An Inquiry Into Counter-Humorism

SATIRICAL BACKGROUND

The satiric text attains its desired effect by deforming an individual argument or style through exaggeration. Humorists of this discipline do not reiterate the pastiches of contemporary discourse, they uncovered that history had already made the “jokes.” After thorough investigation, the stability or infinity of a text goes on to be perturbed or interrupted. The parodic recontextualization of an identity or idea then spotlights the occult potentialities within the source. Purposefully, satiric productions strive to unfold contradictions in its original form. Within this “definitive” explanation of satire - one is able to position the historian practices of Karl Marx as a disruptive invocation of the original historical timeline for the purpose of extirpating its contrarian nuances. It has become apparent to me, time and time again, that diplomacy, politics, economics, and all the imagined sociopolitical systems fail to accurately galvanize praxis amidst the figures of their oppression. Much like the humorists, I have decided to take a cue from that which has already occurred and search for something which does move the masses - literature, music, and a wicked amusement for all the aforementioned.

READING LIST

Over the course of the past year, I searched far and wide for an antidote to the existential vertigo of existing within our hybrid model. Predictably, I strived to shun the digital age, driving up to Walden Pond where Thoreau and his intelligentsia condemned the institutions who perpetrate injustice. Upon arrival, an Iphone application demanded thirty U.S dollars for parking. So, I paid them. Inside the park, a never ending flurry of Instagram users snapped photographs of the New England topography - presumably a manifestation of natural-living insight for the reductive hybrid non-world of one’s digital presence.

I drove to Concord, to the home of Louisa May Alcott where she wrote the domestic Magnum Opus, Little Women. Tickets were sold out with an eager rigor from the Greta Gerwig fan club. Is Greta Gerwig a counter humorist? No. Is she a perfectly good reteller of an already told tale? Yes. Disappointed and defeated with the nineteenth century literary output, I sought out a different reading list, something more radical, something also exhausted of the disillusionment of self-cultivation and everyday living.

Completely neglecting the 19th century immediate aftermath of Marxism as a literary device - Instead solely focusing on the precedent and long term effect. I curated a starter kit if you will, to counter-humorism.

A special thanks to the never wavering help of Youtube (my favorite lecturer) and my pompous friends for their collaborations.

The list is as follows organized in five thematic vignettes:

V.I: GREED

The Works of Horace (30 BCE)

Horace’s work is tedious and hard to read, but crucial should you desire to properly grasp the methodology of the upcoming texts. His work centered around dismantling the form and style of poetry. More importantly for our post-capitalist discourse, Horace explored the unquenchable human thirst for self-worth - one that is entirely unachievable considering it derives from a sense of greed which is in itself entirely insatiable.

Candide by Voltaire (1759)

In Voltaire’s Candide, the titular character and his Professor Pangloss are used to satirize Leibnizian optimism. By defending his philosophy so unwaveringly, especially when it does not serve him, Pangloss becomes an irrational caricature, demonstrating the absurdity of his beliefs.Deemed by some as the quintessential Enlightenment text, this Voltarian satire has been canonized in the Euro-American education system forever. Candide is a foolish optimist who is blinded from the suffering and abuse of capitalism in lieu of blind positivity. The inadequacy of stubborn justification winds up waving the protagonist away into reality where he uncovers the illusions of complacency and happiness.

V.II: ESCAPISM

A Sentimental Journey - Laurence Sterne (1768)

The romantic period during which this novel found great popularity is responsible for many things: bildungsroman novels, female romantic lionization, and most importantly the travel novel genre. Sterne taxonomizes the types of traveler, much like we do today with a heightened sense of superiority spoon fed by the algorithms that inform our interests.

V.III: AGGRESSION

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962)

A gory and lewd staple of gore and generational anger. The anti-hero in this novel doubles as a sort of active lens to the early perverse culture of the 1960’s through a fictitious future. Its impact on visual culture is still felt today - not Halloween goes by where one isn’t privy to witnessing at least three Alex lookalikes parading their dystopian murderous ethos.

