Killer Rabbits in Medieval Manuscripts: Why So Many Drawings in the Margins Depict Bunnies Going Bad

in Art, Books, Comedy, History | March 29th, 2019

In all the king­dom of nature, does any crea­ture threat­en us less than the gen­tle rab­bit? Though the ques­tion may sound entire­ly rhetor­i­cal today, our medieval ances­tors took it more seri­ous­ly — espe­cial­ly if they could read illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, and even more so if they drew in the mar­gins of those man­u­scripts them­selves. “Often, in medieval man­u­scripts’ mar­gin­a­lia we find odd images with all sorts of mon­sters, half man-beasts, mon­keys, and more,” writes Sexy Cod­i­col­o­gy’s Mar­jolein de Vos. “Even in reli­gious books the mar­gins some­times have draw­ings that sim­ply are mak­ing fun of monks, nuns and bish­ops.” And then there are the killer bun­nies.

Hunt­ing scenes, de Vos adds, also com­mon­ly appear in medieval mar­gin­a­lia, and “this usu­al­ly means that the bun­ny is the hunt­ed; how­ev­er, as we dis­cov­ered, often the illu­mi­na­tors decid­ed to change the roles around.”

Jon Kaneko-James explains fur­ther: “The usu­al imagery of the rab­bit in Medieval art is that of puri­ty and help­less­ness – that’s why some Medieval por­tray­als of Christ have mar­gin­al art por­tray­ing a ver­i­ta­ble pet­ting zoo of inno­cent, non­vi­o­lent, lit­tle white and brown bun­nies going about their busi­ness in a field.” But the cre­ators of this par­tic­u­lar type of humor­ous mar­gin­a­lia, known as drollery, saw things dif­fer­ent­ly.

“Drol­leries some­times also depict­ed comedic scenes, like a bar­ber with a wood­en leg (which, for rea­sons that escape me, was the height of medieval com­e­dy) or a man saw­ing a branch out from under him­self,” writes Kaneko-James.

This enjoy­ment of the “world turned upside down” pro­duced the drollery genre of “the rab­bit’s revenge,” one “often used to show the cow­ardice or stu­pid­i­ty of the per­son illus­trat­ed. We see this in the Mid­dle Eng­lish nick­name Stick­hare, a name for cow­ards” — and in all the draw­ings of “tough hunters cow­er­ing in the face of rab­bits with big sticks.”

Then, of course, we have the bun­nies mak­ing their attacks while mount­ed on snails, snail com­bats being “anoth­er pop­u­lar sta­ple of Drol­leries, with groups of peas­ants seen fight­ing snails with sticks, or sad­dling them and attempt­ing to ride them.”

Giv­en how often we denizens of the 21st cen­tu­ry have trou­ble get­ting humor from less than a cen­tu­ry ago, it feels sat­is­fy­ing indeed to laugh just as hard at these drol­leries as our medieval fore­bears must have — though many more of us sure­ly get to see them today, cir­cu­lat­ing as rapid­ly on social media as they did­n’t when con­fined to the pages of illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts owned only by wealthy indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions.

You can see more mar­gin­al scenes of the rab­bit’s revenge at Sexy Cod­i­col­o­gy, Colos­sal, and Kaneko-James’ blog. But one his­tor­i­cal ques­tion remains unan­swered: to what extent did they influ­ence that pil­lar of mod­ern cin­e­mat­ic com­e­dy, Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

The Aberdeen Bes­tiary, One of the Great Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts, Now Dig­i­tized in High Res­o­lu­tion & Made Avail­able Online

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

Explo­sive Cats Imag­ined in a Strange, 16th Cen­tu­ry Mil­i­tary Man­u­al

David Lynch Made a Dis­turb­ing Web Sit­com Called “Rab­bits”: It’s Now Used by Psy­chol­o­gists to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Cen­sor­ship Let­ter: We Want to Retain “Fart in Your Gen­er­al Direc­tion”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Archive of Animations/Cartoons of Ancient Greece & Rome: From the 1920s Through Today

in Animation, Comedy, Comics/Cartoons, History, Literature | March 22nd, 2019

Ancient Greece and Rome have pro­vid­ed fer­tile hunt­ing grounds for ani­mat­ed sub­ject mat­ter since the very incep­tion of the form.

