Comedy Bodies

Comedy. How edgy can it be, how revolutionary and does that justify its going to realms otherwise considered too far for entertainments? Does it shatter preconceptions, creating social justice, or a new form of bullying and categorisation cloaked in protective irony clauses. Recently the issue has come up as a media throw-ball, from Bruno and American mumble-core movies about Jewish dominatrix’ who dress like Isla of the SS, to debates at the Edinburgh Film Festival over the limits of humour and meta-debates over guardian articles purporting to expose the new ‘shock-comedy’

Ostensibly the debates surrounding the movies also fit into what is a long tradition of comedy as iconoclasm in a broader sense. In the 17th Century Rochester mocked his own patron Charles II mercilessly in scarubulous verse ; in the 1st Century BC Aristophanes humour- Middle Comedy-laid into the dignitaries and senate scandals of Greece. Czech and Polish cinema mocked the papacies’ of Communism's contraries, speaking to power in thinly veiled allegories beneath a monolithic but often intellectually cumbersome censorship. By contrast many column inches have been devoted to Bruno as-for better or worse- the epitome of transgressive humour--laying waste to the politically sound sensibilities of the left along with the usual conservative-baiting.

Meanwhile, from National Lampoon to splatter-comedy, and into the Apatow series, 'edgy' humour in the mainstream has been associated with a certain mode of explicitness about sexual- defined, rightly or not, as frankness. But is this explicitness, say, commiserate with an honesty about the subtexts of sex, about complication which rebound on the audience-sexual acts rather than the kernel of sexuality. Some commentators have accused Apatow’s films of being reactionary, just as Bruno's apparent free-for all- nihilism has been seen as the stepping-off point for a new racism and new homophobia; the re-opening of mysticism through relativism in post-modernity compared to modernist rationality. Which is not new- the New Comedy was burlesque and bitter; the Restoration now carefully studied as satire combined the grotesque and misanthropic with the kind of catch-release dialectics of shcok and familiarity feminine power/feminine groitesquity guaranteed to give scholars from the ideological wings an awkward time unravelling them. Or, in Bruno’s case -you could see it as very Restoration, or indeed neo Aristophanean.

There are certain movies which address the root of comedy, the squirming awkwardness around the ambivalent sense of self that lurks behind prejudice and political correctness, between political shirking and tight-clean jokes, concoted from some unending causal dialectic of cringe and desire, of language and form, whose uncovering straddles nightclub hecklers and nouvelle theorem. That appositely meta comedy for a reflexive age, that narcissism self scrutinizing episteme tight rope that is the truth-indulgence of psycho-therapy climates. The under-determined top-spin sign ‘time’ quicksand of these post-masculinity bromances, with their reformation-alike repriotisation of the contingent in identity politics, a hidden homo-text homogenuous heterogenic have made everything suspect. Like a communist cell, you suspect those closest to you first in their closeness. Three movies ‘Humpaday’ ‘ Bruno’ and ‘Crying with Laughter’ document forensically symptoms of the modern anxiety and in their doctor discourse, like a health agency, produce further palpitations of doubt all around them. Being the sign that devours itself they incur a lot of guilt- a mirror disgust and share aura’s of self-loathing around them— two out of three offer ways out of the maze though, and empathy whose fractious presence in that group splits like a critical atom fissure to tell us truths about comedy’s rasion d’etre.

It’s just the joke of ugly faces. Joke of the whimsy-ugly outrage. Playground game humour-It’s all part of, bullying and embarrassment respectively, and also about the need to belong in the second instance Bill hovers over the bed of the two polymorphous chicks. Excess sensibilities and those easily balanced whilst lone uncertain links to uncertain endings to comedy in Humpaday rooted in clear question put to why embarrassing, which question why laughing, funny is to recognize the human frailty, why – laughing at self-loathing, deconstruction of reputations.