The Neophiliacs by Christopher Booker (1969)

This unimaginably boring survey of mid-century history evaluates the precedentary culture responsible for the “swinging London” phenomenon of the 1960’s. It’s not satire per say, but it is radically dull and consequently radically boring. Arguably, this type of inquiry into the hedonist is so dissonant that it cannot be anything except satire.

V.IV: ASSIMILATION

The Official Preppy Handbook by Lisa Birnbach and written by Jonathan Roberts, Carol McD.

Wallace, Mason Wiley, and Birnbach (1980)

Prepdom found an audience in the highly conservative backlash movement of the 80’s. The war against drugs was rampant, secular imagery and propaganda circulated mainstream media like a breeze, and homophobia flourished like a virus amidst a surplus of willing hosts. This satirical how-to guide perpetuated the WASPY aestheticization of conservatism through a comprehensive guide on how to achieve it including but not limited to: retaining sexual matters as private, comporting oneself as a good practicing layman, and dressing the part.

V.V: REVOLUTION

Prez VOL 1: United States in Corndog-in-Chief by Mark Russell (2016)

In the imagined presidency of teenager Beth Ross corporations can run for office, people are human billboards (much like we are when sporting branded content,) and drones have eliminated human labor. Beth seizes the opportunity to employ her Twitter stardom into societal revolt against the businesses which destroyed her world.

MUSICAL EXERCISE:

The true satirical timeline extends all the way back to Horace and Juvenal and then onward to our contemporary masters of the practice - Saturday Night Live, South Park, Drunk Shakespeare - you name it, there is no shortage of predominantly unjust history to poke fun at, and certainly no lack of contemporary subject matter. Satirical literature and its excruciating inquiry historical and cultural contextualization does in fact upset its primary source, this discomfort can then be utilized to toy with chronology, connecting different mediums of art through their same disdain for the industrious human experience.

Lyricism with its broad reach is in a myriad of ways one of the proper remaining forms of advocation. Upon completion of my reading list, I sought out to curate an experience which my generation highly recognizes as pseudo-religious, artful, and pointed: The Spotify Playlist. The aim was to flesh out the dense motifs of these texts in a harmonious and cohesive form. At the core of most renowned and acclaimed works there is a unifying thread of escapism from materialism and capitalism with music as the travel agent.

THE PLAYLIST:

The mundane facets of everyday life often leave us privy to sightless submission, slowly, the alienation of the person leaves us without a voice to speak on the socioeconomic strata that dictate themselves. Musicians, the idols of presentism, speak on these matters over and over again. Does anything change? No - but perhaps through the radicalization of seemingly mundane pleasures like music, we might begin to galvanize the counterpublic which is tired of succumbing to the aforementioned vignettes.

LINK:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2Yq2fY81mLJCAzN8okfbwd?si=5ba50d42c0dd4bee

THE MUSICAL EXPERIENCE - EXPLAINED

Parody, rather our humorous foray into the device has clouded the principal value of satirical social commentary: unapologetic candor. The insidious inculcation of material goods and belongings has corrupted our society’s understanding of freedom. “Free” - became synonymous with financial mobility, but liberty is by definition in contradiction to earthly attachments. Satire is our first coping mechanism with the deity of capital incentive, worshiped by the same people who seek freedom, all. Counter-humorists have been attempting to trigger a visceral response to this hermentia, or fatal flaw, since Horace, long before our master judeo-christian narrative fruitlessly condemned avarice.

“When all else fails!” is a colloquial signifier of surrender after matter-of-fact failure. The pragmatics believe we have failed. Our is a world where insight and spirituality are commodified, whilst religion and faith are institutionalized. I titled my musical curatorial exercise with the turn of phrase because I do believe that when all else fails one can talk, sing, or write about it until a breakthrough pseudo catharsis is a victory in itself. When all else fails, we possess our human ability to think about thinking, and that is the great biological success of our species.

The opener is written and performed by the patron Goddess of sexualized infantilization and glamor. Arguably, the sexualization of virtually anything, is a result of pleasure’s monetization. In her 2014 album, Ultraviolence, a formative milestone for the members of the Tumblr generation, she references the work of renowned literati, crooning time and time again about the pacified condition of late stage capitalism. “Money, power, glory,” channels her diamond-ridden image into a commentary on liberty which comes at a price far more costly than religion. “You talk lots about God, freedom comes from the call, but that’s not what this bitch wants… I want money, power, and glory.” The tangible dictator of our freedom is once again in the forefront of earthly lust.

