Ah! The eternal question of whether we can joke about *anything*. It's funny (!) because my instinctive reaction is to say no. And then I think of Monty Python and I laugh my ass off.
I think the bottom line is not so much what the topic is, but rather how that topic is handled. In that regard, yes, you can probably joke about anything, so long as you get the delivery right.
Reminds me of another Nazi-type joke, this one's from an episode of "Fawlty's Tower" (John Cleese again!). In that one they receive German guests and Fawlty keeps warning everyone not to make any WW2 jokes because he doesn't want the guests to be offended... then ends up doing all the jokes himself! It's just hilarious. :D
This is wonderful Mag, I can’t wait to read this…everything sounds superb and intriguing.
Some general brainstorm:
To add to the great Lenny Bruce bit and Brooks’ penchant for similar humor (albeit quite differently) - I must add Richard Pryor’s brilliant comic-book Hollyweird twist with his 1968 “Super Nigger” - an acidic and hilarious insightful bit about whiteness, comicbooks, stereotypes and a chilling parable of the prison of Black subservience and the hell it causes. His super hero is a janitor who has super powers (to see his cache of hidden drugs!) in the tradition of a Brer Rabbit —an amoral trickster that Scot Saul brilliantly described as a trope he created to “not win over Hollywood but to overturn its conventions.”
The trickster: any conscious and intelligent Black person in America. Period. (Ha!)
Check out my favorite comedy ever “Chameleon Street” by Wendell Harris (inspired by the real exploits of con man Doug Street)
And for some prime time brilliant “killing jokes” cop Charles Wright’s “The Wig.” If only our pop comedians now could imbue some of this holy wit (and anti-authoritarianism)
I love the joker and the trickster and the fool because not only are they shields against the deplorable proclivities and behavior of the ruling class — but also modes of survival in a society that makes no “humane” sense.
As I work on Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (I will send you copy of the performance) — I of course followed Beckett’s own penchant for the clown and the tramp (Keaton and Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy were his favorite screen actors)…but discover no matter what— that his clowns were not full of guile (they don’t try to evade or even survive but…LIVE. As in simply get a grip on existence. And when they understand that they deteriorate or die. All Beckett’s clowns end in death cause they are trapped) - so maybe tramp IS the better word — for they escape nothing, ultimately. And often the only people they fool - are themselves 😟…)
*
Thanks for igniting this blitz, I look forward to reading your book…And I confess that I too was a Killing Joke fan. The comic book itself cost almost $10 (!) in what…1989/90? One of my favorites along with the darker “Arkham Asylum.”
Had a fantasy years ago when I was much younger that Godfrey Cambridge (in the penultimate tricker role) as Jeff Gerber in “Watermelon Man” steps out of the film and says “No, I am Frank Miller. I too can be a fascist.” I have no idea what that means in any linear rational sense, other than Frank Miller’s passionate fascism of Batman could somehow turn in on itself?
(Now thinking, Pryor’s “Prison Play” could probably play with Bruce’s Hollywood riffs)
And somehow somewhere Mags these jokes kill the Father to liberate the Mother? Child?
Us?
Either way you’re gonna slay us. Look forward to the book. Bravo!
Ah! The eternal question of whether we can joke about *anything*. It's funny (!) because my instinctive reaction is to say no. And then I think of Monty Python and I laugh my ass off.
I think the bottom line is not so much what the topic is, but rather how that topic is handled. In that regard, yes, you can probably joke about anything, so long as you get the delivery right.
Reminds me of another Nazi-type joke, this one's from an episode of "Fawlty's Tower" (John Cleese again!). In that one they receive German guests and Fawlty keeps warning everyone not to make any WW2 jokes because he doesn't want the guests to be offended... then ends up doing all the jokes himself! It's just hilarious. :D
This is wonderful Mag, I can’t wait to read this…everything sounds superb and intriguing.
Some general brainstorm:
To add to the great Lenny Bruce bit and Brooks’ penchant for similar humor (albeit quite differently) - I must add Richard Pryor’s brilliant comic-book Hollyweird twist with his 1968 “Super Nigger” - an acidic and hilarious insightful bit about whiteness, comicbooks, stereotypes and a chilling parable of the prison of Black subservience and the hell it causes. His super hero is a janitor who has super powers (to see his cache of hidden drugs!) in the tradition of a Brer Rabbit —an amoral trickster that Scot Saul brilliantly described as a trope he created to “not win over Hollywood but to overturn its conventions.”
The trickster: any conscious and intelligent Black person in America. Period. (Ha!)
Check out my favorite comedy ever “Chameleon Street” by Wendell Harris (inspired by the real exploits of con man Doug Street)
And for some prime time brilliant “killing jokes” cop Charles Wright’s “The Wig.” If only our pop comedians now could imbue some of this holy wit (and anti-authoritarianism)
I love the joker and the trickster and the fool because not only are they shields against the deplorable proclivities and behavior of the ruling class — but also modes of survival in a society that makes no “humane” sense.
As I work on Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (I will send you copy of the performance) — I of course followed Beckett’s own penchant for the clown and the tramp (Keaton and Chaplin and Laurel & Hardy were his favorite screen actors)…but discover no matter what— that his clowns were not full of guile (they don’t try to evade or even survive but…LIVE. As in simply get a grip on existence. And when they understand that they deteriorate or die. All Beckett’s clowns end in death cause they are trapped) - so maybe tramp IS the better word — for they escape nothing, ultimately. And often the only people they fool - are themselves 😟…)
*
Thanks for igniting this blitz, I look forward to reading your book…And I confess that I too was a Killing Joke fan. The comic book itself cost almost $10 (!) in what…1989/90? One of my favorites along with the darker “Arkham Asylum.”
Had a fantasy years ago when I was much younger that Godfrey Cambridge (in the penultimate tricker role) as Jeff Gerber in “Watermelon Man” steps out of the film and says “No, I am Frank Miller. I too can be a fascist.” I have no idea what that means in any linear rational sense, other than Frank Miller’s passionate fascism of Batman could somehow turn in on itself?
(Now thinking, Pryor’s “Prison Play” could probably play with Bruce’s Hollywood riffs)
And somehow somewhere Mags these jokes kill the Father to liberate the Mother? Child?
Us?
Either way you’re gonna slay us. Look forward to the book. Bravo!
What a way to go. Died laughing. 😅🤣