Peer Day 10: Art for Everyone

For a lot of people, going to a museum conjures the image of walking in a gaggle behind a humorless tour guide in sensible shoes past numberless bland impressionist landscapes that speak nothing to them, works painted by long-dead white artists with French names, men who have an elusive concept of beauty that simply cannot be understood in the simple minds of the average folk. Perhaps some of those feelings of disconnect come from a lack of relationship to the art in the museum, and a lack of representation among the curatorial staff. According to Museum Studies experts like Edmund Barry Gaither, for people from traditionally marginalized cultures, the experience of going to the museum has made them feel disenfranchised because their cultures have not been adequately represented. Museums like the Studio Museum in Harlem and el Museo del barrio were created to address the issues of marginalization and representation; these issues were the topic of discussion in Leslie Bedford’s peer day.

Edmund Barry Gaither discusses issues of inclusion in his article in a recent Smithsonian collection, Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture. Gaither believes that museums devoted specifically to the cultural heritage of a single group are important because they offer “a forum for the discussion of cultural issues and for the development of criticism, without becoming bogged down in racism” (60). At present, when more generally oriented museums attempt to reach out to diverse groups, often they do so in a condescending manner. So, perhaps, says Gaither, “when museums in the Unites [sic] States tell a more accurate and integrated story, more Americans from all cultural groups will feel ownership in them, and will say, ‘Hey, that’s mine’” (64).

When a museum oriented toward a specific racial group hosts an exhibit, then, presumably, the show is curated by a person from that racial group. According to Paula Vogel’s essay from Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, that’s an important consideration, since, though many museum visitors are not aware of it, the contents of a show are “mediated” through the eyes of its curator” (193). So if we see a show in a museum designed by and for Latinos, then presumably, we see the artifacts through the eyes of Latinos, an important mediation.

Concepts like these in the readings were fascinating and, I thought, useful to me not just for the peer day, but also as a student of culture. During the first half of our peer day, we discussed the theoretical readings we did in preparation for our touring the museums. Each of the readings favors the existence of museums oriented to marginalized cultures. While I agree in principle with having such museums, I find it interesting to connect some of the ideas, particularly mediation, to some reading I am doing for Union coursework. Thomas de Zengotita’s Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in it raises an interesting and related idea regarding culture and mediation.

In the context of mediation, de Zengotita tells about an Australian ethnic group, Imparja, who were given a television station to broadcast in their native language, “to give a cultural voice to the aboriginal peoples in the outback” (223). In this case, they were allowed to “mediate” themselves publicly through the Australian airwaves rather than in a museum. The interesting part, de Zengotita tells us, is that the “highest demand on the Imparja channel” was “Seinfeld. Other American sitcoms too, but especially Seinfeld” (223). According to what Gaither said, we might have expected the group to desire more Imparja-culture programming, but almost none of the shows were anything other than U.S. situation comedies. So de Zengotita explains if reading that these native people want to watch these programs makes you “recoil, hold on a minute. Who are you to say that Australian aborigines should prefer traditional activities to kicking back with Jerry and the gang? Haven’t they got a right to be hip? No one’s forcing them. It’s a choice, right?” (223).

I brought up this example in our discussion in the peer day, wondering whether exclusive, segregated museums are in fact good for race relations. We (peer day participants Leslie Bedford, Lila Staples, Paul Gaffney and I) debated the relative value of exclusive or segregated museums and a few important issues were raised. To begin with, in favor of these museums, Gaither made his argument from the perspective of an African-American man, a point of view none of the four white people at the table, no matter how sensitive we want to be, can fully grasp. Also, the museums segregated by culture might inspire a certain pride in heritage among groups that were previously marginalized. Those were good arguments raised in favor of the exclusive or segregated museums. But on the other hand, who is to say that the only exhibit Latino museum visitors want to see is, for example, a display of photographs by a Latino photographer? Perhaps Latino museum visitors would like to see an exhibit about Asian weaving, or African American visitors would be interested in an exhibit about Latino women painters. For those reasons, it seems as though museums with a broader range of interest make better sense, particularly in this era of limited public funding for the arts. The best way to make a determination, though, was to go to the museums and see for ourselves.

Taking the subway from Greenwich Village to Harlem was, to my mind, as much a part of the peer day as the museum visits and discussion. We had the chance on the trip to experience the transition between the upscale West Village and the extreme range of diversity in Harlem, where fifteen years ago, a group of middle-aged, middle-class white people like us might have felt unsafe standing at the intersection of Malcolm X Boulevard and 125th Street. But in 2005, this crowded street corner was packed with business people, street vendors, baby strollers, and so on: in other words, it was, perhaps not so different from other busy street corners in the city, except a few of the vendors were selling incense and daishikis, rather than the mundane hats, scarves, and sunglasses sold at the vendors midtown and below. Some of the vendors wore beards and knitted cotton Kufi caps that identified their Muslim faith. Perhaps the only difference that I noted between this and other Manhattan neighborhoods I visited was the fact that ours were the only white faces—a fact, I note with embarrassment, that should not have made me nervous. We were treated more kindly here, if anything, than on the Upper East Side. The only tension we experienced, we deserved—and that was because as tourists, we dallied at the intersection when we should have walked with the green light. One woman said, “GOD! Why don’t they HURRY UP!” which sounds a lot like something I would say about Washington, D.C. tourists.

After lunch in the Harlem Starbucks (which is, as one might imagine, identical to every other Starbucks in the world), we went to the Studio Museum, where we were looking forward to seeing both the Chris Ofili Watercolors (Ofili is famous for his portrait of the Madonna made with dung—censored by Rudy Guiliani in a previous exhibit) and the Bill Traylor, William Edmondson, and the Modernist Impulse exhibits. After paying a very reasonable $3 entrance fee, we entered the museum and began looking at the Ofili Watercolors. Leslie and Lila went ahead, eager to see the Traylor/Edmondson Modernist exhibit, only to be told by the guard that the exhibit, due to be closed on July 3rd, had been closed early, without explanation (or apology, apparently), so we would only be able to see Ofili and the museum’s permanent collection, which consists of about twelve pieces. Leslie, a Museum Studies learner, was incensed that the museum could close an exhibit early—particularly without posting due notice to the public before they paid their entrance fee. It is this sort of shoddy management, she explained, that often prevents museums like the Studio in Harlem from developing a good reputation. While we enjoyed the Ofili exhibit such as it was, we observed that the only other museum visitors were a tour group from a local school; the message to them (and us as well) seemed to be that the museum didn’t have its act together. I wondered, then, if it was the teachers’ purpose to develop the students’ love of attending museums for the future whether the mediocre experience they had on the 28th of June had in fact the opposite effect; it certainly didn’t overwhelm me with the urge to return.

I should mention, though, that the Studio Museum in Harlem is in transition; June 30th, the day we were there, was the last day for the director. A new director was to start on July 1st. So perhaps new and better exhibits and planning is to come there. The museum itself is a beautiful facility, so the new director has a great place to work with.

A great museum director is clearly more important than a beautiful facility—el Museo del barrio is proof. While this renovated school may not be the most beautiful place, I found that its exhibit of Photographs by Agustin Victor Casasola (1900-1940) was fascinating. Casasola was a reporter in Mexico City who founded a photography agency where he and members of his extended family worked to assemble an archive of photographs about Mexico’s history.

Curated by a Mexican-American, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, the exhibit shows 92 photographs of scenes such as the Mexican revolutionary war, the post-war rebuilding of the Mexican infrastructure, Aztec mythic imagery, Mexican nightlife, and scenes from the Mexican criminal justice system. The diversity of the subject matter of the photos is stunning. Some of the photos showed early in the show are political (war photos), and one thinks the entire show will be political figures like Pancho Villa and Presidente Madero. However, later, we see the curiosity of images of Diego Rivera and the nightlife of dance hall performers and variety theater performers, as well as the horror of dead bodies on slabs of marble in the morgue. The range of subjects and the sometimes sensitive, sometimes objective, and often voyeuristic portrayal is intoxicating. The show, with its fascinating bilingual commentary, is well worth seeing. In this case (aside from the Mexican music playing in the background), I realize I have ever so subtly been told a story about Mexican history. It’s a great story, well told—but it would be at home at any of the finest museums in the country, to my mind.

In the end, visiting the two museums was a good experience, and debating the question about whether exclusivity or segregation into museums by culture or racial group was a worthy exercise. I don’t know that I have fully answered the question for myself. I began the peer day leaning against the practice, but having visited these museums and considered some of the issues, I wonder whether I—a white woman of considerable privilege (being in a Ph.D. program at a private university)—should have a say in the matter at all. I’m really not a member of the “Other” group.According to de Zengotita, “instead of treating the Other as an alien something [… ] recognize in the other an autonomy and agency equal to your own and place yourself in a reciprocal relationship of dialogue with the Other, etc. This is the most visible, the positive aspect of the otherness trope. The cardinal rule is to acknowledge the Other as other; that is as categorically different from you” (223) I believe what he’s saying here is not that we can never be equal or never have inter-racial dialogue—but rather that it doesn’t make sense for one group to presume to speak for the other. Thus, I take his advice. I found this, my last peer day to be a worthy one, for which I did some profound thinking.

