The Tyranny of Humour

eg Ulysses now is funny in some of the same ways and in some very different ways than it was in 1922. or more accurately perhaps it was serious in different ways back then.

We live in an informal age compared to upper class urban Victorians but that's tilting the playing field a little bit!

I don't know why, maybe it's just a natural egotism, but people always seem to think that previous generations were less funny, more serious-minded, less sophisticated, easier to fool, etc etc.

the intent of the artist is of limited importance, i think, and proximity is an important part of that murky equation

and yeah 100 years ago only the worst kind of political demagogue wanted to be your friend, friend of the people.

Trace this isn't less, more, better, worse...this is different. I'm saying that societies and cultures are different to one another. They may even repeat the same mannerisms, but i don't buy a timeless universality of experience.

Couple of case studies I guess. The first a 'yes' to the suggestion it's an expression of 'now'. Kafka I found incredibly gloomy (obv) when I first read him as a teenager. Now I find him quite amusing to read. The endless fruitless attempts to get things done in the face of the way things are (yes it's more than that), why, it's Larry David! (no.)

Celine: black as hell, and often extremely funny in what is essentially a presentation the bleak absurd? Black humour funny as a consequence of existentialism? see also Beckett.

So, death of god results in black humour? v possibly. See also the transition of the word absurd from the unique impossible to 'lol'.

Wd want to try and look at Rabelais/Cervantes/Swift maybe in this context, but people be staring at me not doing work.

Is it egotism? Premise of this thread seems to be that this might not, in itself, be A Good Thing.

so that's me saying 'yes' I guess.

sorry, xposting like blazes.

and it's not "previous generations", it's public discourse. the way media and public figures address their audience. the ways it's considered seemly for adults to relate to each other in public.

also xposting like mad. cos i'll have to work again shortly.

There is some kind of irony in a thread about humour being humorously delinated :/

deliniated. gah.

I'm cautiously yes on a cultural shift towards the tendency to see humour. I get the feeling 30s-70s maybe were a great deal more serious about their Kafka, Beckett, Dostoevsky etc.

death of god results in black humour

god = high seriousness
aftermath of death of god = black humour
god dead and forgotten = tim vine

xp

yeah i'm thinking this, from the perspective of criticism. altho it's obviously not the only measure of how writers are received.

aftermath of death of god = black humour

fits nicely into Breton's Anthology of Black Humour

on an unrelated note a work colleague - somebody i don't work that often with - just signed off an email to me with a "xx". i'm not perturbed but i am v much "this is ok now?"

You do see it.

i guess it's kind of pleasant, i think what throws me is the shifting signification of the "x" from "kiss"

well, yes, the first few times I saw it, I thought that as well. Take it it's from a woman tho? (I've only ever had an x at the end of an email from a woman, denuded of any close affection obv).

fuckin denuded gotta stop using that word. esp that close to 'affection'.

yeah exacly it's kinda like an air kiss but then you wdn't air kiss a colleague either?

gotta go actually work yay friday

xx is a bit much, but x i see a bit.

Going to think about humour and the bleak void we stare at/stares at us.

it's even closer to the word "woman" FYI

xx

Most of the "humour" in Private Eye is in the centre pages, the stuff towards the back about industry and banking is back at the anger and investigation. I think that stuff has as much sarcasm per item at the Street of Shame, but it just takes longer to cut through the pomposity and obstructive layers so the items are longer, whereas the SoS is all "An excellent review by Gerald Starborgling in the Telegraph of the new John Hardt novel, but surely the novel was written by a different Sally Johnson than the one who has been shacked up with him for 10 years?"

That said my reading order is straight to the satirical "From The Forums" in the humour, then SoS / the book reviews / everything else.

Also modern satire in pure black tar form = Chris Morris, particularly Brass Eye.

Yep. That qualifies more than anything else in the last couple of decades I think.

And the non-special part of it is 15 years ago, because I am old.

on an unrelated note a work colleague - somebody i don't work that often with - just signed off an email to me with a "xx". i'm not perturbed but i am v much "this is ok now?"

lulz this was the exact subject and angle of a hand-wringing daily mail column yesterday

FUCK CHRIS MORRIS

FUCK THE OFFICE

FUCK PEEP SHOW WHILE WE'RE AT IT

FUCK DAVID MITCHELL AND HIS FUCKING OBSERVER COLUMN

i actually like some black humour, a certain strain of it, i'm thinking uhhh... the opposite of sex? heathers?

elegance is an absolutely crucial component of humour for me, and indeed the only quality that can redeem comedy

also no british people

Opinions running in a direct line from false to true, there.

Can there be comedy about poor people, lex?

maybe but the exceptions to the comedy rule are so rare that it's probably safer to say there should be no comedy at all, about anyone

there's also the issue of 'grace' in real-life/observed humor –– are we laughing because of relatability, because of discomfort, or because of mockery –- and how separable are the three?

fwiw, i do think that all (funny) comedy comes at somebody's expense, unless it is purely absurdist/verbal humor, in which case it's just an odd situ

You mean performed stuff or things that actually happen to someone?

David Mitchell's observer column is truly dreadful. Gives me the heebie-jeebies, weird combo of 'humour' and unpleasant assumed 'moral rationalism'. Elegance is an interesting component. Wd seem to come specifically from the fin-de-siecle (back to death of god/absolute truth)... avatars of 'elegant humour' Firbank? Wodehouse even? Sorry, coming at it from a lit. point of view. Must admit that appeals to my taste less.

I mean stuff that actually happens, Andrew. Or "reality" humor i.e. some idiot who posts a video of himself on youtube as he falls off a wall he's trying to balance beam (or w/e).

'assumed 'moral rationalism' - yes. Mitchell has a big dose of this. The Lib demmy thing.

I admire that elegance & compression & elision style more than I find it funny - the almost totally empty version in Firbank does nothing for me. Wilde is an obvs name to add on there. Can't think of much that goes for that tone now.

Swift's a tricky one w/r/t black humour and the death of god just because it's so hard to reconcile with his life. fwiw I think that it is manageable and that a academic-historicised 'He was a Tory CofI clergyman, you're misreading the satires' is totally inadequate, but I'm not sure I know enough even to sound the bottom of the question.

problem is in relating the texts too closely to the historical man i think, we can never know how much "Swift" was "in control" of say Tale of a Tub and yet because of him or despite him the satire escapes its nominal targets and sprays across religion and enlightenment and yeah sorry rationality altogether - but that isn't an invalid response as long as you're not committed to a strict auteurism

yeah, that does cut through it, I guess I just find the tangle of all this stuff in Swift's case - the relationship between intention, achievement, circumstance, personality & a kind of vision or sensibility - to be an unusual case, and one I come back to a bit.

The British people on this thread make me feel stupid; the Americans make me feel like an alien.

Humour is something that is very, very difficult for me, to understand and to process, on many levels.

I don't think it's actually elegance that makes humour acceptable. I've got into trouble before with stating that I implicitly dislike all *cruel* humour, because a laugh can be protective of a wince if it's properly aimed at a legitimate target, humour is an incisive weapon. But I think it's more that, for me, humour must be absurd, but not veering into the deliberately surreal, because that is seldom funny (the smarmy one from the Mighty Boosh springs unfortunately to mind) - but it's more the concept of the almost accidentally absurd, that it's impossible to aim for absurdity and hit, but if, when aiming for something else, one hits absurdity instead, that is very funny indeed.

Don't have a problem with humour, there is a time and place for it

Do have a problem with the idea that it has to be everywhere