Behead the Prophet

The phrase "punk in spirit" has become a cliche, which means we now know what's true and what's untrue about it. It's true insofar as it nails a worldview, one which can be roughly described as "gleefully pissing people off from an assumed position of weakness." This used to be associated with the word "rock," but then actual rock music got too big and unwieldy. Punk did the world the favor of staying pretty much what it was from the start, and so it can still be used to describe this attitude without conjuring things rock now does like "self-seriousness," "what your parents listen to," and "Journey." The "punk" attitude is, and has been (thanks, Greil Marcus!) evident in any number of artistic, social, and political endeavors throughout the ages, and so a term we can use to more properly categorize those things, and presumably to make it easier for others to adopt that worldview, is to be applauded.

At the same time, punk is still a definite genre of music that you can listen to--a genre featuring songs with the name of the genre in the lyrics, which is a pretty good sign the genre is well-defined--and so while you can argue that, say, Beethoven was "punk in spirit"[1], his music did not prominently feature electric guitars playing two strings in the interval of a fifth in an eighth-note pattern with drums playing a straight 4/4 rhythm with kick on the 1 and 3 and snare on the 2 and 4 and electric bass playing eighth notes in the root of the chord and a singer yowling about unfairness.[2] So calling something or someone "punk in spirit" requires ignoring the art, since the art isn't usually punk, and focusing entirely on social concerns[3], or else looking like a dingus. Alternately, because "punk in spirit" has a positive connotation, it gets planted on things as a way of not just saying "this is good," but what looks punk is merely cluelessness, or stupidity, or jerkiness. You can be an asshole and be punk in spirit, but you can't just be an asshole.

If this has been helpful, then, what other genre offshoots might be useful in ordering the world? Punk itself offers some alluring possibilities, and indeed, a number of its descendents have already staked their claim to a sensibility above and beyond their songs: straightedge, emo, indie. Ah, but what about punk's poor retarded brother? What about hardcore?

The hardcore sensibility is nowhere near as attractive as punk. Hardcore is punk played as quickly as possible, with a speed that kills nuance and anything that was fun or lighthearted, making something that could be about disgust or love or anger or confusion or joy into something consisting solely of rage and violence. In this sense, the most hardcore thing on the planet is Dick Cheney, but something else springs to mind. Sarah Silverman.

In her past work and on her new show, Sarah Silverman has been primarily known for saying things that offend people. Please note that this is different from "being offensive": she was chided for saying "chink" on a talk show, and Joe Franklin sued her for saying "Joe Franklin raped me." She was clearly trying to be offensive when she did these things, but she actually succeeded in demonstrably offending people. Being offensive is not the only thing that she does (she also makes fun of privileged white people by portraying one utterly oblivious to her status as such, without ever breaking character), but it's at the core, and this seems hardcore in spirit to me. Punk was certainly offensive at times, but while it did things that were seen as abnormal, it rarely did things that were actually taboo, except as superficial trappings (i.e. early punk's whole Nazi fixation). Punk is passive in its repulsion--I am wearing spikes, if you get near me you may get poked. But hardcore is active: you are at this show and I am going to punch you in the face. But maybe you like getting punched in the face. Maybe you like seeing a hot girl say "chink." It's not just hardcore-punk in spirit, it's hardcore-porn, too. Both provide an illicit thrill by gleefully depicting the forbidden and readily admitting that this is what they are doing, and Silverman does a good job on her show of drawing your gaze and arousing your prurient interest in the way many TV shows do, but then punishing you for that, repulsing you and throwing you back out. In both porn and comedy, there's a certain pleasure to that.

Not too much pleasure, though. I think that if you laugh at everything Sarah Silverman says you're probably a bad person, and that seems intentional. You're being baited, allowed to see exactly what it is you will and won't laugh at. From the point of view of a TV program, this doesn't seem to make sense. Why would you want to include jokes that only a sociopath would enjoy? But from a hardcore perspective, it's only natural. Hardcore is about lashing out at a corrupt world through self-mortification, taking every opportunity to inflict pain because it's the only way of getting out the anger you feel inside. It springs from the assumption that everything, including you and me, is fucked up, and the only reason people don't say fucked-up things is because they're unable to admit how fucked-up they are, so to come clean about your own complicity in the world's debased state is to let fly with all the fucked-upedness that's inside you. "We're all racists, at least I'm being honest about it." Where punk offers inclusion for anyone abnormal (the spikes are for sale!), hardcore wants to restrict, and having seen the problem punk had in doing this, it chose to express its sensibility in such an extreme way that only those who truly identify it will take it on. There are no part-time hardcore punks. Watching The Sarah Silverman Program is like watching a pit from a distance: you're safe, and it's interesting, but those people in there are sure beating the fuck out of each other.

If it's hardcore in spirit, though, what is it in action? What's the name for what's being done? The obvious one is "transgression," but, almost exactly like "punk in spirit," that's problematic, because it has such a highly positive connotation. MLK transgressed against the mores of white society; Joan of Arc transgressed against sexism; even fucking car commercials tell you to transgress now.