Like all those Water’s send-ups of slushy mainstream romance Underground cinema digs at the subtexts of the genres it responds to, In this case Humpaday’s similarities to the buddy genre in pacing, shot execution and surface themes-of embarrassment, the return of incorrigible college buddies—find both an essentially melancholy underneath and—the clenchingly, excruciatingly awkward topic of the homosocial bond-its dreams and nightmares. The ‘buddy’ as surrogate romance motif has always hovered in pop culture since the seventies- even already been satirised lightly by this years’ I Love you Man’. The Hangover’, this year’s real monster hot, dealt with the uneasy repercussions of the unleashed male psyche and its excuses for bonding; but , for all its teeth-splintering body humour, the hangover was at best subtextual when it came to the burning bush and cheek question, the elephant. No matter how ‘crude’ it stayed safe.

With these movies the connections are nothing much to do with tone, tone which in fact determines their differences; ‘ Humpaday’ is similar to Mendes’ Away We Go, and by proxy the Office US, in its heightened realism criss-crossing between characterisation verite and the portrayal of self-caricaturising groups further embellished into burlesque. Bruno, by contrast, the faux fashion documentary deals with no-one’s home-life, no-ones relationship—Bruno’s background being a series of excess points as triggers for the edgy homophobia-skewering situational endangerment.

Both have some connection to the John Waters spirit; the suburban life transfused with a deviancy which acquires a quaintness, in the case of Humpaday , with its filth festival/bohemian sylvannian hidden in the suburbs all being very familiar to even the squarest inhabitants, along with ( )’s confession of his illicit student fantasy. Whilst Humpday is about blurring lines and drawing connections between the insecurities of adulthood suburban life and the attempts at free-spirited sexually uninhibited life outside of society, Bruno is about the raw force of shock-the anarchy of outrage which comes from the id. The idiocy and deferral laughter exhibited by frat-boy comic characters confronted in locker-room scenes and the other discomforting ‘nakedness’ of their relationships.

They both ‘discuss’ the ideas of cultural expectation too—the symbols of those icky sexual in-differences. But right up to the points of production their approaches are different; Baron Cohen, for all that the movie promotes itself with the frisson of being his next line in excess as far as active engaged in his own controversy in a social dimension, is content to do a couple of chart-shows whilst around him publicists spin stories of law-suits and hidden footage. The politics, fundamentally, are anarchic. The director of Humpaday Lynn Sheldon , by contrast is quite vocal in defining Her movie as satirical, although where its’ politics of judgement lie-whether its anatomy observation or as moral corrective, is unclear. Which is what happens when you start engaging in trying to illustrate faithfully the very complication of human sexuality and ethical responses. Sort of the whole liberal dilemma of moral self-determination, being ’faithful’ to yourself when that self-keeps changing. The surprising is how close in tone it is to the over-ground.

In Humpaday, the same awkwardness is set-up but as a visual, situational subject of the comedy. It 's meta-looking at how humour itself sneakily skirts around-as the husband here skirts around-the issue. More than this-that the 'play-away' may-beneath the excuses about 'art' have emotional resonances. The closest antecedents are the comedy-horror situation of Crying with Laughter-which tenses a line between laughter and disgust even thinner than in Bruno, taking in sexual abuse and obsessive conspiracy revenge missions along with a self-destructive comedian- Much like a Tom green movie- and Zack Clarks wonderfully droll Modern Love is Automatic. The latter, with its dominatrix meets Pastel-coloured weird world of affectless absurdity mumble-core- taking in subjects like-again-sexual perversity and climaxing in an attempted kidnap-- ala Borat—and a ‘john’ with a taste for nazi- orientated role-play delivered by a Jewish ‘mistress’.

Then there’s Scottish comedy Crying with Laughter. This by contrast is different in being generically spliced together rather than just tonally shifting—the laughter and pain, from the title onwards, are in the same breath. Concerned with kidnap and abuse, its uncertain message at heart is about the grim laughter . A plot concerned with the archetypal sad clown, it looks at the characteristically mordant Scottish humour to find both a symbolic an d pathological reason for that black laughter’- the symbolism of having been abused and the pathological ‘masking’ of

There’s the same despair inherent to Scottish cinema in, say, in its vision of a story of abuse-yet on abuse emerge jokes like mushrooms on dirt, a strategy you could say Bruno’s trash and filth over-turning of how far comedy should go, its excessive homo-teasing double edge like the self-eviscerating Crying with laughter character, provides.. pain, the escape from becoming a victim, by sardonic irony. All which still leads to beating yourself.It’s about the comic’s own activities written large, the comic’s own despair of knowing, about the machoismo of articulate and about institution There’s a small joke subtext within the film, one about—a minor salvation of a minor bad lieutenant . And with that same rawness- that corporeality and Scottish huggy homophobia.

