Nuts and Lightning Bolts

Although you may not know it, good satire is an exceedingly rare commodity. More than ever, the creation of the ridiculous is almost impossible because of the competition it receives from reality. In the old days, if the satirist was artful, he obtained his greatest effects by exaggerating the norm in such a way that the reader became aware of its abnormality. Today the extreme is so commonplace there is little left for the satirist to do.

Robert A. Baker (1963)

“Introduction,” A Stress Analysis of A Strapless Evening Gown (And Other Essays For A Scientific Age)

*

Irony, as was pointed out in an earlier post, involves at least two separate states of awareness. The ironist—who is always insincere—has one state of awareness; he knows that his presentation is deliberately overstating what he doesn’t believe, or understating that which he does believe. The former—the overstatement—is the mode of sarcasm. The satirist, after putting forward (seemingly approvingly) the position of his opponent, then attempts to undermine it by setting it down a path of ever-increasingly absurd propositions. Hopefully, at some point, the penny drops and the opponent can no longer cling on to his belief. Reason and logic have abandoned him. Only foolishness remains. And only a fool remains with it.

*

Jovan Pulitzer is either one of the world’s greatest satirists—or a complete nut. He was identified by slate.com as either the originator or popularizer of the claim that one reason the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from Donald Trump was that Chinese thermostats controlled US voting machines, changing Trump votes secretly into Biden ones.*

I stand in awe of such a pronouncement. It has all the earmarks of a brilliant satirical invention—specifically, a sarcastic thrust against Trumpian believers of a massive conspiracy that put the Democratic candidate into the White House.

Consider:

The statement posits a voting machine conspiracy by which Trump votes were sabotaged (which is the Trumpian position).

 

It then identifies the most outrageous possible instrument as having been used to achieve the transfer of votes—a thermostat, the device that regulates the temperature level of your house. 

Crazy enough for you? Wait!

They weren’t just any ignoble thermostats—they were CHINESE thermostats. 

Bad enough that the Chinese have been inundating the US with plastic doodads to fill the shelves of your neighborhood Dollar General emporium; now they’ve gone hightech.

Sure, the sarcasm would work if the Chinese were left out—or if, say the Germans or the Israelis were the alleged culprits. But adding the Yellow Peril—that just puts the satire over the top.

But was it satire—or was it nuttiness? As Robert Baker is quoted, at the top of the page, in 1963 “the extreme is so commonplace.” Is today any different?

*

Another vote conspiracy allegation, supposedly promulgated by a group called Nations in Action, claimed (again according to slate.com) that “an Italian defense contractor uploaded software to a satellite to switch votes from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.” 

Examining this claim, we find similarities to the thermostat mishegas:

Here, too, outrageously inappropriate technology is being used. 

Instead of the Chinese we  have the ITALIANS. The land that has given the world Michaelangelo, Sophia Loren, and linguini aglio e olio, is not, I believe, world-renowned for its satellite technology. 

The conspiracy theory is stretched to the breaking point. 

But, apparently, there’s no attempt at satire here; we’re mired in true conspiracy swampland. Nations in Action claims its goal to be “the exposure of the ‘shadow government’ that controls the world.”

(If you think all of the above is too crazy for words, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows had several government agencies investigate the thermostat and satellite claims.)

*

At which point, what should a sane person think? 

J. B. S. Haldane, the polymath scientist, said:

"My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”

I would suggest that the United States today “is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” 

***

* https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/jan-6-roe-gas-prices-congress-skewed-priorities.html

Families Triptych--Rockwell

Who is the most famous American painter?

Which is not the same as asking, Who is the greatest American painter?(1) I had a particular artist in mind, but I wondered what the internet would offer as an answer. A Google search of the introductory question yielded very little response. The closest any entry came (the one at the top of the search list) was from a site that churns out top 10 list after top 10 list.(2) On that list, the number one place went to Andy Warhol—which I guess can reasonably be argued—for famous he was. It seems to me, though, that the painter who for many decades of the past century would have had claim to that title was Norman Rockwell. 

My first thought when thinking about Rockwell is that there is no ambiguity in his work. His patriotic paintings—like The Four Freedoms—are straightforwardly patriotic. His comic vignettes—like the sailor whose arm is covered with the crossed-out names of previous girl friends getting the name of his latest amour tattooed below the others—are comic. Even his rare political commentary—like the portrait of the little black girl escorted by marshals on her way to integrate a school—is uncomplicatedly plain in its intent. 