Peer Day Report

If you’ve ever skirted the green, woodsy rectangle in New York, seen an aerial shot of it, or even walked through Central Park, you might well have thought that the city somehow wisely foresaw its future overgrowth of concrete and mercifully left undeveloped an idyllic 800-some acres of land for future leisure enthusiasts. I learned in this peer day that Central Park indeed was the result of some wise foresight—but the park was not simply crafted by nature; rather, Central Park is an extraordinarily large public art project, designed and conceived of in the nineteenth century (mostly) by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

I would have proceeded without knowing about Olmsted if it were not for Lila Staples. Lila, whose focus at Union is Museum Studies, convened the peer day and selected biographical readings about Olmsted (including Rybczynski’s excellent biography, A Clearing in the Dark) as well as more current readings about the park written in the context of the recent Christo Gates exhibit. Lila wanted to look at the park as a work of art or special public experience of leisure. Our purpose was to consider the present state of the park and determine how it continues to fulfill the mission of its creator as well as how the park has adapted to more contemporary public concerns. We evaluated the evidence both by discussion and walking through the park, stopping at various places for discussion (a formal agenda is appended).

In addition, in preparation for the peer day each of the peers present (Lila Staples, Leslie Bedford, Paul Gaffney, and I) wrote reflective narratives about an experience in the park; we shared these narratives during the beginning of our discussion. It is important to explain here that writing the narrative one of the best parts of the peer day for me, since writing about places will be a critical part of my PDE. Connecting place, the park, Frederick Law Olmsted, and Holden Caulfield (who seemed to me to be an obvious connection to literary humor) was a great exercise. I’ve appended the piece I wrote to this evaluation; I think it is a good start, or at least good PDE practice.

This sort of thinking ahead (towards my own PDE) is important, and it was an excellent connection to Central Park’s architect. Reading about Olmsted, I confess, it was hard not to think of the future. Most remarkable about Olmsted was his near-prescient ability to prepare for the future. Olmsted’s biographer, Witold Rybscynski, tells stories of Olmsted knowing exactly what to plant and where. For example, when he was asked to design cemeteries for the Civil War dead, Olmsted “advocated using trees indigenous to each region” since the cemeteries would need to be constructed in various parts of the country (Clearing 22). He offered a plan whereby the trees could grow a certain amount within five years, after which time more trees would be planted and a different look achieved (Clearing 22). Olmsted’s ability to understand the long-term outcomes of his designs was remarkable.

Consider this: around the time that the idea of a park in New York was conceived, around 1830, “urbanization” had already begun to occur, but the city had not yet developed the means of handling the sanitation problems that come with all those people. Olmsted’s biographer, Witold Rybscynski calls New York “dangerously unhealthy” because of its lack of “effective trash removal” (Clearing 32). Not only that, but also he explains that the city was “notorious for the pigs that freely wandered the streets in search of slops” (Clearing 32). By 1932, cholera outbreaks became epidemic, especially in the summer, which is why many people who could afford to do so left the city when the weather was warm (Clearing 32). People who stayed in the city were so upset by the problems with sanitation that riots ensued—and at the time not even a police force existed to assist with halting the mayhem (Clearing 32)! The inception of a park with shady trees and ponds must have seemed idyllic, and incredibly healthy, to the people. So, in July of 1853, the state legislature of New York approved a law that designated the land to be used as a park. Five years later, in 1858, Olmsted and his business partner Calvert Vaux began work on what was originally “treeless, rocky terrain and stagnant swampland,” and what became “the first major public park built in America” (Central Park).

Central Park turned into a place where free concerts and theatre were held; however during the 1960s, it also became a place of crime and ill repair. Between the 1960s and 1980s, the grounds were managed poorly (likely because at this time the city was being managed poorly and was in bankruptcy). According to the Central Park website, the grasses were “trampled,” and statues and benches were covered with graffiti (“Central Park Then & Now”). Finally, a number of advocacy groups formed a Central Park Coalition to raise money for the renovation and restoration of the park. The group, called the Conservancy, was responsible for restoring the park to its original beauty and now maintains the park with 100% private funds—the staff, materials, and equipment are entirely funded by donation rather than taxpayer monies.

The park’s 843 acres originally took 20 years to complete. The 150 acres of water, including the reservoir, three ponds, and a lake, were constructed from drained swampland to which city water pipes were added and water pumped in. The park has more than 26,000 trees, as well as 270 species of migratory birds. Every year the park has more than “25 million human visitors who can walk through its 250 acres of lawns and 136 acres of woodlands (Central Park 150th Anniversary Map & Guide). Visitors can enjoy the park all day and into the evening, but they have to leave by 1:00 a.m., when the park closes (I must confess, though, that we were confounded by how that rule could ever be enforced).

Modern-day attractions in the park are many, including a number of sculptures from Balto the sled dog (at East 67th) to Alice in Wonderland (at East 75th). Also, there’s a Carousel at mid-park on 65th and the zoo at East 63rd-65th. Brochures suggest bicycle rentals, horse-drawn carriage rides, boat or gondola rentals, tennis courts, and skating rinks. All these activities are important because they fit in nicely with Olmsted’s populist vision of what the park should be, with one possible exception. Olmsted was opposed to placing statues of any kind in the park because he thought that that kind of art was inaccessible to the masses, so he might have protested the current statues. However, we decided that he wouldn’t contest the ones we saw since they were small and they weren’t the off-putting “guy-on-a-horse” variety, but rather they were appealing, particularly to children. The idea of the park was for recreation. Rybscynski says in that regard “Olmsted was a purist” since he “considered skating and boating integral parts of the park experience” (“Olmsted vs. Christo”). So he would probably have approved of most of what exists in the park today.

The existence of a two-and-a-half mile-long rectangle park, which might be considered by someone like Donald Trump as essentially unrealized real estate profit in the most expensive city for real estate in the U.S. is an extraordinary luxury, in my view a great kindness to the people. Maintaining Olmsted’s park paradise is a great gift to people at a time when most leisure activities are costly and involve electronic accessories, or the “right” clothes. Visiting Central Park is a rare and welcome instance when we feel the relevance of nineteenth century ideals, a reminder of what Olmsted said he hoped for his work on his parks:
Let it not be for present delight, nor for present use alone; let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for, and let us think…that a time is to come when…men will say, “See! this our fathers did for us” (qtd. in Clearing 364).

From Olmsted to Caulfield

Aerial shots of rapid motion intersections at night, where car lights become incandescent crayons, drawing insane paths. I see sudden sunrises and sunsets, helicopter views of the dizzying edges of high rises where my eyes are in danger of scraping the proverbial sky. TV shows seem to be in the business of capturing the visual clichés of what New York is supposed to be: tall buildings, traffic, the impersonality of concrete and glass. It works on me; whenever I see the city, I feel like a rube fresh off the bus from Podunk, rubbing my eyes and saying well, goooolllleee…All that concrete feels dignified, important, and I am insignificant. Yet whenever I see New York, I feel like I own it, that it is in some odd way my city.

Big cities—especially Manhattan—are criticized for loud crowds, the roar of traffic that cancels out sunsets, skyscrapers that erase trees, anonymous people whose shoulders touch, yet never speak, but for me those same qualities give the city its sense of place, and those same qualities give us our sense of belonging there as well, whether we’re visitors or residents. Even if we condemn the City (just capitalize it…there’s only one) for these faults, people are awed at the same time, every time they look up towards the sky, or just turn their heads and glance up and down Broadway. Those who really want to identify New York, though, lift it up by its handle, there in the middle in the green part, Central Park.

Central Park is infamous; people who have never set foot east of Indiana’s Wabash, the Missouri, even Utah’s Green River know about Central Park. Maybe you read A Catcher in the Rye and met protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Holden has, undeservedly in my mind, earned a bad reputation for inspiring madmen like Mark David Chapman to assassinate John Lennon in front of the Dakota back in 1980. Holden should more be remembered as a 1950s anti-hero who mythicized Central Park for literary audiences worldwide.

Holden’s anti-hero status has caused the novel to be banned in any number of North American school systems. The story begins when Holden runs away from Pencey Prep a few days before Christmas break, when he learns he’s failing out. But we know from his unreliable first-person narration that his grasp on the world is shaky; we infer that at the time of the story, he has been taken away to a sanitarium of sorts in California to recover from a number of difficulties, including his brother’s death and issues he glosses over in the story, and which are easy to miss if we in the audience are not paying attention.

One element of the story that is repeated—with humorous results—is Holden’s obsession with the lagoon at Central Park South. Whenever Caulfield gets in a cab, he asks the cab driver about it:
“That little lake, like, there. Where the ducks are. You know.”
“Yeah, what about it?”
“Well, you know the ducks that swim around in it? In the springtime and all? Do you happen to know where they go in the wintertime, by any chance? […] I mean does somebody come around in a truck or something […]” (81-82)
None of the cabdrivers are willing to ponder the answer to his question, though Horwitz does consider what he thinks are related factors:
“The fish don’t go no place. They stay right where they are, the fish. Right in the goddam lake.”
But Holden insists:
“[…] The fish is different, I’m talking about the ducks.”
Horwitz finally argues:
“[…] It’s tougher for the fish, the winter and all, than it is for the ducks, for Chrissake. Use your head, for Chrissake.”
“They can’t just ignore the ice. They just can’t ignore it.”
Horwitz argues some more:
“[…] They live right in the goddam ice. It’s their nature, for Chrissake. They get frozen right in one position […]” (82).

