What Makes a Shark Jump?
WARNING: Spoilers
I've been rethinking that long-elusive, ever-tormenting question, "What makes 'camp' different from 'stupid'?" since about Chapter 11 of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet. The series was still going beautifully up until Chapter 10, even though the main gag of a man walking into his house and finding another man in bed with his wife was starting to get a little stale by then; believe it or not, I initially thought the James and Bridget episode wasn't going to be all that exciting. Boy was I in for a triumphant twist!
I had read in the NY Times article one fan saying that he was afraid that the show might jump the shark, before qualifying it with the consideration that the show started off with a shark jump. I would agree with that fan, for the most part, minus his faith that another, fatal shark jump would be impossible. It's true that the first premise is absolutely ridiculous, though marvelous; Sylvester is in the closet after bedding another man's wife, and while he's hiding from the unsuspecting husband, his cell phone starts ringing. Asinine, right? And yet simple, clean, effective. The subsequent chapters obey that same tone: Sylvester gets a leg cramp during sex; Sylvester thinks he killed Twan before Twan starts coughing and reviving and saying that the bullet just scratched him; and finally, Bridget is sleeping with a midget. This last one, I think, is slightly different from the others in that it's completely over the top. Not only does "Bridget" rhyme with "midget" - a happy coincidence that Kelly exploits fully - but the midget also craps himself AND has an asthma attack. One would almost accuse them of trying too hard, except that with gems like that you can't possibly fail.
The newer chapters, however, you can accuse of trying too hard. I don't know what it is, but there's something about the secret agent rendezvous, the lesbian lovers, and the reverend preaching to Pimp Lucius that just wasn't working for me. It went from funny to ludicrous - laughing with to laughing at. I can't put my finger on what it is; I wonder if it might have something to do with the absence of plot. Simply put, there is no real, good reason for those characters to be there at all, except that they're goofy or satirical - they spoof a certain kind of stereotype that, by virtue of being a stereotype, needs no further spoofing. And because they parasitically spoof a spoof, it seems right to say that they are trying too hard, and much of the humor comes out dead on delivery.
I believe I can tie this to larger aesthetic concerns by comparing these "jokes for jokes' sake" to "art for art's sake." Just as some critics find some avant garde works to be lacking in passion and vim and emotional consequence, I could argue that the a joke needs subtlety in order to fix it in some context and thereby confer a degree of weight beyond the empty laugh. The earlier chapters of Trapped in the Closet seem to have that more than the later chapters. The jokes are embedded in that relatable, scary circumstance of almost getting caught cheating on your lover.
Perhaps it's not just Schadenfreude that makes us enjoy the comedy of pain. Maybe pain is much more essential to comedy, such that comedy cannot exist without the possibility that something terrible could happen. My observations of the need for a jokes to be planted in situations with a beginning, middle, and end might suggest that this is the case; a joke wouldn't be funny in the deep sense if it has no consequence to OUR experiences of reality.
I've been rethinking that long-elusive, ever-tormenting question, "What makes 'camp' different from 'stupid'?" since about Chapter 11 of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet. The series was still going beautifully up until Chapter 10, even though the main gag of a man walking into his house and finding another man in bed with his wife was starting to get a little stale by then; believe it or not, I initially thought the James and Bridget episode wasn't going to be all that exciting. Boy was I in for a triumphant twist!
I had read in the NY Times article one fan saying that he was afraid that the show might jump the shark, before qualifying it with the consideration that the show started off with a shark jump. I would agree with that fan, for the most part, minus his faith that another, fatal shark jump would be impossible. It's true that the first premise is absolutely ridiculous, though marvelous; Sylvester is in the closet after bedding another man's wife, and while he's hiding from the unsuspecting husband, his cell phone starts ringing. Asinine, right? And yet simple, clean, effective. The subsequent chapters obey that same tone: Sylvester gets a leg cramp during sex; Sylvester thinks he killed Twan before Twan starts coughing and reviving and saying that the bullet just scratched him; and finally, Bridget is sleeping with a midget. This last one, I think, is slightly different from the others in that it's completely over the top. Not only does "Bridget" rhyme with "midget" - a happy coincidence that Kelly exploits fully - but the midget also craps himself AND has an asthma attack. One would almost accuse them of trying too hard, except that with gems like that you can't possibly fail.
The newer chapters, however, you can accuse of trying too hard. I don't know what it is, but there's something about the secret agent rendezvous, the lesbian lovers, and the reverend preaching to Pimp Lucius that just wasn't working for me. It went from funny to ludicrous - laughing with to laughing at. I can't put my finger on what it is; I wonder if it might have something to do with the absence of plot. Simply put, there is no real, good reason for those characters to be there at all, except that they're goofy or satirical - they spoof a certain kind of stereotype that, by virtue of being a stereotype, needs no further spoofing. And because they parasitically spoof a spoof, it seems right to say that they are trying too hard, and much of the humor comes out dead on delivery.
I believe I can tie this to larger aesthetic concerns by comparing these "jokes for jokes' sake" to "art for art's sake." Just as some critics find some avant garde works to be lacking in passion and vim and emotional consequence, I could argue that the a joke needs subtlety in order to fix it in some context and thereby confer a degree of weight beyond the empty laugh. The earlier chapters of Trapped in the Closet seem to have that more than the later chapters. The jokes are embedded in that relatable, scary circumstance of almost getting caught cheating on your lover.
Perhaps it's not just Schadenfreude that makes us enjoy the comedy of pain. Maybe pain is much more essential to comedy, such that comedy cannot exist without the possibility that something terrible could happen. My observations of the need for a jokes to be planted in situations with a beginning, middle, and end might suggest that this is the case; a joke wouldn't be funny in the deep sense if it has no consequence to OUR experiences of reality.
posted by Rex at 11:55 AM
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