Speaker 1: I did an episode where I wore blackface. The context
Speaker 1: was well irrelevant because it's not okay to do blackface ever,
Speaker 1: but slash and there is irony because in this episode
Speaker 1: I played an ignorant woman in a liberal bubble who
Speaker 1: thought she was illuminating racism by wearing blackface. What I
Speaker 1: didn't realize then is that in reality, I was an
Speaker 1: ignorant woman in a liberal bubble who thought I was
Speaker 1: illuminating racism by wearing blackface.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and
Speaker 2: contributions to American popular culture. I'm Jonathan Friedman and I'm
Speaker 2: Joey Angelfield producer engineer Mike Tomren is working somewhere behind
Speaker 2: the scenes. Amusing Jews is a project of a dot
Speaker 2: Cover Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, the Jewish Museum of the
Speaker 2: American West, and Atheist United Studios. Hey, Joey, how has
Speaker 2: technology altered our relationship with comedy? How do we know
Speaker 2: when to laugh and when to be outraged? What's even
Speaker 2: funny anymore?
Speaker 3: We're excited to talk with Jacques berliner Blau, the Rabbi
Speaker 3: Herald White, professor of Jewish Civilization, at Georgetown University and
Speaker 3: author of the new book Can We Laugh at That
Speaker 3: Comedy and a Conflicted Age? Jacques. Welcome to Amusing Jews.
Speaker 4: Hi guys, I'm so happy to be here, so happy.
Speaker 3: So could you tell us about your background and how
Speaker 3: you got into comedy as a research subject.
Speaker 4: I was a cut up as a child, obviously like
Speaker 4: all of us here, but I was never I never
Speaker 4: formally studied comedy. I studied two separate things that came
Speaker 4: together and created comedy. One of them was literature, and
Speaker 4: I realized literature was kind of dying on the vine.
Speaker 4: Nobody was reading. My students weren't reading, I wasn't reading,
Speaker 4: but everybody was vibing with comedy over the last ten years.
Speaker 4: So I just wanted to take a look at an
Speaker 4: art form that was growing, as opposed to an art
Speaker 4: form that regrettably was dying. The other thing I do,
Speaker 4: what I'm known for, is I work on something called
Speaker 4: political secularism, and one of the great deliverables of a
Speaker 4: politically secular regime is freedom of speech. And comedy questions
Speaker 4: and probes and interrogates free speech laws like perhaps no
Speaker 4: other art form, with the exception of literature.
Speaker 2: Other than that, which is a really good connection between
Speaker 2: literature and comedy. Was it an easy, I guess crossover
Speaker 2: into that world? Is Are there similarities between literature and
Speaker 2: comedy that go beyond the free speech zone?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Because I worked on funny writers. So I worked
Speaker 4: obviously on Philip Roth. I wrote a book about Philip Roth.
Speaker 4: That guy's pretty funny. I teach courses on comedic fiction,
Speaker 4: which is very, very different from stand up That's the
Speaker 4: thing I've always got to explain it. This is not
Speaker 4: stand up comedy, like writing a joke and telling a
Speaker 4: joke or two totally different artistic genres. So I work
Speaker 4: on writers like Paul Beattie. I can find the humor
Speaker 4: in a book off right. So I was always looking
Speaker 4: for the funny written word. So I think I had
Speaker 4: some credibility to make the transition. I don't think this
Speaker 4: came completely out of left field. I was always trying
Speaker 4: to understand why things were funny, and of course that's
Speaker 4: how you make them really unfunny. Like when it's like
Speaker 4: Freud's analysis of jokes, remember that, and like he's like
Speaker 4: breaking these jokes down and you're not laughing. So as
Speaker 4: soon as you subject comedy to analysis. I regret to
Speaker 4: say you pull out the quality that makes it so special,
Speaker 4: but you understand it, which is which is really important. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think the funniest thing about Freud's book about jokes
Speaker 2: is that Freud wrote a book about jokes.
Speaker 4: He thought he was very funny. I mean you can tell,
Speaker 4: like when he pulls out of telling you a joke
Speaker 4: and explaining it, it's like, excellent, a wonderful joke, the
Speaker 4: most amusing bromide.
Speaker 2: You observe that stand up comedy is at the center
Speaker 2: of today's free speech controversies.
Speaker 4: Why is that? Is something about stand up? Stand up
Speaker 4: is emerging as this art form that we have to
Speaker 4: think about really, really carefully. I think stand up unlike
Speaker 4: other art forms, and I can do this bit that
Speaker 4: I always do. Like art forms that don't translate well
Speaker 4: to the internet, stand up is like genetically coded and
Speaker 4: built to translate to the digital world. Right. So, a
Speaker 4: comedian standing in front of a brick wall, it's very
Speaker 4: very low tech. Somebody's got a little camera. They tell
Speaker 4: a joke. The joke usually last I don't know, five
Speaker 4: to fifteen to twenty seconds. Boom, right, you snap it,
Speaker 4: you download it. You post and it's there. You can't
Speaker 4: do that with ballet. I want to do this bit,
Speaker 4: you can't do that. It's really hard to do with jazz.
Speaker 4: Jazz this is one of my great loves or failed
Speaker 4: jazz musician, and you can't do it with glass blowing.
Speaker 4: Like so every glass blower're listening to this show is like,
Speaker 4: this guy gets me right. He understands who I am
Speaker 4: and what I deal with as a glass blow. Comedy
Speaker 4: just translates. I don't know, It's like the Internet and
Speaker 4: comedy have an elect what Max Weber would call an
Speaker 4: elective affinity. They found one another for better and maybe
Speaker 4: for worse.