Holden’s remarks about the ducks (and the fish) are funny: He tells us, the readers, when the conversation is over “He didn’t answer me, though. I guess he was still thinking. I asked him again, though. He was a pretty good guy. Quite amusing and all” (83). Holden the character is what he would call “horsing around.” But we can’t rely on Holden’s judgment as a first-person narrator. We have to arrive at our own conclusions and think of those helpless ducks a little bit like the way think about our helpless friend, Holden. Holden wonders what the ducks do when it gets cold, whether someone will come to take them away when it is no longer safe for them just as Holden doesn’t know what to do with himself now that it’s “winter” for him and things are no longer “safe” for him. Holden wants to know how “ducks” know when it’s the right time to “take off” because he’s just about ready to do it. When we have insight into Holden’s truth about the Central Park lagoon, then the Park becomes Holden’s source of truth for a moment.

The lagoon—and the Park—belongs to Holden, but at the same time it belongs to hundreds and millions of us. I too can say, “I own that lagoon,” because I assign it my unique narrative. It will forever hold the story of the day of the toy boat regatta in 1983. Even at this moment I can see the brilliant East-side button-down blue sky when I walked up the hill from Central Park South, down by the Plaza Hotel and came upon the lagoon on my right and saw the boats in the water there, as though I were suddenly able at great distance to see Lake Michigan being invaded by an armada of clipper ships. The illusion paled, though, with the sound of the tinny model motors—not to mention the sight of the many enthusiast operators lined up around the lagoon, black aerialed boxes in hand furiously racing the ships, big enough maybe to give a ride to the Chihuahua puppy I saw on a leash in the grass off to the left. Big or small, boat races have never made much sense to me, and they seemed even sillier on the precious real estate of the pond. It was an exquisite puzzle to think about, I reasoned, stretching out with my lunch near the big rock on the right as one approaches the pond. The day stayed impossibly blue and sunny as long as I wanted it to, though I never did figure out the rules of the race. All I did and all I know is forever more Central Park will be my park, at least for that day. Even though I never spoke to another soul the whole day, it would be wrong to call the city anonymous.

Though I didn’t know who he was at the time, I realize now that the park’s landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmstead, would have approved of my day at the races, since, according to his biographer, Witold Rybczynski, “he considered […] boating […] [an] integral part of the park experience” (“Olmsted vs. Christo”). Olmstead wanted nature to be available to city dwellers (though he could not have imagined the concrete jungles we have created in the present day). His design was meant “to foster a single ideal—the democratic use of public space,” which if you think about it is an extraordinary plan for a city (Ginsburg). As a result of this democracy, Holden Caulfield, Fred Olmstead, Heidi Moore, even the kids from Hair—all of us experienced the lagoon and the Park itself individually; it is ours. The point is that because the place is there in the center for all to enjoy, it somehow becomes universal. We have a collective experience, because it’s “our” Park, “our” lagoon, even though our feelings occurred asynchronously: “Oh, the lagoon! Yes! I’ve been there!” But then our memories part. We are the same as Holden Caulfield for a tiny moment, and different all at once, blending back into the high rises, the dizzying incandescence and neon. It belongs to all of us.

And Then There's Maude

I’m watching Maude, episodes 203 & 204 (from 1973). In episode 203 we see a great comic scene where a drunk Maude and Arthur try to decorate grandson Philip’s birthday cake with whipped cream and throw a great big yellow candle in the middle to disguise their mistakes. Even though we can see it coming from a mile away as a very poorly mimicked Lucille Ball routine, they still do a great job. Drunks are always funny, and it’s always funny to mess up a kid’s birthday cake. Walter has three or four drinks at lunch every day and three or four at dinner, as well as a brandy after. They finally must alert him that he might be an alcoholic. That part of it is funny just as an anachronism. The end-of-show morality play is priceless.

In the next episode we see Maude and Florida (Esther Rolle) in the kitchen. Maude tells Florida that the soup “kicks her butt.” Florida feigns ignorance about the meaning of this statement, and Maude informs her that this is a compliment in Black English. Florida says, “Well, you must have been Black longer than I have.” So, Maude reaches over to get her Black slang dictionary and asks Florida what to say to impress her in her “Black Ghetto slang.” Florida says it would be, “you can take the rest of the day off.” Maude says her signature phrase, “God will get you for that.” The scene is really icky.

The race thing gets left aside other than the performance Rolle gives around changing the sheets in the confusion around whether the boyfriend will sleep in the daughter’s bed or in the guest room. Maude tells Florida to change the sheets in the guest room; Carol, the daughter tells Florida to prepare her own bedroom. Florida makes a big joke about the problems about to arise—and says she’s glad she’s about to leave on the bus. You have to hand it to the writers for entering the idea into the consciousness of America that the black woman has to go home on the bus while the white family relaxes at dinner (tension or not).

So of course this ridiculous tension does occur while Maude goes through her ridiculous denial about her ambivalent feelings over her 27 year-old daughter sleeping with a 30 year-old boyfriend. After the issue is ostensibly resolved, then Maude and Walter have their requisite heart-to-heart that lays out the issues. Says Walter: “these feelings that you have are just as honest and valid as they were 100 years ago.” Ugh. Then Maude: “I refuse to be upset about the two of you in this house. I mean lord only knows what happened in that camper….STRIKE THAT….C’mon Walter….let’s you and I stay in the camper.” Ultimately, Adrienne Barbeau chickens out too, saying that the thought of sleeping with her boyfriend in her own mother’s house makes her uncomfortable. They’re going to a hotel. Maude, incredulous, asks her to explain. In the resolution, Maude gives her best one-liner of the show: “Some people take laxatives, I take guilt.”

The General, Cops, The Playhouse

I watched Buster Keaton today, thinking I was just getting The General, but the DVD had the surprise bonus of Cops and The Playhouse as well. The General is really unbelievable because of the stunts. The stuff he does is stunning, particularly since it’s obvious there is no stunt person, either for Keaton or for the woman who plays his lover, and they’re doing absurdly dangerous things on a rapidly moving steam engine. In one scene, the train speeds forward, and Keaton perches on the front on the cow-catcher. He’s reaching out on to the tracks to grab heavy railroad ties that the enemy has lodged in the tracks, one after the other, to derail the train. As soon as he grabs one heavy tie (a single one would be enough to throw a person off balance), another comes up for him grab—and he gets that too. Somehow it’s funny, yet at the same time the suspense is unbelievable, which is an unusual combination I don’t often see (maybe in some Jim Carrey vehicles – though some purists might hate the comparison). He couldn’t possibly have made a mistake at picking up those ties with that train speeding along; I simply couldn’t envision how multiple takes were possible or even how they could manufacture dummy Styrofoam lightweight ties in 1927. The sheer complexity of so many of the shots in this film is mind boggling. It’s pretty surprising to know that it was a commercial flop.

Watching The General made me want to re-read Wes Gehring on “Comedian Comedy.” His characteristics of “the clown model” from The World of Comedy: Five Takes on Funny apply well to The General. He talks about how clown comedies encapsulate the “schtick” of the comedian. So if it’s a Keaton film, it captures his “schtick” (19), which in this case is a “man against machine” battle (7). We can tell it’s a clown comedy because “physical/ visual comedy” plays a large role in the plot (19). We see endless examples of physical comedy in The General. I like one very simple situation that occurs when Buster pays a visit to his girlfriend and two neighbor boys follow him inside. They seat themselves on a couch next to the couple in the parlor. Befuddled by the problem of the two boys, Keaton finally puts his hat on and bows to the young woman, which forces the two little boys to do the same. He opens the front door and politely allows them out before him. However, instead of following them out, he closes the door, takes his hat off, and sits back down next to his girl, this time alone (and victorious).

Also in the “clown model,” clowns tend to be “underdogs who frequently exhibit comically incompetent behavior” (30). We see this behavior repeatedly in The General when Keaton tries to be a soldier to please his girlfriend. She has told him to enlist in the confederate army, specifically not to show his face to her until he’s wearing a uniform. He’s been denied conscription, though, and whenever he tries to fake enlistment, he becomes inept and clumsy with hilarious results. He trips on his sword and makes a fool of himself generally.

Gehring goes on to say that film clowns are “nomadic, with direct literary ties to such picaresque heroes as Don Quixote and Huck Finn” (33). Even more specifically, Gehring gives some reasons they go on road (not all apply, but of those that do): “it gives the clown an endless supply of new settings for his comedy” (33), it places “a clown in some unlikely setting can be an ongoing joke in itself” (34) and it causes “pursuit by authority figures” (36). We see all these in The General because the film is an endless chase/pursuit scene.

So all this is interesting. It’s all Keaton against the machine. Maybe even more interesting because it was a surprise is The Playhouse. I absolutely loved the first half, in which Keaton played all the roles, the conductor, the musicians, the actors--ten or twelve across the stage (Mr. Brown, I think it was, in Blackface), the audience. It was so cool, particularly since they all were on camera at the same time (at least the ones on stage)—and this in the early 1920s, so it had to be done with amazing camera and film trickery unheard of at the time. It’s so elaborate that he even runs fake credits in the middle of the film with Buster Keaton listed for each of the actors and the crew. It’s very funny, I think. Unfortunately, though, the film goes on to include a bunch of Vaudeville skits, unremarkable mostly. One minor exception is a skit where Keaton dresses up as a monkey in a stage scene. The amazing thing about it is that he manages to capture the motions a monkey would make pretty remarkably, including running up the wall and walking on his hands and feet. But ho hum. There’s another sort of funny part of a skit where a man smoking a cigar catches his beard on fire and Keaton grabs an axe out of the place in the wall where it says “IN CASE OF FIRE.” Using the axe, he chops the man’s beard off, essentially shaving the man. It’s pretty funny, actually, but it lasts about 20 seconds. Ho hum too. I thought the same ho hum about Cops. It’s funny slapstick. The plot is not remarkable enough to recount here. More remarkable, though, are the amazing group scenes of parading cops which turn into huge numbers of cops chasing Keaton. The sheer choreography of it is worth noting—and of course it’s funny.

