Recently I saw where Ricky Gervais mused about how the BBC version of The Office TV series would not be allowed today. Just 20 years ago (it aired 2001 – 2002), people weren’t so scared to say funny things.
The comedy of both the BBC and American versions of The Office is that the boss totally can’t understand differences. Both David Brent and Michael Scott are completely inept at social cues and have no sense of protocol or appropriateness. And when they try to have it, things only get worse.
The shows are not laughing at people being fat or gay or trans or ex-convicts or women or minorities or old. They are making fun of the people who can’t handle others not being like themselves. In truth, those shows could be considered some of the most “woke”, if you’re into wokeness.
The problem is that we’ve lost the sense of enjoying subtlety, irony, sarcasm, and that delightful crucial ability to laugh at ourselves. Those wonderful tools of comedy are, sadly to my way of thinking, becoming obsolete. Comedy is allowed to make fun of political figures or be a silly sitcom. That’s it. Everything has to teach a lesson very directly and virtue-signal. It’s kinda like poetry has vanished from the world. Everything must be preachy prose.
Many years ago, my father watched All in the Family almost religiously. Archie Bunker was a racist, sexist, hippie-hater. He was the main character, but (listen carefully) not the protagonist. The entire show led you to see that this man was going to have to change.
In one of the most famous episodes, Sammy Davis, Jr. comes over to the Bunker household to retrieve his briefcase which he accidentally left in Archie’s taxi. Archie warns wife Edith (“Dingbat”) over and over to be so careful not to mention Mr. Davis’ glass eye (“…whatever else you blab about, don’t say nothing about his eye.”) He’s so focused on her possible faux pas that he himself ends up asking Sammy as he hands him a cup of coffee, “Do you take cream or sugar in your eye?”
At the end of the episode, he consents to having a picture taken of him and Sammy. At the count of three, the star gives Archie a big kiss on the cheek just in time for the shutter click. Joke is, as always, on Archie, who gives his classic long-suffering weary look to the camera.
My father was not a racist, sexist man. He may have done a little hippie-disparaging, but not hating. He saw that all of us have some blind spots — some Archie Bunker-isms —in us that need to get worked-out. He told me of a friend of his who wouldn’t allow the show to air in his home. The reason was, said my father, that this friend was very like Archie Bunker. This man saw the humor was directed at him and was not amused at all.
I mourn this lack of humor. I think it’s high time we celebrate differences in a healthy way, not forcing them nor ridiculing them. Let’s just be people and good people at that.
And please please. Can we get our sense of humor back?
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