Speaker 3: Something that I think sort of bridges the gap. You know,
Speaker 3: my in laws have a XM radio and there's a
Speaker 3: couple of comedy channels on there, and it's always a
Speaker 3: little bit weird hearing these comics I've never heard of
Speaker 3: before telling jokes, but it also sort of works. There's
Speaker 3: also that you know, comics unleased show that's now taking
Speaker 3: over for Colbert, And I'm also thinking, you know, recently
Speaker 3: we did an episode about Rodney Dangerfield and I could
Speaker 3: pull out any joke from that book and tell it
Speaker 3: to my family and they were still hilarious with or
Speaker 3: without the Rodney Dangerfield accent. So there is something kind
Speaker 3: of I guess, the tidbit nature of it that that
Speaker 3: seems like the jokes work so well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so, Joey, I do exactly what you do. For
Speaker 4: five years, I've been listening to those XM comedy shows,
Speaker 4: and I've learned that when you listen to a second
Speaker 4: tier comedian, you learn a lot about comedy. Like when
Speaker 4: you when you hear a stand up struggling, I learned
Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, now the timings off right, Oh, we
Speaker 4: should have waited for it. It's so easy obviously for
Speaker 4: me to say that, not having done stand up. But
Speaker 4: XM is this great tool because they've got like five
Speaker 4: different comedy channels there, right, They're like Kevin Hart's got
Speaker 4: a channel, right. Then there's like some Southern Bubba channel, right,
Speaker 4: And I listened to them all. But one thing that
Speaker 4: I really get listening to comedy. I don't know if
Speaker 4: you've noticed this, Joey, is these guys must have a
Speaker 4: lot of heart attacks and strokes on stage. Right, So
Speaker 4: you're listening to a comedian and you and the audience
Speaker 4: is laughing and their voices are rising. So if you
Speaker 4: ever listen to like a seven or ten minute set
Speaker 4: like the cadence or the rhythm between where it was
Speaker 4: when it started and where it is where it ended,
Speaker 4: I just think this would be a great statistic, right,
Speaker 4: Comedians that have stroked out on stage, Comedians rushed to
Speaker 4: the emergency room. I know that very funny comedian Glass
Speaker 4: he had a heart attack. I think it's very very common,
Speaker 4: and it's just something about this art form. You've got
Speaker 4: this audience in front of you, and you're getting excited,
Speaker 4: and you're talking louder and louder and faster and faster,
Speaker 4: and then coronary complications ensue, you know.
Speaker 3: I'm also thinking about the three Mitch Hedberg albums, two
Speaker 3: of which were released when he was alive and one
Speaker 3: which was posthumous. All have very different feels. The first one,
Speaker 3: you know, sounds very much influenced by weed, I would say,
Speaker 3: and the latter two seem like maybe different substances. But
Speaker 3: his last one that was posthumous, is like pretty frenetic,
Speaker 3: So it's almost like he got more and more phrenetic
Speaker 3: over the course of his career in a way. But
Speaker 3: also I had a comedy DVD of Mitch Hedberg's and
Speaker 3: I remember watching the uncut version of it and seeing
Speaker 3: a full comedic roller coaster of him like kind of bombing,
Speaker 3: and then sort of picking it up and getting the
Speaker 3: audience with him, and then watching the Comedy Central edited version,
Speaker 3: which was all of the best hits and really like
Speaker 3: singing it together in a perfect way that you know
Speaker 3: it's not entirely accurate, but works much better for a
Speaker 3: half hour of TV.
Speaker 4: Joey, is there like a drug narrative here? I really
Speaker 4: do want to talk about drugs and art because I've
Speaker 4: been thinking about this a lot. So are you saying
Speaker 4: that either weed or cocaine or something was infusing these sets? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean Mitch Hedberg. I mean my favorite joke of
Speaker 3: his is or one of the I can use, honestly
Speaker 3: say a joke for everything that happens in my life.
Speaker 3: But his joke was, you know, I used to do drugs.
Speaker 3: I still do, but I used to too. His first set
Speaker 3: very laid back and probably under the influence of marijuana.
Speaker 3: He has a stand up bass player who's kind of
Speaker 3: keeping the flow going in a jazzy cool way. And
Speaker 3: then his second album is a lot more kind of
Speaker 3: I would say drunk. He seems like he's a lot
Speaker 3: more loose and kind of happy, go lucky. And then
Speaker 3: the posthumous album really did seem like it could have
Speaker 3: been cocaine or something like that, because he was very
Speaker 3: high energy.
Speaker 4: So I've been thinking a lot about drugs and art,
Speaker 4: so I read I forget the author, Let's find him.
Speaker 4: He wrote something about heroin and the New York arts
Speaker 4: scene in the sixties, seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2: Is it heroin in music in New York City?
Speaker 4: That's it Parry spot. The argument was that that drug
Speaker 4: and comedy, right, the drug infiltrated the esthetic, right, and
Speaker 4: it became part of the esthetic. And then I was thinking,
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna mention names because some of these guys
Speaker 4: are still alive. Fusion drummers in the early seventies, right,
Speaker 4: So if you're listening to these guys their drum fills,
Speaker 4: I don't know if you guys played drums. I used
Speaker 4: to play drums, right, These are like these massive drum fills,
Speaker 4: like right, And somebody whispered in my ear. Yeah, that's
Speaker 4: because they had just covered cocaine, right, So cocaine was
Speaker 4: driving the sound of a very particular type of jazz
Speaker 4: offshoot known as fusion jazz. So I've been thinking a
Speaker 4: lot about the way drugs impact art. Classical musicians are
Speaker 4: telling me about beta blockers of lane. They get so
Speaker 4: nervous that they want to slow down their heart, right.