Keaton choreographs people and objects in ways that were stunning for the time, and they still are stunning because they require no special effects. They all just magically occur without stunt people or animation—impossible today.

Paul Lewis’s “Politics of Comedy and the Social Functions of Humor”

In Chapter Two, Lewis begins with Suzanne K. Langers argument that comedy has various degrees of humor (31). Lewis explains that a “critical controversy” exists between “universalists and anti-universalists,” saying that for “some theorists comedy can be defined by its use of humor; that is, comedy is the humorous genre. For other th

Lewis summarizes the main theorists’ views:

• Walter Sorrell’s 1970 work: “Laughter is a physiological phenomenon, comedy is the product of a creative act of one man’s humorous capacity” (32).
• Aristotle says in The Poetics that “comedy invites us to laugh at low characters,” or the ones, according to Lewis, who have “small defects and minor vices” (33). However, says Lewis, “we discover which characters are low by learning to laugh at them” (33).
• “Bergson sees comedy as social reprimand,” in other words as a way to correct the behavior of others.
• “Northrop Frye sees comedy as a movement from an old social order to a new one.”
• Wylie Sypher says “comedy always supports some value system” but that “the system can be conservative, reactionary or revolutionary.”
  Scott Cutler Shershow sees the struggle in values “between cynicism and optimism, between how the world is and how it should be.”

• Harry Levin “has identified an essential comic clash between killjoys and playboys” (33).

Now, let’s try to distinguish specifically between HUMOR and COMEDY, which is a major concern of the anti-universalists.

Lewis says that no matter whose theoretical approach we ascribe to, we still must analyze a joke in terms of its incongruity. One way to
think about it is to take a look at “how humor acquires its rhetorical
force” (34).

Lewis says, “An incongruity analysis suggests that humor embodies values not by virtue of its content alone but as a consequence of what it does with its materials” (34). He’s talking about here what we do with humor’s apparent message and how we might process the unconscious message (this is from Freud’s work, obviously. Freud thought that one reason for taking pleasure in jokes was the “temporary freedom from the ork of repression” (34).

Lewis gives an example of a joke that might illuminate:

Q. Why do mice have such little balls?
A. Because so few of them know how to dance.

So the idea here is that one might laugh, or one might not think it funny for one of any number of reasons. Either it isn’t funny because the sexualized content it approximates is too touchy or it gets too close to the animal rights issues…or whatever. Lewis says “The rhetorical force of humor in comedy derives from the mobilization of such implied value judgments. Freud notes that a joke ‘bribes the hearer with its yield of pleasure into taking sides...without any very close investigation.’” In other words, by telling such a joke, we expect the listener to join us in our beliefs. If the listener does not, we feel thwarted.

It may seem unimportant but the distinction is a social make-or-breaker…figure that if we tell a joke or two to people who don’t laugh, we usually don’t make friends, right? Indeed, the studies back me up. According to Lewis, “Sociological studies have shown that, because it expresses shared values, humor can be a social lubricant and a tool or force in the exercise of power in social groups.” Lewis cites a 1972 study that found that “in intergroup relations humor can serve to foster consensus or to damage or redefine the relationship between the groups, and in intragroup relations humor can serve either to solidify the group, control in-group behavior or foster a hostile disposition toward an out-group” (37).

The study really proves what is, to me, common sense. Groups use humor to demonstrate what is expected—or who is ostracized. Lewis also cites studies that show how these dynamics are demonstrated at work and in prison.

Interestingly, though, Lewis brings up some of Freud’s discussion of how jokes sometimes are used between strangers “to register [...] resentment, without risk of punishment” to provide “a social mechanism, short of violence for the venting of anger” because individuals “who can joke instead of fighting will be less offensive and destructive” (38). So of course, people can joke to thwart the urge to kill (I speak now figuratively, rather than literally, for the most part).

Now, Lewis analyzes “the politics of comedy and social functions of humor” in several literary works in this chapter, but the most interesting of these analyses is called “From Shakespeare to Sitcoms.” He reminds us at the beginning of this part of the chapter that many theorists tell us that humor is not a necessary element of comedy—but then says “we are left to wonder why there is so much humor in comedy” (64).

Lewis works to distinguish further between humor and comedy here by looking at the form of each, discussing Frye’s definition of a “traditional comedy,” in which “a young man” falls in love with “a young woman who is kept from him by various social barriers: her low birth, his minority or shortage of funds, parental opposition, the prior claims of a rival. These are eventually circumvented.” Another obstacle may arise near the end that may seem as though the two may not marry, but indeed they do and the “conclusion is normally accompanied by some change of heart on the part of those who have been obstructing the comic resolution” (Frye qtd. in Lewis 64). Lewis, citing Eyre, argues that humor also “has a definite structure” in that it moves “from the perception to the resolution of an incongruity” (64). We may perceive humor as “a molecule, rather than an attribute” of comedy, “the irreducible but complex substance out of which comedy is made” (65). These ideas are complex. What do they mean?

Lewis tries to explain the idea with a structural analogy, saying that the idea of humor as a molecule of comedy “may help us understand the vital functions of humor within comic structures” (65). Within Frye’s definition of humor, we “see that comedies move from a problem to some easy [...] solution, just as humor glides past incongruities, refusing to pause long enough for meditation or fear” (65). So according to this view, comedy deals with the big picture, whereas humor deals with the small. Hmm.. I didn’t think about it this way before.

Next, Lewis takes up comedy within the form of the situation comedy, discussing David Grote’s 1983 book, The End of Comedy: The Sit-Com and the Comedic Tradition. Grote distinguishes between the kind of comedy in a traditional comedy and a sit-com, saying that the difference is found in “the way they resist change” (Lewis 65). Lewis explains:

“The traditional comic plot focuses on love and marriage; the typical sit-com plot revolves around an unchanging family unit. Traditional comedies feature stock characters like the fool, the scoundrel, and the innocent who implicitly or explicitly attack the social and moral norms; the sit-com avoids these characters and the anarchic world they inhabit. The result, Grote insists, is that in the sit-com we have subverted the radical impulses and energy of comedy, producing a sterile and conservative middle-class dramatic form, one suited to a country that no longer looks to the future with hope and idealism” (65). David Marc says something similar a little later on. If both Davids are right, then maybe the situation comedy is to blame for all those red state votes?

Lewis’s criticism of Grote’s argument is apt: he notes that Grote completely misses the humor in situation comedies. If we ignore the one-liners, the “dynamic humor” in the shows, then we miss their charm completely. Lewis’s example is “the running intergenerational bickering of Norman Lear’s All in the Family, in which the audience surprisingly identifies with the “deliberately ethnocentric, racist, malaproprian anti-hero, Archie” because of the humor (66).

So in lining up the important functions of humor as well as distinguishing between comedy and humor, Lewis writes an important chapter in this one.

Love's Labour's Lost: Wooing A Bunch of Jacks

Love’s Labour’s Lost is an early Shakespearian comedy; it does not have all the elements of classical comedy down exactly. The characters themselves step outside the narrative to alert us of the play’s peculiarities. Berowne says, "Our wooing doth not end like an old play;/ Jack hath not Jill: these ladies' courtesy/ Might well have made our sport a comedy" (V.ii.867-9), referring directly to the end-without-marriage (note, incidentally, the cool eye-rhyme on line 868—can you imagine how hard it was to write a play in verse?).

To understand my comments, it will help to know a summary of the plot. We are supposed to believe that four ostensibly straight men—the King of Navarre and three members of the court—decide to take an oath of celibacy so that they will be better equipped to focus on their “studies.” Right. They agree not to consort with women on the palace grounds. So suspend disbelief and go along with Shakespeare believing that they actually do want to date the women that come up in the next part.

Now when they take this oath, only one of them, Berowne, does so against his will. He tries to remind the king that the Princess of France is on her way to visit, but the king doesn’t listen. This is an excellent ruse, incidentally. Clearly Berowne is in love with the king. But seriously (or not), when the Princess and her court near, the king has to circumvent his own rule by inventing a way to visit her outside the grounds of the palace.

Well, of course as luck would have it, all four of the men fall for the princess and the women in her court—but the romance of it all is interrupted when the princess learns that her father has died. The women must leave and end the romances for a year—but promise to continue them later…and that’s the end, other than Berowne’s little speech-out-of-character there at the end. (Of course, this stroke of luck leaves them in tremendous relief to their homosexual rompings—which provides the REAL happy ending. But nobody’s supposed to notice THAT, right?)

