Deon Cole gave an interview to Amy Young of the Phoenix New Times (8/15/2017), and has a few things to say about comics and truth telling (parrhesia).
What comedy is
Cole begins early on when asked what his stand-up show is about. He responds:
We’re going to talk about some stuff and people are gonna hear things from a different perspective. That’s all comedy is — just getting a different outlook on things. From things going on in the world to things happening with me. We’ll have a good time, learning and laughin’.
I like this perspective, as it resonates with Kenneth Burke’s notion of perspective by incongruity (which of course, is to presuppose that all humor is incongruous).
If all comedy is, as Cole says, just getting a different outlook on things, a different perspective, then to the extent that this new perspective is different from our own, it can cloud, problematize, interrogate and eventually clarifie what our own perspective is. We can learn, but only if we work it through, and the common interpretation is that laughter signals that we don’t want to.
Policing comedy
When asked about political correctness and cultural sensitivity, Cole responds:
Yeah, man, everybody sucks right now. Everybody is constantly judging what everyone says, I can’t believe they said this or that. Comedy is the last raw form of expression and they’re trying to kill it. Actually, they have killed it but in the midst of them killing it, it’s still raw and once they shut us up, it’s gonna be really fucked up out here ’cause music sucks, movies suck, everything fucking sucks, and it’s getting to the point where they’re trying to do it to us but we can’t allow them to shut us up like that.
In this statement, Cole reiterates what I’ve said on here before: That comedy is not a space free of judgment and rules. Instead, it is constantly under threat, constantly in danger of being constrained, of being killed or “shut up.” Comedy must be defended.
Truth telling
Cole continues,
What they need to do is have comedians be news anchors and let us tell the news. There wouldn’t be no fake news then, it’d be true and hilarious. That’s why shows like Trevor Noah’s show is great, and Samantha Bee’s show too, because they tell the truth.
While this is a continuation of his point about “not shutting us up,” he veers off into the tangent of “because [we] tell the truth.” The idea that comics speak truth to power is again a debatable point, which varies by comic and even by bit – as Jay Leno says, it’s nice when it happens, but “most comics will lie their teeth off if it gets them a good laugh.” So the idea that there’d be “no fake news”? Why do you think we have fake news now? Somebody thinks they’re funny.
Summary
Some comedy is intended as perspective by incongruity, and some may provoke or entice us to engage in reflection. We don’t have to learn – that’s what keeps it friendly – though we might. In order to do this, comedy must be defended. Comics don’t always tell the truth, but they don’t have to. Picasso supposedly said, “Art is a lie that tells the truth.” To adapt it here: Comedy can be a lie, and if it gets us closer to the truth, so much the better.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