Speaker 4: So I just think there's a great book to be written,
Speaker 4: maybe by Joey, maybe by Jonathan, maybe by Mike. I
Speaker 4: don't know about drugs and art. Well.
Speaker 2: I think comedic controversies and drugs come together in the
Speaker 2: person of Lenny Bruce, if you want to tell us
Speaker 2: a little bit about him and how he maybe foreshadowed
Speaker 2: some of the controversies of today.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Lenny Bruce. Look, I'm going to be very honest.
Speaker 4: When I listened to Lenny Bruce, now it's hard for
Speaker 4: me to laugh, right, So your force fed this idea.
Speaker 4: This guy was a genius, right, he was an icon,
Speaker 4: and I'm sure he was, but I'm just not finding
Speaker 4: it funny. And that's something weird about comedy that it
Speaker 4: tends to be very time and place specific. Right, So
Speaker 4: unless you know what companies is referring to and what politicians, right,
Speaker 4: you can hear the genius and the cadences, and there's
Speaker 4: a lot of stuff that he did in his life
Speaker 4: which is just non pere right, all right, So Lenny Bruce,
Speaker 4: why is Lenny Bruce interesting? Lenny Bruce was in many
Speaker 4: ways a precursor to what we're seeing today. Before there
Speaker 4: was the Internet. Lenny Bruce didn't need the internet right
Speaker 4: to get himself into all sorts of trouble. He's the
Speaker 4: classic example of a comedian who makes a joke that
Speaker 4: people really really don't find funny, and they get organized
Speaker 4: into a coherent block and they try to shut him down.
Speaker 4: The case is really really tragic because, as we know,
Speaker 4: this eventually led to his suicide. Right, we know that
Speaker 4: he was addicted to heroin. But Lenny Bruce would play
Speaker 4: clubs around the country and local law enforcement, not federal,
Speaker 4: local law enforcement would be in attendance, and they just
Speaker 4: be like ticks, you know, ready to descend on a deer, right,
Speaker 4: They just be waiting for him to say those words
Speaker 4: that could not be said, whatever, cocksucker with it, whatever
Speaker 4: it was, and then they were to arrest him. What
Speaker 4: I found kind of cool is I read an account
Speaker 4: of Letty Bruce in which he was arrested. I believe
Speaker 4: it was in San Francisco at nine to thirty, arrested, booked, released,
Speaker 4: and came back for like the eleven thirty set and
Speaker 4: made jokes about the whole process, right, And that to me,
Speaker 4: I was like, Aha, he really is a pioneer, because
Speaker 4: what I noticed in like Dave Chappelle's work, or Kathy
Speaker 4: Griffin's work to a certain degree Shane Shane Shane Gillis,
Speaker 4: is they would bring the controversies that their jokes created
Speaker 4: back into their jokes. And that is a really combustive recipe.
Speaker 4: You want to piss people off, do that, all right,
Speaker 4: make your set about people getting annoyed at the jokes
Speaker 4: you made in your previous set. And Chappelle went down
Speaker 4: this road for like five specials running, especially in the Closer.
Speaker 4: I don't think it did anyone any good, all right.
Speaker 4: I don't think it was good for his mental health,
Speaker 4: which I'm somewhat I was somewhat concerned about. I don't
Speaker 4: think it's good for comedy. I don't think it's good
Speaker 4: for audiences to be in this like raw raw mode.
Speaker 4: We're like, you got them, Dave, You show those LGBTQ, right,
Speaker 4: So that move I believe Lenny Bruce was the first
Speaker 4: person I know of who did it. And then there
Speaker 4: was like thirty years where I don't think people were
Speaker 4: doing it because they didn't have to write comedy. Free
Speaker 4: speech was in a place where people could say whatever
Speaker 4: they wanted. You could complain, but for the most part,
Speaker 4: you weren't going to get canceled. Because of the Internet,
Speaker 4: cancelation is now a real possibility. It's almost like a
Speaker 4: quotidian work day reality for the American comedian.
Speaker 2: And as you're saying this, I mean Chappelle's work as
Speaker 2: he's in this loop, as you described in the book,
Speaker 2: is also not very funny. When he's commenting on his
Speaker 2: controversy and it just becomes sort of a lecture rant
Speaker 2: existential whatever, and it's not really funny.
Speaker 4: It feels like a political rally. Right now, Chappelle is
Speaker 4: a genius. We can't deny that. Right This guy is
Speaker 4: a master of his craft. But I think his craft
Speaker 4: suffered because he got into what I call this loop,
Speaker 4: right this feedback loop where he's so mad at the
Speaker 4: critics and the critics won't back down, and it degrades everything.
Speaker 4: It degrades the comedy. It degrades the comedian, and it
Speaker 4: degrades the audiences. So I would urge comedians. If do
Speaker 4: you guys have a large listenership of comedians, I imagine
Speaker 4: you do. Maybe they have to learn how to let
Speaker 4: it go, right, like really really let it go. I'm
Speaker 4: thinking about Chris Rock. Remember selective outrage? Remember that, and
Speaker 4: everybody is waiting for him to talk about Will Smith. Everyone, right.
Speaker 4: I thought what was cool about selective outrage is the
Speaker 4: punch was the last, last, last joke, right. He did
Speaker 4: not spend his entire set complaining about being punched in
Speaker 4: the face in front of like a billion people, and
Speaker 4: it was a great line. You know, people ask me
Speaker 4: why didn't punch them back? Right? Pause? Right? Because my
Speaker 4: parents taught me don't fight in front of white people.
Speaker 4: I'm paraphrasing, obviously. I mean that is that smoked the room.