So what if the results wind up doing lit­tle more than frol­ic in the pas­toral set­ting? Wit­ness 1930’s Play­ful Pan, above, which can basi­cal­ly be summed up as Sil­ly Sym­pho­ny in a toga (with a cute bear cub who looks a lot like Mick­ey Mouse and some flame play that pre­fig­ures The Sorcerer’s Appren­tice…)

Oth­ers are packed with his­to­ry, myth­ic nar­ra­tive, and peri­od details, though be fore­warned that not all are as visu­al­ly appeal­ing as Steve Simons’ Hoplites! Greeks at War, part of the Panoply Vase Ani­ma­tion Project.

Some series, such as the Aster­ix movies and Aesop and Son—a sta­ple of The Rocky and Bull­win­kle Show from 1959 to 1962—have been the gate­ways through which many his­to­ry lovers’ curios­i­ty was first roused.

(Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Ana­toly Petrov’s erot­ic shorts for Soyuz­mult­film may rouse oth­er, er, curiosi­ties, and are def­i­nite­ly NSFW.)

And then there are instant clas­sics like 2004’s It’s All Greek to Scoo­by in which “Shag­gy’s pur­chase of a mys­te­ri­ous amulet only serves to cause a pes­ter­ing archae­ol­o­gist and cen­taur to chase him.”  (Ye gods…)

Senior Lec­tur­er of Clas­si­cal and Mediter­ranean Stud­ies at Van­der­bilt, Chiara Sul­prizio, has col­lect­ed all of these and more on her blog, Ani­mat­ed Antiq­ui­ty.

Begin­ning with the 2‑minute frag­ment that’s all we have left of Win­sor McCay’s 1921 The Cen­taurs, Sul­prizio shares some of her favorite car­toon rep­re­sen­ta­tions of ancient Greece, Rome, and beyond. Her areas of pro­fes­sion­al spe­cial­iza­tion—gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty, Greek com­e­dy, and Roman satire—are well suit­ed to her cho­sen hob­by, and her com­men­tary dou­bles down on his­tor­i­cal con­text to include the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion.

The appear­ance of car­toon stars like Daffy Duck, Tom and Jer­ry, and Pop­eye fur­ther demon­strates this antique sub­ject matter’s stur­di­ness. TED-Ed and the BBC may view the genre as an excel­lent teach­ing tool, but there’s noth­ing stop­ping the ani­ma­tor from shoe­horn­ing some fab­ri­ca­tions in amongst the bux­om nymphs and buff glad­i­a­tors.

(Raise your hand if your moth­er ever sac­ri­ficed you on the altar to Spinachia, god­dess of spinach, in hopes that she might unleash a mush­room cloud of super-atom­ic pow­er in your puny bicep.)

You’ll find a num­ber of entries fea­tur­ing the work of Japan­ese and Russ­ian ani­ma­tors, includ­ing Ther­mae Romae, part of the jug­ger­naut that’s sprung from Mari Yamazaki’s pop­u­lar graph­ic nov­el series and Icarus and the Wise Men from the leg­endary Fyo­dor Khitruk, whose retelling of the myth sent a mes­sage about free­dom from the Sovi­et Union, cir­ca 1976.

Begin your decade-by-decade explo­rations of Chiara Sulprizio’s ani­mat­ed antiq­ui­ties here or sug­gest that a miss­ing favorite be added to the col­lec­tion. (We vote for this one!)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

18 Clas­sic Myths Explained with Ani­ma­tion: Pandora’s Box, Sisy­phus & More

An Ani­mat­ed Recon­struc­tion of Ancient Rome: Take A 30-Minute Stroll Through the City’s Vir­tu­al­ly-Recre­at­ed Streets

25 Ani­ma­tions of Great Lit­er­ary Works: From Pla­to, Dos­to­evsky & Dick­in­son, to Kaf­ka, Hem­ing­way & Brad­bury

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this April. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Cringe-Inducing Humor of The Office Explained with Philosophical Theories of Mind

in Comedy, Neuroscience, Photography, Television | March 8th, 2019

“I’m a friend first and a boss sec­ond,” says David Brent, mid­dle man­ag­er at the Slough branch of paper com­pa­ny Wern­ham-Hogg. “Prob­a­bly an enter­tain­er third.” Those of us who’ve watched the orig­i­nal British run of The Office — and espe­cial­ly those of us who still watch it reg­u­lar­ly — will remem­ber that and many oth­er of Bren­t’s pitiable dec­la­ra­tions besides. As por­trayed by the show’s co-cre­ator Ricky Ger­vais, Brent con­sti­tutes both The Office’s comedic and emo­tion­al core, at once a ful­ly real­ized char­ac­ter and some­one we’ve all known in real life. His dis­tinc­tive com­bi­na­tion of social incom­pe­tence and an aggres­sive des­per­a­tion to be liked pro­vokes in us not just laugh­ter but a more com­plex set of emo­tions as well, result­ing in one expres­sion above all oth­ers: the cringe.

