Of late I have been giving more time to reviewing the comedy/humor/drama of the American people, as played out in my lifetime. This is my native culture, so it is not world opinion, but I also believe there is something in any culture showing basic components that reveal mankind in our attempt to know and manage self, even in serious experiences of life. Much in comedy (joking and surprise), humor (some of life’s distractions and follies), and drama (scenes of imagined or real life) – all become serious to us in the study of self, life experiences, and even God. Laughter deserves solemn evaluation – for good and ill.
My first conscious awareness of comedy came in my childhood home. My mother had roomers and boarders who became family for the several added persons. They kidded us, the children, sometimes too much, but their notice meant we were not overlooked. There was much laughter in our home, good for children. The radio provided programs that were comedic and included the greats of the entertainment world. The silent screen had popular figures like Charlie Chaplin, Fatty Arbuckle and others holding enormous audiences. Radio and the Talkie movies enlarged the roster. We laughed with Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, Red Skelton, Laurel & Hardy, Groucho Marx, and others. My mother and I liked Will Rogers, who was really a humorist, more than a comic. Television began with corny comedy, but emerged with effective comedic secular personages in Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson. These persons became masters of their art, and dominated late television for decades. Others emerged, holding periods of popular tenure, including Jonathan Winters, Nipsy Russell, Carol Burnett, Bob Newhart, Joey Bishop, Phyllis Diller, Merv Griffin, Bill Cosby, and others. Several emerged as musicians and/or actors – as did the Smothers Brothers. These persons used the force of their personalities, of stables of writers, of props, and an understanding of audiences to win their popular positions. The story is not well told without examining the material, quite varied, that they projected. The greatest of them knew the boundaries of their materials, of good taste, and, perhaps, the real meaning of the comedic nature of a healthy society. Gradually the influence of carnality gained ground, and the quality, as well as popularity, declined.
Good taste declined, as much of the general culture diluted the value of good taste. Sex, swearing, drinking, innuendo to prurient interests entered. This latter has become so unsatisfactory to what might be called a wholesome life that the responses gain more sniggering than laughs – at the time of this editing. We hope for recovery, and return to the mainstream of life and communications that do not twist private, even sacred, human life and relationships. Comedians may not be funny at this point. They appear to believe they are brave, that they are opening new vistas to their fields, when they are simply trying to make the secret or private dirty joke acceptable. They use freedom of speech as though there are no boundaries to protect. It is not really acceptable, provides a reduced standard for humor, and offers the new generation something less than my generation was given. This is not merely an opinion of an amateur observer. Many an established comedian has noted that: at least I haven’t fallen to the level of comedy we have today. Jane Fonda openly criticized the 2013 Academy awards for its bad taste – rightly so. The point has been made many times, in public, so to open discussion. What we have is not real fun. Happily for society, there are swings in the entertainment world, so that we can anticipate better things in comedy and media in years beyond the time of this writing. By our choices of entertainment we can influence life factors in all communications genre forms to wholesomeness, good taste, and decency. Fun ought to also be good. It even deserves prayer. Scripture speaks, in the spiritual sense, of Joy. Here is the fun side for the Christian. We learn something about the foibles of the human race, the ability to find the better side of things than may actually be attending the moment, the way to bring joy to bear before current tension is resolved. We learn spiritually what we talk about in the human context. Lincoln said that if he did not have a joke, he would die. He found relief in depression by making laughter while in the depression. That works also in appropriate spiritual context. Whatever burden one bears, the joy of the Lord helps in bearing that burden, even the disappointments in unresolved/unrelieved matters. We must remember that all persons receive similar earth patterns so to preserve equality for all. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020