Happy (Enough) New Year!
Welp, looks like it's been a while since I posted. It's been about two years since I ranted about Trump's election, which is the last entry that I could charitably round up to being of consequence. I'd intended to start posting much more frequently. Then I didn't. Which at this point is a pretty good summary of my blog, as well as my political ambitions: big ideas, good intentions, and very little follow through. I always tell myself I'm going to do more, then I find perfectly valid reasons to go back to bed instead.
Not that I've spent the last two years in bed. Far from it. Standup slowed down, then stopped, then sold the car for a while. But beyond that particular setback, a lot has been happening. I left my full-time job to return to freelance video editing, and my new "business" has been going remarkably well. One of the reasons I left was to start focusing on writing more, which got off to a bit of a slow start, but has been kicking into high gear and going very well as of late. I finished a second draft of a new novel, and am planning to do a final draft as soon as my wife finishes pretending that she's going to read it; I've been working on a pitch for a TV show that will likely go nowhere, but would be very fun if it did; and in the last couple months I've even started working on new standup material, which will soon be performed for underwhelmed audience all over the less reputable clubs of the city. Admittedly, there's not a lot to point to in terms of tangible accomplishments just yet, but there are a lot of possibilities, and a lot of work going into them, which is a good start.
But, I don't want to talk about that right now. There will be plenty of time to plug my various projects if they ever get far enough along to exaggerate the significance of on social media. In the meantime, I wanted to kick this blog back into gear by rambling about something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, which is one of the main reasons that I was finding it hard to write comedy for a while: the election of Donald J. Trump. Or, more accurately, the state of comedy in the wake of the election of Donald J. Trump.
Like a lot of people -- or, more specifically, like a lot of liberal-minded, self-centered, delusional idealists like myself who are so detached from the real world that they mistakenly believe their Facebook friends are both doing as well as they say they are and a representative sample of America -- I was in quite a funk after the election. After the far too shocking realization that white middle America's rage was greater than its common sense, the world didn't seem particularly amusing. I was reading the news more than ever, and trying to think critically about the issues that brought us here. But none of it seemed particularly funny. All I could do was read the news with the joyless focus of Rain Man performing an audit. We were entering dark times, and it didn't feel right to laugh.
Except, that's exactly what I love about comedy. It is the perfect companion for politics because it does so many useful things that are helpful in processing very serious things: it helps make difficult subjects more engaging and approachable, it takes the sting out of sad times, it helps to bring down and take power away from people and institutions that do not deserve them. Comedy may not be the be all and end all of serious public debate, but it helps.
So now would seem like the perfect moment for a renaissance of political comedy, right? Times are dark, big discussions are being avoided because it's so easy to unfriend anyone who wants to have them, and the man dominating the news every day is an almost awe-inspringly extensive collection of pretenses and idiocies. Donald Trump is the perfect foil for comedy. On a daily basis, he provides us with opportunities for high-brow rumination on the existential nature of our national identity, and low-brow knee-slappers that perfectly illustrate why you don't give a baby the keys to the car. In almost every headline, there's a little comedy for everyone.
So why does political comedy feel so pointless right now? I think in part it's because there's just so goddamn much of it. Trump is such a fundamentally absurd character that making fun of the leader of the free world is fruit hanging so low that it's almost impossible not to grab it by the...see? Trump jokes are inescapable! They are becoming such a deeply ingrained part of our psyche that babies are probably being born with the instinctual ability to hunt for boobs and make twitter jokes about one. Which, first of all, makes it difficult to feel like you have anything original to say about the subject social media is increasingly becoming a race to prove that you were the first person to read a headline when you were supposed to be working. If you take a minute to think about something you've heard, everything that could possibly be said about it will be tweeted by someone somewhere.
Second, there's so much political comedy that it feels like it's becoming little more than background noise. It's not something we talk about to further a dialogue, it's just another pop culture reference, like the latest Avengers movie or which celebrity divorced which less successful celebrity. Which isn't entirely unusual. I mean, Jay Leno made jokes about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky every day of the nineties, and you can't really claim that he was trying to further an important dialogue about moral leadership. He was just pressing the "sex is funny" button. But what feels unusual about this moment is the sheer volume of content we produce. Twitter is a million Jay Leno's competing for much lower ratings.
Not to say there is no good political comedy out there. For example, I've always been a big John Oliver fan, and I think that Last Week Tonight is a great showcase for his talents. But what does a show like his actually accomplish? They are the epitome of "preaching to the choir." In our fractured, oversaturated media landscape, anyone who watches is almost certainly a self-selected group that is not just receptive to his point of view, but actively seeking it out. Our entertainment is as tribalized as our politics, our news, or our social media. People don't seek out ideas that will challenge them, they look to hear someone saying what they already believe with a charming accent. In fact, the only people who do seem to seek out ideas they don't agree with are YouTube trolls who think they can eviscerate an opposing viewpoint through the clever use of ALL CAPS. John Oliver is great, but he speaks to people like me, a liberal base that wants to be reminded of just how right they are. John Oliver even kind of acknowledged this himself, pointing out in one of the episodes that all the problems he's talked about are still around, despite all the articles that say he "destroyed" them. He may make some difference in the world, especially when he raises money for good causes. But as long as he's only speaking to a receptive audience, that impact has to be limited.
When Trump was elected, the word "normalizing" was thrown around, as in, this is not normal, and we should not let it become normal. But, surprise surprise, it has. We're all becoming accustomed and addicted to the spectacle of our reality TV presidency, which only furthers these problems. People are either desensitized, or they're secretly enjoying the trainwreck. It's hard for politics to be any more than a pop culture reference when people -- not individuals, but large groups of people -- start accepting their fate rather than being angry about it. Good comedy should make you think, but that's something none of us particularly wants to do anymore. We just want that numbing, knee-jerk reaction that we get when we remember that it's funny when society slips on a banana peel and falls down, too.
Not to be overly down on political comedy or anything. I still love it, and I still think it has an important place in the world. I still continue to write some of it, too. For example, one of the big themes in my books is trying to find a way to be active and make a difference when the world is all talk, and you begin to worry that you are, too. I still think there is value in political and socially relevant comedy. I just spend a lot of time these days asking myself, really, how much?Anyway, 2019 is shaping up to be a busy year for me, as a writer, as an editor, and maybe even as a filmmaker. I'll do my best to keep everyone updated on my progress, as well as some of my more entertaining musings. But, I don't exactly have the best track record of following through when I promise to start writing more blog posts. So I won't promise that. Instead, I'll just say that I'm still writing, I'm still working, and hopefully I'll be able to share more evidence of that with you all soon.
-TC
p.s. I'm also in the beginning stages of planning to update my website! I hope to roll out a new design by the end of the year. But again, no promises, just hopes.