So what does this mean? Well, it certainly still follows the plot arc of old comedy—up to a point. In the article, “The Structure of Aristophanic Comedy,” G.M. Sfakis proposes a standard narrative structure for Old Comedy: First we see “[v]illainy, lack or misfortune” (129). In the case of LLL, it is a lack the four men bring on themselves (at least ostensibly) when they agree to foreswear women. The second step is the men's “[d]ecision/plan to counteract misfortune,” (129) and in this case we see the plan to “step around” their noble plan of studying. They decide, instead, to bend the rules and meet the women outside the palace grounds. Third in the structure is “[s]ervice or help of a supernatural or quasi-magical helper” (129).

I’m not so sure about this one, though I do see Boyet, who is the attendant to the women, as somewhat of a helper and in many ways a catalyst to building the relationships, since it is his role to joke around with the men and to facilitate their meetings. Fourth in the plot is “[t]ransference” (130). I see this element as crucial to a romantic comedy because it’s so evident any romantic comedy. Here, we see that Costard, the clown, is supposed to deliver letters from the men to their respective ladies, but he makes a mistake and the wrong letter goes to the wrong lady. Number five, “[o]pposition or obstacles” (130), in this play means the confusion over connecting the proper man with the proper lady after the letter confusion. However, ultimately Love's Labour's Lost's plot is problematic because another major obstacle does not get resolved; the princess’s father dies and thus delays the wedding. Thus, the remaining plot elements, “persuasion exercised in debate…liquidation of villainy or misfortune….[and] triumph of hero” are not included (400).

Further on what it all means is to ponder the notion that for thousands of years, we have managed variations on a single form of plot without getting sick of the story. That goes to show us, though, that the form of a story is quite different than the delivery, subject matter, or characters.

Paul Lewis’s
Comic Effects: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studying Humor
Chapter One
Paul Lewis’s book on an interdisciplinary approach to the study of humor in literature was helpful in a number of ways. I thought that the way he brought in the theory of humor in social sciences (particularly Freud and various interpretations of Freud’s theory) was particularly interesting. He sees the application of the study of behavior as quite appropriate to literary humor, since after all writing about the lives of people is writing about their behavior. In a sense, then, the “mixing of methodologies” that occurs in interdisciplinary research is especially apt for humor research (ix-xi) Another helpful part of the book was seeing the way Lewis applied theories of humor to specific literary works like Poe’s gothic stories and poems or to “fictions of development” like Catcher in the Rye. I liked his close readings, and the way he specifically applies the theories, avoiding the generalizations he warns against is a good example to follow.

Lewis talks a lot about the potential pitfalls in theorizing about humor. First is “the universalist mindset,” which he defines as “the danger of universalizing or globalizing literary humor,’ which may lead one to think that “humor can be easily explained or subsumed under a catchy formula or definition” (x). Another danger can be found in humor study’s own subjectivity (this echoes a concern about American Studies). Lewis asks, “if humor appreciation is subjective and contextual, rooted in individual affective and intellectual responses, how can critics isolate such elusive phenomena for analysis?” (x-xi). The answer, Lewis decides, is that we cannot have as our critical goal to “standardize humor appreciation but to refine our understanding of the humor we perceive in literature by helping us see how it is structured, how it functions, and how [...] it is one determinant or component of character, genre, and writer” (xi).

In his first chapter on “Humor Criticism and Humor Research,” Lewis tries to dispel long-lived assumptions about Humor, replacing them with truths grounded in research. For example, a common assumption has been that “one of the root causes of humor is fear” (4). Lewis disputes the connection, saying that in fact such a connection has never proven the connection, that “research is demonstrating [...] humor and fear often seem to arise together or in sequence not because fear causes humor but because they have a common origin in incongruity” (5).

Lewis also discusses James F. English’s argument that “we needed to move away from traditional comic theory toward a broader interest in literary humor generally” or what English calls “trans-generic” criticism (8). That way, according to English, we could think “more precisely” about humor and determine “form, content, function and context” (8). That would allow us to more thoughtfully mix literary criticism and “social science research,” and the result would be that when we analyze the humor of a character, we would know specifically whether indeed we “are focusing on humor appreciation, humor creation or both” (8).

If we accept certain “distinctions” and draw on the existing research, says English, then we don’t have to belabor the established ideas in humor studies, namely that: (1) “humorous experiences originate in the perception of incongruity [...]; (2) in most cases humor appreciation is based on a two-stage process of first perceiving an incongruity and then resolving it; [...] (3) that humor is a playful, not a serious, response to the incongruous;[...] (4) that the perception of an incongruity is subjective, relying as it does on the state of the perceiver’s knowledge, expectations, values and norms, that, because the presentation of a particular image or idea as a fitting subject for humor is based on value judgments[and ...] (5) the creation and use of humor is an exercise of power; a force in controlling our responses to unexpected and dangerous happenings, a way of shaping the responses and attitudes of others and a tool of intergroup and intragroup dynamics (qtd. in Lewis 8-13). So if those assumptions are givens—and indeed they are stated repeatedly by many theorists—that gives us room to move forward into discussions of why and when that others haven’t thought of.

Lewis also discusses Victor Raskin’s real/unreal dichotomy for understanding jokes (in The Semantic Mechanisms of Humor [1985]) in which Raskin defines three means of interpreting jokes: “the actual versus the non-actual, the normal versus the abnormal and the possible versus the impossible” (12).

Looking back at those assumptions, then, we can begin there and move forward into analysis. Arthur Koestler’s Act of Creation, says Lewis, examines “cognitive and emotional responses to the incongruous” (14). Koestler discusses “how the fool, the artist and the sage follow similar cognitive processes, moving from the perception of an incongruity to an assimilation that results in the creation of humor, art or knowledge” coming to the conclusion that the creativity he discusses applies “to literary works as well” (14). In other words, says Lewis, “we can learn a good deal about the generic properties of particular works, about the personalities of given characters and about the ways in which given writers tend to use humor by observing (1) what they regard as incongruous and (2) how they deal with the incongruities they contain or perceive” (15). Here, Lewis applies Koestler’s idea to interpreting and analyzing literature—we begin where the idea of defining incongruity left off and, in effect, answer the “so what” question about it. Lewis says we can ask two questions to analyze a humorous text: “within the fictive world it creates, what is normal and what is not?” (15)

Similarly, Mary K. Rothbart’s “safety-arousal model of humor appreciation” finds “three primary responses to incongruity,” namely, “fear, problem solving and amusement” (15). Rothbart asks: “(1) Is the stimulus dangerous?; (2) Is the stimulus evaluated as a serious challenge to the person’s knowledge or is it seen as playful or inconsequential?’ (3) Can the incongruity be resolved?” So in this model as well, we can see reactions that “may lead to smiling and laughter” (15).

What is interesting is that incongruity doesn’t necessarily guarantee hilarity. The difference between tragedy and comedy is often minute. According to Susan Snyder, “Shakespeare’s great tragedies achieve much of their impact by following but then subverting comic structures” (qtd. in Lewis 18). Lewis also points out G.W. Knight’s “classic study of humor in King Lear” that argues that “Lear’s downfall is due in part to his inability to laugh at himself” (18).

Another interesting part of Lewis’s discussion points at the “shift in taste away from writers like Cooper and Poe in America toward writers like Twain and Howells.” According to Lewis, this shift could be attributed “in part to the development of a new sense of humor.” Lewis cites Edwin Cady’s argument that the shift in sense of humor began because of satires of romantic texts (20).

Lewis also points out another way to get at the incongruous, by character analysis. He says, “we can better understand a character by seeing the extent to which he or she deals with incongruity by way of defensive reactions, fear, problem solving and/or humor” (20). In addition, says Lewis, “Humor uses and appreciation can also reflect a given character’s openness to change, his or her adaptive potential” (21).

To study the way an author uses humor seems fruitful—in fact, it might seem as though there would be a certain pattern of life for the humorous author, but in fact there isn’t one, says Lewis. According to Lewis, Seymour and Rhoda Fisher tried to find out in their Pretend the World is Funny and Forever: A Psychological Study of Comedians, Clowns, and Actors. They found the typical comedian:

* “[H]ad to deal with contradictory and incongruous messages from his or her parents about such fundamental matters as the parents’ expectations and feelings about being parents” (22). They describe the typical mother as “severe and non-nurturant” and with low expectations for the child’s behavior. The typical father is described as dependent “on his child for emotional and even material support” (22). As a result, the comics often had to care for siblings and act as “adult beyond their years” and “gave more psychologically to their parents than they received” (Fisher qtd. in Lewis 22).
* Demonstrated “a magnified fascination with contrasts of moral values—good vs. bad, virtue vs. vice” as well as size when they were given a Rorschach test (22). The Fishers related this ability to detect contrasts to a sense of incongruity necessary for a sense of humor.
* Demonstrated “a sense of relativity of all norms and an impulse to deny or evade danger or menace” which would contribute to “two humorous strategies employed by comics in dealing with the incongruous” (23).

Some of the personality types sound a little suspect—like the cold mother. It seems reminiscent of the schizophrenic “cold mother” type. They always want to blame the mom has become a cliché. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to consider the above as a template.

Lewis explains, in sum, in his first chapter, that interdisciplinary models of humor were at one time considered flawed because it was thought impossible to have “’universal components of humor” that would apply to literature (26). However, Lewis holds that the argument was probably never valid because no need to focus on “humor as universal and constant phenomenon” exists (26). Lewis believes it is important for literature scholars to follow the work of humor scholars in the social sciences (27).

