Humor and its discontents

I am fascinated by the possibilities of producing modernist tableau(x) featuring the conceptual persona of the stand up somehow telling a vital anecdote relating to the concept of routine. I haven't read the Dean on stand up comedy yet (ah, spring break- a time to catch up and get ahead on reading, cleaning, writing), but I have some thoughts/musings/opinions already.

We have been told that following Virno (which we are just starting to read) to treat our public policy issue as a joke. The interesting thing about jokes, about humor, is that often at the core, are anxieties about important issues. Humor is a way to deal with anxiety. I discussed this in my post Selling chubby hubbies vacuums. Humor is one place we can play out behaviors and thoughts that are less socially acceptable. There are lines that we are not supposed to cross but getting damn close to those lines, crossing over them now and again, taking risks, is what marks the most memorable comedy sets/comics.

Bodily functions will always be a source of humor. Funnily enough, becoming more accepting of bodies and their functions and limits actually can increase our tendency to make jokes about the body. I think this is because even for those of us more accepting of bodies that fart and shit and belch and squirt and piss and smell and make all sorts of odd noises, there still is anxiety about how much we cannot control those functions.

Almost twenty years ago, over a Christmas holiday, I got sick with a dreadful flu that made me spend quality time in the bathroom for four days. My father got the same flu but only for two days. At the time, I made some joke about how he should have to suffer the flu for four days- this is not the sort of joke that would play for a crowd- it was a family, in crowd sort of a joke. And for years after that horrible Xmas shitfest, my father and I would make jokes about my jokingly serious, seriously joking anger that he only had the flux for two days.

All this discussion about bodies is important, because "fat" bodies often are the butt of the joke. We have anxieties about obesity; so as a culture we make (often cruel) jokes about fat, fat people and their behavior. My own family often has dealt with our tendency to pack on pounds (and not just 10 to 30 pounds extra, more like 100 to 300 pounds extra) by making jokes- often self deprecating, very earthy jokes.