Consider this painting called “Walking to Church” from 1952:

It would seem to fit in with other Rockwell religion-themed paintings—the nuclear family neatly off to church—but with a little dig (perhaps) at boozehounds as they pass a shuttered bar and grill on that Sunday.

*

But . . .

And this is what the whole blog is about: Another Rockwell painting—this one from 1959—entitled “Sunday Morning.”

I look at this Rockwell, and for once I see ambiguity. And I’m trying to figure out which side Rockwell is on.

Is he, as in the “Walking to Church” painting, celebrating Ozzie-and-Harrietish whitebread-eating middle-classness, all prim and proper coloring-within-the-lines? In which case, the pantomime villain is the father, still in his pajamas sprawled out in his chair with the Sunday papers messily on the floor, next to his breakfast. A slob in contrast to the oh-so-neat mother and daughters in their white gloves and son in his pants suit with bow tie and little peaked cap. And it’s maybe even worse. I suppose that the service the quartet are going to will feature an anodyne sermon, probably about good works. However, what if the minister (for I assume it’s a Protestant church they’re off to) is a Bible-thumping fire-and-brimstoner? Then those sweet churchgoers are implicitly leaving daddy behind to burn in hell.

When I first saw this painting years ago, I thought—and still think—that this painting is quite different from other Rockwells: that Rockwell has introduced ambiguity into his work, and behind that ambiguity lies satire.

When I looked, I saw the girls and the mother, with their holier-than-thou noses in the air, deliberately snubbing the father-and-husband who has spent all week working to provide for their neat little existence in their neat little suburban house and to pay for their barf-enducingly-cute little flowery hats and white gloves. The son, all quizzical, looks over to his father, as if wondering, is he my role-model? Can he fathom that the man deserves his day of rest?

To sum up:

If Rockwell is not doing what I think I see here (or is it, what I want to see here?), and is unambiguously on the side of the Bible-clutchers, then I hate this painting as much as I hate any painting.

But I hope Rockwell, like me, disdains the false piety of those who can go off to pray—with their noses in the air—without leaving a little love behind for the man sprawled in his chair.

*

Now, I really would like to know your opinion. Am I right to discern an underlying satire in the painting? Or, perhaps I’ve got the satire wrong, and it’s directed at a father who is failing in his duty.

So, help me out on this. There’s a space below to offer your views. I really would like to know what you think.

Thanks.

***

(1)  A question I would never ask. I believe we shouldn’t descend to the invidious practice of attempting to measure greatness, but to gratefully accept all outstanding performances. 

(2)  https://www.learnodo-newtonic.com/famous-american-painters

Williams and Williams (Brief Look at Satire, Part 6)

One of the greatest of American cartoonists of the twentieth century was Gluyas Williams (1888-1982), who retired, much too early, in 1953 (he lived another three decades). The name Gluyas was his mother’s maiden name and was of Cornish origin. Born in San Francisco, he lived most of his life in Massachusetts, and drew a great deal of his inspiration by watching people getting on and off the train at the West Newton, Massachusetts station.

Here is a typical full-page drawing Williams did for The New Yorker, dated April 26, 1941; it is part of “The Inner Man” (i.e., feeding the inner man) series, this drawing depicting “The Cocktail Party”:

Notice how Williams contrives to fill his canvas from top to bottom and from side to side with a multitude of sharply observed individual sketches. Every character is doing something, so there is a sense of movement. The range of individual emotions and attitudes is striking—from assertiveness to mild anxiety. It is a view of the human comedy without condescension. The writer Edward Street declared:

He sees humans as confused, insecure, well-intentioned duffers bluffing their way through the world of half-baked customs and screwball mores which they do not understand but cannot sidestep.*

Another writer, David McCord, agreed:

This universal human quality—a love, not a contempt, for his fellow man—is what sets Gluyas Williams in a class by himself. Satire has no place in his method of characterization. Even his painfully correct reporting of some of America’s incredible playgrounds shows not the slightest trace of mockery. That crowds of men and women can look and act as they do, and affect to find pleasure and recreation in the sordid mass, is part of the subdivine comedy in which he enters as a spectator, never as a critic.

