"Had any of it simply appeared on the latter, he argues, its humour would not have been questioned. 'That was what was interesting about it,' he says. 'It seems that by changing the masthead to something real, it changes the context of what the joke is.' Perhaps, in the era of Donald Trump and fake news, the joke becomes a little more hackneyed, a little less funny. 'Some of the critical response to the themes that we were talking about was:
We know this already!' he concedes. '
You’re worried about corporations? Boring! But I look at the moment we’re in. We’ve got a reality star in charge of the United States, and everything that we love and care about is filtered through this incredible corporate structure.' He gestures at my iPhone sitting on the table. There is something distorted, he says, in the suggestion that a corporation such as Apple could be so widely regarded as benign. 'Like:
Hey, we’re not Exxon, we’re the good guys! We’ve all just accepted it.... We felt very inspired by that golden era of [satirical 1970s magazine] National Lampoon... By modern standards, some of that stuff does not fly: the photo spread saying they’d found
Hitler in paradise. It’s so offensive, but so perfectly executed. You’re probably not doing it right if it’s not on that edge. A lot of comedians now say the same thing: they won’t play colleges now because you can’t tell a joke. People have lost the ability to even know what a joke is. It’s very Orwellian, it’s the canary in the coal mine. Comedians have always been at the frontline of what people have been scared to talk about, and as soon as you stop being able to do that it’s a downward slope.'"
From
"Arcade Fire: 'People have lost the ability to even know what a joke is. It’s very Orwellian'" (The Guardian).
Man who thinks people are not sophisticated enough is not sophisticated enough to know that jokes that are labeled "joke" are easier to see as jokes than jokes that are not labeled.
I could imagine California passing a law that lets people sue to force jokes that are not obviously jokes to be labeled "JOKE" and the federal government bullying websites into demoting — as "fake news" — anything not obvious enough that a complete naif would know it's a joke.
But I think it might be good if people seem to have lost the ability to know what a joke is. Arguably, we're becoming
more sophisticated. We should be looking at everything and wondering
was that some kind of joke? We should all be saying,
like Bob Dylan,
Right now I can’t read too good...
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the doorknob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can’t read too good
Don’t send me no more letters, no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row
Posts
42 comments:
The best jokes are unintended, but not everyone gets them.
A priest, a rabbi, and a reverend walk into a bar.
The bartender says, "what is this, some kind of joke?"
I've sung that song a lot over the years, and have quite never settled on what this means (i.e how to sing it): "All these people that you mention, Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame, I had to rearrange their faces, And give them all another name." Any suggestions?
The Everything Now corporation. This is not an age for subtle humor and faux-corporate worship. Does this bloke not know the current watchword is "THAT'S NOT FUNNY!"
He's a leftist and doesn't even know it. That's pretty funny.
The only verbs leftists now know are
protest
project
progress
See now that's subtle humor. Wait. What?
I'm still chortling about yelling "Wolf Arm!" in a crowded theater, even though it's not funny. But maybe with an orange clown wig...
Is everything Orwellian? People don't understand his humor or tastes change, and it's JUST LIKE ORWELL WROTE !!!
There is something distorted, he says, in the suggestion that a corporation such as Apple could be so widely regarded as benign.
John Savage report to your hilltop tower.
I came too late to Arcade Fire, so I watched both songs from their performance on SNL.
Here's my comedy influences: raised on Mad magazine, Monty Python, National Lampoon, George Carlin. Later, ran into the Goons, Richard Pryor, Mel Brooks, and a slew of comedians including Andy Kaufman, Eddie Murphy, and Robin Williams.
Seeing the opening of "Creature Comforts," I thought "Oh, they're stealing Bono's look from U2's "Pop" tour (Bono dressed in a silver outfit including silver cowboy hat).
While watching the vids, I opened up the lyrics thanks to Google and followed along (I have terrible hearing). Each song had a couple of points to make and a lot of repetition. They weren't really that sharp. "Creature comfort makes it painless" had promise. Comfort distances you from pain, especially the pain of others. But they just didn't go there.
"Put Your Money on Me" seemed to mix a love song with a plea to the corporation to invest in AF. It's hard to tell because it's obscured with lines like "sitting on carpets in the basement of heaven" and "I know that you [the corporation?] gotta be free / but I'm never gonna let it go".
In short, WTF?
If they're looking for inspiration, they should have stolen from "The Tubes." Take a listen to "Telecide" from their "Remove Control" album. Yeah, it attacks television, but at least it makes you pay attention to the lyrics.
https://youtu.be/Fsa_JAKHxOo
The Tubes - great! Why would i lie?
JSM
Fee Waybill?
Yes. It was Fee. That’s one of the great names in the Englebert Humperdinck tradition.
