a stoat?
A weasel is weaselly recognised and stoat is stoatally different.
This joke won second prize in the Beaver Club Super Joker Competition at Clacton Butlins in 1975. It is a pun and nothing else. I suppose it is slightly funny that someone has given a silly answer to a sensible question. And the great James Thurber said that weasel is an intrinsically funny word. But the joke has no further point. The first syllables of two English words sound like the names of two animals. Ho-ho.
I like wordplay. I don't like old-fashioned word-play: I prefer current puns. I once included ten different word-plays in the same article, hoping that at least one would get a laugh, but sadly, no pun in ten did. But a decent pun generally has to involve something apart from the mere fact of one word sounding like another word. For example:
a: Dramatic situation: One character plausibly misunderstands what the other has said. ("Four candles! 'Andles for forks!")
b: Outrageous contrivance: A hugely complicated set up, generating tension which is relieved by the punch line. ("It's a nick-nack, Patty Jaques: give the frog a loan.")
c: Dissonance: the speaker says something which seems nonsensical for a second, but is de-coded once you understand the pun. ("The vicar told the bellringer, and the bellringer tolled the bell.")
e: Sheer, breath-taking ingenuity. ("Kings Cross Station -- A royal lobster.")
But we're linguistic animals: even the most unsophisticated pun can raise a smile. Like it or not, it is just funny that some words sound like other words. And we're also sexual animals, and social animals. Like it or not, it is just funny that men and women do a particular thing in bed; and like it or not it is just funny that there are parts of the body and bodily functions that we are not supposed to talk about. And I am sorry to say we are cruel animals: it is just funny when someone slips over or steps on a rake. If laughter is the object of the exercise, Jake Thackray didn't need to bother with the Latin. He might just as well have said "I like women's bums, me." He could probably have raised a laugh by merely walking onto the stage and shouting "Bum!"
So: by low humour I mean laughing at farts, bums, swears, custard pies, and pratfalls. (Pratt is an old fashioned word for bottom. A pratfall means falling on your arse. Bottoms are an indispensable component of English comedy. Fundamental, even.) By sophisticated humour I mean jokes which involve some ingenuity, or which have some sort of point to them.
Sigmund Freud: In your professional opinion, what comes between fear and sex?
Doubtless, quite a lot of prudes pretend not to find dirty jokes funny when they really mean that they don't approve of them. When the Slitheen appeared in the Sarah-Jane Adventures, Clyde had to explain to Luke (a super intelligent alien clone) that "Farts are funny. They just are". But, by the same token, if Queen Victoria is genuinely Not Amused by bodily functions, then she isn't.
So. Low comedy is basically cheating. The low comedian points to things which are just-funny and tells us to laugh at them. The wit or the raconteur, on the other hand, points to things which are not funny and enables us to laugh at them. You don't need to go to a Carry On film in order to laugh at the existence of lavatories: you probably have one in your own house. But an evening with a clever humorist will allow you to see the funny sides of tax returns and terminal cancer. He creates a funniness where it did not exist before.
But unfortunately for us sophisticates, low comedy is funny. People laugh their posteriors off at the silliest, crudest, rudest material. That's every vaudevillian's defence of his blue material. People pay money to come and see me. You can't get a ticket. My show sells out weeks in advance. Listen to the laughter.
Did you know that the reason comedians talk about "blue" jokes is that, in the days of censorship, unacceptable material was underlined in blue pencil? I certainly didn't.
Maybe we could say that high comedy does several things; where low comedy only does one. Satire is better than slapstick because it makes you laugh and also offers a critique of corrupt politicians. A clever pun is better than a simple one because it makes you laugh and also makes you think about the nature of language. This is not an argument that satire is funnier than slapstick. In fact, it's allowed to be less funny. Many of us forgive Private Eye and Newsthump for not making us laugh as much as they used to because we agree with their political points. The only justification for a custard-pie routine is if it makes you laugh an awful lot. If it doesn't, it's just boring.