“In David Brent, we have a char­ac­ter so invest­ed in the per­for­mance of him­self that he’s blocked his own access to oth­ers’ feel­ings.” So goes the analy­sis of Evan Puschak, a.k.a. the Nerd­writer, in his video inter­pret­ing the humor of The Office through philo­soph­i­cal the­o­ries of mind.

The elab­o­rate friend-boss-enter­tain­er song-and-dance Brent con­stant­ly puts on for his co-work­ers so occu­pies him that he lacks the abil­i­ty or even the incli­na­tion to have any sense of what they’re think­ing. “The irony is that Brent can’t see that a weak the­o­ry of mind always makes for a weak self-per­for­mance. You can’t brute force your pre­ferred per­son­al­i­ty onto anoth­er’s con­scious­ness: it takes two to build an iden­ti­ty.”

Cen­tral though Brent is to The Office, we laugh not just at what he says and does, but how the oth­er char­ac­ters (which Puschak places across a spec­trum of abil­i­ty to under­stand the minds of oth­ers) react — or fail to react — to what he says and does, how he reacts to their reac­tions, and so on. Mas­tery of the comedic effects of all this has kept the orig­i­nal Office effec­tive more than fif­teen years lat­er, though its effect may not be entire­ly plea­sur­able: “A lot of peo­ple say that cringe humor like this is hard to watch,” says Puschak, “but in the same way that under our con­fi­dence, in the­o­ry of mind, lies an anx­i­ety, I think that under our cring­ing there’s actu­al­ly a deep feel­ing of relief.” When Brent and oth­ers fail to con­nect, their “body lan­guage speaks in a way that is total­ly trans­par­ent: in that moment the embar­rass­ment is not only pal­pa­ble, it’s pal­pa­bly hon­est.” And it reminds us that — if we’re being hon­est — none of us are exact­ly mind-read­ers our­selves.

You can get the com­plete British run of The Office on Ama­zon here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ricky Ger­vais Presents “Learn Gui­tar with David Brent”

The Phi­los­o­phy of Bill Mur­ray: The Intel­lec­tu­al Foun­da­tions of His Comedic Per­sona

A Romp Through the Phi­los­o­phy of Mind: A Free Online Course from Oxford

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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John Cleese Revisits His 20 Years as an Ivy League Professor in His New Book, Professor at Large: The Cornell Years

in Books, Comedy | March 6th, 2019

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Paul Box­ley

It takes real intel­li­gence to suc­cess­ful­ly make dumb com­e­dy. John Cleese and his Mon­ty Python col­leagues are a pre­mi­um exam­ple. You can call sketch­es like the “Min­istry of Sil­ly Walks” and “Dead Par­rot” sur­re­al­ist, and they are com­pa­ra­ble to the absur­dist stunts favored by cer­tain ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry mod­ern artists. But you can also call them very smart kinds of stu­pid, a descrip­tion of some of the high­est forms of com­e­dy, I’d say, and one that applies to so much of Cleese’s best work, from the Pythons, to Fawl­ty Tow­ers, to A Fish Called Wan­da. We are moved by stu­pid­i­ty, Cleese believes, and silli­ness is the engine of good com­e­dy. “Some­times very, very sil­ly things,” he says in the inter­view with Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Press direc­tor Dean Smith below, “have the pow­er to touch us deeply.” Then he tells the old joke about a grasshop­per named Nor­man.

Is Cleese still fun­ny? Depends. Many lis­ten­ers of a recent BBC Radio 4 show found his act a lit­tle stale. He has also come off late­ly as a “clas­sic old man yelling at a cloud,” writes Fiona Sturges at The Guardian. (He called, sure­ly in jest, for the hang­ing of EU pres­i­dent Jean Claude Junck­er, for exam­ple, dur­ing the Brex­it cam­paign).