Speaker 4: The room's going crazy. He drops the microphone. He literally
Speaker 4: dropped the microphone and out. So I think Chris Rock
Speaker 4: understood the deformation to one's art that will occur if
Speaker 4: one becomes obsessed by their own controversies.
Speaker 2: Is it possible to separate comedians from their comedy stand ups?
Speaker 4: No? I mean, like you know stand ups that are
Speaker 4: like right there, right in front of you, in their
Speaker 4: own body, under their own name. I'm sure there have
Speaker 4: been stand ups that go in a kind of drag
Speaker 4: or in costumes under stage names, and nobody actually knows
Speaker 4: who they are. I think stand up is a very
Speaker 4: interesting art form in that it's so embodied, like it's
Speaker 4: your physical body, it's often your name. You know, a
Speaker 4: stand up usually will begin by making a derogatory reference
Speaker 4: to their own body. Right. I once saw a guy
Speaker 4: with a T shirt. He was this humongous guy, right,
Speaker 4: and he had a T shirt that said dilfh on it,
Speaker 4: and it just just cracking me up. I don't know why.
Speaker 4: It was just so funny, right, it was like some
Speaker 4: second tier communient. It said dilf right, and he was
Speaker 4: just talking about his body. The entire set. Is he
Speaker 4: the same person as his persona? No, right, the persona
Speaker 4: is this thing he radiates for fifteen or ten minutes
Speaker 4: on stage. Right, the person is the guy who goes
Speaker 4: home and you know, smokes grass and you know has
Speaker 4: a family. But there's this Venn diagram like overlap in
Speaker 4: stand up comedy, which makes it a very volatile and
Speaker 4: I think fascinating art form. Right, I'd love to spend
Speaker 4: ten years right studying the mechanics of stand up, but
Speaker 4: unfortunately I've got other projects in the works.
Speaker 2: There are examples like Dame ed Nah and Tony Clifton, right,
Speaker 2: who are alter egos for comedians. But I think even
Speaker 2: someone like Don Rickles, who would you know say that
Speaker 2: when he goes on stage and he's the biggest jerk
Speaker 2: in the world, it's just an act, and that you know,
Speaker 2: his friends and acquaintances would confirm that he was a
Speaker 2: really nice guy otherwise, Right, I don't know if there's
Speaker 2: that same differentiation now because of social media and everybody's
Speaker 2: sort of presenting themselves in their character online as a brand, you.
Speaker 4: Know, really good point. I think the the energy or
Speaker 4: the torque of social media is like be yourself, right,
Speaker 4: be who you are and post a lot. I think
Speaker 4: that's really also bad for comedians, This this bottomless pit
Speaker 4: of talking about the self and promoting the self. I mean,
Speaker 4: I have two sons that are artists and one of
Speaker 4: them is a musician. He's always posting these little snippets
Speaker 4: of his I'm like, you didn't need the post that
Speaker 4: it wasn't that good, dude. I mean, it was fine,
Speaker 4: You've done better. But as he explains it to me,
Speaker 4: he's like, that's what we all do, right, we all
Speaker 4: play and we take like the best thirty forty seconds
Speaker 4: and we do a little Instagram. Right. Here's something that's interesting.
Speaker 4: I was reading about a South African comedian who walked
Speaker 4: into the biggest comedy club in South Africa. I guess
Speaker 4: it was in Pretoria or Johannesburg, and he had like
Speaker 4: a tape and he was like, sir, here's my tape.
Speaker 4: And the guy said, I don't want to see your tape,
Speaker 4: show me your Instagram. I want to see how many
Speaker 4: followers you have. That's really interesting, right, and he had
Speaker 4: like ten thousand followers. Said okay, you get a five
Speaker 4: minute spot. And I think that's the way the technology
Speaker 4: is changing the art form, probably not for the better. Right.
Speaker 4: So there's this relentless pressure on artists in so many fields,
Speaker 4: even the glassblowers who we mentioned earlier, right to show
Speaker 4: the world that they have all these followers. Right. I've
Speaker 4: been stuck on like one thousand, five hundred Twitter followers
Speaker 4: like eight years, and I wear it like a badge.
Speaker 4: Of honor, right, like I cannot get past one thousand
Speaker 4: and five. Und I feel I'm doing something right, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, twelve hundred of them are like bots anyhow. Right,
Speaker 4: So to those three hundred people, I salute you, and
Speaker 4: to the four or five billion that aren't following me,
Speaker 4: I salute you as well. Right, you validate, you validate
Speaker 4: what I do my project.
Speaker 2: I was watching a lecture by an art historian today
Speaker 2: talking about how, you know, back in the day Picasso
Speaker 2: and Michael Langelo and all the greats, they didn't need
Speaker 2: that kind of nonsense. And maybe, as he was saying,
Speaker 2: you know, if they had to kind of post like
Speaker 2: process images of their work or whatever, it would have
Speaker 2: gotten in the way of the actual artwork.
Speaker 4: But you think, I'm like JD. Salinger, even Philip Roth.
Speaker 4: I mean, so many writers that I studied just did
Speaker 4: not want to be in the public eye. And probably
Speaker 4: what they understood is that's that's crack cocaine. That's dangerous
Speaker 4: stuff right being out, and it's bad for my art.
Speaker 4: But I don't think the young general of artists as
Speaker 4: much of a choice, and that's a problem, that's a
Speaker 4: real problem.
