When William S. Burroughs Appeared on Saturday Night Live: His First TV Appearance (1981)

in Comedy, Literature, Television | December 14th, 2016

Though he nev­er said so direct­ly, we might expect that Sit­u­a­tion­ist Guy Debord would have includ­ed Sat­ur­day Night Live in what he called the “Spec­ta­cle”—the mass media pre­sen­ta­tion of a total­iz­ing real­i­ty, “the rul­ing order’s non­stop dis­course about itself, its nev­er-end­ing mono­logue of self-praise.” The slick­ness of TV, even live com­e­dy TV, masks care­ful­ly orches­trat­ed maneu­vers on the part of its cre­ators and adver­tis­ers. In Debor­d’s analy­sis, noth­ing is exempt­ed from the spec­ta­cle’s con­sol­i­da­tion of pow­er; it co-opts every­thing for its pur­pos­es. Even seem­ing con­tra­dic­tions with­in the spectacle—the skew­er­ing of polit­i­cal fig­ures, for exam­ple, to their seem­ing displeasure—serve the pur­pos­es of pow­er: The spec­ta­cle, wrote Debord, “is the oppo­site of dia­logue.”

So I won­der, what he might have made of the appear­ance of cult writer and Beat pio­neer William S. Bur­roughs on the com­e­dy show in 1981? Was Burroughs—a mas­ter­mind of the counterculture—co-opted by the pow­ers that be? The author of Junkie, Naked Lunch, and Cities of the Red Night also appeared in a Nike ad and sev­er­al films and music videos, becom­ing a “pres­ence in Amer­i­can pop cul­ture,” writes R.U. Sir­ius in Every­body Must Get Stoned.

David Seed notes that Bur­roughs “is remem­bered by many mem­bers of intel­li­gentsia and glit­terati as din­ner part­ner for the likes of Andy Warhol, David Bowie, and Mick Jag­ger,” though he had “been a mod­el for the polit­i­cal and social left.” Had he been neutered by the 80s, his out­ra­geous­ly anar­chist sen­ti­ments turned to rad­i­cal kitsch?

Or maybe Bur­roughs dis­rupt­ed the spec­ta­cle, his dron­ing, monot­o­nous deliv­ery giv­ing view­ers of SNL exact­ly the oppo­site of what they were trained to expect. The appear­ance was his widest expo­sure to date (imme­di­ate­ly after­ward, he moved from New York to Lawrence, Kansas). One of the show’s writ­ers con­vinced pro­duc­er Dick Eber­sol to put Bur­roughs on. In rehearsal, writes Bur­roughs’ biog­ra­ph­er Ted Mor­gan, Eber­sol “found Bur­roughs ‘bor­ing and dread­ful,’ and ordered that his time slot be cut from six to three and a half min­utes. The writ­ers, how­ev­er, con­spired to let his per­for­mance stand as it was, and on Novem­ber 7, he kicked off the show sit­ting behind a desk, the light­ing giv­ing his face a sepul­chral gaunt­ness.”

In the grainy video above, Bur­roughs reads from Naked Lunch and cut-up nov­el Nova Express, bring­ing the sadis­tic Dr. Ben­way into Amer­i­ca’s liv­ing rooms, as the audi­ence laughs ner­vous­ly. Sound effects of bombs and strains of the nation­al anthem play behind him as he reads. It stands as per­haps one of the strangest moments in live tele­vi­sion. “Bur­roughs had posi­tioned him­self as the Great Out­sider,” writes Mor­gan, “but on the night of Novem­ber 7 he had reached the posi­tion where the actress Lau­ren Hut­ton could intro­duce him to an audi­ence of 100 mil­lion view­ers as Amer­i­ca’s great­est liv­ing writer.” I’m sure Bur­roughs got a kick out of the descrip­tion. In any case, the clip shows us a SNL of bygone days that occa­sion­al­ly dis­rupt­ed the usu­al state of pro­gram­ming, as when it had punk band Fear on the show.