In cur­mud­geon­ly inter­views, he com­plains about hyper­sen­si­tiv­i­ty with exam­ples of jokes con­tem­po­rary audi­ences sim­ply don’t find amus­ing, or at least not com­ing from him. Cleese has railed about the evils of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, espe­cial­ly on col­lege cam­pus­es, while spend­ing the past 20 years as a “pro­fes­sor-at-large” on the pres­ti­gious cam­pus of Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, where he has deliv­ered “incred­i­bly pop­u­lar events and classes—including talks, work­shops, and an analy­sis of A Fish Called Wan­da and The Life of Bri­an.”

These appear­ances draw hun­dreds of peo­ple, and their enor­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty should offer Cleese some reas­sur­ance that he may not need to fear cen­sor­ship, and that his wit—while it might not be as well appre­ci­at­ed in today’s mass entertainment—still has plen­ty of cur­ren­cy in places where smart peo­ple gath­er. From sem­i­nars on script writ­ing to lec­tures on psy­chol­o­gy and human devel­op­ment, Cleese’s appear­ances at Cor­nell lead to riv­et­ing, some­times hilar­i­ous, and often con­tro­ver­sial con­ver­sa­tions.

In the episodes here from the Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Press pod­cast, you can hear Cleese’s full con­ver­sa­tion with Smith, part of the pro­mo­tion of his 2018 book Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years, in which he includes an inter­view with Princess Bride screen­writer William Gold­man, a lec­ture about cre­ativ­i­ty called “Hare Brain, Tor­toise Mind,” a dis­cus­sion of facial recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy, and a talk on group dynam­ics with busi­ness stu­dents and fac­ul­ty. Like Cleese’s mind, these lec­tures and dis­cus­sions range far and wide, demon­strat­ing, once again in his long career, that it takes real smarts to not only speak with ease on sev­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects, but to under­stand the mechan­ics of stu­pid­i­ty. You can pick up a copy of Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

John Cleese Explains the Brain — and the Plea­sures of DirecTV

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Monty Python’s Best Philosophy Sketches: “The Philosophers’ Football Match,” “Philosopher’s Drinking Song” & More

in Comedy, Philosophy | February 1st, 2019

From dead par­rots to The Mean­ing of Life, Mon­ty Python cov­ered a lot of ter­ri­to­ry. Edu­cat­ed at Oxford and Cam­bridge, the Pythons made a habit of weav­ing arcane intel­lec­tu­al ref­er­ences into the sil­li­est of sketch­es. A clas­sic exam­ple is “Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Con­clu­sion Vis­it Jean-Paul Sartre,” (above) from episode 27 of Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus.

The sketch fea­tures writ­ing part­ners John Cleese as Mrs. Premise and Gra­ham Chap­man as Mrs. Con­clu­sion, gab­bing away in a laun­derette about how best to put down a budgie. Mrs. Premise sug­gests flush­ing it down the loo. “Ooh! No!” protests Mrs. Con­clu­sion. “You should­n’t do that. No that’s dan­ger­ous. Yes, they breed in the sew­ers, and even­tu­al­ly you get evil-smelling flocks of huge soiled bud­gies fly­ing out of peo­ple’s lava­to­ries infring­ing their per­son­al free­dom.”

From there the con­ver­sa­tion veers straight into Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Roads to Free­dom. It’s a clas­sic sketch–vintage Python–and you can read a tran­script here while watch­ing it above.

Anoth­er clas­sic is the “Philoso­pher’s Drink­ing Song,” shown above in a scene from Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl. The song was writ­ten and sung by Eric Idle. In the sketch, mem­bers of the phi­los­o­phy depart­ment at the “Uni­ver­si­ty of Wool­loomooloo” lead the audi­ence in singing, “Immanuel Kant was a real pis­sant who was very rarely sta­ble; Hei­deg­ger, Hei­deg­ger was a boozy beg­gar who could think you under the table…”

And one of our favorites: “The Philoso­phers’ Foot­ball Match” (above), a filmed sequence from Mon­ty Python Live at the Hol­ly­wood Bowl, pit­ting the Ancient Greeks against the Ger­mans, with Con­fu­cius as ref­er­ee. The sketch was orig­i­nal­ly broad­cast in 1972 in a two-part West Ger­man tele­vi­sion spe­cial, Mon­ty Python’s Fliegen­der Zirkus.

