Mayflower Mayhem: Laughter vs. Land Claims

Cartoons about Indians and Pilgrims constitute a genre of their own, and the conflict they depict tends to follow a pattern: they turn large cultural conflicts into a comedy of manners.

I thought about this recently when I saw one of these cartoons, by David Sipress, in The New Yorker.  It is an example of what Henri Bergson would have called "the reciprocal interference of independent series."

Although Bergson wrote "Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic" (in 1900), you can tell from his writing style that he did not invent the term "ROFL."

Bergson was describing stage comedies when he coined that phrase, but it is a principle that applies to many cartoons, especially those in The New Yorker.  (Look in the magazine's online Cartoon Bank under the heading of "Thanksgiving.")  He is describing comical dramatic situations that exist among different sets of characters. When those different sets meet, the audience realizes that "the actions and words that belong to one might just as well belong to the other."  (This is evident in several of Shakespeare's plays, for example, when the plot of the upper-class characters is mirrored in the plot of the lower-class characters.) But for cartoons, the common dynamic is that a statement (the caption) totally appropriate in one situation is placed in a situation that, at first, seems inappropriate -- until the reader realizes it is uncannily appropriate.

He also describes an example that could be applied to this particular category of cartoons, Indians & Pilgrims. Bergson writes that comedy can ensue when we witness the combination of "one series of events belonging to the past and another belonging to the present."

Another New Yorker example of humor arising from this juxtaposition is a recent Thanksgiving cover that illustrates the common analogy between current debates about "illegal immigrants" and Pilgrims.

At the heart of this comedy (and of much comedy) is incongruity. The audience realizes these things do not belong together, which produces an element of surprise, but the audience also realizes there are some startling similarities, which produces another element of surprise.

In Sipress's cartoon, we have an event that might be experienced today, when a stretch of beach is reserved for the use by residents of that community. Then there is the awkward encounter when someone must tell the unwelcome visitors that they must leave.  

Today is juxtaposed with the past when this moment of summer beach "trespassing" is made analogous to the arrival of Europeans in New England. However, the awkwardness comically alluded to here is epic rather than quotidian. The trespassing tourists in this case, we know from our history books, stay and eventually take possession of the beach.  (Smallpox Beach Towels for Everyone!)

Sipress's image interested me not simply because it touches on a common trope in modern cartoons but because it made me think about the truths it is built upon, truths that, depending upon your perspective, it acknowledges or avoids.

While Bergson tries to understand what makes some things funny, Avner Zev tries to understand what makes some funny things useful. In "Humor as a Social Corrective," Zev ponders a couple of possibilities for the social function of laughter.  One idea is that laughter is a way to punish people who transgress social mores. This idea understands laughter as mostly mockery.  Since few people enjoy receiving that kind of laughter, Zev writes, avoiding it will encourage people to conform to society's expectations.

A second idea, which Zev finds more attractive, is that laughter relieves social pressure. This release of pressure is especially important for people living in undesirable circumstances: In every repressive regime there is this kind of underground humor, and it fulfills an important function: Laughter shared by the oppressed as the expense of the oppressor reduces fear and helps people to go on living under the regime with more ease.

We do not need to discuss repression to discuss the pressure-release theory of laughter. Many forms of laughter acknowledge a real social problem while at the same time allowing the audience to laugh about the situation; indeed, the laughter may allow the acknowledgement to take place, since without it the discomfort of the problem would create the incentive to avoid the topic. And there are times when a group of oppressed people make serious critiques of their oppressors in the form of jokes. They are allowed to make a forbidden comment ("You suck"), but pass it off as a joke; the oppressor may not realize the jokers were not joking. If the comment had not been disguised as a joke, it could never have been made -- the Trojan Horse becomes a kind of Trojan Rubber Chicken.

But one problem with applying Zev's idea to this cartoon is that it appears in The New Yorker, not Indian Country Today. What social pressure is being relieved when cartoons like this appear in a magazine the is closely associated with elite members of the dominant culture?

