* (restored)
1.
It seems as though the comic could not produce its disturbing effect unless it fell, so to say, on the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm and unruffled. Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion. I do not mean that we could not laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for instance, or even with affection, but in such a case we must, for the moment, put our affection out of court and impose silence upon our pity. In a society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter; whereas highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every event would be sentimentally prolonged and re-echoed, would neither know nor understand laughter. … To produce the whole of its effect, then, the comic demands something like a momentary anesthesia of the heart. Its appeal is to intelligence, pure and simple.
Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo, Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another, something beginning with a crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain. Still, this reverberation cannot go on for ever. It can travel within as wide a circle as you please: the circle remains, none the less, a closed one. Our laughter is always the laughter of a group. It may, perchance, have happened to you, when seated in a railway carriage or at table d’hote, to hear travellers relating to one another stories which must have been comic to them, for they laughed heartily. Had you been one of their company, you would have laughed like them; but, as you were not, you had no desire whatever to do so. A man who was once asked why he did not weep at a sermon, when everybody else was shedding tears, replied: “I don’t belong to the parish!” What that man thought of tears would be still more true of laughter. However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary.
Bill Hicks on marketing
Andy Kaufman wrestles a 327 lb. woman
Cartman ‘Kyle’s Mom’s a Big, Fat, Stupid Bitch’
Toy Car Up the Butt
Rip Taylor Tossing Confetti
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What life and society require of each of us is a constantly alert attention that discerns the outlines of the present situation, together with a certain elasticity of mind and body to enable us to adapt ourselves in consequence. TENSION and ELASTICITY are two forces, mutually complementary, which life brings into play. If these two forces are lacking in the body to any considerable extent, we have sickness and infirmity and accidents of every kind. If they are lacking in the mind, we find every degree of mental deficiency, every variety of insanity. Finally, if they are lacking in the character, we have cases of the gravest inadaptability to social life, which are the sources of misery and at times the causes of crime. Once these elements of inferiority that affect the serious side of existence are removed — and they tend to eliminate themselves in what has been called the struggle for life — the person can live, and that in common with other persons. But society asks for something more; it is not satisfied with simply living, it insists on living well. What it now has to dread is that each one of us, content with paying attention to what affects the essentials of life, will, so far as the rest is concerned, give way to the easy automatism of acquired habits.
Laughter, then, does not belong to the province of esthetics alone, since unconsciously (and even immorally in many particular instances) it pursues a utilitarian aim of general improvement. And yet there is something esthetic about it, since the comic comes into being just when society and the individual, freed from the worry of self-preservation, begin to regard themselves as works of art. In a word, if a circle be drawn round those actions and dispositions–implied in individual or social life–to which their natural consequences bring their own penalties, there remains outside this sphere of emotion and struggle–and within a neutral zone in which man simply exposes himself to man’s curiosity–a certain rigidity of body, mind and character, that society would still like to get rid of in order to obtain from its members the greatest possible degree of elasticity and sociability. This rigidity is the comic, and laughter is its corrective.
Jacques Tati ‘Playtime’
Film – Buster Keaton – Beckett -1965
Woody Allen ‘Stardust Memories’ (extract)
Rushmore, Wes Anderson (1998) – Opening scene
Stanley Kubrick/Peter Sellers ‘Dr. Strangelove’
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When we speak of expressive beauty or even expressive ugliness, when we say that a face possesses expression, we mean expression that may be stable, but which we conjecture to be mobile. It maintains, in the midst of its fixity, a certain indecision in which are obscurely portrayed all possible shades of the state of mind it expresses, just as the sunny promise of a warm day manifests itself in the haze of a spring morning. But a comic expression of the face is one that promises nothing more than it gives. It is a unique and permanent grimace. One would say that the person’s whole moral life has crystallised into this particular cast of features. This is the reason why a face is all the more comic, the more nearly it suggests to us the idea of some simple mechanical action in which its personality would for ever be absorbed. Some faces seem to be always engaged in weeping, others in laughing or whistling, others, again, in eternally blowing an imaginary trumpet, and these are the most comic faces of all. Here again is exemplified the law according to which the more natural the explanation of the cause, the more comic is the effect.
