We live in absurd times. A Reality TV show star is president. He is a narcissist who is never wrong about anything but is wrong about everything. He enlists creepy people, straight out of a Dickens' novel, to do his dirty deeds.
You gotta laugh. How did we get into such a mess? If I was a serious columnist for a major metropolitan newspaper, I could dissect Trump's faults with a litany of facts and figures. Real journalists do that.
I'm a blogger so am not constrained by facts. I do know truth from lies and I try to adhere to them when it matters. I'd rather turn a nice phrase or get a laugh. I'm a fiction writer, too, which gives me a certain leeway to embellish, maybe even lie.
What makes us laugh at serious topics? It's in our genes, a human response to inhumane acts. How else can we deal with a monster like Trump, a ghoul like Stephen Miller? How can we tolerate war and pestilence?
It takes some talent to get us to laugh at human foibles. It takes skill and wit. Wit in the old-fashioned sense. A person with wit has "the ability to relate seemingly disparate things so as to illuminate or amuse," according to Merriam-Webster. Here's another: "a talent for banter or persiflage," persiflage meaning "light or slightly contemptuous banter or mockery."
A good stand-up comedian has wit. A bad one just tells jokes. A witty politician can turn a phrase, helps us laugh at ourselves. A bad politician heaps scorn on helpless people, afflicts the afflicted.
There's a darkness to good humor. And it takes skill to tease the humor our of war and pestilence, sex and death. The Seven Deadly Sins, a.k.a. capital vices, are as serious as the name. A good comic writer can find a lot of fun in "lust" and its sister, "envy." I've heard many a comedian describe their lustful ways -- failed relationships, oddball sexual practices, the inevitable heartbreak that comes with opening up yourself to others.
A novelist gets thousands of words to show you heartbreak. It can come in many ways. The pursuit of love. How love of country or religion can turn out badly.
We could blame war on "wrath," another deadly sin. For those who experience war, heartbreak may best describe its aftermath.
In the film version of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, a platoon of heroic U.S. soldiers back from Iraq are celebrated at an NFL playoff game. The pageantry of a big NFL bash is juxtaposed with Billy Lynn's memories of Iraq and the guilt he feels at not saving a buddy. One of the scenes involves Billy Lynn and the team owner, played straight by comedic actor Steve Martin. The fatuous owner chides Billy for his uncertainty and notes that his platoon now is bigger than Billy Lynn -- it belongs to America. So America gets to celebrate by playing a football game and shooting off fireworks. EDM beats power the costumed dancers who writhe around the stage while the soldiers stand and get appreciative applause from the crowd. The pageantry and pathos of America on stage.
Dark humor and satire are cousins. Often, dark humor is poking fun at a cataclysmic event. World War II was not a laugh riot but some amazing books came out of the struggle. Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five. Same goes for World War I. The Good Soldier Svjek is a great example, a book that set the stage for later war books and movies all the way up to the present. In the hands of a good writer, one with wit, the most serious war novel can yield some laughs. All Quiet on the Western Front is a good example.
Vietnam was my generation's heartbreak. Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato with its magical-realist elements. Meditations in Green by Stephen Wright is another darkly comic take on Vietnam and its aftermath. The movie Full Metal Jacket came out of a novel by Gustav Hasford but took a darkly comic path in Kubrick's hands. No surprise from the director of Dr. Strangelove. Michael Herr, Hasford and Kubrick collaborated on the screenplay. Herr wrote the memoir Dispatches which was part of the inspiration for Apocalypse Now, which has its own absurdist moments. Herr was a correspondent in Vietnam for Esquire Magazine. Although Herr has admitted that he invented some of the characters and did not actually witness some of the events and dialogue, he contends it is all true. In France, Dispatches was published as a novel. In Vietnam, it was all true and it was all fiction.
Fiction writers yearn to go beyond the history into a place of story, a place where the reader is compelled to move on and possibly laugh or shake their heads or both.
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