Why So Serious?
In defense of laughter
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I can't remember when I stopped watching, even occasionally, late night talk shows. Back in the days of, well, not of a monoculture, but of a cultural context much closer to one - you could reasonably expect that in a group of people, someone had seen the monologue on The Tonight Show and would laugh along with you at whatever you thought was funny. This was maybe in the 70’s or 80’s - a long time ago. I stopped watching these shows sometime in the 80’s I think - after college. Adulthood … parenthood … life intruded.
Even so, I was looking forward to late night television, at least in theory - when I heard that Stephen Colbert was selected to succeed David Letterman on The Late Show. At the time, my impression of Colbert was of someone who was not only funny but smart. And, more, someone who had thought deeply as a Catholic about suffering and life in ways that revealed not only depth of thought but of wisdom and humility and gratitude. In this remarkable segment of a 2019 interview with Anderson Cooper who had recently lost his mother and was obviously still grieving, Colbert helps Cooper understand loss and grief.
Colbert became host of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2015 - and we all know what was happening then. Colbert hosted a live show on election night 2016, which turned out to be a remarkable bit of television history. We have grown so used to the presence of Donald Trump that we can forget how big a surprise it was to most people when he won that election. Colbert’s sign off for that show is the most remarkable part of that remarkable show. In it, he bemoans the division in our country and asks “how did we get here … how did our politics get so poisonous?” His answer shows a great deal of wisdom as well. He said -
we overdosed … we drank too much of the poison … you take a little bit of it so you can hate the other side … and it tasks kinda good, and you like how it feels … and there is a gentle high to the condemnation, right? … and you know you are right - right?
Stephen Colbert - Showtime Election Night Special - 2016
I was not a Trump voter then nor was I a Clinton voter. In fact, it turns out - something I didn’t plan - the last election I voted for one of the major party candidates for president was 2012. That string will probably survive through this election. But - or perhaps perfectly in line with that fact, on election night, 2016, I appreciated those words from Stephen Colbert. We had imbibed too deeply of the poison.
I never really was a regular Colbert watcher, but shortly after that election night show, and despite my respect for his talent and depth, my interest in his show waned. I am not saying he stopped being funny, he probably still is. He could probably still make a room laugh - his talent and insight aren’t gone. But it seems to me that sometime early in 2016 he, and many others, stopped trying to be funny. It seems he and a lot of other people drank a lot more of the poison and things were just too serious, the threat too existential for humor and laughter. I don’t follow the logic, we have often thought that these are the times we need humor most, but many among us seemed to think that moral virtue required us to be serious. “How can you joke about x when y is happening in the world?” It may have been the Joker who asked "Why so serious?" and it may be true that his Jokerness may not be the most reliable narrator, but it isn't a bad question.
As I said, Colbert, it seems to me, stopped trying to be funny. He had a political message. He had a fight to wage and to win - like so many others in media and entertainment. And, fine, his choice. Again, my comment isn’t that he isn’t funny, it is that he stopped trying to be funny in the old way - subverting and surprising his audience, upending their expectations, inviting them to think - maybe about themselves - along the way. Instead, while the form was the same - monologue, timing, skits, remarks - he did the opposite of all of those things that good and smart comedians did. He gave the audience what it wanted. Perhaps more than that he gave the audience what he thought they should want. Humor as morality, morality as humor - the right people are laughing. Maybe I am not the right people. And, fine - disappointing, but fine.
I use Colbert as an example, but he is part of a very, very large trend. We are unhappy -
… and aggrieved and dissatisfied with life and the world - while at the same time, we seem proud and satisfied with our righteous anger. So we can’t find humor - and all that humor requires - like humility, insight, and curiosity … and a willingness to take our foot of the moral gas pedal.
