Comedy in hard times: a love letter to my enemy
The latter part of this year has been hard for me. The hardest since I last had cancer treatment. My already sad immune system got sadder after finally getting you-know-what. Going through hard times tends to make me hate comedy. I don’t want to laugh; I want to be miserable! Comedy seems like salt in the wound. Not only do I not want to be anywhere near it, I really, deeply HATE it. Or at least I try to, but it always finds me. It seems to know that when I least want it; I need it most. This is my love letter to my enemy. Here’s to better luck in the new year, everyone.
Comedy isn’t for happy people. Comedy is for the miserable. The hopeless. Comedy is for the people who don’t have it in them anymore to feel good on their own power. They need somebody else to reach out their ridiculous, wonderful, mighty hand and pull them out of despair for just a few seconds; a few minutes, an hour. Every comedian alive today is someone who, without comedy, almost certainly wouldn’t be.
Comedy is essential. It is an awesome power that has been within our grasp for as long as human beings have been aware of one another. As sure as you’re reading this sentence, the very first fire, proudly started by the first chest-beating, boastful hominid, had to have gone out in a puff of smoke, and there’s no way on Frances McDormand’s green earth that hominid wasn’t taken completely by surprise in full view of the rest of the tribe.
The USO isn’t there to entertain the troops. The USO is there to remind the soldiers what they’re fighting for. What makes life worth living. Comedy is and always has been everywhere. People got through the hard times of the collapse of the Soviet Union by trading funny stories in crumbling cities and villages. Brilliant comedy came out of the Great Depression. Prisoners made dark jokes born of pain and hopelessness during the holocaust.
Comedy has been here as long as humans have been alive; and it will be here long after we’re gone, because we value it so highly we even sent it into space. A recording of Carl Sagan laughing was included on the Voyager golden record, in hopes it would be played by extraterrestrial life, should they ever encounter it. That’s our representation of the expression of human emotion. Not crying. Not threatening. Not yelling. Laughing.
Comedy, as a profession, is heartbreaking. It is exhausting. It is sacrifice. A comedian has a job to do; whether she’s tired, whether she’s sick, whether she’s grieving, whether she’s terrified. I’m awestruck and incredibly grateful to be a part of it. Comedy is sacred. Society can disagree on ideals. The acceptance of truth can come and go. Progress and regression can alternate until we either realize our dreams or wipe ourselves out, but all the while, one constant remains. If you don’t laugh, you cry. The show must go on.