08-11-2022, 10:59 AM
The only Missionary comedian that qualifies as a household name is W. C. Fields. Maybe that is because he had an extensive career in movies, and comedy wasn't so big in the movies unless slapstick in the early days. The Lost had some comedians -- Laurel and Hardy, Fanny Brice, Abbott and Costello, the Marx brothers, George Burns, Harold Lloyd, Mae West, Jack Benny, and Charlie Chaplin, among others. It could also be that keeping some recognition in comedy beyond one's demise depended upon motion pictures. I had heard that the motion picture code ensured that the raunchy stuff in vaudeville could never reach the mass audiences of the cinema and have a legacy that outlasted their audiences. Vaudeville would be much of the model for televised entertainment, and initially that went in accordance with a code similar to that of the movie industry.
If anyone remembers TV from the 1970's or earlier one remembers this this device, which appeared on all channels:
![[Image: 150px-Sealofgoodpractice.jpg]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0a/Sealofgoodpractice.jpg/150px-Sealofgoodpractice.jpg)
What was "good practice"? It meant that one was going to never see anything considered vile at the time, like sex or nudity; mockery of religious sensibilities; or anything that violated 'patriotic' standards. Pressures from advertisers ensured that criticism of the products of capitalism were generally to be avoided. Raunchy comedy was to be kept on the more free-for-all stage, as with Foster Brooks, Red Foxx, or George Carlin until things opened up. The raunchy stuff of any Lost comedians would not reach the Big Screen until the 1960's, by which time those comedians were retired, or the airwaves until the 1970's. The unrecorded stage and club acts that were raunchy died about the same time as their clientele.
Abbott and Costello did get into the movies because they could clean up their acts, unlike many of their contemporaries. The Lost comedians whose comedy depended upon dirty words or shady behavior could not make the Big Screen until they were too old to do comedy. Comedy is effective only when one has the timing, and timing seems to be something that fades at most in one's mid-seventies. The great Silent comedians are either dead or they are no longer doing credible comedy. Once-great figures of comedy who did reach old age, like Groucho Marx, Bud Abbott, Bob Hope, Phil Silvers, Lucille Ball, Andy Griffith, Carol Burnett, John Cleese, and Woody Allen either retired or went in some other direction.
It could also be that the post-WWII world fostered a cult of efficiency and groupthink that had to be mocked. The Bomb created its own absurdity of a technological wonder that could obliterate billions and ravage what many people thought necessary for comfortable living. You can laugh; you can cry; or you can get angry. Which do you think is healthier? I can imagine a therapist telling a client "watch an episode of some comic program and call me in the morning". We need comedy to keep us from getting stuffy.
Raunchy comedy is possible at all times, and even if the movie studios and broadcast TV (as opposed to cable) refused to air it or make it available in cinemas, it is now easy to find and (at times) disseminate. We have long had clowns and jesters, and they remain in perhaps more novel forms. I am tempted to believe that with their blandness, public prudery, manifold instances of parvenu behavior, and cults of efficiency that Civic/Hero archetypes are the easiest to spoof once they normalize their roles once they have completed their youthful stage of inimitable heroism.
If anyone remembers TV from the 1970's or earlier one remembers this this device, which appeared on all channels:
What was "good practice"? It meant that one was going to never see anything considered vile at the time, like sex or nudity; mockery of religious sensibilities; or anything that violated 'patriotic' standards. Pressures from advertisers ensured that criticism of the products of capitalism were generally to be avoided. Raunchy comedy was to be kept on the more free-for-all stage, as with Foster Brooks, Red Foxx, or George Carlin until things opened up. The raunchy stuff of any Lost comedians would not reach the Big Screen until the 1960's, by which time those comedians were retired, or the airwaves until the 1970's. The unrecorded stage and club acts that were raunchy died about the same time as their clientele.
Abbott and Costello did get into the movies because they could clean up their acts, unlike many of their contemporaries. The Lost comedians whose comedy depended upon dirty words or shady behavior could not make the Big Screen until they were too old to do comedy. Comedy is effective only when one has the timing, and timing seems to be something that fades at most in one's mid-seventies. The great Silent comedians are either dead or they are no longer doing credible comedy. Once-great figures of comedy who did reach old age, like Groucho Marx, Bud Abbott, Bob Hope, Phil Silvers, Lucille Ball, Andy Griffith, Carol Burnett, John Cleese, and Woody Allen either retired or went in some other direction.
It could also be that the post-WWII world fostered a cult of efficiency and groupthink that had to be mocked. The Bomb created its own absurdity of a technological wonder that could obliterate billions and ravage what many people thought necessary for comfortable living. You can laugh; you can cry; or you can get angry. Which do you think is healthier? I can imagine a therapist telling a client "watch an episode of some comic program and call me in the morning". We need comedy to keep us from getting stuffy.
Raunchy comedy is possible at all times, and even if the movie studios and broadcast TV (as opposed to cable) refused to air it or make it available in cinemas, it is now easy to find and (at times) disseminate. We have long had clowns and jesters, and they remain in perhaps more novel forms. I am tempted to believe that with their blandness, public prudery, manifold instances of parvenu behavior, and cults of efficiency that Civic/Hero archetypes are the easiest to spoof once they normalize their roles once they have completed their youthful stage of inimitable heroism.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.