However . . .

*

Consider the following drawing, part of “The Reading Public” series (The New Yorker, November 15, 1941: 

Lolling in bed, 2:30 in the morning, smoking his cigarettes as he reaches the final pages of a mystery novel, he reads:

Yes, “[s]atire has no place in his method of characterization” in the drawing itself. But Williams does demonstrate a fine satirical sense of parody in the literary portion of the work. Here he has got down pat the essence of the English detective mystery novel of the age. Every word, every inflection, is dead-on typical of the genre. For example: the elaborate timetable of the movements of the characters—down to exact minutes, which somehow get registered in people’s minds for later retrieval—which the detective pieces together, in retrospect, for the benefit of the less-astute narrator (and reader). 

This is absolutely brilliant satire. Parody at its best. Without resorting to exaggeration or distortion, Williams highlights the clichés and conventions of the English detective novel. The “novel,” in other words, is not “new,” but formulaic. 

True to his nature, Williams’ satire is gently done. But sharply observed and perfectly drawn like his cartoons.

***

How one wishes Gluyas Williams were around to gift us a picture of the crowd at the women’s final of the US Open tennis tournament this past weekend—with their boos and catcalls protesting the treatment of their favorite, Serena Williams, by the match umpire. My first thought upon reading about the brouhaha was: Were those people New Yorkers? Where was the traditional New York rooting for the underdog? Granted that that Serena Williams is one of the greatest racket-wielders of all time, but, hey, she was playing against a twenty-year-old! I can only surmise that like so much of the city these days, the stadium was infested with gentrifying out-of-towners. 

But I digress—well, actually I don’t digress because I haven’t gotten started yet.** 

Well, to get to the point—there did emerge from the event a now-notorious cartoon from the down-under newspaper The Herald Sun. Here is Mark Knight’s cartoon:

Serena throwing the tantrums of all tantrums, jumping on her broken racket and screaming for all she’s worth. Serena, not as a grown woman, but as a bratty child--notice the pacifier. (And off to the side, the umpire implores her opponent to let Serena win in order to stop the ruckus.) The drawing is indeed satirical—a caricature that reduces its victim by distorting her features and exaggerating her actions for a critical commentary. Her actions are exaggerated—Serena did not jump up and down on her racket. And her physical features—except for the hair—are grossly distorted. Distorted in a way that has led people to call out the work as racist. 

Caricature relies on distortion. A pointed nose gets longer and pointier. Ears expand to rival Dumbo’s. Chins either recede into nothingness or jut out like the prow of a ship. It all depends on what the victim’s features were to begin with. Here’s Daumier’s caricature of King Louis Philippe:

Notice how the portrait emerges from Louis Philippe’s physiognomy. From now on when we see the King, we see a pear, and when we see a pear, we see the King.

To return to the depiction of Serena Williams in the cartoon. Aside from the hair, what feature is there that builds from the player’s face? Look at the lips—are they anything like Serena’s? Or are they like this:

A racist stereotype.

So, yes, Mr. Knight has drawn a funny, satirical cartoon. But one that is deeply flawed; because it depicts a racist idea of a black woman and not Serena Williams.

*

Satire comes in many varieties. It can be coolly intellectual or emotionally boiling. It comes in words; it comes in images. It comes as parody. It comes as caricature.

Sometimes it can be extremely nasty.

***

• http://www.tcj.com/gluyus-williams-master-of-line-and-shape-and-subject/

(Strangely, Williams’ given name is spelled wrongly here in the address.)

      ** Somehow I seem to have developed a case of Tristram-Shandyitis. If you haven’t read that        classic novel, please do. It’s a gas.

Their Daily Bread

In a moment that can be described as pure Grouchovian, Karl Marx pre-empted his namesake by observing that “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."  

When I read recently that the Delhi high court in India issued a ruling decriminalizing begging in the streets,* it occurred to me that Marx’s observation could be expanded to claim also that “The content of satire eventually repeats itself as reality.”

In what was his most famous satiric gem, Anatole France (1844-1924) noted:

La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.
(In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.)

Well, at least in this one case, the law relaxed its “majestic equality” and saw fit to remove the interdiction against the destitute begging in the streets. May we presume that it is still verboten for the rich? 

