The Comedy



That Nobody
Laughed At

It has been said that it is very difficult for a comedy to be nominated by, let alone receive an Oscar from, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Comedy, by its very nature, isn’t taken as seriously as drama. Irony can be a powerful device in either genre. But when a film, comedic in its casting, is marketed as a serious drama… ahhh, that’s doubly ironic!

There can be little disagreement that realism in storytelling, enhanced by refinements in film handling, optics and special effects is remarkably evident when, a film from any earlier decade is compared to the most contemporary release. It would seem that the *Academy* has been around long enough to be capable of critiquing the artistic aspect of the product with the same degree of logical consistency as the scientific aspect of filmmaking. Some big-budget, star-packed movies have been critically panned, and roundly neglected by the Academy, due to a lack of crucial artistic criteria such as pacing and plausibility. Two that come to mind: Ishtar and Waterworld.

But what happens when the politics of the film industry, collides with the social insanity of Political Correctness? Are the Hollywood Pop Culture Engineers really that megalomaniac, as to believe that reality can be altered by the mere perception of reality? Or is moviemaking the proof that Existential reality is only a construct in each mind? Is that what we’re doing? Pushing the envelope of Relativism via fantasy, until the entire population goes insane, and can’t tell the difference between virtual reality and reality?

Reliance on passive entertainment has proliferated proportionately to the discretionary time afforded by modernization. Ask the common man what appliance he can’t do without in the home, and the most popular answer is, "The TV." In true Leni Riefenstahl homage, television has also become the means of controlling politics, and thus, every important aspect of human life. Now THAT’S a human stain! When Marshall McLuhan proclaimed that the medium is the message, he unified philosophy and pop culture. It’s taken some time for the plot to evolve, but Shakespeare’s adage that all the world’s a stage is ever more apparent. Now that pop culture has itself become a parody, how much longer can comics or dramatists parody a parody?

Let’s compare and contrast, The Jerk and The Human Stain. In each film, a white guy plays the son of a black mother and a black father. In The Jerk, which is billed and scripted as a comedy, Navin Johnson (played by Steve Martin) is the obviously adopted son, raised by black sharecroppers, who doesn’t realize that he’s either adopted or white. At the start of The Human Stain, Coleman Silk knows he’s black, but we as the audience are only made aware of that fact gradually as the film progresses. We are asked to suspend our recognition of the actor, Anthony Hopkins, and attempt to believe the character that he plays is black. Now, The Human Stain is not meant to be a comedy, but it is just as comically absurd as The Jerk. In The Jerk, racial stereotypes are juxtaposed, and traits are lampooned, to encourage us to laugh at ourselves for not recognizing the overriding similarities between the races. With freaky but preachy casting, The Human Stain wants us to irrationally ignore the true physical differences of the races, in order to bludgeon the audience with guilt. No one is safe from the onslaught. Blacks are asked to examine their consciences for the times they’ve wished they were an indistinguishable part of the majority. If it’s human nature to want to belong - to fit in – in order to avoid peer rejection for differences within the group to which one aspires, the filmmaker’s intended guilt is an unreasonable call to reject one’s own human nature. Not every person succumbs to the outright denial of one’s roots, or one’s immediate family, in order to be an economic or a social climber. But The Human Stain wants you to feel guilty for even thinking about it. Just like irrational laws, which portend to punish "hate crimes," the underlying philosophy here is that society is somehow capable of policing thought.

With poignant irony, Anthony Hopkins as the character Coleman Silk, is dismissed from his college teaching position for referring to a couple chronic class-cutters as "spooks" due to their illusive nature. It turns out that the virtually unknown students are both black, and make formal complaint, accusing Dean Silk of using racial slurs. Not only is Silk consequently fired from the college he helped build, a black professor/friend whom he was responsible for hiring, refuses to attest to his lack of prejudice or racial discrimination. In addition, Silk’s wife dies as a result of stress from the trumped-up accusation, leaving him without position or spouse. Can you say heavy-handed morality play? Charles Dickens pales by comparison.

A good message: that racial discrimination is wrong, and undermines the humanity of both the racists, and those being discriminated against - is therefore perverted. The Human Stain takes a token jab at the fallacy of Political Correctness in the script, while implicitly enforcing PC via casting. The actors in the roles of Coleman’s parents visibly have traits of the black race. Though both his siblings also are unmistakably black, the actor playing the young Coleman appears to have no black racial characteristics. Because all of these actors are virtual unknowns, the flashback portions of the screenplay hold together as story driven. The established fame of Sir Anthony Hopkins however, placed in the role of the mature Coleman Silk, refuses to allow that suspension of belief. The effect, desired or not, is a throwback to Elizabethan theatre, where even the female roles were played by male actors. That irony, in itself, reveals the inefficacy and insulting nature of PC manipulation. In an age where storytelling strives to be increasingly more realistic, this casting decision was a glaring faux pas. We were asked to suspend the data our senses conveyed, as if mere reality wouldn’t have made the point strongly enough. In the real world, it’s a prescription for neurosis. Instead of this film being a vehicle to promote racial harmony, as I’m sure it’s producers intended, it successfully perpetuated the uneasy tension that comes from insisting that we’re indistinguishable from each other.

Someone very wise once said, that we should not judge each other by the [real] differences in the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.

Another area of Liberal thinking, which insists we ignore the data from our own senses, is the neurosis-producing belief that males and females are exactly the same. The GLBT agenda would even like us to believe that gender is frivolous and arbitrary. A perpetual stirring of both the Civil Rights Movement and the Feminist Movement is inherently doomed to produce dissatisfaction. Lack of forgiveness, and a nurtured bitterness, ensures that the grass on the other side of the fence, though seemingly greener, will ultimately NEVER be green enough. Lo and behold, the contest to replace the U.S. President has all of these PC roles inhabited by the candidates.

America is poised to heal the institutionalized tension between black and white citizens. Oprah’s endorsement of black over female indicates much more than one woman’s preference. It acknowledges a priority among priorities. We have reached the moment of history where a black at the helm of this Republic could heal much more than racial discord. But the man for this occasion is not Barack Obama.

It is Alan Keyes.

The hope to be generated in a truly Post-Racial America is one that respects all aspects of humanity. Alan Keyes, as yet unacknowledged and un-embraced by the majority of the traditionally liberal black community, would relegate race for America where it justly belongs in the greater scheme of the world… to one aspect of nature. The content of the character of the man, Alan Keyes, is the reason he should be President. The fact that he’s blacker than Barack Obama, is yet another irony that should not be ignored. The fact that the media, Christian groups, and almost everyone else, have intentionally ignored Alan Keyes as a candidate in 2008, is the BIGGEST IRONY OF ALL, considering that race isn’t supposed to matter. Apparently, it matters if a black is conservative, but not if he’s liberal.

http://www.alankeyes.com/

The Crisis of the Republic