Per­haps Bur­roughs’ com­mer­cial appear­ances also show us how the coun­ter­cul­ture gets co-opt­ed and repack­aged for mid­dle-class tastes. Then again, one of the great ironies of Bur­roughs life is that he both began and end­ed it as “a true mem­ber of the mid­west­ern tax-pay­ing mid­dle class.” The fol­low­ing year in Lawrence, Kansas, he “caught up on his cor­re­spon­dence.” One stu­dent in Mon­tre­al wrote, imag­in­ing him in “a male whore­house in Tang­i­er.” Bur­roughs replied, “No… I live in a small house on a tree-lined street in Lawrence, Kansas, with my beloved cat Rus­ki. My hob­bies are hunt­ing, fish­ing, and pis­tol prac­tice.” Did Bur­roughs, who spent his life destroy­ing mass cul­ture with cut-ups and curs­es, sell out—as he once accused Tru­man Capote of doing—by becom­ing a celebri­ty?

Per­haps we should let him answer the charge. In answer to a fan from Eng­land who called him “God,” Bur­roughs wrote, “You got me wrong, Ray­mond, I am but a hum­ble prac­ti­tion­er of the scriven­er’s trade. God? Not me. I don’t have the qual­i­fi­ca­tions. Old Sarge told me years ago: ‘Don’t be a vol­un­teer, kid.’ God is always try­ing to foist his lousy job not some­one else. You got­ta be crazy to take it. Just a Tech Sergeant in the Shake­speare Squadron.” Bur­roughs may have used his celebri­ty sta­tus to his lit­er­ary advan­tage, and used it to pay the bills and work with artists he admired and vice-ver­sa, but he nev­er saw him­self as more than a writer and (and per­haps lay magi­cian), and he abjured the hero wor­ship that made him a cult fig­ure.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Teach­es a Free Course on Cre­ative Read­ing and Writ­ing (1979)

William S. Bur­roughs Sends Anti-Fan Let­ter to In Cold Blood Author Tru­man Capote: “You Have Sold Out Your Tal­ent”

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

Beat Writer William S. Bur­roughs Spreads Coun­ter­cul­ture Cool on Nike Sneak­ers, 1994

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Science of Why We Laugh

in Biology, Comedy | December 6th, 2016

Laugh­ter is uni­ver­sal. And yet strange when you think about it. One moment we’re doing noth­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy. The next moment we’re con­vuls­ing and mak­ing these loud stac­ca­to guf­faws. Odd that.

So why do we laugh? It’s a ques­tion that Robert Provine, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land, Bal­ti­more, has been study­ing for 20+ years, try­ing to under­stand laugh­ter’s social, neu­ro­log­i­cal, and evo­lu­tion­ary roots. In the video above, he gives you a sense of the “side­walk” research he con­ducts, and some of the con­clu­sions he has drawn–e.g., laugh­ter is often not a reac­tion to some­thing fun­ny per se; it’s some­thing that helps build social rela­tion­ships with oth­ers. And it’s a reac­tion that’s hard­wired in the brain.

At the video’s end, Provine tells us that the study of laugh­ter has just begun. But, if you’re inter­est­ed in what we know so far, see his two books: Laugh­ter: A Sci­en­tif­ic Inves­ti­ga­tion and Behav­ior: Yawn­ing, Laugh­ing, Hic­cup­ping, and Beyond, an explo­ration of neglect­ed human instincts.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese Explores the Health Ben­e­fits of Laugh­ter

Char­lie Chap­lin Finds Com­e­dy Even in the Bru­tal­i­ty of WWI: A Scene from Shoul­der Arms (1918)

Chris Rock Cre­ates a List of His 13 Favorite Standup Com­e­dy Spe­cials

How to Cope with Trump. Laugh

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Tim Robbins’ Improv Classes Transform Prisoners’ Lives & Lower Recidivism Rates

in Comedy, Life, Politics, Psychology, Theatre | December 5th, 2016

If a 20‑something, Yale-edu­cat­ed New York­er reporter feels ner­vous step­ping in to her first ever improv class, imag­ine the stakes for your aver­age inmate, whose sur­vival depends on a suc­cess­ful­ly mono­lith­ic pro­jec­tion of tough­ness and con­trol.