This wouldn't be as big a problem if transgression weren't so easy. For instance, I could go right now and poop in my sink. That would certainly be transgressive, since I'm not supposed to. Lord knows my girlfriend would be displeased.[4] But it wouldn't mean anything, and it wouldn't accomplish anything other than filling my sink up with poop.[5] There are lots of rules and conventions, because there have to be, and you can always pick one and transgress against it. But it will almost certainly be unimportant, and since transgression is supposed to mean something, what do you call pooping in a sink?

This is even a problem with transgressors who have movies made about them. According to Quills, the Marquis de Sade was a champion of free speech, but if you actually read what he wrote, he just seems like a pervy spectrum kid. He didn't seem to be trying to accomplish anything with his smut, he just seemed to really, really enjoy writing about fucking. Over and over and over again. To the point of tedium.

All of which is a long way of saying that I'm ducking the question and going with "conservative" instead.[6] Why conservative? Well, certainly it's difficult to think of a musical genre more conservative than hardcore punk. While punk has actually changed its sound to a certain degree, from the Ramones to the Sex Pistols to California punk, hardcore hasn't. You pick up a random hardcore album from 2006 and it will sound exactly like a random hardcore album from 1996. Certainly hardcore has spawned productive offshoots, like sludge and emocore, but those were created specifically because hardcore as a genre couldn't accommodate any changes, and that's the definition of conservative. (Which is why non-teenagers still involved with hardcore are so creepy, as Jessica Hopper has pointed out.)

So is Sarah Silverman conservative? Ah, there's the debate. Because you will be uncomfortable with something she says unless you're a bad person, and because she doesn’t come out and tell you that she's making fun of middle-class white people by portraying such a deadly caricature of one, people think that she's the kind of conservative who's "punk in spirit," i.e. the ones who are holding a "find the illegal immigrant" game at NYU right now. Saying these offensive things, the theory goes, doesn't point out people's prejudices, but simply reinforces them, while in the process hurting people. The ol' laughing-at or laughing-with. The problem, though, doesn't seem to be what she's doing so much as the nature of comedy itself.

A deadly serious, violent thing like hardcore gets translated into playful, light comedy because in both, lies are not allowed. In comedy, the impulse is always to mock that which you think to be untrue, and so if someone gives you an untrue thing to say, you'll either mock it or give an unconvincing performance. And since professional comedians insist that the only purpose of comedy is to be funny, then lying is bad comedy.

This presents a problem to deal with. Comedy says it's not interested in meaning, but that's what we deal with as critics. By focusing purely on aesthetics, i.e. the laugh, it walls itself off from certain dangerous criticisms--i.e. it doesn't matter if something is offensive unless it's so offensive it's not funny--instead of addressing them and dealing with them, as I think it could. But it regards critical acceptance as failure, because that means you've followed the rules. This can be result in a richly rewarding constant negotiation between pleasure and repulsion, but it can also mean stagnation. And comedy right now does feel a little conservative.

Nowhere is it more so, though, than Fox News' new Daily Show rip-off. It's called The Half Hour News Hour, and, to continue with the musical metaphors, it is undoubtedly Christian rock. Both seek to appeal to a particular segment of the population by taking something popular and making it accessible to that population, while missing the point that their sources weren't seeking to appeal to a particular segment of the population, they were seeking to be good. And naturally, it's not. Because it imposes limitations on the content--rather than the form, as genres do--it feels half-baked, like it's not telling us something. Like it's lying, in other words, and insofar as they seem to be consciously refusing to make possible jokes about Republicans, they are. This is one time when comedy's laughs-for-laughs-sake dictum seems to justify itself.

The unavoidable relationship of hardcore and conservative is one of the hobgoblins of politics. The people who most fully embody a worldview are thought to be the extremists, but extremists are also the least likely to change their minds or compromise, and democratic politics can't happen without those things; if everyone was pure in their beliefs, nothing would get done. Comedy is said to be apolitical because it doesn't have a pure belief system, but if that's true, then it functions in the center, and that's where politics happens. From this perspective, going hardcore, as Sarah Silverman does, is a radical act, but like most radical acts, if it keeps happening, it'll just become conservative again. It's a problem, and while I'm sure comedy will deal with it, I can't help but wonder how. Hopefully not through moshing.

[1] He wasn't; he was romantic, which is a whole different thing. In fact, the difference between punk and romantic is pretty much the definition of punk.
[2] Well, except for his oft-overlooked operetta, "Fuck You, Dad."
[3] Dada/situationism/Fluxus was art about social context, but when you're discussing the punk aspects of them you don't really discuss the aesthetics of Duchamp's readymades or do a textual analysis of Tzarza's poetry.
[4] If also horribly amused.
[5] This is literally what Rage Against the Machine have accomplished with their transgression.
[6] For another take, consult the Clark Puppy-Punching Doctrine.

Labels: comedy, punk, Sarah Silverman, TV

posted by Mike B. @ 12:14 AM 16 Comments