It says that life’s difficult, rather than says that nothing is about ‘something’-a phrase Kermode uses to describe horror. Occasionally but comedy says that faith in things can be excessive, like the railing at in losers, the railing at scared bodies. About attacks without the authority to offer moral objections, a wish to expose anything. To be heard which only works in character with a point to strike against.

Humpaday hints at an external world which it wants to represent whilst Bruno is ultimately the delivering of reality into a skewed weird and literal universe comprised of emotional reactions where their chief cause and effect is laughter. An attack and homage to Apatow movies in their excess and the tension -filled obsession with the un-done kiss in friendship , even more than Humpaday so far as it plays with the political subtexts of watching those movies in a much more visceral way compared to the taste of Humpaday.

Humpaday which is like a Paul Rudd spiked- even the main character is reminiscent of podgier Rudd, with the attempts at creeping towards a more metrosexual conclusion, a more honest expose of the habits or at least idealised depiction of a modern friendship in ‘i love you man’ –Rudd with his schultzy klotzy depictions of Machoisimo in ‘ Anchorman’ to his bemused everyman roles, offering vision slightly beyond the Apatow movie’s central Rogan-like slacker dynamic of women as shrews and male friendships as simple collusions of equals neutralising their critics with superficial signs of ‘growing ‘.

Certain scenes have been accused of exhibiting a smugness- the same smugness which Humpadays’ dissection of liberal mores and then ironies seeks to puncture- to puncture this assurance of meaning which is assumed by the nihilistic joke-tellers a and exhibitionist. The sense of negating responsibility which attachés itself to the art world. Throwing stuff at wall to see what sticks’ says Kermode of Bruno. Then, in the Guardian newspaper recently there’s s been a to and fro debate over an article Richard Herring and Brendon Burn’s comedy acts dealing with ‘ironic racism’, an article which in turn has led into the politics of interpretation and slander. All which deals with the unstable ironies of edgy subject matter, and brings up issues of what are comedy’s prerogatives? Is discrimination elemental or situational, ethically speaking?

Especially when in a different way Burn’s infamous Edinburgh comedy stunt relied on the concept of obligation- the moral fissions of laughing at laughing at offence with a comfortable safety blanket, and the deconstruction of the comedian’s authority over topics and hecklers. Which fits into the reflective media-scrutinizing dunking of Bruno-looking at conventions and truth whilst also opening up a vacuum of confused, directionless laughter. It’s the issue of whether you need to engage fully with something to condemn it, at the risk of perpetuating its profile and confusing, in the course of the argument and especially given how nebulous art can be-- just as illustrated in the variable nature of the interpretations surrounding the film, the moral issue. Whether entering into the joke or into the cinema, are you culpable in seeing it or can you be redeemed by having it inflicted upon you. Or in turn is art, as Burns claims for himself and extending his argument, unable to take the full force of sociological argument for better and worse by it’s own dangerous subjectivity, its unstable grammar of signs.

Humpaday’s likely to be a small cinema favourite. Compare that to Kissing Jessica Stein of the early 2000’s. Though no multiplex favourite, it was a comfortable play to the urban and couples crowd, the lat-mainstream in the same way Mendes’s new Away We Go might Had a male equivalent been tried in that idiom, it wouldn’t have, discernibly wouldn’t have emerged from the Queer ghetto.

We only get, even here, mainstream-breaking homo comedy when tragedy’s involved-unless you count that decidedly sexless Kevin Kline movie. A factoid; in Friends David Crane once admitted they had seriously considered making Chandler g. Will and Grace or no, it just wouldn’t have played with the same dynamic- Will and Grace is a big fish in its Eas coast crowd, Friends played nearly every state, to use the American marketing analogies. Likewise Xander in Buffy- the decision to make Willow the gay instead, probably saved ratings.