When you’re done laugh­ing, you can dive deep into phi­los­o­phy here with our col­lec­tion of 75 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es online.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Novem­ber 2011.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mon­ty Python’s “Argu­ment Clin­ic” Sketch Reen­act­ed by Two Vin­tage Voice Syn­the­siz­ers (One Is Stephen Hawking’s Voice)

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

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Lin-Manuel Miranda & Emily Blunt Take You Through 22 Classic Musicals in 12 Minutes

in Comedy, Film, Music, Theatre | December 24th, 2018

Watch­ing James Cor­den, Lin-Manuel Miran­da, and Emi­ly Blunt don­ning bad wigs to mug their way through a 12-minute salute to 22 movie musi­cal “clas­sics” is a bit rem­i­nis­cent of watch­ing the three most pop­u­lar coun­selors ham it up dur­ing an over­long sum­mer camp skit.

Their one-take per­for­mance was part of Role Call, a reg­u­lar fea­ture of the Late Late Show with James Cor­den. Usu­al­ly, this fan favorite is an excuse for Cor­den and a megas­tar guest—Tom Han­ks, Julia Roberts, Samuel L. Jack­son—to bum­ble through the most icon­ic moments of their career.

These kinds of larks are more fun for being a mess, and the live stu­dio audi­ence screams like besot­ted campers at every goofy quick change and wink­ing inside ref­er­ence. Blunt and Miran­da are def­i­nite­ly game, though one won­ders if they felt a bit cha­grinned that the film they are pro­mot­ing, Mary Pop­pins Returns, is giv­en pride of place­ment, while the orig­i­nal 1964 film star­ring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke is strange­ly absent.

As is Thor­ough­ly Mod­ern Mil­lie, Victor/Victoria, and even The Sound of Music.

Maybe Corden’s sav­ing up for a Julia Andrews-cen­tric Role Call.

What did make the cut points to how few orig­i­nal movie musi­cals there are to res­onate with mod­ern audi­ences.

Of the 22, over 2/3 start­ed out as Broad­way plays.

And “You Can’t Stop the Beat” from 2007’s Hair­spray was born of the 2002 stage adap­ta­tion, not the grit­ty 1988 orig­i­nal star­ring John Waters’ main­stay, Divine.

Is it wrong to hope that most view­ers hear­ing “Your Song” will think, “Elton John!” not “Moulin Rouge”?

And Beau­ty and The Beast is per­haps not so much a movie musi­cal as a children’s fea­ture-length ani­ma­tion, so why not The Lit­tle Mer­maid, The Lion  King, or hell, Snow White or Pinoc­chio?

Alas, 1953’s Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes is as far back as this skit’s mem­o­ry goes, pre­sum­ably because the audi­ence has a greater like­li­hood of rec­og­niz­ing Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe than say, Howard Keel.

More inter­est­ing than the jokey horse­play with Into the Woods and The Mup­pet Movie is the choice to blithe­ly cast white actors in roles that were writ­ten for black women (Dream­girls, Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors). I don’t think any­one would try to get away with that on Broad­way these days, even in in a spoofy char­i­ta­ble event like Broad­way Bares or East­er Bon­net… though if they did, get­ting Lin-Manuel Miran­da on board would be a very good idea.

As to why Hamil­ton isn’t one of the titles below … it’s not a movie musi­cal—yet!

Readers—what glar­ing omis­sions leap out at you?

Cabaret

Chica­go

La La Land

Beau­ty and the Beast

Guys and Dolls

Evi­ta

Sin­gin’ in the Rain

Mary Pop­pins Returns

The Mup­pet Movie

The Wiz­ard of Oz 

Hair­spray

Dream­girls

Annie

Fid­dler on the Roof

Into the Woods 

Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors

Les Mis­er­ables

Moulin Rouge 

Once

Fame 

Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes

Mama Mia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hair: The Amer­i­can Trib­al Love-Rock Musi­cal Debuted on Broad­way 50 Years Ago: Watch Footage of the Cast Per­form­ing in 1968

David Bowie Dreamed of Turn­ing George Orwell’s 1984 Into a Musi­cal: Hear the Songs That Sur­vived the Aban­doned Project

Alexan­der Hamil­ton: Hip-Hop Hero at the White House Poet­ry Evening

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City this Jan­u­ary as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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Andy Kaufman Reads Earnestly from The Great Gatsby and Enrages His Audience

in Comedy | December 6th, 2018

In a 1980 appear­ance on David Let­ter­man, a dead­pan Andy Kauf­man tells a sob sto­ry about his nonex­is­tent fam­i­ly leav­ing him. He then “admon­ish­es the audi­ence for laugh­ing,” writes William Hugh­es at the AV Club, and pan­han­dles for their spare change. “The genius of the bit, as always, is that Kauf­man nev­er blinks. Even as he’s led away by the show’s staff, there’s noth­ing about his unemo­tion­al entreaties that sug­gests that what he’s doing isn’t any­thing but the sober-cold truth.”