Speaker 3: Enjoining the show click like and subscribe. What is the
Speaker 3: pre digital liberal free speech consensus and how has it
Speaker 3: challenged in our social media world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was the part of the book where imagine
Speaker 4: a lot of the comedians would be like blah blah
Speaker 4: blah blah. Like they were just like like, if comedians
Speaker 4: were reading this, they might tune out there because I
Speaker 4: had to work through a lot of jurisprudence and Supreme
Speaker 4: Court cases, and that comes from the research I did
Speaker 4: on political secularism. Suffice to say that between nineteen fifty
Speaker 4: seven to like nineteen sixty five, there was a tectonic
Speaker 4: shift in how we thought about free speech in the
Speaker 4: United States, and like the gates opened and Visa the comedy.
Speaker 4: The idea was, it's just a goddamn joke. If you
Speaker 4: don't like it, don't purchase it, or don't go to
Speaker 4: the club. Let it live, let it breathe, even if
Speaker 4: it's offensive, Let it live, let it breathe. Right, A
Speaker 4: strong democracy And now we're going back to John suit
Speaker 4: Mill on liberty and a Meal Dirk on right. A
Speaker 4: democracy thrives when it can process or it can absorb
Speaker 4: really bad, mean spirited jokes. Right, And that's in the
Speaker 4: pre digital age, and I think that law was commensurate
Speaker 4: with the age. It made a lot of sense, right,
Speaker 4: But now we have this new technology, and as I
Speaker 4: read reviews of my book, a lot of folks are
Speaker 4: not comfortable with what I'm saying. Right. What I'm saying
Speaker 4: is this new technology means we might have to rethink
Speaker 4: some of our free speech givens. Right. Why Because with
Speaker 4: this new technology, you can make a joke about Jews
Speaker 4: or Palestinians, and you can make this joke about Jews
Speaker 4: are Palestinians and in a part of the world where
Speaker 4: they're a minority, and in really bad repercussions can can
Speaker 4: ensue from your joke, right, because it's out there and
Speaker 4: you're making fun of them. So I think about LGBTQ
Speaker 4: folk in particular, right, jokes are made at their expense,
Speaker 4: They're multiplied online. Somebody's at the water cooler, they hear
Speaker 4: this joke. It undermines their self esteem. So I'm this
Speaker 4: pre digital free liberal free speech consensus is under attack globally.
Speaker 4: It's under attack from the far right and the far left.
Speaker 4: That's what my sixth chapter, about a French comedian called Juduni,
Speaker 4: is about. I don't think it deserves to be under attack.
Speaker 4: But I think liberal theorists, and I call myself a
Speaker 4: liberal theorist, have to like rethink free speech. Mister Madison
Speaker 4: wasn't on Twitter, he didn't have Instagram, right, he didn't
Speaker 4: understand that power, and that power is really negative. So
Speaker 4: I don't want to sound too ludite about things, but
Speaker 4: the advent of digital technology and the Internet, I feel
Speaker 4: has changed the free speech game now. When I was
Speaker 4: reading reports from free speech oversight organizations right free speech watchdogs,
Speaker 4: they were all saying the same thing, even though we
Speaker 4: disagree on what the solution is. They were saying, it's
Speaker 4: a paradox that in the age of the Internet, we
Speaker 4: are finding more crackdowns on expressive liberty than prior to
Speaker 4: the isn't a paradox, right, So now governments India is
Speaker 4: an example of Venezuela as an example, Cuba is an example,
Speaker 4: China is an example. Right, they're looking at what the
Speaker 4: Internet puts out there and they're creating laws or trying
Speaker 4: to create laws that circumscribe what can be said on
Speaker 4: the Internet. Right, So it's a double edged sword. Right,
Speaker 4: the Internet permitted all this speech and it also led
Speaker 4: the powers that be to find ingenius ways to crack down.
Speaker 2: Maybe one of the things that the Internet has done
Speaker 2: is sort of expose is the dark side of humanity
Speaker 2: in a way that you know. Previously it was a
Speaker 2: little more structured in terms of who gets to have
Speaker 2: the microphone, what stories are written and printed, and there
Speaker 2: were more official organs that sort of curated that stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it showed us something. I mean, we're monkeys, right,
Speaker 4: we're simeons, right. The Internet taught us something about ourselves
Speaker 4: that I don't think we actually knew. I think fictionalists
Speaker 4: and novelists knew it, but we're learning. Like we're bullies, right,
Speaker 4: you know when you're liking that snarky Internet, right, and
Speaker 4: you're feeling good because somebody got their face punched in
Speaker 4: on Twitter. You know now that Elon Musk has taken
Speaker 4: over Twitter, right, he keeps moving me to the for
Speaker 4: you tab, And the for you tab is people getting
Speaker 4: punched in the face for being bad guys. Right. You know,
Speaker 4: they fucked around and they found out, and there's this
Speaker 4: little part in me it's like, yeah, yeah, punch him
Speaker 4: in the face, in him again, right, And I'm not
Speaker 4: the only one, right, I'm a professor, right, So I
Speaker 4: think the Internet exactly as you said, Jonathan, is teaching
Speaker 4: us something about ourselves, which some of us new. But
Speaker 4: this thing we're learning about human beings is not good, right,
Speaker 4: And this is where lawmakers have to step in. This
Speaker 4: is where religious leaders have to step in, right, Oli
Speaker 4: analy people need to think this through. This stuff is potent,
Speaker 4: absolutely potent.
Speaker 3: What role does the audience play in determining the boundaries
Speaker 3: of humor?
Speaker 4: I received a doctorate. I have two doctorates. I think
Speaker 4: I should mention that humbly. I too, I received a
Speaker 4: doctorate in sociology. I didn't use it much. I used
Speaker 4: the other doctorate a lot in ancient languages and literature.
Speaker 4: But to the sociologist, the comedian isn't interesting, That's right.
Speaker 4: What's interesting is the audience. Right to the sociologist, the
Speaker 4: profit isn't interesting. To quote Max Faber, it's those that
Speaker 4: recognize the prophet is a bearer of charisma or great wisdom.