This soul imparts a portion of its winged lightness to the body it animates: the immateriality which thus passes into matter is what is called gracefulness. Matter, however, is obstinate and resists. It draws to itself the ever-alert activity of this higher principle, would fain convert it to its own inertia and cause it to revert to mere automatism. It would fain immobilise the intelligently varied movements of the body in stupidly contracted grooves, stereotype in permanent grimaces the fleeting expressions of the face, in short imprint on the whole person such an attitude as to make it appear immersed and absorbed in the materiality of some mechanical occupation instead of ceaselessly renewing its vitality by keeping in touch with a living ideal. Where matter thus succeeds in dulling the outward life of the soul, in petrifying its movements and thwarting its gracefulness, it achieves, at the expense of the body, an effect that is comic. If, then, at this point we wished to define the comic by comparing it with its contrary, we should have to contrast it with gracefulness even more than with beauty. It partakes rather of the unsprightly than of the unsightly, of RIGIDNESS rather than of UGLINESS.
* from Henri Bergson’s ‘Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic’ (read the entirety)
Richard Pryor interview 1980
Chris Morris ‘Paedogeddoni’
Dylan Moran ‘Bernard’s Letter’
Sarah Silverman vs. Paris Hilton
I WAS SCARED STUPID BY A PICTURE!
*
p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Cool. No, I haven’t read that Melissa Broder, let me know how it is. And enjoy the short nonsocial recharging period. Books’ll do that, yep, even to the most level headed love. Love giving the sad news to skateboarders that a day will come when they won’t be able to just skateboard all day every day anymore, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. Unrealness does really help. Happy that the class is starting soon enough. That’ll get the pen back twitching in your paw. ** Misanthrope, As soon as cops here see me, their hands immediately come to rest on their guns. Or they would if French cops had guns. Get those documents in shape in your inimitable style. ** Joe, Hi! Ah, I see. I suppose I’m not surprised that the change hasn’t been radical, and I’m pleased as a fellow pre-book elaborator. Dying for ‘Alehoof.’ Wow. What’s the scoop on its birth? Public birth, I mean. I’m really looking forward to finishing the film so I can start thinking about words in combination again. It’s been a while. All the ultra-best! ** Sarah, Hi. I think ‘TF’ is probably easily streamable and maybe for free, if that helps. Well, that Rimbaud crossword puzzle was pretty primitive, as I recall. YA is one of those genres that can handle the great, it just seems like people who work there don’t try. Anyway, I’d love to read it, of course. A pdf is cool. My email is [email protected], if that helps. It might take me a little bit to read ‘cos I’m in film finishing heavy mode, but we’ll be through that soon. Thanks! ** Steve, Welcome home. Hope the Ethiopian was safe and sound. I’ll try to find that Alejo Moguillansky film. Obviously sounds to be within my wheel house. I saw the world premiere of James Benning’s ‘Breathless’ last night. His build up about it being a Benning-ified remake of the Godard is total mischievous prank. It’s not that at all. It’s something, but people who come to it expecting it to be what he hinted at will be very bewildered. ** Justin, Glad you like his stuff. Me too, duh. Uh, there’s a publisher I’m thinking of where I think the book would be appropriate and who might be interested, so I’m going to query them to see if in fact they are interested to consider it. ** Harper, Hi. ‘Pink Narcissus’, sure, so singular. I went to this program of experimental films made by teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 last year, and this one, I think, 14 year old guy made this insane and really great kind of personal homage to ‘Pink Narcissus’. It’s quite a good fount. I think maybe there’s thought among self-styled ‘serious’ fiction writers that taking influence or copping to taking influence from other mediums would cheapen their work’s ‘seriousness’, but of course that’s just bizarre. I’m more influenced by music and film and visual art in my work than by other fiction writing. But then I’m considered a weirdo by the ‘serious’ fiction writer sets, so there you go. So, we’re of like minds, basically. It’s morning, and I’m about to go finish polishing the sound on our film, and I’m a little pooped but looking forward to the finish line. I hope your day will or has lead you excitingly astray. ** Gramski 🌝, Hi. Welcome home, or, err, maybe not, I guess. Too messed up for therapy sessions … uh, were is the logic in that? Maybe force yourself to do that application? Okay, that’s a lot. My guess is it’s a short aligning of the awful that will pass rather quickly, but I am the terminal optimist. But I would just see it as a dark moment, and moments are called moments for a good reason. So sorry, pal. You’re tough, you’re wild, you’ll be fine, trust me. ** Uday, Hi. I too have become more of a crepes than pancakes guy since moving over here. I do love pancakes, but not the slight nausea of having the weight of one too many decomposing in my stomach. Congrats about the summer at home! When will summer start for you? I’m only kind of okay with Blondie. They don’t really do all that much for me, I guess. You a big fan? ** Okay. I decided to lift today’s curious post out of the mothballs-like distant past in which it had been left behind, and I can’t explain why. See you tomorrow.
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