Con­trol is actu­al­ly some­thing the Actors’ Gang Prison Project seeks to cul­ti­vate in its incar­cer­at­ed par­tic­i­pants. The Actors’ Gang’s Artis­tic Direc­tor, Tim Rob­bins, who found­ed the rad­i­cal­ly exper­i­men­tal ensem­ble fresh out of col­lege, notes a well-doc­u­ment­ed con­nec­tion between an inabil­i­ty to con­trol one’s emo­tions and crim­i­nal activ­i­ty.

Unchecked rage may have put these play­ers behind bars, but explor­ing a wide vari­ety of emo­tions behind the safe­ty of the Actors’ Gang’s mask-like white pan­cake make-up has proven lib­er­at­ing.

The dull prison rou­tine leaves pris­on­ers favor­ably inclined toward any divert­ing activ­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly those that allow for cre­ative expres­sion. Shake­speare has made an impact on this pop­u­la­tion. Why not com­me­dia dell’arte-influenced improv?

It’s a tru­ly ther­a­peu­tic fit, as Actors Gang ensem­ble mem­ber Sabra Williams, the founder of the Prison Project, explains in her TED Talk, below.

Par­tic­i­pants are sub­ject­ed and held to the rig­or­ous phys­i­cal­i­ty and emo­tion­al hon­esty at the core of this group’s aes­thet­ic. Per­son­al con­nec­tion to the vis­i­tors is lim­it­ed to what­ev­er may tran­spire in-the-moment, but with­in the prison pop­u­la­tion, rela­tion­ships blos­som. Both guards and pris­on­ers speak of new­found empa­thy.

The emo­tion­al insights aris­ing from these spon­ta­neous explo­rations teach par­tic­i­pants how to dif­fuse aggres­sive sit­u­a­tions, present a more pos­i­tive face to the world, and inter­act gen­er­ous­ly with oth­ers. In between class­es, par­tic­i­pants write in jour­nals, with a goal of shar­ing aloud.

Gang signs, mimed weapons, and bod­i­ly con­tact are out of bounds. Wild inven­tion often car­ries the day.

Par­tic­i­pants have zero recidi­vism, and a wait­ing list in the hun­dreds attests to the program’s pop­u­lar­i­ty.

You can learn more about the Actors’ Gang ten-year-old Prison Project here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Great­est Per­for­mances (1972)

Inmates in New York Prison Defeat Harvard’s Debate Team: A Look Inside the Bard Prison Ini­tia­tive

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Whiskey-Fueled Lin-Manuel Miranda Reimagines Hamilton as a Girl on Drunk History

in Comedy, History, Television, Theatre | December 2nd, 2016

Back in July of 1804, when Vice Pres­i­dent Aaron Burr fired a fatal round into the abdomen of for­mer Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury Alexan­der Hamil­ton, I won­der which sce­nario would have seemed more implau­si­ble: that these polit­i­cal rivals would one day be res­ur­rect­ed in the form of a black guy and a Nuy­or­i­can, or as two young women in reveal­ing­ly snug breech­es, above.

Time moves on. These days, your aver­age Hamil­ton-obsessed pre-teen may have trou­ble accept­ing that there was a time—Jan­u­ary 2015, to be exact—when most Amer­i­cans could­n’t say what the guy on the ten dol­lar bill was famous for.