Much Ado: The Real McCoy

It’s hard to remember that the plot in Much Ado About Nothing is an original. The hundred or thousand after it are the cheap imitations. Basically, the plot is one of romantic jollity for royalty. Claudio, a young lord in Don Pedro’s court, falls in love with Hero, Governor Leonato’s daughter. As it happens the whole royal entourage is conveniently staying at the Governor’s mansion, so many hijinx can ensue. Another lord, Benedick, frowns on marriage. His snide bantering with Beatrice, the Governor’s niece, prompts both Benedick and Beatrice to vow never to marry. However, various parties in the royals conspire to cause the two B’s (Benedick and Beatrice) to admit they love each other.

Meanwhile, Don Pedro’s BB (“Bastard Brother”) Don John (interesting that he alone gets an anglicized name) is displeased because he dislikes the sight of happy people becoming happier. So he conspires with his footmen, Borachio and Conrade to break up Hero and Claudio. His first scheme fails because Claudio, a good soul, wants to trust Hero. But his second plot is so dastardly that even Claudio is persuaded that his betrothed has been unfaithful. In Don John’s evil plot, Claudio is brought under Hero’s window the night before the wedding. Where Claudio thinks he sees Hero’s dark hair tumbling out the window, unbeknownst to him, he sees the lady-in-waiting, Margaret’s dark hair – as she is in flagrante delicto with Borachio. We are not supposed to care whether or not Margaret wanted to have sex or actually liked it with Borachio—or even whether she had to get Borachio (which is pretty close to the Spanish word for drunk) to stomach it with him. Claudio, convinced his bride has betrayed him (since she is no longer a “maid”) appears at the wedding the next morning but slaps Hero’s face, throwing her to the ground and accusing her in public of being a whore. Thus, the prince and his party must sever ties with the Governor—and thus the big “ado” of the title.

After the party leaves, Leonato, Hero’s father, first threatens to kill her (if this is set in sixteenth century Messina, that possibility is by no means improbably—we must remember that Italy is not far from the Mideast, where men to this day kill their daughters for losing their virginity before marriage). Luckily, the friar asks Leonato to reconsider, saying that the truth about Hero will come out and she will be “lamented, pitied and excus’d” (IV.i.215). However until then he advises the family to act as though Hero died from the shock and to hide her until Claudio and Don Pedro beg for forgiveness.

Ultimately, of course, the truth comes out. Meanwhile, Benedick and Beatrice have been set up and once so, they do confess their love for each other. They find themselves in alliance, and Beatrice tells Benedick that he must inform the prince and Claudio how wrong they are. This he does, and when he does, it is the first inkling to both that they’ve made a mistake. When Dogberry the constable catches Borachio and finds out the truth, Don Pedro and Claudio realize they must apologize to Leonato and do.

Since Claudio still thinks Hero is dead because of his mistake, Leonato makes Claudio agree to marry his niece unseen—he does so, not knowing that the niece will be Hero. The wedding is double—Beatrice marries Benedick as well. So it’s a big surprise when Hero pulls up her veil and Claudio finds his real love. There’s even—almost—a reversal where Beatrice and Benedick return to fighting and seem as though they won’t marry at the very end. But they do, and all live happily ever after.

Shakespeare’s plot certainly conforms to the structure of the classical romantic comedy that we talked about with Menander. Within the play itself, Shakespeare uses a number of comic devices—like sly risqué allusions we see early in the play, such as when Don Pedro and Benedick first greet Leonato and Beatrice:

Don Pedro: …I think this is your daughter.
Leonato: Her mother hath many times told me so.
Benedick: Were you in doubt, sire, that you asked her?
Leonato: Signior Benedick, no; for then you were a child. (I.i.92-94)

Even sillier than this is the humor that comes from the sections with Dogberry and his men. Dogberry, a constable who speaks in malapropisms and nonsense sentences, is a source of easy, often slapstick humor. For example, Dogberry’s malapropisms might take the form of a bit of advice like, “Adieu, be vigitant” (III.iii.88). Dogberry’s advice on apprehending a criminal is “if you do take a thief, [...] let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company” (III.iii.54-55). In addition to these silly lines, the action of Dogberry’s scenes in play is often portrayed in a slapstick manner.

The slapstick was evident in Branagh’s 1993 film adaptation in which Michael Keaton played Dogberry as a drunken, over-the-top slapstick character (to not altogether favorable reviews—which often compared him to Beetlejuice, unfairly in my view). Frankly, I liked Keaton’s performance and found it fit the over-the-top nature of the character. I also liked Branagh’s interpretation of Benedick, who undergoes a decided transformation in the course of the play.

Probably the most common humorous device in Much Ado is irony. One instance occurs when Benedick promises that he will “live a bachelor,” (I.i.219) and speaks the most strongly against marriage, yet when confronted with evidence that Beatrice may perhaps love him, he speaks most ardently about love. The irony—the not getting what we expect in the play is delightful and interesting. I don’t remember where I read it now that Much Ado isn’t often included in the list of Will S.’s major plays but that it should be. I agree. I think I like it almost as much as The Tempest. Hmmm…talk amongst yourselves about this one. Next, friends, we’ll be discussing LLL (Love’s Lobour’s Lost).

Decidedly Un-Superstitious Terence Writes The Eunuch

Terence (195-159 B.C.) wrote six comedies, all based on Greek New Comedy; like his friend Plautus he based his work on Menander’s. Folklore has it that Plautus’s work was more popular with the masses, and Terence’s work was higher-minded, but according to Holt Parker, evidence proves otherwise. Parker says, “Eunuchus was not his one hit; it was not even merely his biggest hit; it was the biggest hit. When it was performed, it was the single most successful play ever staged in Roman history.” The play was so successful that it was “acted twice in a day and earned a reward greater than any previous comedy by anyone” (Parker). We could compare that today to a hit along the lines of an Austin Powers or a Men in Black – I may not be speaking precisely of the late twentieth century because I’m living in time about two and half thousand years ago at the moment, but fill in the blank with one of those hundred-million grossing blockbusters.

Terence’s comedies are noteworthy for a number of reasons. Whereas one might observe gaudy puns and overdone rhymes in Plautus, Terence’s plays may be regarded as subtle and elegant. Duckworth says, “Terrence expresses his thoughts in neat and polished maxims” called sententiae” (xix). Terrence’s style is noted as a precursor to the commedia dell’arte (Duckworth xi).

Terence did something new with plotting (as far as I know). Duckworth explains: “One of Terence’s most interesting features is his use of the double plot; he weaves together the stories of two young men and their respective love affairs, and makes the solution of the two difficulties depend on each other” (xviii). I think of a double plot as something modern—as modern as, say Buster Keaton. In fact, it would be interesting to read The Eunuch and watch The General in the context of discussing and defining plot.

Anyway, at the risk of repeating myself, here again—why was I afraid of Greek drama? Terence’s play reads like something that could be made into a film today, with only a few cultural adaptations. I had a hard time getting into this one because it’s a but more subtle—it doesn’t have Plautus’s slapstick, and the characters are hard to keep up with. But the important characters are well enough drawn that action is interesting.

First, a note about women in the play. It’s no secret that women didn’t have much say at the time in their future or the choice of their suitors. I noted an interesting clue about images of beauty at the time in a speech Chaerea makes. It’s often been said that women at the time were thought beautiful if they were a trifle zaftig, but judging from Chaerea’s observation, that doesn’t seem to be true. Describing Pamphlia, he says, “This girl isn’t like our girls, whose mothers try to make them sloping-shouldered, and tight-laced, that they may look slender. If a girl is a trifle plump, they say that she’s a prize-fighter, and put her on short rations. However well nature may have shaped them, by this treatment their mothers make them like laths; and that’s why people fall in love with them” (260). So it seems as though the premium was on skinny girls then as well.

Here’s the story: Thais, town courtesan and lovely, inspires two of her lovers to bring her gifts. Thraso, the soldier, comes with the gift of someone they call an Ethiopian girl, Pamphlia. Phaedria also brings a gift—a eunuch—but he doesn’t hand-deliver; rather, he orders someone else to send the eunuch while he goes to the country, since he knows Thais will be with her other lover. The trouble is, Phaedria’s younger brother, Chaerea falls in love with Pamphlia. Parmenon, the slave boy, encourages him to dress up as the eunuch so that he can go be close to Pamphlia. Chaerea takes Parmenon’s advice, but when he goes to live in Thais’s house as a eunuch, he ends up raping Pamphlia. When Pamphlia is revealed to be, actually, an Attic citizen, Thais’s sister, Thais arranges for Chaerea to marry her. The ending, we are to assume, is to be happy (for everyone except Pamphlia).

The plot is double because we see Phaedria’s plot to please Thais, and try to persuade her to love him instead of Thraso. At the same time, we see the Chaerea’s doomed plot to dress as a Eunuch to be near Pamphlia. The plots connect at the end when Thais both chooses Phaedria and helps Chaerea to marry Pamphlia. So, it is a classic comedy with a marriage at the end.

I wondered as I read whether Terence was a bit testy about others noticing his borrowed plots from the Greek comedy. In the prologue, Terrence mentions it: “As for the play which we are now about to act, Manander’s The Eunuch, …[w]hen it was being rehearsed in the presence of the magistrates he cried out, ‘It is a thief, not a poet that has written this play’ [... But ] In short nothing is said now that has not been said before; you ought to reflect upon this, and pardon us new writers if we practice the same tricks as the old ones” (248-249).

This is the end of Roman comedy for me—next we meet Bill Shakespeare.