Aw c’mon, humor is alive and well in intimate spaces. The Orwellian factor is entirely online. No natural barriers to global exposure there. People are slowly learning to watch what they say or do on camera. -willie
...never settled on what this means ... "All these people that you mention, Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame, I had to rearrange their faces, And give them all another name." Any suggestions?
If I ever wrote a novel, I'd preface it with one of my favorite Dylan lines: "I had to rearrange their faces, and give them all another name". It's more artful than the standard "all persons fictitious" disclaimer.
In Dylan's case, I don't think he's singing about avoiding legal action for libel. The rearranging is because the people are so lame. Perhaps that's the only way he can deal with them. Sort of the way we sometimes give annoying people nicknames and view them as cartoon characters.
Come to think of it, doesn't Trump give different names to all the people he deems lame. Thankfully, he hasn't rearranged any faces.
The problem is that dumb people don’t get the joke, as Malcolm Gladwell demonstrated in “The Satire Paradox.”
The band guy (Will) does not see himself as part of the problem. If you are a culturally edgy phenomenon, you can't just say that you can't do that 70s National Lampoon stuff anymore, you have to do it.
The music was unremarkable. If I had heard it on pop-rock radio in the 80s, I would have nodded along and immediately forgotten it.
I hate this cultural moment.
"Instead, he is forthright and enlivened, and close to defiant. Over oysters, crab meat and steak tartare, he discusses an array of subjects including satire, gun control and Angolan dance music, as well as the response to Everything Now."
This is the counter culture trying to "keep it real." they don't even realize that they are satire. What a frikkin' joke.
"I could imagine California passing a law that lets people sue to force jokes that are not obviously jokes to be labeled "JOKE" and the federal government bullying websites into demoting — as "fake news" — anything not obvious enough that a complete naif would know it's a joke."
There was no federal government involvement, but something like this happened recently.
"But I think it might be good if people seem to have lost the ability to know what a joke is."
Spoken like someone who doesn't tell a whole lot of jokes.
Even these morons understand that it's a joke. (The phrase "willfully obtuse" pops into my mind.)
This blue-on-blue-on-dark blue crime is entertaining, but if these people aren't mocked hard and soon, this might get out of hand.
Arguably, we're becoming more sophisticated. We should be looking at everything and wondering was that some kind of joke?
You've got it backwards. People are not questioning whether what is claimed to be serious is some type of joke (healthy skepticism). Rather, people are unable to laugh. They what is intended to be humorous as serious and needing societal-wide condemnation. That is not more sophisticated, or healthy.
Not just can't tell what is funny, many people do not allow for certain things to be funny. Want to make a joke about "making a sammich"? That's not funny. It isn't that it is not funny, it is that topic is taboo because someone says so.
It’s worth remembering . . . when people first heard Dylan performing “Desolation Row,” they couldn’t stop laughing.
“Dylan sang the song in public a little more than three weeks after recording it—two days before the song and the album it sealed were to be released—on August 28, at Forest Hills in New York. It was his first show since the Newport Folk Festival. For the opening half of the concert he would appear solo, with his acoustic guitar; then he would come back with a band and, as he knew, the trouble would start. People were primed, for and against; in fact, it would be the meanest, most outraged crowd Dylan would ever face in the United States. But for the time being, listening to familiar songs played in a familiar way, those in the crowd who have come to protest the former protest singer are reassured—at the least, they have dropped their guard of suspicion.
“Dylan’s tone for the new song is cool, and his style of emphasis, the way he comes down on this word or that, is hilarious. The whole performance is entrancing, as if full of confidence that everyone will get the joke. No one present has heard the song before, but the crowd is with it instantly, laughing with wonderful good humor at every other line, cracking up completely at the words ‘Everyone is either making love, or else expecting rain,’ as if ‘expecting rain’ is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. The feeling is that of liberation, of people absolutely at home in their own skins; there’s also a sense of privilege. It’s a sense of people being in the right place—here, where the tribune of a new culture is speaking a secret language that, for the moment, needs no translators—at the right time—now, when the world seems to be changing and you can feel yourself one step ahead, already looking back.”
So if people are incapable of understanding the joke today, fuck em’.
Maybe 10 years ago,
on April Fool's Day,
someone at Google's main office sent a message to all employees warning them that a big snake had gotten loose in the office.
Everybody got a big laugh out of what appeared to be a classic April Fool's joke.
It wasn't a joke.
One of the employees had brought his pet python snake to work with him and it had gotten loose. For real.
"We’ve got a reality star in charge of the United States"
Infuriating. WHY was he a reality star, HMM? Oh right, because he was a colorful, successful, multi-billionaire, that's why. It's like they think his success is on par with Snooki or something.