I con­fess, until quite recent­ly, I was far more con­fi­dent in Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment’s fic­tion­al Bluth fam­i­ly’s exploits than any involv­ing Hamil­ton and Burr. This explains, in part, why I’m so drawn to the cast­ing instincts of Derek Waters’, cre­ator of Drunk His­to­ry. 

The most recent episode fea­tures Alia Shawkat, one of my favorite Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment play­ers as a sar­don­ic, pot­ty mouthed Hamil­ton.

No wor­ries that Drunk His­to­ry, which bills itself as a “liquored-up nar­ra­tion of our nation’s his­to­ry,” is the lat­est in a long line of John­ny-Come-Latelys, eager­ly bel­ly­ing up to the Hamil­ton trough.

Before Shawkat imbued him with her trade­mark edge, Drunk History’s Hamil­ton exud­ed the befud­dled sweet­ness of Shawkat’s besot­ted Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment cousin, Michael Cera, who orig­i­nat­ed the part in a video that gave rise to the series, below.

That one’s far slop­pi­er, and not just in terms of pro­duc­tion val­ues. The inau­gur­al nar­ra­tor, Mark Gagliar­di, was ren­dered a good deal more than three sheets to the wind by the bot­tle of scotch he downed on a sag­ging brown velour couch.

Amer­i­ca would not want to see its cur­rent sweet­heart, Hamilton’s play­wright and orig­i­nal lead­ing man, Lin-Manuel Miran­da in such a con­di­tion.

Where­as Gagliar­di seemed dan­ger­ous­ly close to need­ing the buck­et Waters thought­ful­ly posi­tioned near­by, a whiskey-fuelled Miran­da seems mere­ly the tini­est bit buzzed, sit­ting cross legged in his parent’s liv­ing room, flesh­ing out Hamilton’s sto­ry with bits he didn’t man­age to cram into his Pulitzer Prize-win­ning musi­cal, such as a bewigged Tony Hale (aka Buster Bluth) as James Mon­roe.

On the oth­er hand, he does describe the Reynolds Pam­phlet as “Dick 101” (and failed to recall Face­Tim­ing var­i­ous friends post-record­ing) so…

You’ll need a Com­e­dy Cen­tral sub­scrip­tion to view the com­plete episode online, but Shawkat’s ear­li­er Drunk His­to­ry turn as Grover Cleveland’s “It Girl” wife, Frances, is free for all, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Alexan­der Hamil­ton” Per­formed with Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage

Alexan­der Hamil­ton: Hip-Hop Hero at the White House Poet­ry Evening

Watch a Wit­ty, Grit­ty, Hard­boiled Retelling of the Famous Aaron Burr-Alexan­der Hamil­ton Duel

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Only Surviving Behind-the-Scenes Footage of I Love Lucy, and It’s in Color! (1951)

in Comedy, Life, Music, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | November 25th, 2016


The endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of come­di­an Lucille Ball’s 6‑season sit­com, I Love Lucy, has result­ed in so many full-col­or col­lectibles, occa­sion­al view­ers may for­get that the show was filmed in black and white.

More ardent fans may have tuned in for the spe­cial col­orized episodes CBS aired a cou­ple of years ago, but the only exist­ing col­or footage of Lucy and her hus­band and co-star, Desi Arnaz, was cap­tured by a stealthy stu­dio audi­ence mem­ber.

The ubiq­ui­ty of smart phones have made unau­tho­rized celebri­ty shots com­mon­place, but con­sid­er that this reg­u­lar Joe man­aged to smug­gle a 16mm movie cam­era into the bleach­ers of pro­duc­er Jess Oppen­heimer’s tight­ly con­trolled set. This covert oper­a­tion on Octo­ber 12, 1951 shed light on the true col­ors of both the Trop­i­cana night­club and Ricar­do apart­ment sets.

Oppenheimer’s son, Jess, even­tu­al­ly obtained the footage, insert­ing it into the appro­pri­ate scenes from “The Audi­tion,” the episode from which they were snagged.