Actually, as we know from our own experience in the US, it would be hard to find on the streets of any great city a plutocrat with his hand out. That is not to say that the rich are not beggars; they are—but not on the streets and generally not in person. They do their begging in the corridors of power—and by proxy, employing those smarmy lapdogs known as “lobbyists.” 

*

What is it with the poor, who, Jesus said, will always be with us? 

I think I have a clue. “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime,” Honore de Balzac (1799-1850) asserted. The problem with the poor, it would seem therefore, is that they aren’t criminal enough.

***

* “Begging is their last resort to subsistence,” the judges ruled. “Criminalising begging is a wrong approach to deal with the underlying causes of the problem and violates the fundamental rights of some of the most vulnerable people.”

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/aug/21/its-their-last-resort-delhi-high-court-decriminalises-begging

"A Little Mistake" (Brief Look at Satire, Part 5)

I know I was a coward: In the early oughts, I wanted to ask a famous opera star this last question in an interview (which ended up not taking place at all): “For truly great artists, is there a different moral standard that applies?” Only very superficially an innocuous question, it was obvious enough in the context and I was strongly advised not to ask that question if I got the chance… lest I get in trouble.   Jens F. Laurson(1)

*

Let's keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her . . .(2)

 *

The Background:

1977—Film director Roman Polanski, indicted on 6 criminal charges, plea-bargained down to one—“Unlawful Sexual Intercourse with a Minor.”

1978—Polanski, instead of turning himself in for sentencing, fled the country. He has lived in Europe ever since. A French citizen, he was exempt from extradition to the United States.

2009—In Switzerland, however, Polanski was not free from extradition and was arrested in Zurich by the Swiss at the request of the US.

Immediately, Hollywood and other celebrities jumped into the fray, with statements in defense of the director. Ironically enough, considering recent events, one of the leaders in the free-Roman movement was Harvey Weinstein:

Film mogul Harvey Weinstein has got behind a campaign by French film-makers calling on US authorities not to extradite the Oscar-winning Polish director in connection with a charge of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor dating back more than three decades. 
Weinstein entered the fray at the personal behest of Cannes film festival director Thierry Fremaux and will now use his considerable influence and campaigning heft to enlist the support of Hollywood.
"We're calling on every film-maker we can to help fix this terrible situation," Weinstein said, reviving a theme he adopted earlier in the year after he bought international distribution rights at Sundance to the HBO documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.(3)

One film-maker who was outspoken in Polanski’s defense was the Swiss Otto Weisser:

“This is for me a shock. I am ashamed to be Swiss, that the Swiss is doing such a thing to brilliant fantastic genius, that millions and millions of people love his work," Weisser said upon learning the director had been detained by Swiss authorities. "He's a brilliant guy, and he made a little mistake 32 years ago. What a shame for Switzerland.”(4)

That foremost moral philosopher and legal theorist Woopi Goldberg asserted:

I know it wasn't rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don't believe it was rape-rape.(5)

*

The Present:

MSNBC Cuts Ties With Sam Seder Over Roman Polanski Rape Joke(6)

Sam Seder is a comedian, writer, actor, film director, and television producer-director, who in 2009 sent out a tweet that read:

Don’t care re Polanski, but I hope if my daughter is ever raped it is by an older truly talented man w/a great sense of mise en scene.

That tweet, in which Seder reacted to the defense of Polanski by the celebs (e.g., Debra Winger, “We stand by him and await his release and his next masterpiece”), just happens to be a classic work of satire.

One of the devices that the satirist uses is irony, which is based on misdirection and hidden truth. In Socratic irony, for example, the ironist undervalues his own position (“I know nothing”), while in sarcasm the ironist overstates the value of the target (saying to someone tripping over his own feet: “Ah, here’s Fred Astaire"). The satirist can also—as in this case—pretend to accept the false valuation of the object of his satire in order to subvert it.

Seder used the argument of Polanski’s defenders to pretend to reconcile himself to an outrageous act on a family member. If the rape was perpetrated by anyone other than “an older truly talented man w/a great sense of mise en scene” it would presumably not be acceptable to the celebs. But as an act by “an older truly talented man w/a great sense of mise en scene” it will be—and Seder pretends to take his lead from the celebs’ judgment. 

