The Tyranny of Humour

xp - yes, but I understood that one.

no offense, but I get you and man alive confused.

not all mans

BEST JOKE I HAVE RECENTLY HEARD
There are 2 kinds of people, those who can extrapolate from incomplete information

Privileged to be a guest at the consecration of a new bishop @LiverpoolMet yesterday. Some subtle wit here from @Pontifex in the papal mandate for a Liverpool bishop. pic.twitter.com/GZEbnULJOy

— Crispin Pailing (@crispin_pailing) September 4, 2021

i didn't get it, then i read the comments, now i get it but i'm angry

I guess I still have some schoolboy latin because I got it right away & smh, my nightmare is being around ppl for whom this kind of stuff is the pinnacle of wit

Also not sure what is “subtle” about this bit of local pandering

the pope doing this = fine, w/e, have fun

people guffawing about it like it's the most witty thing ever written = fuck right off

some of the deeply weird anglican/catholic latinists/priests in the replies/quote tweets really got off on this. Which is what I find very amusing.

see also: cunts who laugh at bad humping jokes in Shakespeare

OMG THE ACTOR DONE A HUMP MIME I THINK MY SIDES HAVE SPLITTED

country matters amirite

I did get the Latin on my second try, but I admit my first thought was "you're going home in a fucking ambulance". Which tbf I probably would have found funny coming from the Pope.

the humor of tyranny

is that like when stalin joked about how he was going to purge you one day and you had to laugh

the final form of banter

Banter road leads to Belsen

Stalin's idea of top bantz with priests was after decades of bulldozing down churches, confiscating monasteries and sending clergy to the gulags he called some chief hierarchs during the war and said what is wrong with you miserable fuckers - we need to work together here!

Cops bantering with the people they arrest, another manifestion of the same thing.

this dog outfunneyed the pope

in mexico this dog walked through a parade for the pope thinking it was for him pic.twitter.com/wCBw9AMWWp

— Humor And Animals (@humorandanimals) September 5, 2021

the tyranny of humour and animals etc

"the humor of tyranny"

a genuinely funny imo example of this is the scene in To Be or Not To Be where the actor playing Hitler walks onto the set to a chorus of "Heil Hitler's" and responds "Heil Myself".

I hadn't seen this thread before so I'm just going to reply to the original question instead of the revive. Sorry to jump into the middle of a conversation! But this made me think about how two of my favorite songwriters are Springsteen and John Prine, and they're in many ways very similar in their preoccupations and the kind of stories they tell, and yet they have these very different approaches to humor that I think end up defining their reputations in a big way. Like, John Prine is known for his humor, it's one of the first things mentioned in all the articles that came out after he died, and that despite his having a ton of grim, grim songs in his catalog. Whereas Springsteen, who can be very funny when he wants to - you see it a ton in his concerts - I think has a general rep as a songwriter for intense seriousness unleavened by humor (or at least not intentional humor.)

And I think that's an exaggeration of both of them but it does get at something real. Like, John Prine's humor isn't a set of haha jokes so much as a kind of detached self-awareness and a constant sense of the absurdity of human existence, which is sort of relatable and distancing at the same time. He'll write something like, "The streetlamp said as it nodded its head, 'It's lonesome out tonight,'" or "bowl of oatmeal tried to stare me down/ and won," and you get the sense of someone looking at his own unhappiness from an ironic distance, like ah yes, we're all just wandering through this absurd, surreal world where streetlamps and oatmeal and knickknack shelves and whatever have opinions on how crappily we're living our lives. it me. it all of us.

But Springsteen will write "The dogs on Main Street howl 'cause they understand," and if you stop to think about that it's just as absurd, and yet you don't stop to think about it, the song doesn't let you. This is not funny, it's deadly serious, you are pissed off as fuck and those dogs GET IT!

And you'd think that lack of detachment and self-awareness would be a weak point, and I do think it repels some people, but also invites a really intense and wholehearted commitment once you get past that initial barrier. Like, if you listen to this you'd better be prepared to BE King Lear as a 30-year-old mechanic screaming at the sky for four and a half minutes, and if you can't do that without rolling your eyes, then go away, this isn't for you.

Awesome post

I think the kind of facetiousness of Prine puts me off sometimes even tho I know, when I do listen to him, that I like him a lot

Thanks! Awesome thread question. I think I was lucky in that my first encounter with Prine was the album Common Sense, which might be his darkest one, and it definitely shaped my impression of his humor as sad existentialist absurdity rather than haha goofiness.

there are Prine songs I have to skip b/c they are so dark ("Sam Stone"), but that's not the case with say "The River", Springsteen somehow manages to have this level of detachment there, where you are listening as an observer and not a participant? thanks for that post.

Yeah, rereading that, I didn't mean to suggest Prine wasn't dark or immersive; I think he can be very dark, but I often get a double-exposed feeling even from his grimmest stuff, a sense of standing inside and outside the story at the same time, experiencing it and also seeing how it looks to others. Even when he dials the humor way down, that little self-mocking smile is still there: "Thought I saw a neon sign/flash my name with the time/ prob'ly didn't see a thing/ crazy dreams and a broken wing."

Springsteen - just thinking this out - I think maybe he deals more in characters who are lacking perspective and self-awareness; like that inability to step outside your own story and see yourself as absurd is something that appeals to him. So there are layered narratives and irony and humor, but you have to look harder for them, because the character doesn't know they're there. And his detachment, when he has it, mostly comes from somewhere else. Maybe in "The River" it comes partly from the framing device where you're listening to someone tell his story, and partly from the sense of resignation and inevitability he brings to it?

This could all be nonsense. It's easy to think of exceptions to everything I'm saying - what about the line about the car wash in "Downbound Train?" What about all of "Reason to Believe?"

Maybe I should start a Springsteen v. Prine thread.