The Har­po Marx-esque Pro­fes­sor char­ac­ter Lucy plays is a holdover from both the pilot and the vaude­ville show she and Arnaz cre­at­ed and toured nation­al­ly in 1950, in an attempt to con­vince CBS that audi­ences were ready for a com­e­dy based on a “mixed mar­riage” such as their own.

In addi­tion to Arnaz’ unbri­dled con­ga play­ing, the home movie, above, con­tains a love­ly, unguard­ed moment at the 2:40 mark, of the stars calm­ly await­ing slat­ing, side by side on the sound­stage.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bat­girl Fights for Equal Pay in a 1960s Tele­vi­sion Ad Sup­port­ing The Equal Pay Act

Watch the First Com­mer­cial Ever Shown on Amer­i­can TV, 1941

Watch Dragnet’s 1967 LSD Episode: #85 on TV Guide’s List of the Great­est Episodes of All Time

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Watch Dave Chappelle’s Saturday Night Live Monologue: “We’ve Elected an Internet Troll as Our President”

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Life | November 13th, 2016

Dave Chap­pelle host­ed SNL last night and gave us the com­ic relief we need­ed. And also a few heart­felt thoughts about what a Trump pres­i­den­cy means for our imper­iled nation. The most poignant part comes at the very end:

You know, before I go, I do want to say one thing, and this is not a joke. But I think it’s impor­tant that I say this, ’cause they’re march­ing up the street right now as we speak.

A few weeks ago I went to the White House for a par­ty. It was the first time I’ve been there in many years and it was very excit­ing. And BET spon­sored the par­ty, so every­one there was black. And it was beau­ti­ful. I walked through the gates — you know, I’m from Wash­ing­ton, so I saw the bus stop, or the cor­ner where the bus stop used to be, where I used to catch the bus to school and dream about nights like tonight.

It was a real­ly, real­ly beau­ti­ful night. At the end of the night every­one went into the West Wing of the White House and it was a huge par­ty. And every­body in there was black — except for Bradley Coop­er, for some rea­son.

And on the walls were pic­tures of all the pres­i­dents, of the past. Now, I’m not sure if this is true, but to my knowl­edge the first black per­son that was offi­cial­ly invit­ed to the White House was Fred­er­ick Dou­glass. They stopped him at the gates. Abra­ham Lin­coln had to walk out him­self and escort Fred­er­ick Dou­glass into the White House, and it didn’t hap­pen again, as far as I know, until Roo­sevelt was pres­i­dent. Roo­sevelt was pres­i­dent, he had a black guy over and got so much flack from the media that he lit­er­al­ly said, “I will nev­er have a n—-r in this house again.”

I thought about that, and I looked at that black room, and saw all those black faces, and Bradley, and I saw how hap­py every­body was. These peo­ple who had been his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­en­fran­chised. It made me feel hope­ful and it made me feel proud to be an Amer­i­can and it made me very hap­py about the prospects of our coun­try.

So, in that spir­it, I’m wish­ing Don­ald Trump luck. And I’m going to give him a chance, and we, the his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­en­fran­chised, demand that he give us one too. Thank you very much.

You also should­n’t miss Kate McK­in­non’s two-for-one trib­ute to Hillary Clin­ton and Leonard Cohen. What a tal­ent she is.

And for any edu­cat­ed white lib­er­al, this skit will sure­ly hit home:

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Chris Rock Reads James Baldwin’s Still Time­ly Let­ter on Race in Amer­i­ca: “We Can Make What Amer­i­ca Must Become”

Pres­i­dent Obama’s 2016 Stand-Up Com­e­dy Rou­tine

William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Alec Bald­win Does a Per­fect Don­ald Trump: Watch SNL’s Spoof of the Trump-Clin­ton Debate

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The Power of Conformity: 1962 Episode of Candid Camera Reveals the Strange Psychology of Riding Elevators

in Comedy, Life, Psychology, Television | November 7th, 2016

Watch tele­vi­sion cre­ator Allen Funt pre­dict flash mobs in the 1962 episode of Can­did Cam­era above, filmed some forty years before Harp­er’s mag­a­zine edi­tor, Bill Wasik, found­ed the move­ment with anony­mous­ly e‑mailed instruc­tions for a coor­di­nat­ed pub­lic action.