You can make the same argument from a more spiritual position. The only true pleasure and the only true happiness comes from union with God. Bounty bars, romantic love; the Marriage of Figaro and the Marx Brothers are all equally focussed on quick fix in the here and now. Pascal's Wager says abstain from laughter today so you can spend eternity laughing with the angels up in heaven. People living serious, spiritual lives are much happier than those living frivolous worldly ones. Too much laughter makes baby Jesus sad. It makes you sad in the long and infinite term.
"But we monks -- we Christians -- are supposed to be very pure. And what you call low humour is really just laughing about impurity. We don't talk about our private parts or bodily functions or sexual immorality; and we only speak of God with respect. And the proper response to cruelty or misfortune, real or imagined, is sympathy and empathy. We don't laugh is someone slips on his arse, we offer him a cupo of tea and check he's all right. You are right to draw an analogy between comedy shows and strip clubs. Men ought not to be looking at ladies breasts for enjoyment. And they ought not to be laughing at indecent stories, either. Some things may be just funny. But some of the things which just funny are just wrong."
Hi,
I'm Andrew.
I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.
If you have enjoyed this essay, please consider backing me on Patreon (pledging £1 each time I publish an article.)
Friday, December 30, 2022
Thursday, December 29, 2022
Friday, December 23, 2022
Tales of the Galaxy
Hi,
I'm Andrew.
I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.
If you have enjoyed this essay, please consider backing me on Patreon (pledging £1 each time I publish an article.)
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Source Criticism
I was going to give this series of essays an academic sounding title. A Case Study In the Reception History Of Star Wars, perhaps. Defamiliarizng Lucas: Star Wars Observed Through a Mantlovian Lens. Or if that was too pretentious maybe Micronauts Considered As Fan Fiction. Or something blunter. What Star Wars Looked Like In 1978.
That was the excuse for dusting off these very old comics. I wanted to celebrate the best bad comic book I have ever read: but I also wanted to revisit that forgotten world when Star Wars was just one movie; when Darth Vader was not Luke's daddy and it wasn't squicky for Leia and Luke to go all kissy-kissy. When Steve Gerber looked at Star Wars, he saw silly hats and silly names. When Terry Nation looked at Star Wars he saw terrorists fighting fascists. When some advertising creative for a confectionary company saw Star Wars, he saw temples and cod-mysticism. What did Bill Mantlo see? And why did his version resonate with me in a way that Battlestar Galactica and even the Empire Strikes Back never quite did?
But this plan collides with a very inconvenient fact. Bill Mantlo, like Terry Nation and Eddie Large, had never seen Star Wars. In a 1979 interview he is quite clear on this point:
Well: maybe so. But if Mantlo had an eleven year old son, he could hardly fail to have been aware of Star Wars -- to know, at the very least that the idea of Space Fantasy had come back into the zeitgeist. And as a jobbing employee of the Marvel Bullpen, he must have known that there was a comic book adaptation of a block-buster movie in the works.
His preview essay in FOOM magazine presents the initial five characters -- Rann, Acroyear, Bug, Time Traveller and Marionette -- very much as an incoming superhero team not entirely unlike the Fantastic Four. Only when Mego sent him a complete set of Micronauts figures did he become aware of Microtron, Biotron and Baron Karza, and only at that point did his story become inescapably like Star Wars. And whichever Mego employee designed the Karza figure must have been well aware of George Lucas's big-bad. So even if Mantlo really hadn't seen Star Wars his comic book character was inspired by a toy that was inspired by the movie. Vader once removed.
Did Bill pass the toys on to his son, we ask ourselves? Did Adam Mantlo become the only kid in America with as good a collection of Micronauts as the lad in the telly adverts? And did Bill Mantlo, like A.A Milne, watch him play with the figures and borrow themes for his stories?
But if Star Wars was only an indirect influence on Micronauts, Mantlo happily lays claim to two more illustrious predecessors:
Hi,
I'm Andrew.
I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.
If you have enjoyed this essay, please consider backing me on Patreon (pledging £1 each time I publish an article.)
Monday, December 19, 2022
I've Never Seen Star Wars
Hi,
I'm Andrew.
I am trying very hard to be a semi-professional writer and have taken the leap of faith of down-sizing my day job.
If you have enjoyed this essay, please consider backing me on Patreon (pledging £1 each time I publish an article.)