Zev says humor can allow an oppressed group of people "go on living under the regime with more ease," but, on the flipside, humor can allow a dominant group of people go on living despite the injustice of a system or event from which it benefits. The joke acknowledges a sense of guilt without changing anything.

Cartoons such as Sipress's acknowledge the problem with land claims made by the dominant culture -- in this case, the United States of America, which considers itself descended from those Pilgrims depicted in the cartoons who landed at Plymouth in 1620 (never mind the Englishmen who had been in Virginia since 1607). The beach is for residents only, the Indian man tells them, which mirrors current regional laws that limit such beach use to local residents.  But we know from history that these interlopers do not go away, despite the legitimacy of the Indian's claims; hence, their claim to own the beach today is dubious.

Cartoons make this tacit confession, and yet the news frequently contains examples of the United States denying the legitimacy of land claims by American Indians, even those land claims that have moved successfully through the legal system created by the United States.

The irony of Sipress's cartoon came to mind because I had just seen two articles about American Indian land claims.

I saw an article about Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut renewing his opposition to changes in the process by which American Indian tribes are granted federal recognition. He gained his fame as the state's attorney general and for his role in reversing federal recognition of two tribes in Connecticut (those reversals were unprecedented). If those tribes had gained federal recognition, they could have expanded their land bases, which would have meant a loss of land for those currently occupying it.

I also saw an article about the Agua Caliente tribe in Palm Springs, Calif., taking action against the water district there. The Agua Caliente are asserting the legality of their claim to those water rights and claiming the water district is abusing and contaminating the water supply. While this case is just getting started, I will not hold my breath for the court system to rule in favor of the Agua Caliente.

Don't get me wrong: I love cartoons. That is one reason I subscribe to The New Yorker, and the door to my campus office is covered in them. And I love to laugh, even at very serious topics. But I do think it is useful to keep in mind the issues raised (and buried) by our laughter.

The Lone Ranger's Black Veil

[Update: The story has been published in the Spring 2014 issue of The Yellow Medicine Review.]

The following is a short-short story I wrote awhile back but which has not found a publishing home.  But with the release of The Lone Ranger, I thought I would go ahead and give it a home here.  Honestly, it was written before I had heard Johnny Depp was working on the movie.  It was inspired after re-reading Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "The Minister's Black Veil."  I have not posted anything recently on Depp's portrayal of Tonto because others have posted plenty, and I already made some comments on the issue after pictures from the set were first leaked: "Tonto Shops at J. Crow."  An interesting difference between my story and the film is Tonto's tribal affiliation.  The film has made Tonto a Comanche, but in the radio and TV series, Tonto was either Apache or Kiowa (sources differ on that).  The Apache and the Comanche were bitter enemies through much of the history of the Southwest, and my story hinges upon that.

The Lone Ranger’s Black Veil

LR is serious about the mask.  No one can touch it.  No one can ask about it.  I am the only other person who knows its story.  My name is Tonto – that’s not my real name, not my Apache name, just some stupid name he made up because he thought it sounded more heroic.  He is such a drama queen. 

And now he is lying on his deathbed – shot in the back – and still wearing his mask.  He has his gun out, keeping the doctor away because the doc wanted to remove the mask.  He’d rather die than be revealed.  Geesh.

His mask is not what everyone imagines, the one that makes him look like some stupid raccoon.  Don’t you think you could recognize someone if he was wearing that mask?  No one looks at a raccoon and wonders, “What is that?  Is that a dog?”

No, his mask is a piece of black gauze hanging over his face.  He can see through it, but you can’t clearly see his face beneath it.  And he never takes it off in front of anyone.  Not even me.  But I know its story.

The Texas Rangers were created to kill Indians, and they were good at it.  They were ordered West, to fight Comanches, and that is when I came looking for them.  But first they ran to East Texas and killed a bunch of Cherokees and the like who were farming, minding their own business, living in wood houses, wearing shirts and pants and dresses, going to church, not causing anyone any trouble.  Other than being Indian. 