Of course, the act was still—to use Woopi Goldberg’s unfelicitous words—“rape-rape.” By placing himself in the situation of a rape victim’s parent, Seder demanded that the defenders of Polanski imagine their own daughters in such a situation. They would have to shrug off the violation if they were to be consistent with their idea of the artist’s impunity—or like real-life parents demand that the perpetrator be brought to justice.

***

(1) https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenslaurson/2017/12/03/the-grand-moral-reckoning-classical-edition-james-levine-in-the-soup/#71f554f71d5b

(2) Kate Harding, https://www.salon.com/2009/09/28/polanski_arrest/

(3) https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2009/sep/28/roman-polanski-arrest-hollywood

(4) http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/09/29/hollywood.embraces.polanski/

(5) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/roman-polanski/6245219/Roman-Polanski-backlash-as-Whoopi-Goldberg-says-director-didnt-commit-rape-rape.html

The Telegraph went on to list the following celebs as being among Polanski defenders: Martin Scorcese, David Lynch, Wim Wenders, Pedro Almodovar, Tilda Swinton, Debra Winger, Monica Bellucci. And Woody Allen!!!

(6) http://www.vulture.com/2017/12/msnbc-cuts-sam-seder-over-roman-polanski-rape-joke.html

Cognitive Dissonance (Brief Look at Satire, Part 4)

To quote myself:

The structure of [Widowers’ Houses, George Bernard Shaw’s first play] . . . falls into the classic romantic comedy pattern [boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl], ending with all the characters leaving the stage arm-in-arm to join in a pre-marriage feast, celebrating boy getting girl. . . . However, Widowers’ Houses does not allow its audience to savor the romantic reconciliation and comic resolution. As the audience celebrates the triumph of love, it must, at the same time, acknowledge the defeat of its own morality. The hero and heroine, after all, are going to set up housekeeping on the profits of a land swindle. . . .In allowing love to triumph at the expense of morality, Shaw gives the audience at the same time what it wants and what it does not want. He gives it a happy ending—and a continuing state of corruption. He gives it boy getting girl—and swindles moving forward. He gives the audience—in short—comedy and satire.*

*

I had occasion recently to talk to someone about Widowers’ Houses, and when I got home I had an epiphanic moment. “Cognitive dissonance,” I exclaimed aloud (and since there was no-one around to witness my talking to myself, I escaped being sent to the loony bin this time). “Why weren’t you in my ken when I wrote my dissertation in 1975?”

I immediately began an internet search of all things (OK, several things) cognitive dissonance-ish. Now it’s all around us, but when, I wanted to know, did the term pop up into our culture. It reminded me of several other words—tofu, cholesterol, tapas, fajitas**—that seemed suddenly to appear before me like rabbits magically out of a conjurer’s hat and to begin multiplying like you-know-whats. 

The term “cognitive dissonance” was introduced by the social psychologist Leon Festinger (who, I’m proud to say, shared the same alma mater with me) in his 1957 book A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. My American Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (1991) includes the term and dates it to 1957 (“psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously”). However, neither my American Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language: Second College Edition (1980) nor my British The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (1993) contains an entry for the term. Perhaps this is not really surprising. Although the Google Books Ngram Viewer shows the sudden explosion onto the scene of “cognitive dissonance,” the term itself seems to have taken a good while to move from the specialized realm of psychology into general usage. 

For example, the first use of the term by the New Yorker was in 1988; there were 14 uses during the 1990s, the other 27 uses (so far) coming in the 2000s.

For the New York Times, the 1960s saw 4 uses; the 1970s had 5. It was in the 1980s that the term began to find its way into more general use—20 mentions. And in the 1990s it exploded to 52. 

So with this historical research under my belt I could feel better about not having that useful term available when writing my magnum opus (though it really would have helped).

Besides using it to explain the satirical implications of the effect the denouement of Widowers’ Houses should have had on its audience, I would have called the term into action in the chapter on Man and Superman. That play concludes not with boy getting girl, but with girl snaring boy. To quote myself again:

Jack Tanner, M.I.R.C. (Member of the Idle Rich Class, as he calls himself), author of “The Revolutionist’s Handbook and Pocket Companion” . . . , socialist, and creative evolutionist, is the ironic exposer of the fatuous and false values of others.