It’s just too big a cultural anxiety-hemmed din by a couple of thousand of years of psycho-social sexual issues connected with dominant patriarchy and the demonstration of masculinity. As witlessly but effectively proved by Year One, in one sense and another. Or where the comedy’s aimed at- ripping down stereotypes or riffing on the phenomena- the observational comedy value neutral- of stereotypes, the obligation to the marginalised groups or the hiccaw of recognition which when it becomes too self—aware of itself becomes a lesson—about what and How you believe-but stops the laughter in your throat. Watching Burn’s stunt on youtube throws off laughter becomes the ramifications fly in the air like flaming bowling pins.

To decide on what’s worth seeing-isn’t this the debate on what a film is- its inevitable status as informed by the trends of societies code- of the critic or—the comedian. Are acts moral in of themselves- what if, as one self-described ‘raging homo’ Spiked columnist suggest- Baron Cohen’s creation is in fact an accurate depiction of tendencies in the queer community. Is the onus then to confront and accept those tendencies despite and if they conflict with societal moods in democracy—like an emphasis on fashion which leads to a twisted body politic, or other self-destructive tendencies, in this hypothesis. It all hinges, -from conception to distribution-- on liberty and the limits of a heterogeneous cultural mass.

Which leads onto these more nebulous concerns---

Is the evil in misconstruing the tendencies of a group from a purely illustrative, reductive perspective, or in passing judgement on any tendencies based on a morality which in turn whose status epistemologically lies between the situational and that inherent philosophically. Are we laughing the absurdity of the value system, the absurdity of this being construed as any value system given the caricature burlesque status of Bruno, or at the situational tension of the persona played against the gullibility of the set-up ‘perry’ people , the extent of whose gullibility is based on a - again- nebulous set of implied prejudices which are complicated by the creation of persona through the necessarily reductive vision given to them by a media consciousness, which foregrounds the extremes-hence is it a satire on the media too- and complicated by the double choice of Bruno’s implied ‘real’ character with his fake essentialism-human in a caricature, and the choice to perceive him as real or even representative.

Is prejudice a matter of degrees- that anything out of kilter must necessarily suffer and bring upon itself prejudice? This brings on issues of determinism- how do we determine choice and what do we imply in ridiculing people at the service of what just by the set up of Bruno’s reach, the resources involved in creating the film, are implied to be passive consumptions of video iconography, victims of a simplifying media. Just as people condemn according to clips of films, so too we condemn betrays of ‘innate’ sexual identity according to the selection of images and the authenticity that implies in its selective, fragmentary but choice role according to the media progenitor. But in turn aren’t we all just selections of ourselves, articles of faith changing across time and chemicals.

Returning to Bruno, there was an uncertainty still whether he’ had or could ever have made his point about the consumption of prejudices eloquently enough, which wasn‘t present-in either sense of that-in the Guardian commentary on his style of comedy. The same ambiguity as Sheldon commented on in her hope, her hope, that the film wouldn’t be seen as prejudicial towards the lifestyle-whether that was to misconstrue the facts of the lifestyle or not. Fact is not directly synonymous with moral understanding, after all.

Are the methods justified-as Herring in his Guardian response debates, which he says that question- lies at the heart of his comedic wrangling- the comedy in the methodology whilst the philosophy lies in the conclusion. Justified in mocking through exaggeration or ad hominem arguments, the phenemological limits of jokes on your opponents features, the knee-jerk insults Congressman or wrestling fans offer when you wave a spandex clad-retorts not directly related to confounding of the arguments on the same verbal lines, but to expose a flaw which is assumed from a logic in the original statement. The neurotic meetings of the accidental cover-up conspiracy obfuscations, the myopia of totemic solidity in civilisation behind the statement, leave readers all around deep-strung-- and the laughter catching in your throat like a deep neck into the charbydis of meaning. The Greeks might approve.