When he saw the innocent people he had killed, he came to his senses and went crazy at the same time.  LR put on the black mask and killed the men in his unit.  That story of him being the only survivor of his unit after an ambush?  Just part of the myth.  That mask was a sign of his sinful nature.

“We all see the world through a veil of our own sins,” he told me many times.  He had the habit of sounding like a preacher.  “And I am here to remind people that we cannot escape that fact.  Nor can we escape the Lord’s justice.  That is why I have dedicated myself to hunting down bad men, bad men like myself.  For who knows their ways better than I?” 

“That’s great,” I told him just as often.  “There are plenty of bad men out in West Texas.  They’re called Comanches.”

But the only bad men who caught his eye looked like him.

On his deathbed now, with a gang of white folks trying to talk their way past his pistol and into his room, he keeps muttering, “Expiation.” 

I spent a lifetime wasting my energy, trying to get that old fool to do what he was originally so good at.  But I could never cajole, coax, or coyote him to West Texas.  What did I care about his redemption?  I wanted my revenge.  They killed my brother.  They kidnapped my young cousin.  Probably married her off to one of their own or sold her to some Mexicans.  They even took my dog.   They probably ate it.  I wanted him to come out West and kill some goddamned Comanches. 

Stupid white men.  You can’t count on them for nothing.

Committed: "This Is the End" Goes All the Way

Spoiler alert: I discuss the conclusion of This Is the End.

Unless there are categories for "Most F-bombs" or "Biggest Demon Penis," This Is The End is unlikely to contend for any Academy Awards. Yet there is one thing the film, written by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, does better than many Hollywood films: it sticks to its premise 100 percent.

I already have noted my delight in apocalyptic films and in Hollywood's penchant for destroying itself in many of them. In "At the Corner of Hollywood Boulevard & Death Drive," I discussed the attraction of films such as 2012 and Battle: Los Angeles.

I suggested there that Hollywood seems bent upon self-punishment for a variety of sins, and I noted that this has been a theme since the 1930s.  Myron Biring's 1933 novel, The Flutter of an Eyelid, ends with Los Angeles sliding into the Pacific Ocean after an earthquake -- and sweeping all of the characters to their deaths. Nathaniel West's 1939 novel, The Day of the Locust, concludes with a riot that sweeps away his main characters (who are not very likable).

The Day of the Locust resonates well with This Is the End because the novel's characters are involved in the shallow, soul-killing world of movie-making, and because it describes a large painting titled "The Burning of Los Angeles." In This Is the End, the actors play themselves as vain, stupid, pot-addled man-boys. And we see Los Angeles burning -- and falling down open pits into lakes of fire and being terrorized by demons. As with the characters in The Day of the Locust and The Flutter of an Eyelid, the people in This Is the End seem to deserve their fates.

The notion of "deserving" is important since the film depicts the Rapture; this is Judgement Day. The Hollywood B-listers in the film who fall into the open earth are literally being sucked into Hell. No one at James Franco's wild party gets taken into Heaven before the mayhem begins.

What I respected about the film was that it did not back off from its premise, despite its epic scale.

How many apocalyptic films imagine the end of civilization but also imagine some way to save it? How many films, apocalyptic or not, set up the almost-certain death of central characters only to snatch them from doom however improbably? How many films depict horrible events that, thankfully, turn out to have been a dream?

I believe Pauline Kael somewhere said something about the difficulty of making a satisfying conclusion to a film. She said she had seen many good middles of movies but not that many good endings.  (If you can find it, could you let me know where to find it?  I have looked high and low for it.)  She said that the film creators were clever enough to create elaborate problems but not clever enough to make believable solutions.

This Is the End does not suffer from that problem.