Full of radical talk on politics and morals, he skewers the conventional values of the other characters. But while he can rightly describe the landscape, he is blind to his own place in it. He expounds at length on the Life Force (that scheme of nature by which the female ensnares her prey to further the human species), casting his poet-romantic friend Octavius as Ann Whitefield’s love object—without realizing all the while that he himself is her target: 

[H]is philosophical insight does not compensate for his inability to escape [the Life Force’s] entrapment. The laughter at the end of the play is directed at Tanner, who is allowed by Ann Whitefield, his captor, to “Go on talking.”

The conventional-minded members of the audience can join in the laughter at the iconoclastic radical—but Tanner’s downfall (if we can call it that) only comes about because he is proved right. Right about men’s and women’s roles in the larger drama of life. But wrong about the not-so-small detail of knowing his own part in it.

“Poetry makes nothing happen,” lamented W.H. Auden. Alas, that’s also true of Shaw’s satire in this play. The conventional audience should experience cognitive dissonance as the object of its derision is brought down only by the correct working out of ideas he has proclaimed. But “should” doesn’t mean “did.”

And Shaw’s beautiful subtlety didn’t even have a name at the time.

***

*Normalvision: A Study of Bernard Shaw’s Satire

**http://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-active-bottom-and-bottom-line.html

False Normality (Brief Look at Satire, Part 3)

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.
Hamlet
There’s no art/ To find the mind’s construction in the face
Macbeth

***

One task I would sometimes give my students before discussing Robert Browning's “My Last Duchess” was to have them make a sign reading:

I Am a(n)

________

Person

They were instructed to insert an adjective that would best describe them. They were then told to hold the signs out in front of themselves so that other people could read them. “Wouldn't it be great,” I asked, “if signs worn on their chests would reveal people's true qualities (and not just the sweetness-and-light ones claimed there in the classroom)?” Browning's subtlety would, alas, be lost as the Duke of Ferrara's toxic pride would be (literally) up front. But how much easier life would be if all the masks disguising fools and villains were countered by a little bit of writing.

***

Architect [John Cleese]: “This is a 12-story block combining classical neo-Georgian features with all the advantages of modern design. The tenants arrive at the entrance hall here, carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes towards the rotating knives. The last 20 feet of the corridor are heavily soundproofed. The blood pours down these chutes . . .”

Committeeman [Michael Palin]: “Excuse me. Did you say ‘knives’?”
Monty Python's Flying Circus

*

. . . my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age, who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them, as those who demand our charity in the streets.
As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years, upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of our projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. It is true, a child just dropt from its dam, may be supported by her milk, for a solar year, with little other nourishment: at most not above the value of two shillings, which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging . . .
Jonathan  Swift, “A Modest Proposal”

***

What the famous Swift satire and the non-satirical, Chas-Addamsish-macabre Python skit have in common is (a) the initial surface normality of the presentations: “neo-Georgian features” and “modern design” in the case of the Python architectural project and in the Swift the claim by his persona to have “maturely weighed” the schemes of other proposers and (b) the almost unobtrusive way that a calm seemingly-sane presentation is subverted by a horrendous incongruity. The signaling word in the Python skit is, of course, “knives”; in the Swift the word is “dam”--the mother of a human child has become an animal, and the child will be treated as such too, bred to become the central ingredient in “a fricasie, or a ragoust,” food for the tables of rich Englishmen in Ireland.

***

Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not; which have ears, and hear not . . .
Jeremiah 5:21

*

. . . instead of seeing a full stop put to all abuses and corruptions, at least in this little island, as I had reason to expect; behold, after above six months warning, I cannot learn that my book has produced one single effect according to my intentions.
Gulliver's Travels

*

Satire has a range something like chili sauce—from mild to four-alarm fiery hot. But one thing that all satires have in common is the working proposition that out in the world, deceived by appearances, there are too many people who have eyes that do not see, or ears that do not hear. Otherwise, would they not already have—as Gulliver wished—put an end “to all abuses and corruptions” (as well as eradicating the milder follies of our species)?

***

Enter GLOUCESTER [Richard III-to-be] aloft, between two BISHOPS. . . .MAYOR. See where his Grace stands 'tween two clergymen!

