Summer Closure/Ricky and Lenny

This is the last post before the Passage shutters for the summer, and as is traditional, it closes with a culturally-relevant topic.  Thanks to all, and see you on September 6!

It was only after I watched Ricky Gervais' Netflix comedy special, "Supernature" that I read the protests from various trans rights organizations, charging that his show is disrespectful, despicable and harmful towards transexuals. Some called for Netflix to remove the performance.

I sighed, because since I discovered Lenny Bruce in the '60s,  I have viewed socially-critical humour not solely as "the exercise of free speech", or "art"— but as a key contributor to critical thinking skills. The genre, in both performance and print, invites us to question self-righteousness. It reveals repression, the conformist agenda of certain institutions, and our hang ups.  

You can titrate your dose, though to entirely avoid this genre is to sidestep consideration of the human condition. Some 'provocative' comics are simplistic panderers with no substance, but when humour-laced social criticism is delivered with intelligence and insight, there is little as bracing.

In his live performance, Gervais' subjects include gays; trans persons; little people; his family and childhood friends; paedophiles; God in creation mode; cats, dogs, and himself naked in his doctor's office.  

Not everything works; some jokes are juvenile. I was reminded of a friend's four year old son who would shout "Underpants!" and collapse laughing. The #1 inflammable topic, transwomen who have retained their genitals, will date faster than a Netflix "New and Popular" list.  Gervais, I suspect, cares little about this matter personally. A pro has a built in Offense-O-Meter and knows exactly how hot his topic is.

He has a "Why am I strapped to this joke?" look at times—but wades in anyway about class, sexual preference, gender, nature vs. nurture, his weight, the ways we show affection other than hugging, and Hitler (in the context of time travel, a surrealist set up).

After the show Gervais goes home, or as he admitted, "Well... to a mansion." Bruce did not; he was broke thanks to legal bills and cancelled gigs.

Lenny Bruce ca. 1960

If Lenny Bruce was the gold standard, Ricky Gervais is but a silver-plated heir. He's neither as inventive as Eddie Izzard at her best, nor as agile as Stephen Colbert.

Well into the hour-long show, Gervais says, "In real life, of course, I support trans rights... I support all human rights, and trans rights are human rights." 

Lenny would never have printed himself a hall pass. The Lenny Bruce character in "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" is a defanged caricature of the brilliant, angry, untameable Bruce, whose jazz-riff monologues inspired generations of comics. (Bruce's official website, which includes videos, is here.)

His attitude toward the government censors in his audience was, "I'm going for it, up yours", which ultimately bankrupted him and fuelled his addiction to its fatal outcome. 

Such performers present the absurdity and inconsistency of the times, reveal our hypocrisies and dilemmas. Some filter their criticism though a soft lens—most of George Carlin's routines could be played in a dentist's office—but the majority of popular standup comics today "work blue", with explicit language and themes meant—no, constructed—to pack clubs and bag those lucrative TV specials. 

The language that got Bruce arrested multiple times in the '60s is now heard nightly on American TV; in one episode of "Bosch: Legacy", Mimi Rogers, playing the lawyer Honey ("Money") Chandler, used every word Bruce was busted for—in two brief sentences.

Many are capable of both modes. Gervais has a sweeter side, shown in his Netflix series, "After Life", in which his quirky character sidesteps political-correctness alarms, unless a viewer resents the skewering of the caddish man who mistreats Gervais' colleague on a dinner date, or the gentle mocking of a lovelorn postal worker. He has written a series that offers some original observations about bereavement, community and diversity.

The charge that Gervais has shown deep disrespect to the trans community warrants a spin of the Kinks classic, "Lola", with it's slyly tolerant lyrics: "Girls will be boys and boys will be girls/It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world except for Lola...". As Bruce said, "Who's to say what's 'normal'?" 

"Supernature" waves a red flag in front of hyper-correct gender politics, but Gervais does not target real-life individuals. (For that, catch Eddie Izzard describing an encounter in a rowboat between Margaret Thatcher and an amorous General Pinochet. I nearly passed out from laughing.) Gervais, in contrast, tried to soft-pedal his trans-themed material by opening with a definition of "irony", which landed as an awkward attempt to pre-empt criticism.

Gervais wrapped the show by saying, "Live your best life. Use your preferred pronoun..." 

The rest of that benediction is not printed here but there is a punch line, because that's a comic's deepest desire, to land the laugh.

At the end of this week, comments will be disabled for the summer closure.