Speaker 4: So I'm really interested in audiences. And what I wanted
Speaker 4: to do in the book was think about the power
Speaker 4: of comedia audiences right to shape the art form and
Speaker 4: shape the discourse around the art form. So one type
Speaker 4: of audience I was looking at are negative audiences, right,
Speaker 4: audiences that hear a joke and they get so upset
Speaker 4: that they organize and they marshal their resources and they
Speaker 4: try to punish the comedian. Right Now, the audience in
Speaker 4: question can be you know, totally decent citizens, It can
Speaker 4: be vigilantes, it can be a government, it can be
Speaker 4: a militia, it can be a terrorist cell. Right, So
Speaker 4: those are audiences. So I was looking at all these
Speaker 4: negative audiences, and negative audiences have this really bad habit
Speaker 4: of wanting to sensor, shut down, lockdown certain types of jokes.
Speaker 4: The complicated question is are there certain types of jokes
Speaker 4: that just shouldn't be told. I think ninety nine out
Speaker 4: of one hundred comedians would say insane, that's wrong. Right,
Speaker 4: Any joke can and should And I used to believe
Speaker 4: that before the Internet. Prior to the Internet, I was
Speaker 4: with the comedians. And now I'm like, oh, these jokes
Speaker 4: can be weaponared, these jokes can have really deleterious effects
Speaker 4: on human beings. I'm interrogating that. One of the criticisms
Speaker 4: of the book, which I'm not vibing with, is this
Speaker 4: guy is like, so convoluted about what he actually feels.
Speaker 4: I am that's my job. My job is not to
Speaker 4: come to a conclusion and to prescribe and to suggest
Speaker 4: a policy. I'm very confused by what we do with
Speaker 4: jokes that lacerate and hurt large groups of people and
Speaker 4: might downstream have negative impacts resulting in violence. I don't
Speaker 4: know what to do with that type of humor. And
Speaker 4: instead of being you know, we've got to protect it
Speaker 4: or we've got to shut it down, I want to
Speaker 4: create a space where people can sort of reflect together
Speaker 4: as to what the best course of action is.
Speaker 2: Speaking of audiences, I know there was controversy around some
Speaker 2: classic films like the Life of Brian and The Producers
Speaker 2: and things like this, and yet those films sort of
Speaker 2: persisted in that pre digital age as classics and have
Speaker 2: sort of, you know, grown on people. I think over
Speaker 2: the years. I don't know if that nuance is still
Speaker 2: there in terms of how we respond to stuff, because
Speaker 2: I know, again there weren't controversies, but they didn't win
Speaker 2: the day in the way that today's cancelors are.
Speaker 4: Cinema is big, though, right, I mean cinema like when
Speaker 4: you see the credits, if you ever count as I have, right,
Speaker 4: because I've OCD. If you ever like count how many people,
Speaker 4: they're often like a thousand people in those credits, right.
Speaker 4: So cinema is just like collective artistic project, which means
Speaker 4: there's somebody very wealthy or a studio, right, or backers
Speaker 4: or capitalism is like back there, right. So I think
Speaker 4: movies like that. Yes, there was an outcry, but they
Speaker 4: were big studios. That's just add all paramount CBS, arister records, whatever,
Speaker 4: right that could push back. With comedians, it's a little
Speaker 4: bit different because they are fundamentally individuals, especially at the
Speaker 4: beginning of their career. So Netflix protected Dave Chappelle as well.
Speaker 4: I think it should have, right though that's complicated. But
Speaker 4: a young comedian making a really really inappropriate joke doesn't
Speaker 4: have a studio behind them, right, They don't have lawyers, right,
Speaker 4: they don't have capital backing them up. So I'm interested
Speaker 4: in you bringing cinema into this conversation. I just think
Speaker 4: there's something really really unique about these stand ups, right
Speaker 4: with their little microphones at Yuck Yuck's in Fort Wayne, Indiana, right,
Speaker 4: and somebody captures thirty seconds of some of their LGBTQ jokes, right,
Speaker 4: And the next thing you know, one they've been canceled
Speaker 4: and national right LGBTQ advocacy groups are complaining about them. Right,
Speaker 4: I don't know. There's a scene in Curb Your Enthusiasm
Speaker 4: where somebody's making a Mexican joke, remember that, and Jeff
Speaker 4: says that joke is not funny? Do you remember that? Right?
Speaker 4: I thought it was like Larry David was like actually
Speaker 4: asking the same question, right the curb in thood, like
Speaker 4: what types of jokes are no longer funny? I find
Speaker 4: anti Asian jokes really not funny, Like when Joe Rogan is,
Speaker 4: you know, doing like so called yellow voice. I'm just
Speaker 4: like I wish you'd stop, like stop doing this, right please?
Speaker 4: It's like done right Buddy Hackett, Right, he used to
Speaker 4: do like Chinese restaurant bits in the forties and fifties,
Speaker 4: like let it Go. So they're like so many jokes
Speaker 4: that I hear and I just don't want to hear them. Now.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's because I'm closed minded, I'm a philistine, but
Speaker 4: I feel I know where these jokes lead collectively, right,
Speaker 4: They lead to psychic pain for lots of people over
Speaker 4: aspects of their identity, which one they're proud of and
Speaker 4: two they couldn't change, and three they wouldn't change even
Speaker 4: if they could. So do I have an answer, gentlemen, No,
Speaker 4: I'm thinking about this. I'm thinking really, really hard about
Speaker 4: what we do with comedians that want to make these jokes.
Speaker 4: One rule I suggest in the book is flay your
Speaker 4: own like any juke, and I can make Jewish jokes.