The film does not end with our main characters awaking from a bong-induced dream. Our characters do not somehow save the world, or even just Los Angeles. The world really ends. The gang of celebrities, including Rihanna, really do fall screaming into Hell. Jonah Hill really has been possessed by a demon. James Franco really has been eaten alive by a roving band of cannibals. Danny McBride, however, thrives in the new chaos, though he cannot survive long with a giant, anatomically correct demon stomping about. Ultimately, only three of our "heroes" -- Craig Robinson, Seth Rogen, and Jay Baruchel -- make their way to Heaven, which, in this imagining, turns out to be a slacker paradise. The film ends with a big dance number there. As it should.

But down below, for Hollywood there is no redemption.

How We Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the F-bomb

James Gandolfini's death last week generated a lot of retrospectives on his role as Tony Soprano and the influence of HBO's The Sopranos on television and American popular culture.

If nothing else, that show was influential for making the f-bomb commonplace on the small screen.  In the 1980s and 1990s, American audiences were growing accustomed to that word on the big screen, but then came January 10, 1999, and the debut of The Sopranos.

That special word appeared in the first season of The Sopranos more than 400 times.  In the second season, more than 700 times.  There are several online homages to the F-bombs on the show, such as this.

Then came The Wire, a show more respected among TV critics than even The Sopranos.  It debuted in 2002, and it is famous for a scene in which two detectives examine a crime scene and the f-word is the only thing said between them -- numerous times with different inflections and meanings.

Then came Deadwood, which debuted in 2004. In its first season, the f-word was used more than 800 times. Season two: more than 1,000 times. Someone calculated the number of the f-bombs in the series' three seasons: 2,980.  That is 1.56 FPM.

In a 2010 report titled "Habitat for Profanity," the Parents Television Council claimed that between 2005 and 2010, prime time television experienced "a significant increase in both the number of instances of use of profanity and the harshness of the profanity used." Thanks, in part, to The Sopranos.

Most times, I believe, the f-bomb is used too cheaply.  It is used to give a character a veneer of coolness or distance or anger, but often times it is just that: a veneer, an artificial surface used to disguise the actual material underneath, to make particle board look like pine, for instance.  And the f-bomb can used by many writers as a simple way of generating tension or drama -- rather than creating real tension and drama through the personality of the characters or the quality of the dramatic situation.

Having said that, despite Deadwood winning the F Crown on HBO, I would say it was the best written show among the three I mentioned.   (I know that is not the consensus.)  For me, the f-word didn't stand out on that show; it seemed more of an ornament on the already convincing and compelling speech of its many well-imagined (though dark) characters.  An ornament enhances, whereas a veneer conceals.

Some people argue for cursing because they feel it adds a sense of realism to a story. But keep in mind that the stories are fake to begin with, and realism is only an illusion created by the writer/director.  Some might say that the three examples I have cited -- mobsters, police detectives and criminals, tortured souls in the Wild West -- would lend themselves quite easily to profuse profanity.  And they would.  But if that is done in the name of realism, why do those same shows flinch away from other realisms? Such as blood.  One of the characters in Deadwood likes to cut throats.  That is a rather messy way to kill someone, yet the victims leave hardly a puddle on the floor.  What is "real" on the screen is whatever I am convinced to believe is "real."

David Milch, the creator of Deadwood, even has addressed the artificial nature of the cursing in the series.  The curses used are not the curses of the late 1800s, he admits. But his characters would have sounded silly spouting the language considered foul in that era.  So to make the show seem "real," he had to resort to "fake" cursing.

The topic of potty mouths came to mind this week after I saw This Is The End -- apparently the world ends from the fallout of all the f-bombs dropped by a troop of stoner comedians. But before the movie started, I saw the trailer for The Heat, the buddy-cop movie starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy.  A surprising number and variety of f-bombs exploded in that two-minute trailer, and even I felt a little assaulted.  (I heard it so much in This Is The End that I tuned it out.)  I hadn't recalled hearing such cursing in a movie trailer. Perhaps the trailers were R-rated because I was in the theater to see an R-rated film, but I had the impression that previews were prepared for "all audiences."

