Topical Guide 822
Mark Dorset
Humor: As a Weapon
At Home with the Glynns, Chapter 16:
“You are part of a grand tradition, you know. Well, perhaps grand is not the word. You are a fool—”
Andy tightened his grip.
“—that is, a clown—”
Andy twisted the man’s coat until he was choking.
“High praise! High praise!” the man squeaked. “You have made a mockery of them. You have made them appear ridiculous. They are ridiculous, of course, but they don’t always appear ridiculous to those who can’t see beyond the handsome uniforms they give themselves, their tidy grooming, their goose-step, their polished boots, but in your depiction of them, you leave no doubt about it—we see that they are ridiculous.”
Norman Manea, On Clowns: The Dictator and the Artist:
The artist cannot dignify officialdom by opposing it in a solemn fashion, because that would mean taking it too seriously and inadvertently reinforcing its authority, thus acknowledging that authority. He pushes the ridiculous to grotesque proportions, but artistically he creates . . . a surfeit of meanings. . . . In today’s rushed, confusing society in which everything mixes and is mixed up and destroyed, the ridiculous does run the risk of “swallowing up” art too. But the artist, even if he has been relegated to the position of a buffoon, tries to assume—even at the price of an apparent, momentary abnegation of the self—an ambiguous stance, to place himself on a shaky seesaw, to transform the loss into a later gain.
See also:
Humor: Shaggy Dog Story: The Three Rabbits TG 150; Pun: Extended or Epic Pun TG 150; Humor: “A Sense of Humor”: Value of TG 413; Humor: the Knack for Creating; Humorous: the Knack for Being; Eutrapelia TG 468; Parody TG 492; Ridiculous versus Ludicrous TG 807; Its Nature TG 820
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