He pulled a sim­i­lar stunt the fol­low­ing year, in a guest appear­ance on a short-lived SNL knock­off called Fri­days. After bel­liger­ent­ly break­ing char­ac­ter dur­ing a sketch, he appeared the fol­low­ing week to deliv­er an apol­o­gy, which became a bit­ter, sad sack appeal for sym­pa­thy, while he stared blankly at the cam­era in what his writ­ing part­ner Bob Zmu­da called his “glazed-over hostage look.” Kauf­man was “more of an antag­o­nist of his audi­ence than an ally,” Jake Rossen com­ments at Men­tal Floss.

Rather than punch­ing up or down, he punched out, open­ly exploit­ing our trust and abus­ing our patience. Kauf­man invit­ed us to mock him, only to reroute our respons­es into empa­thy, anger, con­fu­sion, or bore­dom. “Many crowds had streamed into com­e­dy clubs only to endure Kauf­man nap­ping in a sleep­ing bag,” writes Rossen, “or read­ing earnest­ly from The Great Gats­by, threat­en­ing to start all over again if they inter­rupt­ed.” Once giv­en a choice between him read­ing or play­ing a record, a night­club chose the record. “It was the sound of Kauf­man read­ing.”

Just what is the prop­er response to this? The emo­tion­al mis­di­rec­tion works so well because we know we should react a cer­tain way, for exam­ple, to a bro­ken man in great distress—whether he’s ask­ing for spare change or look­ing for all the world like a kid­nap vic­tim. In his Gats­by read­ing, Kauf­man pulls a dif­fer­ent lever—drawing on our innate sense of deco­rum dur­ing a lit­er­ary event, one con­duct­ed by a vague­ly Euro­pean-sound­ing man in a tuxe­do, no less. He incites his audi­ence by mak­ing them laugh at a sit­u­a­tion they would, in its prop­er con­text, try to take seri­ous­ly.

In the clip of Kauf­man read­ing Gats­by at the top, he begins with a cou­ple rus­es and feints: play­ing a snip­pet of a record that makes us think we might be in for a Mighty Mouse-like rou­tine, intro­duc­ing him­self as an actor who plays a screw­ball Amer­i­can com­ic named Andy Kauf­man. Once he launch­es into Gats­by, how­ev­er, and it becomes clear he isn’t going to stop, that the read­ing is the act, the audi­ence becomes incensed, express­ing a pal­pa­ble sense of betray­al.

You came for com­e­dy, he tells them in his Let­ter­man and Fri­days bits; I’m going to give you human­i­ty. You came for com­e­dy, he announces in the Gats­by read­ing; I’m going to give you cul­ture, whether you want it or not. But it’s not me who’s mis­be­hav­ing, he says (in dia­bol­i­cal ver­sions of “stop hit­ting your­self”), it’s you. In the clip above from Man on the Moon, Jim Car­rey draws out the pas­sive aggres­sive impuls­es inher­ent in these maneu­vers, show­ing Andy break­ing out Gats­by as an act of retal­i­a­tion against a crowd who demands that he enter­tain them on their terms.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Kauf­man Cre­ates May­hem on Late Night TV: When Com­e­dy Becomes Per­for­mance Art (1981)

The Improb­a­ble Time When Orson Welles Inter­viewed Andy Kauf­man (1982)

A Look Back at Andy Kauf­man: Absurd Com­ic Per­for­mance Artist and Endear­ing Weirdo

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Andy Kaufman Creates Mayhem on Late Night TV: When Comedy Becomes Performance Art (1981)

in Comedy, Television | November 30th, 2018

While there are many styles of com­e­dy, the con­tract between come­di­an and audi­ence is a fair­ly stan­dard one. The come­di­an endeav­ors to get laughs. The audi­ence under­stands that sort of cur­ren­cy, and is eager to lav­ish it on deserv­ing can­di­dates.