The stunt, enti­tled “Face the Rear,” was pulled off by a hand­ful of “agents”—a phrase coined by Improv Everywhere’s founder Char­lie Todd to describe the pok­er-faced par­tic­i­pants con­jur­ing a secret­ly agreed upon alter­nate real­i­ty to con­found (and not always delight) its tar­get sub­ject, along with unsus­pect­ing bystanders.

Com­pared to the grand-scale the­atrics that have trans­formed an upscale mar­ket into a scene from La Travi­a­ta and infil­trate sub­ways world­wide with thou­sands of pants-less rid­ers every year, this prank is quite sub­tle in the exe­cu­tion.

It suc­ceeds on our tac­it under­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes prop­er ele­va­tor behav­ior when oth­ers pas­sen­gers are present. Left to our own devices, we can sing, dance, and let the mask of pro­pri­ety slip in any num­ber of ways. Once oth­ers enter? We share the space and face for­ward.

But what if every­one who enters inex­plic­a­bly faces the back wall?

What would you do?

As hypo­thet­i­cals go, this one’s not near­ly so weighty as con­sid­er­ing whether you’d have fol­lowed the script of Stan­ley Milgram’s obe­di­ence exper­i­ments or put your own fam­i­ly at risk by hid­ing Anne Frank.

Still…

For the sub­jects of Can­did Cam­era’s ele­va­tor gag, the pres­sure to suc­cumb to group think quick­ly over­ruled years of learned phys­i­cal behav­ior.

And nor­ma­tive ele­va­tor phys­i­cal­i­ty def­i­nite­ly springs from social cues, as John Dono­van, host of NPR’s “Around the Nation” said, in an inter­view with Lee Gray, author of From Ascend­ing Rooms to Express Ele­va­tors: A His­to­ry of the Pas­sen­ger Ele­va­tor in the 19th Cen­tu­ry:

I know a psy­chol­o­gist who works with teenagers who have autism who—he uses encour­ag­ing to learn skills that will allow them to be inde­pen­dent in the world to get out on their own. And one of his lessons with some of the teenagers is what to do in an ele­va­tor because he says that the typ­i­cal kid that he works with, when the door is opened, and he’s been told that he should step inside, will step inside and face the back wall because nobody has told him that every­body else in the ele­va­tor is going to turn around and face the front doors…

Can­did Camera’s stunts were always framed as com­e­dy, though its cre­ator, Funt, was well versed in psy­chol­o­gy, hav­ing served as child psy­chol­o­gist Kurt Lewin’s research assis­tant at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty.

In an arti­cle for the Archive of Amer­i­can Tele­vi­sion, writer Amy Loomis iden­ti­fied five premis­es into which the aver­age Can­did Cam­era gag could fall:

  1. Revers­ing nor­mal or antic­i­pat­ed pro­ce­dures
  2. Expos­ing basic human weak­ness­es such as igno­rance or van­i­ty
  3. Using the ele­ment of sur­prise
  4. Ful­fill­ing fan­tasies
  5. Plac­ing some­thing in a bizarre or inap­pro­pri­ate set­ting

“Face the Rear” was a case where con­for­mi­ty born of an unex­pect­ed rever­sal in nor­mal pro­ce­dure yield­ed laughs, at the gen­tle expense of a series of unsus­pect­ing sub­jects, whose solo rides were dis­rupt­ed by a bunch of Can­did Cam­era oper­a­tives.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Footage from the Psy­chol­o­gy Exper­i­ment That Shocked the World: Milgram’s Obe­di­ence Study (1961)

