On Sarcasm as Pseudo-Bravado
Men aren't raised to be brave—they're raised to deny their cowardliness, with force or more often sarcasm if necessary.
The craven retreat into sarcasm by cowards is why sarcasm is no longer very funny anymore and becoming less funnier by the day.
Sarcasm is now the zeitgeist. Everything that happens is fodder for the next laugh. Nothing can be taken seriously anymore. There will always be someone waiting around, needing to feed on the irony of the situation like an attention-starved buzzard.
The desert of the real is big buzzard country.
In an earlier life, I imagined myself one day becoming a comedy writer. I thought that if there was anything I was definitely born to do, it was delivering deadpan. But then I grew up and realized that deadpan isn’t itself funny; it’s funny because of the stark contrast between a sardonic character and everyone else around them.
In a sitcom, the irony is built up by an ensemble over three acts and each opportunity to pierce that tension with a joke is cathartic and appreciated by the audience. But as soon as everyone on the show becomes the sardonic asshole, the show loses its quirky charm and becomes quickly a weird exercise in competitive cruelty (see: Seinfeld, It’s Always Sunny, etc.). Few women I know want to live in the comedic universe created on these shows. And yet here we are—big buzzard country.
Still, sarcasm and comedy are still important to me. I think they can be revolutionary. But only in specific contexts. First, the joke has to work. Sarcasm lands when the ironic tension of a situation has been building to such a degree that when a well-timed snarky comment lands against it, it releases pressure like some kind of social orgasm. A biting insult delivered against power with perfect comedic timing in front of the right audience can in fact reveal that the Emperor is wearing no clothes, that the system is violent in its absurdity, that we should man the barricades and sharpen the people’s blade. But that exact confluence of timing, appropriateness, wit, courage, and audience—namely context—is rare. Few of us have such power to manipulate our situations in such a way to make sarcasm zing.
But the magic of writing comedy is that you actually can control the situation. As a writer, you build up that tension by crafting a scene and winding up your characters and having them go at each other. The comedic writer is in that way a god whose only heaven is landing a punchline.
Consider the character Chandler in the television show Friends. Is Chandler actually a funny character or is the show set up in such a way that he always appears to be funny? Right, Friends is a conspiracy. His character exists only to fart out comedic relief, at a hit rate of about three or four quips per episode. Friends is written in such a specific way to have him succeed as the comedic gravity of the show.
In that way, the power to situate is the real power of comedy. We the viewer concede the situation to the writers of a sitcom in order to be entertained. We concede to their framing of the situation. We let them play god.
So here’s where things get hairy. Comedy is located in the situation. But someone trying to control the situation for the sake of making comedy is not a comedian but a petty tyrant. Years of watching white men being centered in situational comedy and podcasts have entrained so many young white men to believe that their rightful place is also at the comedic gravity of every situation. They feel entitled to the joke. Nevermind that real life is not being set up for a punchline. Not everything is meant to be funny.
Now there is an insufferable surfeit of white men trying to nail as many sarcastic zingers as they possibly can in any conversation they have, as though we were all living out our lives in their audition reel. Their impulsive need to land a joke overrides the need for the group to cohere, to bond, to communicate with genuine emotion and sincerity.
Seizing a scene and capturing attention unexpectedly in the right context to make a political statement can be brave. This is obviously the goal of situationist activists. But some people have a near-pathological need to exercise situational power wherever they can get away with it.
Comedy is revolutionary when it is speaking truth to power; a firehouse of banal truths sprayed on everyone all the time is just wasting water.
For some (many) people, the goal of providing snarky commentary is not about saying anything important or relevant. There is really no higher art to it, no deeper purpose. The point of all this discourse is not about providing insight or clarity, a way of cutting through the noise and nonsense. It’s now too often now a means to a lesser end, a cavalier way of relating to the political situation, not as an activist but as broadcaster does, as an opportunity to capture more attention.
There’s no better world to be won, just larger market share to gain.