Speaker 4: I can make Holocaust jokes. My ancestors are blessed memory
Speaker 4: perished in law, so I can make those jokes. I
Speaker 4: feel I have a license to make those jokes. I'm
Speaker 4: not going to make jokes about my black brothers and sisters, right,
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna make jokes about the slave trade. It's
Speaker 4: like not my place. I don't want to do it, right.
Speaker 4: I'd love to hear what comedians. Comedians always are like, Oh,
Speaker 4: I'm an equal opportunity offender. That's something comedians I insult everyone.
Speaker 4: I don't know if that's even possible, because there's so
Speaker 4: many people to insult. Invariably, comedians have like grooves, right,
Speaker 4: they have go tos. They keep going back to certain
Speaker 4: types of joke. Sorry, if I spoke to much guys,
Speaker 4: I get very excited by this subject.
Speaker 2: Where do political cartoons fit in this cartoons?
Speaker 4: I had to read that book by Jit Klausen. It's
Speaker 4: called The Cartoons That Shook the World. I would recommend
Speaker 4: it to everyone listening. So good, so good, such good scholarship,
Speaker 4: so clearly written. I love scholarship like that. And she
Speaker 4: was making an argument which I'd never thought of. And
Speaker 4: then I started reading more about cartoons. Victor something or
Speaker 4: other wrote a book about the history of car Apparently
Speaker 4: cartoons have an uncanny ability to piss people off. I
Speaker 4: did not know that, because they're visual after all, right,
Speaker 4: and you have, like I was reading some studies of
Speaker 4: African comedy right across the continent of Africa, and when
Speaker 4: shit gets real, it's usually involving a cartoon, not a
Speaker 4: stand up.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So there's a famous incident in South Africa with Jacob Zuma.
Speaker 4: There are incidents in Kenya in particular. There's something about cartoons. Now,
Speaker 4: think about Shaley Abdu, Right, there's something about cartoons that
Speaker 4: drives fundamentalists insane, sends them off the rails. Right. If
Speaker 4: you think of these little Shali Abdu, they're these little
Speaker 4: tiny things, right, these done things, but like guys with
Speaker 4: dicks on their heads and whatnot, right, drives them to
Speaker 4: utter distraction and violence. So what I learned from the
Speaker 4: Jit Klausen book is the way stand up is one
Speaker 4: genre of political comedy. Cartoons are another, and they might
Speaker 4: even be more volatile. Here's another one which we don't
Speaker 4: think about in the United States, puppetry. I've been looking
Speaker 4: at African comedy troops that do puppetry, and this stuff
Speaker 4: is like nitroglycerin, right, It really gets them in trouble.
Speaker 4: And the puppetry is absolutely like hisstoric. I believe the
Speaker 4: troop's name is x y Z Right. It's a Kenyan
Speaker 4: guy who studied in France, and and he does these
Speaker 4: kind of puppetry send ups of African despots, and they're
Speaker 4: so funny, right, They're so hysterically funny. They also get
Speaker 4: the artists into a metric ton of trouble.
Speaker 3: What can we, as secular Jews who are proud of
Speaker 3: our comedic heritage, draw from your study of comedy in
Speaker 3: these conflicted times?
Speaker 4: Boy guys, it's such a rough time to be a
Speaker 4: Jew in the United States. And I say that, you know,
Speaker 4: and I know it's a real rough time to be
Speaker 4: a Palestinian and you know, Palestine and Israel, Palestine and
Speaker 4: a Palestine in the United States. But I've never been
Speaker 4: at more of an impasse in my thinking about Judaism
Speaker 4: and what Judaism should be doing right as an American
Speaker 4: Jew than I am right right now. I think secular
Speaker 4: humanistic Judaism has like certain core values which are really
Speaker 4: really important to this conversation. Right one, as I understood
Speaker 4: secular humanistic Judaism, it always had a tremendous emphasis on
Speaker 4: untraveled freedom of speech and expressive liberty. It is, in
Speaker 4: a way, in case in the amber of what I
Speaker 4: call the pre digital liberal free speech consensus. Right, That's
Speaker 4: where I came from. I think that's where you guys
Speaker 4: came from. Right, make the jokes, all right, it's better
Speaker 4: this way, don't censor anything. But another thing I like
Speaker 4: about secular Judaism is, like many liberal fiates, liberal Islam,
Speaker 4: liberal Protestantism, liberal Catholicism, it retains a capacity to say, ah,
Speaker 4: maybe we should think about that, maybe we were wrong.
Speaker 4: I do like that about all liberal denominations in the
Speaker 4: United States, Right. They acknowledge the possibility of error. So
Speaker 4: what I appreciate about secular forms of Judaism is the
Speaker 4: idea that, no, we're not getting this on high from God.
Speaker 4: We are not in unique possession of God's writ and revelation.
Speaker 4: We're human beings, like the rabbis of Blessed Memory, kind
Speaker 4: of struggling together to figure out what the proper course
Speaker 4: of action is. So I think the best secular value,
Speaker 4: and I'm not saying this is present in orthodoxy or
Speaker 4: conservative Judaism do. I don't know if it's present in
Speaker 4: ultra Orthodoxy, is this process of communal reflection and deliberation
Speaker 4: where considerations of power are not dominant.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: It's not because somebody is more powerful that they're right.
Speaker 4: So I do think secular Judaism is a religion or
Speaker 4: religious tradition in which interesting conversations, painful conversations can be
Speaker 4: had under certain conditions. And that's what I think is
Speaker 4: a great strength of the secular humanistic tradition. It's like,
Speaker 4: all right, let's talk this through, and let's not talk
Speaker 4: it through knowing what our conclusions are going to be,
Speaker 4: nor let us assume that certain talkers are more powerful
Speaker 4: or more important than others. So there's something very democratizing
Speaker 4: in secular humanistic Judaism. So, guys, that's a really long answer.