In the Works of Horace, many lifetimes before Del Rey’s modern manifesto, the famed Roman satirist explored the acquisitive currency of worth that we have placed unto ourselves, despite its unfulfillable conditions. The very driving force behind our pursuits makes them unachievable, Horace touched on this, “a great majority of mankind, misled by a wrong desire, cry, "No sum is enough; because you are esteemed in proportion to what you possess."

Many years later, famed French thinker, Voltaire, studied the complex relationship between optimism and capitalism in his magnum opus, Candide. In his world, the best of all possible worlds, he fantasized about a golden city, El Dorado. In all its luxurious glory, it still was not satisfactory. Instead, Candide learns that life is lived and enjoyed by being inhabited, by tending to the veritable garden of oneself day after day. He discovers that the teachings of Pangloss, which prompt questions like: “what scales your Pangloss would use to weigh the misfortunes of mankind, and set a value on their sufferings,” are unfathomably trite. No amount of justification or pep can change the intrinsic nature of our challenging world, a world where the golden city is a figment of imagination, and most people suffer from veritable syphilis-like misfortunes, despite their best precautions.

To emphasize the arduous qualities of regular-folk life, I selected Stevie Wonder’s anticapitalist anthem, “Living For the City.” It’s a poignant, and upbeat song about the cyclical woes of life under our capitalist authorities. The average person cannot rationalize the measly pay for their work in this world, the best of all possible worlds where arduous labor merely sustains survival. They earn just enough to exist, and that cannot be the best of all possible worlds.

Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey, popularized the travel genre at the core of the romantic period. The natural world which kept expanding through colonial pursuits was a source of both anxiety and interest for the polished citizens of distinct European metropoles. The great poets and writers reverted to the belief of self-discovery through wanderlust, a connection with nature, and sentimentality. In the story, Sterne identifies three core causes for exploration, infirmity of body, imbecility of mind, or inevitable necessity. He then goes on to identify several sorts of travelers, crowning himself the sentimental kind, informed by the besoin de voyager, the need, crowning himself better than all the rest.

Escapism, especially of the journeying variety, is arguably a symptom of the desire to combat life’s mundanity. Should our lives not feel suffocating, there would be no need to pilgrimage. Our devotion to the natural world is an exercise in escapism. The same way the impressionists rebutted a conflict-ridden world with landscaped greenery and simplicity.

Nina Simone longed for wings cut off by racial prejudice and abuse. A recurring utterance in her discography sings of flying away, amidst the weightless birds. In “I Wish I knew How It Feels to Be Free,” she sings, “I'd soar to the sun, and look down at the sea, then I'd sing 'cause I'd know… how it feels to be free.” I positioned her in the halfway point of the playlist, as an ode to sentimentality and thirst for autonomy from our systemically suffocating establishment, the besoin to fly, if you will.

The post- world war twentieth century was characterized by the unsilenceable youth. The swinging sixties are my favorite moment in sartorial and artistic history: the rise of Andy Warhol’s factory, the hedonism of south London. The juvenile frustration with the establishment, in a post-cold war hangover, embodies the “when all else fails” mentality of disorder. To commemorate the anti-establishment mid-point of the twentieth century, I added The Who’s “Baba O’Riley.” For me, that is the triumphant anthem of an exhausted youth, “they’re all wasted!” writes Pete Townshend, referencing the wasteland of young people numbing themselves from our finance-centric mortality. I followed it with the Velvet Underground’s drug crisis ceremony,“Waiting for My Man,” because I believe these songs capture societal anti-tradition bitterness.

“I am the son, and the heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar. I am the son and heir of nothing in particular,” are the opening lines of The Smiths’, “How Soon is Now?” In the song, they explore the desperation of a consistent inheritance of conflict and superficiality. The brutal alienation of the lyrics is exacerbated by pounding synths, and an exasperated Morrisey. “How can you say, I go about things the wrong way?” he asks implying a lose-lose fate for the receivers of civilization. “And you go home, and you cry, and you want to die,” he writes in an exaggerated crisis of existential ennui.