BUCKINGHAM. Two props of virtue for a Christian prince,
To stay him from the fall of vanity;
And, see, a book of prayer in his hand,
True ornaments to know a holy man.
Richard III (Act III, Sc. 7)

In the play we (unlike the Mayor) are not fooled by the pretended display of piety; we know it's all an act, the prayer book merely a prop and the bishops just stage furniture, for the playwright, since the opening soliloquy, has allowed our eyes to see behind the villain's mask and our ears to hear his duplicitous intentions. But what of the real life equivalents of the Shakespeare's Duke of Gloucester or Browning's Duke of Ferrara?

The challenge for the satirist is how to make those eyes see, those ears hear—to counter the stage-managed displays of fake virtue and false reason.

***

I have decided to take a respite from writing this blog. When (or whether) I will return to it, time will tell.

Meanwhile, to those who have bothered to read the blog at some point I offer many thanks. 

Usurpation (Brief Look at Satire, Part 2)

----------------------The Galton Case:
“Your son has been missing for a very long time.”
“I’m better aware of that than you, young man. I last set eyes on Anthony on the eleventh day of October 1936. We parted in bitter anger and hatred. I’ve lived ever since with that anger and hatred corroding my heart. But I can’t die with it inside of me. I want to see Anthony again, and talk to him. I want to forgive him. I want him to forgive me.”

----------------------"Garish Summit” Episode 2:
Agatha
I have something preying on my mind that I need your help with, Bodin. A man has turned up here in Garish Summit who claims to be my long-lost elder son, Caldwell.
Pardew
That’s shocking, Agatha. We’ve known each other for forty years, and I always thought your weak-willed son, Rodney, was an only child.
Agatha
Well, I thought so, too. That’s the strange part I don’t understand.
Pardew
Well, you’re a fabulously rich widow who’s inherited the world’s largest chain of lead mines. The man’s probably a fortune hunter.
Agatha
No. I’ve encountered those before. But this chap definitely claims to be the son I never knew I had. So, of course, it’s just his word against mine.

***

A short time ago, I indulged in a binge of reading (or re-reading) half-a-dozen novels by Ross Macdonald. Although his private eye, Lew Archer, is not as famous as Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade or Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, Macdonald is generally recognized as holding the third spot in the trinity of American writers of hard-boiled detective fiction. 

At the same time as I was gorging myself on the Byzantine intricacies of Macdonald's Californian family sagas, I was also getting re-acquainted with the output of Bob and Ray. Although Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding did some television work (and even had a hit Broadway show), they were men of radio; they not only worked on radio, they used radio as the basis for most of their material—such as, the stilted language and formulaic plots of soap operas, the banality of advice givers, the obliviousness of newsmen and sportscasters, and the boasts of commercials. 

*

Satire, as I noted in my previous blog post, “X-raying the Soul (Brief Look at Satire, Part 1),” can be general or specific. For example, Bob and Ray's “Jack Headstrong, All-American American” was a specific parody of the serial “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy,” while their “The Life and Loves of Linda Lovely” was a parody of the soap opera genre at large. “Garish Summit,” created in 1982, was a rather late addition to the Bob and Ray stable of soap opera take-offs. Although performed on radio, “Garish” was based on the hot-house rich-family television primetime soaps, such as “Dallas” and “Dynasty.” It was while reading the script of a “Garish” episode that I was reminded of something I had recently read in Macdonald's The Galton Case, written in 1959 (see above). Which I will get back to shortly.

* 

I enjoyed Star Wars when it first came out in 1977, and I enjoyed it even more when I went the second time and actually saw the movie—having been afflicted by a dodgy contact lens the first time I went. I also enjoyed the second in the series to be released, The Empire Strikes Back, which I also saw in a theater (thankfully with both lenses working). However, when the third of the series, Return of the Jedi, was released in 1983, I never made it to the movie house. I did catch up to it when it was later aired on television, taping it for viewing at some future time. Somehow in the next five or six years I couldn't seem to find that future time. And in the meantime, Spaceballs happened. 

When I finally rolled the tape of Return of the Jedi, I couldn't take the movie seriously. For me, the Mel Brooks parody Spaceballs, although rather broad and hit-and-miss (like most of Brooks’ work), had usurped its place in the Star Wars canon. 

*

There was a riddle a few economic recessions back that went like this:

What's the difference between a pigeon and a yuppie?

A pigeon can still leave a deposit on a new BMW.