I never watched "The Apprentice", but doesn't an apprentice by definition need a master? Master of what? Makin' money.
I swear it's like they all have a case of "the dumb", on purpose, forever.
Speaking of pythons and jokes...
Hence the invention of Canned Laughter.
I thought that Michigan AG’s ad was a joke.
Everything is still funny if you’re just out for dinner, in an elevator, hotel lobby etc. Online it’s blood in the streets.
Has anyone here been called out for inappropriate humor in a real world setting? -willie
"Arguably, we're becoming more sophisticated. We should be looking at everything and wondering was that some kind of joke?" Indeed, we should. For the purpose of making sure no doubleplusungood heterodox notion gets out into the wild. "We" are becoming much sophisticated both about defining (the right) deviance down and squashing (the wrong) deviance entirely.
Prog paradise is no joke.
Humor is disappearing - or its appeal is becoming more selective, as per Spinal Tap - because there is much less of a shared culture. People don't get jokes made by the other side because they don't share the same priors.
You are split, like the Nazis and the Communists. The only jokes they are going to make are against each other.
The problem with humor today is that it is all a variation on the joke that ends with the punchline, "The Aristocrats!"
The joke is on the audience, being forced to degrade themselves in the name of humoring the comedian.
The world is full of laughable stuff. That some choose not to laugh at it is laughable in itself.
buwaya said...
Humor is disappearing - or its appeal is becoming more selective, as per Spinal Tap - because there is much less of a shared culture. People don't get jokes made by the other side because they don't share the same priors.
You are split, like the Nazis and the Communists. The only jokes they are going to make are against each other.
Partial answer.
The problem is the left is beyond parody or humor. They can't honestly say what they want to do because it is so reprehensible and unconstitutional.
The only freedom they acknowledge is the freedom to chop up aborted fetuses for profit.
Name one other subject where the left advocates for more freedom.
Self defense?
Economic?
Speech?
Religious?
Racial?
Ah I forgot one: freedom to kill yourself.
Pot too. We are just waiting for the idiot prohibitionists do die off though on that.
It is impossible to allow humor when your ideology is so diseased.
History is now believed to begin on the day one was born. Before that, everyone was ignorant and barbaric. Worse, they weren't cool or fashionable. The median age in the US is about 40. Therefore, anything before 1978 didn't really happen. He's so unhip, when you say "Dylan," he thinks you're talking about Dylan O'Brien.
If you have to explain it, then it's not a very good joke. The ability of people to get a joke has atrophied a bit. I blame the comedians that alternate their shtick between funny and serious (clown nose on, clown nose off), and then the technology doesn't really lend itself to jokes and humor. Ever tried sarcasm over text or email? Doesn't work.
-sw
"Two professors have written a new book warning of a trend they call "toxic geek masculinity," which they see evidenced in television shows such as "The Big Bang Theory."
According to the book, popular culture is undergoing a “cultural shift” whereby “geek masculinity has become part of hegemonic, white, male masculinity.”
Big Bang Theory
Big Bang Theory is, when it goes off into cultural space, reliably liberal, or had been up to when we quit watching it several years ago. Its probably even more so now. And this was a show that was very popular among the liberal intelligentsia.
But this is not the only shift in elite taste, just being one data point.
According to the book, popular culture is undergoing a “cultural shift” whereby “geek masculinity has become part of hegemonic, white, male masculinity.”
Megan McArdle dealt with this canard back in August:
As a woman in tech I realized these are not my people
Neither professor has a proper hyphenated name, which calls their feminist credentials into question. One of them is named Bridget Blodgett, which I defy anyone to say after a few drinks.
Blogger Lyle Sanford, RMT said...
I've sung that song a lot over the years, and have quite never settled on what this means (i.e how to sing it): "All these people that you mention, Yes, I know them, they’re quite lame, I had to rearrange their faces, And give them all another name." Any suggestions?
The sentence is reflexive - it logically should be at the beginning of the song. The song is about the ending of a romantic relationship. She drifted away into her circle of friends, leaving him behind. The people derogatorily mentioned in the song are doppelgangers for the people who are quite lame.
Satire should always be clearly labeled as such. It's only fair.
I reviewed "Everything Now" and to me what was profoundly lacking in it was a sense of humor. Contrast it with something like "The Who Sell Out," and it's obvious that "Everything Now" is too earnest and heavy handed. The Who used a lighter touch in its satire about consumerism and pop culture, even letting the humor reflect on themselves. Imagine what someone like Frank Zappa would have done with Arcade Fire's concept. You would have caught the humor immediately. "Everything Now" is well performed and smart, but anyone familiar with Arcade Fire knows this is not a group that should try to be funny.
Thanks to Amexpat and Roy Lofquist for those fresh insights that had never occurred to me.
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