Self-indulgent metacognition is Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange’s entire modus operandi. The novel’s protagonist is a relentlessly violent intellectual, Alex DeLarge. His exploration of radicalism, and free rein to aggression, is a ridiculous exploration of the human condition were it truly free to roam. His humanity however fickle it may be, lies in the presence of impulse. Personhood is determined by a cognitive ability to recognize need, universally and otherwise. It’s reminiscent of Morrisey’s lyric, “I am human, and I need to be loved. Just like everybody else does.” In Alex’s case it isn’t love that he needs, but to refuse conformity. The use of Nadsat, the book’s fabricated language, shows a desire to connect in praxis, even if the binding things are gory and incorrigibility.

“The room is on fire and she’s fixing her hair,” sings Julian Casablancas in “Reptilia.” The 1980’s are often regarded as the point past no return for the fast-paced digital and free-market mercantilism of the twenty-first century. Preppyness intends to avert attention to the futile matters of physicality as a means of silencing change in exchange for plaid skirts and the illusion of a wearable American dream only the subservient can recreate.

Beth Ross, the female president of the “United States in Corndog-in-Chief,” is a feminist satire taking aim at the corporations which enforce patriarchal ideals and destroy our planet, corporatocracy. Mark Russell’s heroine feels particularly timely battling “cat flu” in office, as we battle the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s scathingly badass, and I couldn’t score it with anything other than The Runways.

“Hello world! I’m your wild girl!” scream The Runways on “Cherry Bomb,” a track I’m sure Beth would love even in 2036 when the comic takes place. Corporate destruction is rooted in homosocial oppression of performed gender, and we need wild girls to gracefully and educatedly stick up their middle fingers. Ross is a perturbingly contemporary form of escapism into a not-so unimaginable dystopian future, once again crafted by our exploitative rapacity.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Community is a fragile thing in that it’s imagined. A shared understanding of humor and societal backlash is at the root of our society-building. Artists, writers, and musicians have clearly explored the same subject matters of anti-establishment critiques since before Christ. Although one individual work cannot immediately remedy the shortcoming it’s criticizing; it can open dialogue and enable discourse for both the creator and consumer. In order to keep imagining successful communities, we must continue championing the rebels who dare to question them in the first place.

WORKS VISITED/CONSULTED

Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. W. W. Norton & Company, 2019.
Birnbach, Lisa. The Official Preppy Handbook. New York: Workman Publ., 1981.
Del Rey, Lana. “Money Power Glory.” Spotify
Debord, Guy The Society of the Spectacle [1967], New York: Zone, 1994, pp.1-13 & 57-69
Horace. The Works of Horace. C. Smart. Theodore Alois Buckley. New York. Harper & Brothers.
1863.
Krenkel, Werner A. “Horace’s Approach to Satire.” Arethusa 5, no. 1 (1972): 7–16.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/26307003.
Wonder, Stevie. “Living For The City.” Spotify
Who, The. “Baba O’Riley.” Spotify
Simone, Nina. “I Wish I knew How It Feels to Be Free.” Spotify
Reed, Lou. “Waiting for My Man,” Spotify
Russell, Mark, et al. Prez. DC Comics, 2016.
Smiths, The. “How Soon is Now?” Spotify
Sterne, Laurence, Ed. Melvyn New. A Sentimental Journey and Continuation of the Bramine's Journal: With Related Texts
Terdiman, Richard. Review of Counter-Humorists: Strategies of Ideological Critique in Marx and Flaubert, by Gustave Flaubert, Société des Études Littéraires françaises, Karl Marx, and Ben Fowkes.
Diacritics 9, no. 3 (1979): 18–32. https://doi.org/10.2307/464807.
`Voltaire. “Candide.” The Project Gutenberg EBook of Candide, by Voltaire., 1759, www.gutenberg.org/files/19942/19942-h/19942-h.htm.
Runways, The. “Cherry Bomb” Spotify