Where Did the Fun Go?
The woke left has redefined our national perspective of fun and the things we enjoy.
One aspect of the last couple of years of pandemic and assault from the woke left is that it has redefined our national perspective of fun and the things we enjoy.
I've noticed many people, myself included, have just dropped things we once found enjoyable and have moved on to other things. The woke revolution has bifurcated society into those who revel in trivial silliness and those of us who have become even more serious than we were.
I think there is a thing best described as "serious fun", something we enjoy as a release from the seriousness, a bit of an oasis in a desert of real life's vicissitudes. We know it is fun and that fun is temporary.
As Vision told Voltron, "A thing isn't beautiful because it lasts."
The other side - the woke left - seems to believe that nothing is fun, everything must have a component of seriousness, it must speak to some sort of issue with serious import - the NFL and NBA can't just be about football and basketball, it has to fight racism or art can't just be enjoyed as art, it must be an expression representing some sort of social justice battle.
But what passes for seriousness for the wokesters is far from serious - most of the time it is simply idiotic.
These perspectives, these attempts to make fun into seriousness, simply destroy the restorative and regenerative value of fun.
As often is noted, the left ruins everything.
These are people who are only happy when they are unhappy or can make others unhappy.
Freaking killjoys.
But humans need fun. We need downtime when the weight of the world isn't on our shoulders. A few hours of fun here and there can make all the difference.
Back in 2018, I wrote that losing our sense of humor is something that seems unusual in American history – one of the interesting aspects of the most difficult and dangerous times in American history, wars- and particularly WWII, gave rise to great comedians, actors and musicians – Bob Hope, George Burns, Red Buttons, Red Skelton, Jack Benny, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, the Andrews Sisters, Vera Lynn, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Richard Burton, Kirk Douglas, Clark Cable, Audrey Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart – and Ronald Reagan to name a few…
Our entertainment industry has bought into the idea that they need to push the postmodernist agenda…and therein lies the problem. If everything is serious enough to be an issue, then nothing is funny. Many established comedians have stopped playing college venues due to this very fact – and as a result, the comedy institutions are producing young comedians who just aren’t funny, at least not to the majority of America.
Where are people like the original SNL cast, “The Not Ready For Prime-Time Players” – Laraine Newman, John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Garrett Morris, and Chevy Chase (even though Chevy Chase has turned into a bitter old man) or the original SCTV cast – John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Harold Ramis, and Dave Thomas? Where are comedians like Cheech and Chong, Richard Pryor, and Eddie Murphy?
Where is the new Mel Brooks – for Christ’s sake, this man made arguably the funniest movie of all time, Blazing Saddles, a movie based on lampooning racial stereotypes. He even made a movie called “The Producers”, the central plot of which revolved around putting on a Broadway musical titled “Springtime for Hitler”.
Can you even imagine a film like “Blazing Saddles” getting green lit by Hollywood today?
Never happen.
As I told one of my kids, when you succumb to the postmodernist idea that there are no objective standards, that truth is relative and that opinions are equal in weight to facts, it should come as no surprise that people will be offended by anything and everything can be construed to fit any narrative. It just so happens that most of the narratives today are negative and designed to punish.
This is not to say America doesn’t have serious problems – because it does – but the attention given to issues created by the social justice postmodernists is taking time away from working on the real issues and without humor, the relief needed to deal with the true seriousness is missing.
What we need is a healthy dose of MAFA – Make America Funny Again.
And we have to stop the wokescolds from interfering with our fun.