As I was in the process of collecting my thoughts for this essay, I noticed a number of pieces that are noticing the same trend. In the wake of the 2016 election, there were a number of attempts to explain the Angry Right. Strangers in Their Own Land was a National Book Award finalist in 2018 and explored this phenomenon - the righteous anger of the victim and the deadly struggle to right the wrong. We see, of course, much the same thing on the left. Ross Douthat recently asked Can the Left Be Happy? - an example of a column that doesn’t really match the title. Douthat is noticing what I am noticing (I swear I started to write this before I read his piece. More on this in a bit) - that many on the left, mirroring those on the right but for slightly different reasons, don’t think happiness is what we should be feeling right now.
The smartphone theory of increasing youth unhappiness has been especially in the news this past week, thanks to Jonathan Haidt’s new book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness.” And it’s been striking how certain critiques of Haidt’s theory from the left seem to object to the idea that youth unhappiness could be anything but rational and natural.
Ross Douthat - The New York Times - April 6, 2024
Unhappiness is rational, natural, and … right. Again, why are you laughing at x when y is happening in the world?
Kevin D. Williamson, just last week, wrote in The Dispatch a better (though longer) version of what I am trying to write here. His piece is called Humor is a Cool Medium. In it, Williamson observes,
Humor requires emotional distance rather than emotional urgency, dispassionate observation rather than cheerleading and sermonizing, cool wit rather than scalding rage … When humor is instrumentalized for political purposes—when it stops being art and is degraded to the state of rhetoric—it is used for one thing only: lowering the relative status of disfavored groups.
Kevin D. Williamson - The Dispatch - May 24, 2024
Humor being instrumentalized for political purposes describes much of late night comedy. It stops being art because it isn’t trying to be. It is used to lower the relative status of disfavored groups. One more bullet in the culture war.
As I mentioned, if you look at the links below, you will notice that a number of people sensed the appropriateness of this sort of question at about the same time I did. What does that mean? I don’t know - but it may be a hopeful trend.
In the Wisdom book of Ecclesiastes, wrestling with the meaning of life in a world that was by every circumstantial measure (child mortality, disease, war, starvation …) much more difficult that here and now, we read -
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
There is a time to weep and to mourn and to tear. There is. We should recognize that. But there is a time to dance and embrace and laugh. The person who always laughs and the one who never does has lost perspective, has cut themselves off from at least part of reality. There is wrong in this world. Humor can help highlight it in a unique way. Laughter is good. Perpetual anger isn't a virtue. And the world has been measurably worse in almost every measurable way in almost every other time and place than here and now. It is ok to recognize and mourn and even work against what is wrong and unjust in this world. But we should not draw any moral status by the depth of our indignation.
Why so serious? Is it because we need to be seen (and to think of ourselves) as a Serious Person? A person who Gets It? A person who Knows What Time It Is? Those things are about us. In the meantime, among the actual people in our actual lives, we are humorless, joyless, ungracious, and proud. This makes the actual world, in a small but real way, worse. In our self-serious righteousness that doesn't help anyone (that which brings joy to ourselves as well as others) we become part of the problem.
We have been blessed with a world of love and beauty. It is not only a denial of reality not to see it, it lacks humility. There is a time for laughter.
Remember, the Joker wasn’t trying to be funny either. Nobody was more serious than he was. He just wanted to watch the world burn.
Links
Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper Discuss Grief - CNN Replay - June 2019
Stephen Colbert Signs off on the 2016 Presidential Election - Showtime - November 9, 2019
Satisfaction With The United States - Gallup - May 1, 2024
The Sad State of Happiness in the United States and the Role of Digital Media - World Happiness Report - March 20, 2019
Strangers in Their Own Land - Arlie Russell Hochschild - The New Press, 2018
Can the Left Be Happy? - Ross Douthat - The New York Times, April 6, 2024
Humor is a Cool Medium - Kevin D. Williamson, The Dispatch, May 24, 2024
Making Fun of Your Friends is Good for Them - Kieran Setiya, The Atlantic, May 2024
I don't watch much late night programming, but it does seem like most of the hosts have abandoned actually trying to be funny (although Jon Stewart is back on The Daily Show and crushing it). I will say Colbert is still the best and most thoughtful interviewer of them all.