Sometimes in class I use a short story by Kurt Vonnegut titled "The Big Space Fuck."  It was published in 1972 and is a dystopian imagining of the planet's future -- and in some regards it was rather prophetic: "This was a period of great permissiveness in matters of language, so even the President was saying shit and fuck and so on, without anybody's feeling threatened or taking offense.  It was perfectly OK."  (I cited the story also when I discussed the advent of another word in "The Big Bitch Theory.")

As I have said before, I am not a language prude.  I do not shy away from using the right word for the right purpose.  But I can't help but think the proliferation of cursing in our popular storytelling can be a sign of laziness -- and it disregards the fact that most Americans do not talk like a Quentin Tarantino character nor do they want to spend time with someone who does.

I can't help noting this: When was the last time someone complained about the LACK of cursing in a film or television program?  No one has finished watching Raiders of the Lost Ark or Sherlock and said, "You know, it would have been better if there had been more cursing."

America at War: Who Pays and Who Plays?

In the wake of 9/11, America was saturated in flags and patriotism.  They came again after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.  But after each outpouring, it seemed, the flag-waving fever died down, and the nation went back to its usual priorities of Twitter, TMZ, and Target's weekly specials.

Of course, not all of the nation did -- the families of those serving in the Armed Forces remained acutely aware of the fighting overseas.  But the rest of the nation seemed to hardly notice at all, in large part because it was making no sacrifices -- outside of placing "Support Our Troops" magnets on the vehicles.

Despite the hagiography of The Greatest Generation, the soldiers and civilians who made success in World War II possible, the nation seemed unprepared for its own current role; the Greatest Generation may be our saints, but they are not our role models.

We laud the bravery of those soldiers, sailors, pilots, and nurses from the 1940s.  We praise the sacrifices of the civilians who lived through rationing of gasoline, rubber, and other consumer items needed to fuel the war effort.  Flash forward 60 years and witness the hysteria that followed any rapid increase in gas prices.  Witness tax cuts when the nation was at war.  Witness the total absence of daily sacrifice -- or even inconvenience -- by civilian America.

Witness the disconnect between the sacrifices asked of one group (soldiers) on behalf of another group (civilians) asked to make none.

Ben Fountain

That disconnect is a dominant theme of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, a novel by Ben Fountain that was a finalist for the  National Book Award in 2012.  I have just finished reading it as I prepare to teach a course in the Fall that will compare the literature of America's war in Vietnam with the literature of its war in Iraq.
was a finalist for the

The novel takes place over the course of a few hours, when a squad of U.S. soldiers attend a Dallas Cowboys football game to be honored for their bravery.  They participate in a halftime performance by Destiny's Child (including Beyonce), and in the process they are overwhelmed by the bloated corporate enterprise of the NFL, Hollywood, and the music industry -- and by the simultaneous patriotism and cluelessness of the spectators and executives that surround them.  Fountain shows the soldiers as the symbols of American pride, as decorations for a hypersexual media circus, and as commodities to be bought and sold.  By the end of the novel, they are almost happy to be going back to Iraq, as they have been assaulted emotionally and physically by Hollywood's greed for their story, by stage managers who view them as props, by civilians who won't stop asking stupid questions, and by a gang of roadies from the halftime show.

And here is the passage that I want to emphasize, when Fountain powerfully captures Billy's awareness of the disconnect I note above.  As Billy escapes the corporate spectacle of Texas Stadium, he realizes the balance of power.  He realizes that the stark reality of war, the death and the pain, are overpowered by the spectacular unreality of America:

For the past two weeks he's been feeling so superior and smart because of all the things he knows from the war, but forget it, they are the ones in charge, these saps, these innocents, their homeland dream is the dominant force.  His reality is their reality's bitch; what they don't know is more powerful than all the things he knows, and yet he's lived what he's lived and knows what he knows, which means what, something terrible and possibly fatal, he suspects.  To learn what you have to learn at the war, to do what you have to do, does this make you the enemy of all that sent you to the war?