Chevy Chase, satire and anger

Dennis Perrin over at Red State Son has some interesting thoughts about Chevy Chase's ongoing comedic straight-talk. I was particularly interested in what Dennis said near the end, comparing the blunt, righteous anger of comedians during Watergate to the weak tea being peddled today. Even with legends-in-the-making like Stewart and Colbert there seems to be a distance, a sense of "look at how ridiculous these humans are--too bad we are powerless to intervene in their affairs." But comedy CAN move opinion, and the shenanigans being lampooned DO matter--they really effect real people in our real world.

The satirists of the 60s and 70s had an immediacy, and a sincerity which energized their material. They had a personal commitment to reality as a place changeable for the better (and worse) that the current ones seem to lack. Was there ever any doubt where "The Vietnamese Baby Book" stood on Vietnam? Was there any doubt that Hunter Thompson HATED Richard Nixon? Does Jon Stewart HATE Bush? Or does he merely dislike him intensely, while remaining just a tiny bit grateful for the steady stream of material? I simply can't tell. When Stewart and Colbert dropped their "foolish humans" distance and showed the anger beneath, people went crazy for it. People crave that kind of honesty--why don't our comedians and satirists give it to us?

I blame irony. The current comedy culture in America arose in the 80s as a "cool" response to the "hot" satire that had dominated from 1955 to 1980. Hot satire is immediate, personal, and hard-to-duplicate; cool satire is detached, often impersonal, and reproducible. Animal House is hot, while Porky's is cool. Office Space is hot, Dilbert cool.

"Cool," ironic satire was immediately championed by the entertainment industry, because it solved the problem inherent in marketing satire: it made people laugh without suggesting that they change. We've been drowning in it ever since. Irony is satirical-seeming--"things are bad"--yet fundamentally passive--"but all you can do is laugh."

But that's a lie; laughing ISN'T all you can do. The ironic stance is based on a false knowingness, a sense of having done and seen it all which is excusable in an 18-year-old but shows ignorance, if not outright corruption, in an adult. Irony's not a worldview, it's a defensive crouch against being exposed as a fool, based on the belief that everybody gets exposed sooner or later. It insists that nothing ever changes, then its passivity makes that so. Irony's perfect mass-satire for our fractious times, because it's a way to comment without taking a stand--but it makes our times more fractious in the process. It's a unclear, excuse-making, self-serving form of communication, and as a form of satire, it's crap.

Since 1980, American comedy's been about getting rich (because everybody else is) treating authority figures like entertainers and vice-versa (because everybody's corrupt, and everything is showbiz). It's Lenny Bruce's cynicism, without his explicit admonitions to be better. Bruce and his ilk said, "Here's how politics is corrupt--so don't be corrupt. Here's how people are racist--so don't be a racist. Here's how morality is hypocritical--so don't be a hypocrite." Bruce self-selected for fans that didn't want to be corrupt, racist, or hypocritical. But the current satirist says, "Be however you want, we'll take everybody. It's all a hustle anyway." Smaller audience versus bigger audience--for the entertainment biz, irony's a no-brainer. And exactly what we don't need right now.