When in Rome…Plautus’s Twins

Of Plautus, we know a few things. First, his comedies—farces, really—were not original. He based them entirely on Greek New Comedy, usually the work of Menander. It sounds like a great gig. The audiences he wrote for knew probably nothing of the Greek theater, so it was as though he had invented the stories. No issues, then, with writer’s block, in theory. But in practice it wasn’t that simple. Plautus wrote rhyming text with allerative puns, and his plays were all musicals. So while he may have repeated Greek plots, Plautus spun them around and made them dance.

Farce as an element of comedy is in itself interesting. It’s the first time—thus far—historically that I’ve read of farce. Bentley wrote in detail in Life of Drama about Plautus’s work as farce, saying “farces are much like dreams in that they show the disguised fulfillment of repressed wishes” (Corrigan 336). According to Bentley, we enjoy farce because we get to see someone acting out what we want secretly to do but can’t--like sex (Corrigan 237).

Generally it is assumed that the other most widely known Roman comic poet/playwright, Terence, was not as popular as Plautus, but in fact, its likely that Terence far surpassed Plautus in popularity. In any event, both Plautus and Terence were extremely successful. Also, Plautus, who was born into poverty, had held all jobs in the stage—a properties worker and an actor—so he had, according to Corrigan, “a remarkable sense of the theater” that contributed to his playwriting ability (235).

One of my research questions for this course is to consider how Greek and Roman comedy influenced later comedy (like Shakespearan). Here lies at least one answer: We know for sure that old Will read Plautus because the motive in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors is taken from The Menaechemi. Later comedies have been influenced as well; the film, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum is “a pastiche of scenes from Plautine farce” (Corrigan 240). Indeed, says Corrigan, “Plautus is history’s first-known writer of musical comedy and it is no accident that countless musicals (Fanny, The Boys from Syracuse, and A Funny Thing, to name a few) have been based on his plays” (240-241). This practice of pastiche sounds decidedly postmodern to me, but in fact it was characteristic of Greek New Comedy to collect scenes from several plays into a new work (Corrigan 241). But while Plautus derived the plots from Greek theater, he most likely took his inspiration for “musical comedy from Italian popular theater” (242).

Consider how difficult it must be to read and understand ancient Roman jokes and puns in what were supposedly lyrics written in Latin. The only thing more difficult would be to translate the jokes and puns to English, while preserving some of the alliteration and complex internal rhymes—and at the same time keeping the language simple-sounding and “of the people.” Palmer Bovie somehow manages to do all of that. Bovie’s translation of Plautus is extremely clever. Bovie captures all the standup comedian cheesiness of Plautus’s cheesy jokes, puns, and rhymes, like the prologue that begins, “Ladies and gentlemen, and everyone else” (249) and ones in the monologue that begins with, “The boys all call me Peniculus, which may sound ridiculous” (253).

The Menaechemi is a different comedy plot than the Aristotle and Menander I’ve discussed so far, yet in contemporary terms it’s painfully familiar. Gerald Mast would call it reductio ad absurdum—a series of confusions resulting from a decision made in the beginning. But it’s also a classic comic plot, a series of (mostly romantic) confusions based on mistaken identities.

Specifically, twins, separated at birth, find themselves reunited in town. The poorer twin realizes what has occurred and takes advantage of the riches (in the form of a mistress, among other things) before the confusion is sorted out.

Next, we’ll see the work of Plautus’s main competitor, Terence.

Woman from Samos: Two-thousand-year Letdown?

Menander, born 40 years after Aristophanes (342-291 BC), was considered by his peers and those after to be a true genius. Plutarch, for example, preferred Menander to Aristophanes, and a Byzantine scholar described him as a poet “second only to Homer” (Walton xxi). Until the 1950s, though, only a few tiny fragments of Menander’s work existed; we knew of him only by his mentions in the critics. A few finds at the turn of the twentieth century fueled curiosity, but in 1957 a scroll found in a tomb revealed a near-whole copy of A Woman from Samos, and later discoveries in the 1960s provided other large-scale findings. Yet contemporary critics, according to Drama Professor J. Michael Walton, were disappointed in plays that turned out to be “simple” and “obvious” (xvii). Even so, it has been suggested that perhaps Menander’s lack of originality and vigor had to do with the heavy censorship in place a the time (Corrigan 78). A Woman from Samos would have been performed some years later than Clouds.

In A Woman from Samos, rich Athenian Demeas goes off to war with his neighbor Nikeratos. Before he leaves, Demeas tells his pregnant mistress, Chrysis, that she’d better not have the baby. Meanwhile, Demeas’s son, Moschion falls in love with Nikeratos’s daughter, Plangon; she gets pregnant and elopes with Moschion. Before Demeas and Nikeratos return, both Chrysis and Plangon deliver babies, but Chrysis’s baby doesn’t live. So, Moschion asks Chrysis to keep Plangon’s baby and nurse it until he can explain the complexities to his father.

As usual, hijinx ensue. When Nikeratos and Demeas return from war, they’ve independently dreamed up the notion of marrying Moschion to Plangon, so the situation should never complicate itself the way it does. But then we wouldn’t have a story, would we? In this case (as it was with Aristophanes’ Clouds), a woman doesn’t botch the plan—it’s a slave. Demeas overhears the servants talking and misunderstands; he thinks the baby Chrysis is caring for (and about whom he’s already angry) belongs to his son—in other words that baby came from his son having an affair with his mistress. So Demeas throws Chrysis out of the house without allowing her to explain. Chrysis ends up at Nikeratos’s house with the baby. The situation never is resolved until Nikeratos himself catches Plangon nursing her own baby and explains it to Demeas.

It is a fairly predictable plot, one of the most basic plots of the classic comedy:
1) Boy meets girl;
2) Boy falls in love with girl;
3) There is an obstacle to the fulfilling of that love (the obstacle is usually parental);
4) The obstacle is overcome and the there is a reorganization of society. (Corrigan 69-70)

It’s in this play that we see the true definition of classical comedy—no real belly laughs; rather, it’s a romance nearly gone awry, salvaged at the last moment—a When Harry Met Sally of the Auditorium. In true Greek comedy form, the tone is informal and folksy. Corrigan says, “Greeks in the fifth century” saw “any play with an invented plot and subject matter drawn from contemporary life” as comedy (70).

Menander seems extremely readable, though, as I said about Aristophanes’ Clouds, the readability factor seems to be attributable as well to the translation. Most importantly, though, I don’t find Menander to be simple and derivative. We’ll leave that to Plautus. Okay. He’s not simple, but….he’s next.

Aristophanes’ Clouds - Whirlywindy Hairblowings

Listen to this: on the one hand is the country bumpkin farmer frustrated by his debt, which he blames on his wife’s purchases of new fashions and his son’s compulsive gambling. He can’t adapt to modern scientific explanations for world events. On the other hand i the son, who espouses the new logic and science—as well as gambling on horse races. This 2500 year-old father-son conflict is surprisingly familiar. In the end, Dad urges son to maintain his regard for the traditional cultural and religious values. Son tells dad that no educated person would espouse anything less than the logical point of view.

Greek comedies don’t, frankly, sound like a big barrel of laughs, and I wasn’t looking forward to reading them. While they were not necessarily written with idea of generating guffaws, they’re a whole lot more fun to read (especially in good translation) than one would think. But it has been surprising for me to learn that they’re a little bit racy (or a lot racy, in the case of, for example, Lysistrata) and that they’re oft-copied in present-day plays and films.

To understand Clouds, it helps to know a little about Aristophanes:

• Aristophanes’ early plays (like Clouds) are Old Comedies; they’re identifiable because they deal with the problems government may cause with the individual. Later ones are Middle Comedies and are less political and more philosophical.
• Aristophanes wrote comedies between 425 and 392 B.C. Other than vase paintings, the remaining comedies are the first depictions we have at all of ancient Greek domestic life.
• Reading Aristophanes is compared with reading an Athenian funny paper (Edith Hamilton qtd. in Walton viii) because as in comics, the plays satirized or made light of:

+ Politics
+ Anti-war party
+ Pacifism
+ Women’s vote
+ Free trade
+ Fiscal reform
+ Current religions
+ Educational theories, etc.

Not mentioned in the list Corrigan makes here, though, is Aristophanes’ obvious target: Socrates, who is the butt of the main satire of the play. Aristophanes is sending up Socrates' sophistry.

Nonetheless, Aristophanes doesn't allow himself to become fully enmired in high-minded humor. As Walton reminds us, “Many of the laughs in Aristophanes are belly-laughs created through all manner of jokes about sex and bodily functions” (xiv).

According to Corrigan, Aristophanes’ plays were “written for an audience whose principal form of entertainment, outside of the theater, was the court of law” (7). I found this an interesting detail—particularly in view of the contemporary fascination with lawsuits and all things regarding the court. It doesn't seem as though much has changed in two and a half millennia.

Corrigan also compares Aristophanes to North American Southerners, saying he “was determined, like so many of our Southerners today—although for different reasons—to do all he could do to resist the erosion of the time-honored Greek traditions” (72). In essence, Corrigan says, the humor in Aristophanes’ plays is conservative, a social corrective.

Aristophanes makes fun of Strepsiades, the farmer father, for trying to modernize himself. He demonstrates his ignorance at the many new inventions. Strepsiades visits the Logic Factory and is allowed to look through a telescope and binoculars and his response is to say “How horribly close! Now apply your mind / To moving it farther away – much farther!” (117).