The Lit­tle Albert Exper­i­ment: The Per­verse 1920 Study That Made a Baby Afraid of San­ta Claus & Bun­nies

This is Your Brain on Sex and Reli­gion: Exper­i­ments in Neu­ro­science

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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John Cleese & Jonathan Miller Turn Profs Talking About Wittgenstein Into a Classic Comedy Routine (1977)

in Comedy, Philosophy | October 19th, 2016

Every­one inter­est­ed in phi­los­o­phy must occa­sion­al­ly face the ques­tion of how, exact­ly, to define phi­los­o­phy itself. You can always label as phi­los­o­phy what­ev­er philoso­phers do — but what, exact­ly, do philoso­phers do? Here the Eng­lish come­di­ans John Cleese of Mon­ty Python and Jonathan Miller of Beyond the Fringe offer an inter­pre­ta­tion of the life of mod­ern philoso­phers in the form of a five-minute sketch set in “a senior com­mon room some­where in Oxford (or Cam­bridge).”

There, Cleese and Miller’s philoso­phers have a wide-rang­ing talk about Lud­wig Wittgen­stein, sens­es of the word “yes,” whether an “unfetched slab” can be said to exist, and the very role of the philoso­pher in this “het­ero­ge­neous, con­fus­ing, and con­fused jum­ble of polit­i­cal, social, and eco­nom­ic rela­tions we call soci­ety.” They come to the ten­ta­tive con­clu­sion that, just as oth­ers dri­ve bus­es or chop down trees, philoso­phers “play lan­guage games” — or per­haps “games at lan­guage” — “in order to find out what game it is that we are play­ing.”

As inten­tion­al­ly ridicu­lous as that expla­na­tion may sound, it would­n’t come across as espe­cial­ly out­landish in many phi­los­o­phy-depart­ment com­mon rooms today. Cleese and Miller, no strangers to play­ing their own kinds of lan­guage games, get laughs not so much from mock­ing the non­sen­si­cal com­plex­i­ties of phi­los­o­phy — and indeed, most of their lines make per­fect sense on one lev­el or anoth­er — as they do from so vivid­ly express­ing the dis­tinc­tive man­ner of the “Oxbridge Philoso­pher” char­ac­ters they por­tray. It has every­thing to do with man­ner, both ver­bal and phys­i­cal, tak­en to as absurd an extreme as their lines of think­ing.

Cleese and Miller’s ver­sion of the Oxbridge Philoso­pher sketch here comes from the 1977 Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al ben­e­fit show and tele­vi­sion spe­cial An Evening With­out Sir Bernard Miles (also known as The Mer­maid Frol­ics), but oth­ers exist. It goes at least as far back as Beyond the Fringe’s days pio­neer­ing their huge­ly influ­en­tial brand of British satire on the stage in the 1960s; their ear­li­er per­for­mance just above fea­tures Miller and fel­low troupe mem­ber Alan Ben­nett. It can still make us laugh today, but we might well won­der whether any­one in the his­to­ry of human­i­ty has ever real­ly sound­ed like this — in which case, we should watch footage of real-life Oxford philoso­phers back in those days and judge for our­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python Sings “The Philosopher’s Song,” Reveal­ing the Drink­ing Habits of Great Euro­pean Thinkers

Mon­ty Python’s Philosopher’s Foot­ball Match: The Epic Show­down Between the Greeks & Ger­mans (1972)

John Cleese Touts the Val­ue of Phi­los­o­phy in 22 Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ments for the Amer­i­can Philo­soph­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion

Athe­ism: A Rough His­to­ry of Dis­be­lief, with Jonathan Miller

The Mod­ern-Day Philoso­phers Pod­cast: Where Come­di­ans Like Carl Rein­er & Artie Lange Dis­cuss Schopen­hauer & Mai­monides

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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