Speaker 4: That's what I would hope, and that's what I like
Speaker 4: about the secular tradition. And I feel, you know, we're
Speaker 4: good talkers, we listen to one another, right, and we're powerless. Right.
Speaker 4: It's kind of a small cohort of Jews these days,
Speaker 4: the secular humanistic Jews. And as I think I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 4: that's where I like to be. That's why I have
Speaker 4: one thy five hundred Twitter for I just think too
Speaker 4: much power for any human being is not good. Too
Speaker 4: much power for any religion is not good. And this
Speaker 4: particular denomination of American Judaism, secular human fulfills all those
Speaker 4: criteria right of not being particularly powerful or populous. So
Speaker 4: maybe some of the best conversations can happen there.
Speaker 2: Applying that to com you would say the best approach
Speaker 2: to comedic controversies is to talk it out and figure
Speaker 2: out some limits or some liberties and that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's problematic right from the second you get the
Speaker 4: Internet and you get you know, massive entertainment conglomerates involved,
Speaker 4: and now you have the FCC involved. It's really hard
Speaker 4: for intellectuals, and that's what we are. For intellectuals and artists.
Speaker 4: We've got to talk talk, talk it out amongst ourselves, right,
Speaker 4: what nation states, what conglomerates? Right, what streamers do? That's
Speaker 4: up to them, and that's often dictated by anything but
Speaker 4: the conclusions that we would reach in a group. But
Speaker 4: I do think it's important for intelligent people with expertise
Speaker 4: and knowledge to sit around and to talk to one another.
Speaker 4: I'd love to have comedians not be filmed, right and
Speaker 4: get in a room and like respond to some of
Speaker 4: the things we've said today, like, hey, guys, maybe maybe
Speaker 4: there's certain jokes. I'd love to hear a comedian, knowing
Speaker 4: they're not being recorded, talk to me about his or
Speaker 4: her or their experiences on the road with a particular
Speaker 4: joke that they understood really pissed people off. So they
Speaker 4: they said, you know what, I'm not gonna tell this joke.
Speaker 4: It's a great joke. I'm not going to tell it
Speaker 4: because the human toll is too much. I'm sure comedians.
Speaker 4: I've spoken to comedians who have stories like that about
Speaker 4: jokes they just don't want to tell anymore, even though
Speaker 4: they think they're very funny.
Speaker 2: Or they may tell a joke to one audience and
Speaker 2: not to another.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a little bit a sort of fishy moral code, right,
Speaker 4: like I'm but yeah, it just reminds me like how
Speaker 4: powerful humor is as like a human as like a
Speaker 4: tool of human interaction. You know, Freud was onto something.
Speaker 4: To go back to Freud, right, I mean, I don't
Speaker 4: think his analysis was correct, but at a time when
Speaker 4: not many people were looking at comedy, comedy has never
Speaker 4: taken seriously, Like why did Eddie Murphy get the oscar
Speaker 4: for Norbert? I'm not kidding, right, Like he should have won.
Speaker 4: That is an amazing performance, right, but because it was comedy,
Speaker 4: and because he had about two hundred and seventy five
Speaker 4: pounds of like makeup and flab and fat jackets on. Right,
Speaker 4: But if you look at the acting in that, I
Speaker 4: imagine some actors are just rolling their eyes right now.
Speaker 4: But damn it, I'm gonna you know, I'm gonna die
Speaker 4: on this hill. He should have won some major major
Speaker 4: award for playing all those roles. Why didn't he Because
Speaker 4: we don't take comedy seriously. Back to Freud, I think
Speaker 4: Freud understood take it very very seriously. Of course he
Speaker 4: had to go through the unconscious right to justify all
Speaker 4: of that. But I've been taking comedy like dead serious.
Speaker 4: And when I go to comedy clubs, I get called
Speaker 4: out by the comedians. It's like they're you asshole. There
Speaker 4: was like, look like Mike, because my posture is wrong, right,
Speaker 4: I'm not drunk. I'm like, I'm like sitting there like
Speaker 4: taking them so seriously. And they noticed this like big lanky,
Speaker 4: dorky white dude, who's unlike all the other objects in
Speaker 4: the room. Right, I'm like, I'm not whooping, and I'm not.
Speaker 4: I'm just looking at them like this. And it's uncanny
Speaker 4: how they picked me out. Right, I can't even hid
Speaker 4: from these guys. Right. One guy called me like a
Speaker 4: smug motherfucker like twelve seconds into the show. Right, It's like, Wow,
Speaker 4: these guys are really good because comedians understand their audiences.
Speaker 4: That's all I like about them. They really like develop
Speaker 4: this like a symbiotic relationship with laughter. A comedian told
Speaker 4: me that he could distinguish the laughter like he had
Speaker 4: like categories like, oh, when I hear people laughing like this,
Speaker 4: I know surge forward. But when I hear this type
Speaker 4: of laughter. It's like backoff, back off, back off, right,
Speaker 4: slow it down. They're so good. I love art forms
Speaker 4: where people work with audiences like that. God blessed performing artists,
Speaker 4: God bless musicians, A right poets, right at a theater, actors,
Speaker 4: people that deal with live audiences love that stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much, Jock for joining us.
Speaker 4: This is so fun. We should do this again, guys.
Speaker 2: And to our audience. Now back to your regularly scheduled lives.
Speaker 3: Amusing Jews is here to amuse you. If you like
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Speaker 4: Mhmm