We see in other ways how Strepsiades is undone by his single quest for something new: he makes a request to the clouds (a chorus of goddesses in this play) for the ability to flout logic so that he can evade his many creditors. Socrates introduces us to the clouds in the play, explaining that they replace the old, better known gods like Zeus. This quest, which in effect is a trend toward modernization and change, is a big mistake, and the clouds will teach him a lesson for making the request.

Poor Strepsiades is utterly taken by Socrates and the clouds. He’s suspicious for a moment, asking, “If they’re really and truly clouds, / Please will you tell me why / They’re shaped like mortal women?” (122). Looking like women, of course, is a mark of something evil. Socrates assures him that the clouds just elected to take that form just the same way that they look like a “centaur” or “leopard, or a wolf, or a bull” (123) on some other days. So he is convinced when Socrates tells him that in fact the clouds are the central goddesses responsible for important life events: they cause the rain—has he ever seen a drop without them? How about thunder? Even though he knows it’s “a daring thought,” he goes along with Socrates’ belief that it’s “Vortex” who causes all these events (124).

Next, the clouds begin to advise him They tell him what he has to do to flout logic, saying “You’ll be the luckiest of Athenians, of all Greeks. / Never grow slack, or weary, or flinch from the weight of your burden, / Never slaver for supper; cut out the wine, and the gymnasium” (125). In other words, they give him bad advice—admittedly! Socrates once says of Strepsiades, “The fellow’s / A barbarian lout!” (128). The farther Strepsiades moves from old way of doing things, the farther he moves from being a decent human being.

Aristophanes’ characteristic slapstick exists in small doses, such as when he addresses the Holy Goddesses thus:
I worship you Holy Ones,
But I can’t help but compete
Against your thunder with a fart. (120)

Similarly, when Socrates explains the origins to Strepsiades, he retorts, “I always believed before it was Zeus pissing through a sieve” (124).

Another form of slapstick could better be described as incongruity; the scene occurs at the end of the play when we see Pheidippides beating his father, Strepsiades for his behavior. Strepsiades, in protest, shouts that he was the one who changed Pheidippides’ diaper and fed him his first food. Pheidippides points out that Strepiades had had to beat his own son for his own good at one time—and now Pheidippides is just returning the favor (159).

Nonetheless, Clouds is a more refined play than Aristophanes’ other works—the playwright himself believed it to be his best. Aristophanes himself speaks to the relative dearth of slapstick in the parabasis, when the chorus explains:.
Now comes my comedy [...]
She doesn’t come on
Waving a property phallus to get a laugh
From the coarse children; she doesn’t poke fun at bald-heads;
Or flaunt her sex in an indecent dance;
There’s no old man literally doing slap-stick
To bolster his rotten jokes. Nobody wildly rushes
On brandishing torches, there’s no comical wailing—
This play relies on nothing but its own merit. (129)

Because Aristophanes saw Clouds as his best work, he was upset that it didn’t win at the festival of its original production. We know the version in existence now to be one he revised angrily after the festival, so the statements the chorus makes here are directed at an audience that didn’t understand—or vote for his play to win. According to critic Patric Dickinson, in the original draft, it is likely that Dickinson assumed that his audience comprised more people like Pheidippides than like Srepsiades, but he was wrong (103).

April 8, 2005

I’d like to take an intermission here to comment on my internship; I don’t usually write on my blog about my internship, since I encourage my students to read what I write here, and it seems sort of, well, exhibitionistic, then to blog about teaching the very people who may be reading what I say. But something particularly interesting happened this week in class that’s worth documenting here.

Every week we’ve been watching a film in class, though we’ve gotten a little behind of late because of some technical problems we had with equipment (first) and then because I had to miss class on another day (second). So now when I go to school on Wednesdays, truthfully, I’ve been ruefully facing the fact that I planned the class exactly the way I said I wouldn’t when I read about teaching film courses. People like Ellen Bishop (who wrote Cinema (to) Graphy) say it is often better NOT to show the whole film in class, but rather to show important parts and to discuss and analyze (and let students watch the films on their own). Somehow, though, that just didn’t work for me. I wound up showing them all in class—it just seemed more practical to me…but I felt guilty since I said in my original paper that I wouldn’t. I was letting myself down—and in a sense, Ellen Bishop, even though I wouldn’t know her if I backed into her in a parking lot.

Making this short story very long, then, some of the showings of films have seemed arduous and stupid, and I’ve thought, well Ellen Bishop was right, and these students probably would have benefited from watching them at home and we should be spending this time discussing….etc. etc. I get a lot of exercise from jumping around second guessing myself, you see.

But then this week we watched Eating Raoul. For those of you who haven’t seen it or who need a jog to the memory, ER is Paul Bartel’s 1980s cult film about Paul and Mary Bland, who come up with a scheme that will both earn them money to open the restaurant they always wanted (where they can serve their specialty, the Bland Burrito) and rid the world of kinky swingers. It involves their pretending to be swinging prostitutes themselves and then killing their customers for the money. The film became a sort of underground classic, with lines like, “Beat me! Bite me! Make me write bad checks!” that came to be repeated in mainstream places that would surprise one. But it’s pretty graphic to say the least. Showing it was a tricky decision; I knew that the sex scenes would embarrass the hell out of me—and they did. The film is so damn funny, though, and it’s the epitome of a dark comedy—so it was worth offending everyone to do it. For this film I wrote the strongly worded disclaimer on my syllabus—and for this film I wrote the webpage on kitsch and camp, so that students who didn’t understand it might at least have some theoretical reference for it. And as it turned out, that camp and kitsch information came in handy in our class discussion.

I thought I could take comfort because a particularly cool student had chosen to present the film; he’s a non-traditional student (in that he’s older than the typical college student) and he’s done a lot of writing. Before school started, he was in touch with me about the material of the course and he seemed really to “get” it. So I knew this student could handle Eating Raoul—that much I wasn’t worried about. I was just concerned that a few of the other students would be offended or that they just wouldn’t understand the kind of humor in the film. But it was a perfect film, nonetheless, to ask the students to consider I question I want to write about: does humor hold up to the test of time—particularly in the case of Paul Bartel’s film? In other words, did the jokes in this film cease to be funny in the 1980s, or are they still funny now? I asked them to consider that as they watched.

Then the student presented. Imagine my surprise when this extremely competent student began to discuss the film, distributing a very impressive packet of handouts, saying that he just absolutely didn’t “get” the film. I was really shocked. He said that though he watched it, he just couldn’t capture the depth of the humor. However, he did make one interesting observation, which was to compare Eating Raoul to a television situation comedy. When I heard that I jumped in and talked about high and low culture, mentioning how literature scholars at one time privileged literature over film, calling film low culture; then when film graduated into an object worthy of study, it was television that became marginalized. I argued, though, that television is just as worthy of study as film. The student politely accepted my diatribe and then we watched the film.

Miraculously, the entire class absolutely loved the film, every one of them—even the people I had been afraid would be offended. But even more interesting, the student who presented the film (and who developed questions for discussion afterwards), confessed that he had been mystified by his own experience: when he saw it in class it was different, he said. It was projected onto a big screen, not his small TV. And twelve of us were laughing riotously, talking throughout, and pointing things out to each other. So the part that was most fascinating to me was that the discussion was taken over by the notion that films—especially certain kinds of comedies—are collective experiences. Eating Raoul, apparently, is one of those. I added that, perhaps less dramatically, I had noticed the same thing about Putney Swope. It had been so much better when I’d seen it against the reactions of the class. The student presenter wondered how our experiences of the cinema change in the present since we so much more commonly view films in the safety of our little home entertainment pods.

The students did answer my question about whether or not the humor was anachronistic. I did feel like I had to explain (to the traditional-aged students) that AIDS didn’t even exist at the time the film had been written (or that maybe it did but it wasn’t even in the consciousness of most people). They said that the juxtaposition between the two extremes seemed, if anything, extremely topical in this era of fascist politics and lax everything else. Always interesting to me are the contributions of the two Maturals (retirees who take our classes). One woman noted that, in a certain way, she thought that the film might have been more offensive in the 1980s than it is today, if only because too many of the viewers would have recognized themselves. She thinks its easier, in retrospect, to laugh at ourselves.

But back to the point the presenter had made about television: No kidding, I’ve probably seen ER about 100 times in my life, and I never noticed what this one student observed, that Bartel seems to be parodying a situation comedy like The Dick Van Dyke Show or I Love Lucy. The details are there, down to the twin beds, the kitschy 1950s furniture, and even the sing-songy theme song. Once I realized that the student was talking about the production values, I realized he had really noticed something interesting. Another student in the discussion, who really notices great things always, noticed something about my favorite scene in the movie, where all the swingers are in the hot tub and they become annoyed because Paul and Mary won’t join them. Paul gets annoyed and throws in some sort of electrical appliance and all at once, like that children’s toy where you push the button and the elastic string relaxes its tension and the toy wilts, every pervert in the hot tub wilts. It’s hilarious—and the other student noted the scene as symbolic as the end of the free love movement, symbolic of the effect AIDS had on that era. It was a clever thing to note.

Anyway, this week was just a particularly productive session…and just think…next week is Harold & Maude, so we go from trying not to hide under the desk during the sex scene to trying not to cry during the sad one….