It occurs to me that my blog is not very funny. I don’t know why that is. In person, I attempt (and sometimes succeed at) being funny, using a sense of humor that makes its most hay by overstepping the boundaries of what society considers appropriate and acceptable, a humor based on an impolitic bluntness and a flaunting of social expectations; in a word, the humor of an asshole, tempered (I hope) by a recognition of my good will. While my sense of humor can sometimes lead to a gross misunderstanding, more often than not it leads to a confused moment followed by an outburst of laughter. I know that people who are not funny often mistake themselves by thinking they are, but I do not believe such is the case here; I am quite certain that I can be genuinely funny.
But you wouldn’t think it if you only knew me by my blog.
I write weird, passionate shit about politics, god, religion, and education (with a smattering of wandering critiques of films, books, comedians, musicians, television shows, etc.). I do not, however, seem to write anything particularly funny.
I am okay with that. There is a difference between me, the writer, and me, the person. The writer is part of me, but not all of me; nor do I need it to be.
Part of my job as a teacher is to help students discover and channel their *authorial* voice. There are two practical reasons for this. First, the language of academia is the language of authority; it recognizes and rewards confidence, clarity, and cohesion. If students are to be successful in academia, they must learn to read and write in its language.
Second, because the language of academia rewards confidence, clarity, and cohesion, discovering the ability to channel that language through one’s brain leads to increased self-confidence, intellectual clarity, and a sense of self-cohesion, the exact skills we want all children to develop as they grow into mature and responsible adults.
We look at the world and we realize that it’s not only academia that rewards self-confidence, but all of life in general; and we see that intellectual clarity is a universal value, respected by all people and all cultures; and we also see the destruction that can be wrought by persons who have no sense of themselves, no understanding of their neuroses or anxieties, and no capability to recognize the difference between healthy and unhealthy coping methods, and we all agree that self-cohesion and self-awareness are integral to a personally, professionally, and socially responsible life. Discovering and channeling one’s authorial voice is not just a practical skill; it’s a life skill.
There is more to life, however, than the authorial voice. There is also a voice that speaks the language of comedy.
Where the language of academia rewards confidence, clarity, and cohesion, the language of comedy rewards surprise, authenticity, and the unsought insight, a perspective on reality that shifts an audience ever so slightly to a greater understanding of an already agreed-upon objective truth — the ah-ha inside of the ha-ha.
While there are hundreds (if not thousands or tens of thousands) of geniuses who speak the language of academia, there have not been scores of geniuses who speak the language of comedy.
Louis C.K. is one of them.
I am not going to analyze that statement. If you don’t recognize the genius of Louis C.K.’s comedy, then you don’t understand the language of comedy, and any attempt I might make to translate it would do it a great disservice, like translating the Koran out of its original Arabic. It simply can’t be done; or at the very least, I am not the person to do it.
I will say that people whose opinions on the subject you ought to respect way more than mine agree with the sentiment that Louis C.K. is a comedic genius. If you don’t think so, I can only invite you to try again.
With that being said, I want to make a proposal.
I say this as a white, cis, heterosexual, 40-year-old man who makes significantly less than $100,000 a year but attempts to live a lifestyle in which that is not true (hence my financial debts). I say it as a man with a Master’s degree, a full-time job that he loves, and a family he could not feel more thankful for.
Speaking as that man, I say, “I want Louis C.K. to be let out of the box.”
Louis C.K. is a genius, as is Woody Allen, as is Jimmy Page, as was Martin Luther King, Jr., as was Ghandi, as was Picasso. I don’t believe their genius should give their transgressions a pass; they should be held accountable for their actions in both a legal and a moral sense. But I also believe that they should be allowed to speak in the language of their genius.
I don’t think Louis C.K. will defend himself in the court of public opinion. His transgressions, masturbatory as they were, stem from a place of shame and guilt, both of which are on adamant display throughout each and every one of his jokes. Louis C.K. has long since convicted himself of some moral crime whose penalty carries a sentence of life, and he will continue to maintain his confession and conviction in whatever future we eventually allow him to have.
I think it ought to be a future where he provides us with his genius’s perspective; as stained as it may be with our knowledge of his transgressionss, it is still a perspective worth having.
I think it is possible to seperate the comedy from the comedian, the art from the artist, the authorial voice from the person. There is a cliche in literary theory that tells us “The author is dead” — if one is to understand (or create) a text fully, one must believe that there is only the text, nothing but the text, and its author ought not matter. Following the cliche allows a wide range of interpretations on any given text, freeing the literary critic to partake in its creative process, not as an objective observer but as a subjective experience.
We ought to treat the language of any artform in the same way. If the author is dead, then the comedian should be as well.
I keep saying that Louis C.K.’s “genius” speaks in the language of comedy. The origin of the word “genius” lies in the conception of a seperate entity attending to another person’s body; the word “genius” quite literally means the presence of something other than the person who displays it. In other words, a person is not a genius, as much as a person *has* a genius, much as a person might have a *jinn*.
If Louis C.K.’s genius is just that, an entity seperate from the perverted, public-masturbating person whom also inhabits that body, we do ourselves a disservice by not allowing it to speak. We cut ourselves off from shifting our perspectives ever so slightly to a greater understanding of an already agreed-upon objective truth and stop ourselves from experiencing the geniune ah-ha to be found inside of a genius joke.
I value the perspective on life that Louis C.K.’s genius provided. I did not find myself in it as much as want myself to share the moral sensibility that fuels it, the one that finds so much of human nature (particularly one’s own) at fault. I appreciate the judgements it makes on how some of us — white men, in particular — live our lives in the 21st century in the United States. I appreciate the way it calls us — white men, in particular — to account.
If we were to let Louis C.K. out of the box, I do not think his genius would allow him to defend himself. I think it will lead him to attack, attack, and attack himself, like the masturbatory genius it is, but it will do it in a way that speaks to white males like me, calling us to stand and admit and attack our transgressions in a way that cuts to the quick.
I think it’s time for his genius to come back. I think both he and other white men need to have themselves a talk, and I think his genius can lead it: a blunt-spoken, funny, judgemental prick who loathes his body just enough to not care what anyone else around it thinks. His genius is the guilty, confessing preacher we need, and the guilty, confessing martyr some of us hope will come back, raised from the grave where we buried it, and once-again, as always, still alive.
We, as a society, deserve it.
And I say that in my best authorial voice, and in a way that wasn’t funny at all.