“She laughed – a solo effort. Nothing in the prevailing circumstances made me feel like turning it into a duet.” — P. G. Wodehouse, Joy in the Morning
Tag: laughter
Quote of the Day
“When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you; but when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh.” — Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck
Quote of the Day
“Laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.” — John Cleese, From the Human Face, BBC Television (2001)
Quote of the Day
“If laughter be an aid to health,
Then logic of the strongest
Impels us to the cheerful thought
That he who laughs lasts longest.” — W. E. Nesom, “Perverted Proverbs,” The Judge (3 November 1917)
Appetite for Satire
A few days later I came across Jonathan Coe‘s essay Sinking Giggling into the Sea which, in the guise of a book review, looks at British satire. It joined a few of the dots of my thoughts.
He quotes the introduction to a collection of scripts to explain the British satire boom of the early sixties:
“Conceivably the demand arose because after ten years of stable Conservative government, with no prospect in 1961 of its ever ending, the middle classes felt some vague guilt accumulating for the discrepancy between their prosperous security and the continuing misery of those who persisted in failing to conform, by being black, or queer, or mad, or old.” — Michael Frayn, Beyond the Fringe
This explains nicely the persistent popularity of satire in France and it also works for The Daily Show’s.
Coe sums up the message of one skit with:
“Laughter is not just ineffectual as a form of protest, but that it actually replaces protest.”
I didn’t like the first conclusions I was drawing from this. Is The Daily Show‘s popularity a sign of the pacification of a malaise without any actions to cure it? Maybe. But the early sixties led to the protests of the late sixties and Jon Stewart does not limit himself to satire. He’s actively organizing, participating in, and promoting many events (e.g. the demonstration Rally to Restore Sanity).
Hmmm. What new paths for my thoughts to wander down will tomorrow’s news bring?
Quote of the Day
“A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.” — H. L. Mencken, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken’s Notebooks
Quote of the Day
“Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.” — George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma
Quote of the Day
“Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.” — Lawrence Durrell, Clea
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