*

Bird droppings have their place in two excellent parodies: the 1968 short film De Düva: The Dove and The Birds episode in High Anxiety, Mel Brooks’ homage-cum-parody of Alfred Hitchcock films. 

De Düva takes on two of the most famous films by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman: Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal. Conflating the two Bergman works, De Düva has an angst-filled Strawberries professor accosted by a Seal-like figure of Death, and they engage in a contest for the man's life. In the original, the protagonist is a medieval knight, and the contest is a game of chess. In the parody the professor and the black-robed figure of Death engage in a game of badminton. While a grim game of chess—that most mental of contests—seems quite appropriate as a cinematic battleground to determine life or death, badminton, with its airy, floating shuttlecock, swerving this way and that, forcing the players into all sorts of contortions to follow its flight, reduces the confrontation to absurdity. 

And there is a dove to leave its deposit.

In High Anxiety, bIrds mass on a school's monkey bars behind an oblivious bench-seated Mel Brooks (like Tippy Hedron in Hitchcock's film). And then they swoop—but instead of attacking and pecking the bodies of the running adults and children as in the original film, in Brooks' parody the birds relieve themselves on the frantically running protagonist, who ends up so smelly that the patrons of the dry cleaner shop he escapes into quickly exit the premises holding their noses. 

Bird droppings are nature's way of making everything else at the time unimportant.  Perfect for the deflationary role of satire.

*

It was with the sense of a, for him, very memorable something that he peered now into the immediate future, and tried, not without compunction, to take that period up where he had, prospectively, left it. But just where the deuce had he left it? The consciousness of dubiety was, for our friend, not, this morning, quite yet clean-cut enough to outline the figures on what she had called his "horizon," between which and himself the twilight was indeed of a quality somewhat intimidating. He had run up, in the course of time, against a good number of "teasers;" and the function of teasing them back—of, as it were, giving them, every now and then, "what for"—was in him so much a habit that he would have been at a loss had there been, on the face of it, nothing to lose.
(Max Beerbohm's parody of Henry James “is almost indistinguishable from the real thing.” Brendan Gill, The New Yorker, October 24, 1970)

Parody ranges from broadest (e.g., Spaceballs) to the subtlest take-off of the original work. Beerbohm's parody is so subtle that it is, as Gill puts it, “almost” indistinguishable from James' own prose style. If one were to imitate perfectly the style and select the same sort of content as the original writer, there would be no satire. A carbon copy is not satire. The satirist exposes the flaws of the original author to our scrutiny by deliberately exaggerating—subtly (the "almost" effect) or broadly—his stylistic tics and mannerisms and the formulaic content of, and ideas in, his work.

A gift for comedy seldom comes to a writer unaccompanied. . . .Sometimes, as in parody, it is coupled with the flinty disposition of the critic.
(Donald Malcolm, The New Yorker, November 8, 1958)

When the parodist has done his job well, his work—the “flinty” examination of the original—supplants, in the audience's mind, the original work, and he has himself progressed from critic to creator.

*

And so back to Ross Macdonald and Bob and Ray.

Unlike the other parodies discussed, which were all specific satires, Bob and Ray's “Garish Summit” was aimed at an artistic (if we can called it that) category—the rich-family's-got-a-lot-of-entanglements-and-strange-passions soap opera. After reading the script of the episode above, I had a flash memory of something I had read shortly before in Macdonald's The Galton Case (written 23 years earlier). It was, it seemed to me, the stilted dialogue of soap opera. And the convoluted storylines of his mysteries, I realized, were soap operas with a hard-boiled detective on the chase. 

The net of general parody captures a lot of fish (even unintended species).

***

Notes:

1—The dialogue in De Düva: The Dove is in mock-Swedish—basically English with fake “Swedish” suffixes appended.

2—Coincidence: Madeline Kahn is in both De Düva: The Dove (her first movie role) and High Anxiety.

Video Evidence:

Bob and Ray

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnm6kRZhous&list=PLQGNr2fhiKu29qMBWAVBpUoaHnqSW-ol7&index=6

Bergman: The Seventh Seal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7oj9JkcRGc 

De Düva: The Dove

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X2QmLWWxq4  

Hitchcock, The Birds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydLJtKlVVZw 

Brooks, High Anxiety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scgO8Vfh1qU