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THE BRIDGE: Not Funny
The most common defense people offer up for the demeaning Black comedy is that we need to laugh at ourselves. That is neither new nor interesting and disrespecting me for disagreeing will only get you ignored or cursed out. How funny is that?
Tough talking assheads slammed me for criticizing Black men in drag, but while they defend demeaning comedy, the world is turning upside down. And damn, if defense of degrading comedy is now your revolution and if dogging me out is the best revolutionary tactic that you can muster, then your worthless life is the real punchline.
Ignoramuses who think one installment of my column defines my entire existence imagine that I hate comedy and laughter, and that makes them look silly. I love to laugh and private moments with loved ones find me smiling and exchanging laughs, releasing, relating and relaxing until I return to the work that is required of my life. As a grown man who deals with the world as a responsible adult, I realize that life is not all smiles and giggles.
Since critical thinking is dead, allow me to offer background on how we got to the point where many of us feel all too comfortable laughing and how we have come to expect laughter even when there really is nothing funny.
In America, the people have become lazy. And because of our laziness and dumbing down, we expect to be entertained at every turn.
Advertising is delivered in song, but much of it is delivered in humor, even when dealing with serious products or services.
Corporate meetings have to be quick-paced, and conventions must be laced with entertainment to keep the attention of the ADD masses.
Morning radio shows are no longer simply music, news and traffic--the pressure is on to make the audience laugh.
And, even the most serious of presentations, the morning and evening news, is now delivered in most cases with humor. They must compete with entertaining shows and other entertaining newscasts, because, in this society, the fear is that people will tune out. We know the people won't fight, so the fear is that they will switch.
Politicians can no longer focus on messages and promises, however empty. They must focus on being entertaining, good looking and engaging. Neither Lincoln, nor Washington could be successful politicians today, unless, of course they learned to juggle. Witness the complaints lodged against Al Gore--that he was stiff and boring. Or how about the attacks on John Edwards for his excited utterance that surely occurs with regularity deep in suburban white America?
Our schools have to take special care to keep the lesson plans moving swiftly, competing with the pace set by television and computer games, even if the message is a bit cloudy or missed by the majority.
Where previous generations of children were given age appropriate entertainment for children, today's youth are bored stiff with entertainment designed for them. They are given access to entertainment that is violent and sexual beyond their years, while the purveyors of entertainment argue that times have changed and children have evolved. There is no real evolution, only overexposure.
In previous times, the average citizen placed primary needs above entertainment--the need for assistance, freedom, education and enlightenment and the need for a cure for the most threatening disease. Now, we fear being bored more than we fear death or destruction of our way of life. And while some factions push for the eradication of our most threatening disease, too many of our mushy-minded citizens would rather point accusing fingers at the victims of AIDS or create ghostly villains who mysteriously promulgate the disease.
Not too long ago, the standard forms of entertainment grew old and could only hold attention for a short time. Everyone is looking for the next level of entertainment--the next thrill.
Amusement parks build faster, scarier and more dangerous rides, while the people line up for them, ignoring the crash test dummies that fell apart or got necks snapped during testing. Reality television shows promise to present real people in real activities, from eating bugs and pig intestines, to risking life or at least limb, in risky stunts, but that has nothing to do with real life.
We talk about keeping it “real,” but very little is actually real. Very little exists because it exists. Much of what we do, think, wear and say is developed for corporate benefit, even as we imagine that we have individual thought and freedom of expression. Even most of the people's politics and religious views are shaped by mega-corporations, while the people defend beliefs they don't really understand with tooth and nail.
Critical thinking and independent thought are rare in a world of social seeding and engineered popular culture.
Yes, popular culture, which once developed organically from Black culture, is now artificially stimulated, taking backward portions of Black mis-socialization into the mainstream, which, even when it comes back to our own community appears smooth, but in reality is as artificial as fake sweetener. Blacks who have either been raised on that fake culture, or have simply been duped into accepting it as their own, now have very little sense of who we are, who we once were or who we could potentially be.
This may explain forty and fifty year old men and women who would rather wear silly hairstyles and ridiculous clothing, claiming to be "ghetto" and "real," instead looking like clowns, duped into foolish behavior symptomatic of arrested development.
This may also explain why many of us have begun to turn on our own people. The likes of neo-Black Conservatives, who are really radical activists for change attack every effort made by anyone to deal with real issues faced by the Black community, operating under the false reality that America really is one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. The saccharine reality they have been consuming has deluded them into thinking this nation is really a melting pot.
And sadly, this explains why Black people can tell jokes of how perfect white people are with the punchline being how dysfunctional Black people are in comparison and Black people will pack the house to laugh. I understand it, but I am still confounded by the throngs of blind-minded assholes who emailed me to defend the advent of Black men in drag simply because it makes them laugh.
So many of us have been raised on fake culture and disconnected from our heritage of dignity that we have come to expect laughter instead of reality and entertainment instead of hard work.
There has been so much abject avoidance of reality that those among us who still see the world clearly are maligned and attacked for dealing with real issues that real people are affected by. Those who have a false sense of reality are so shocked by the divergence that they recoil from it and lash out at that which confuses them.
Their retarded mental state has them believing that freedom of expression means cursing at or otherwise deriding someone who will simply take it.
But our freedom of expression was abandoned in a time when we were searching for something greater than what we are. We believed that we could be more and we were well on our way to grasping it. Where we once set lofty goals to surpass the best of us, now, we define ourselves by how good we look in comparison to the worst of us.
And, instead of working to make things better, we turn to anything that will allow an escape—especially comedy.
So, perhaps it feels good to laugh because the world is so difficult. But while the people are laughing, the joke is on them. The world economy is in the toilet, while a few continue to get richer and many continue to get poorer.
This nation is slowly but surely becoming a police state as civil rights are being offered up by the frightened masses who are barely aware and stolen from those who are happily asleep.
Our children are fed over-processed garbage devoid of nutrition and given little activity. Most of America's youth are undereducated and ill-prepared to compete on a global level, yet we blame the children of poverty for poor schools while the nation spends more on defense than school improvement or teachers' salaries and more to bailout failing corporations than on after school programs or books.
The nation is creating a subculture of undereducated, underemployed people who are finding it hard to remain hopeful, while those who have better chances and better choices bitch and moan about how the poor make it hard for the "rest of us."
But the great equalizer is coming as global greed and manipulation for power go into the end game. Those without are prepared because they have already been functioning with worn out tools. Those who have or pretend to have and lose will be harmed greatly because they were looking for the laughter while the situation kept getting sadder and sadder.
There is a big, black boot headed for their stupid asses, but they're laughing so hard that they can't see it coming. Sad, but they won't realize it until it has kicked the stuffing out of them and smashed their hopes and dreams. They won’t wake up until it is too late and they are left with broken lives for which they will continue to use medication or alcohol, spending or sex, gambling or comedy to pretend away, looking for the punchline because they have been punched while in line.
And it's really not funny.
Darryl James is an award-winning author and is now a filmmaker. His first mini-movie, “Crack,” will be released in March of this year. James’ latest book, “Bridging The Black Gender Gap,” is the basis of his lectures and seminars. Previous installments of this column can now be viewed at www.bridgecolumn.com. James can be reached at djames@theblackgendergap.com.
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