The late Andy Kauf­man wasn’t much inter­est­ed in that sort of exchange.

His com­e­dy was exper­i­men­tal to the point of per­for­mance art, and often felt exper­i­men­tal in a sci­en­tif­ic sense as well. When he read long pas­sages from The Great Gats­by to com­e­dy club audi­ences, went after pro­fes­sion­al wrestlers twice his size, or insist­ed he’d found Jesus and got­ten engaged to a Lawrence Welk Show singer, it was as if he was con­duct­ing a stress test. How much dis­ori­en­ta­tion would an audi­ence put up with?

He was a gen­uine weirdo. The genius kid who seems hell­bent on win­ning the ani­mos­i­ty of his class­mates with his cryp­tic remarks and odd behav­ior.

Know­ing young com­e­dy fans who idol­ize prankster Sacha Baron Cohen’s shapeshift­ing stunts may find it hard to appre­ci­ate just how unset­tling the off-kil­ter Kauf­man could be.

Wit­ness his 1981 guest spot on Fri­days, a rival network’s short-lived attempt to dupli­cate Sat­ur­day Night Live’s suc­cess.

In the sketch above, Kauf­man wan­ders pret­ty egre­gious­ly afield of expect­ed con­duct. In an era where guest stars appeared not infre­quent­ly bombed out of their gourds, it wasn’t entire­ly sur­pris­ing that one might appear con­fused, or have trou­ble read­ing cue cards. But Kauf­man seemed to be mak­ing a delib­er­ate choice to scup­per his career, or at the very least, the good­will of Fri­days’ cast and crew, by refus­ing to play along in a sketch about restau­rant patrons sneak­ing off to the bath­room to get high.

“I can’t play stoned,” he breaks char­ac­ter to announce, mid-scene. Hmm. Seems like the kind of thing one might bring up dur­ing the table read. An a‑hole would wait till dress rehearsal, when such a move would for sure inspire the enmi­ty of cast and crew. Kauf­man wait­ed till the sketch was being taped in front of a live stu­dio audi­ence.

But then, Kaufman’s exper­i­ments need­ed an audi­ence to suc­ceed.

As with Sacha Baron Cohen’s elab­o­rate rus­es, it helped to lim­it the num­ber of peo­ple who were in on the joke.

Actor Melanie Chartoff recalled how she and Kaufman’s oth­er two scene part­ners, Mary Edith Bur­rell and Seinfeld’s Michael Richards, were tipped off fair­ly late in the process by producer/announcer Jack Burns, who was thrilled to snap up the live wire whose antics had per­ma­nent­ly burned his bridges with Sat­ur­day Night Live:

Andy’s gonna bust out of the show tonight,” he gleamed. “He’s gonna mess up and break the fourth wall from the top of the mono­logue. It’s gonna be great. It’s gonna kick our rat­ings through the ROOF!

And so it did, abet­ted by benight­ed crew mem­bers who sprang to pro­vide back up, when a furi­ous-seem­ing Burns stormed the set as if to kick the ornery guest star’s ass.

But the piece de resis­tance came the fol­low­ing week, when pro­duc­er John Mof­fitt went on air to sat­is­fy the public’s need to know, con­fess­ing that the stunt was indeed a fake and pious­ly sug­gest­ing they should take it as a reminder of the “spon­tane­ity of live tele­vi­sion, some­thing that rarely hap­pens in this basi­cal­ly pas­sive medi­um today.”

Then Kaufman—who gen­uine­ly hat­ed that his sleight of hand had been revealed—turned on Mof­fitt for the halt­ing, mis­er­able, and seem­ing­ly forced 4 minute apol­o­gy below.

When the live audi­ence laughed delight­ed­ly, he lashed out, insist­ing that his pre­vi­ous week’s actions were about to cost him his gig on the hit sit­com Taxi, all future roles, a num­ber of friend­ships, and his mar­riage.

Nev­er mind that he was unmar­ried.

This come­di­an played a long game, and easy laughs were nev­er the goal.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Look Back at Andy Kauf­man: Absurd Com­ic Per­for­mance Artist and Endear­ing Weirdo

The Improb­a­ble Time When Orson Welles Inter­viewed Andy Kauf­man (1982)

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC this Decem­ber for the 10th anniver­sary pro­duc­tion of Greg Kotis’ apoc­a­lyp­tic hol­i­day tale, The Truth About San­ta, and the next month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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