What's Not Funny?

George Carlin in l969 (ABC TV)

There are certain things that you can’t or are not supposed to joke about and when you do you receive the remonstrative “that’s not funny!” followed by a disconcerting disengagement by the offended party. That’s may have been what George Carlin was trying to avoid when he cancelled “I Kinda Like it When a Lotta People Die,” which was filmed on September 10, 200l. The special is finally seeing the light of day (“George Carlin’s lost pre Sept. ll routine gets new life on CD,” CNN, 9/12/16). Which brings us to the case of the Muslim marine recruit who was put in an industrial level dryer by his drill sergeant at Parris Island (“Marines Scrutinize a Culture of Toughness After a Muslim Recruit's Death," NYT, 9/14/16). It’s a horrific bit of abuse, but there's also something undeniably humorous in it. It’s the kind of black humor that goes  into make a musical like The Producers with its “Springtime for Hitler,” or Wally Shawn’s Aunt Dan and Lemon. Horror becomes the butt of satire. After all putting someone in a dryer is not too far from “hanging them out to dry” and the blustering drill sergeant has always been a source of comedy. Phil Silvers made a big hit of Sergeant Bilko back in the 50’s. Still you have to ask yourself how far is putting someone in a dryer from putting them on a leash like in Abu Ghraib or, for that matter, in an oven. But rather than silencing the laughter, maybe when things reach a certain level of grotesquery, the only thing to do is laugh. Alfred Jarry was prescient in Ubu Roi. His tyrannically comical character bears an uncanny resemblance to the preposterous rantings of dictators like Kim Jong-un and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

The Donald Trump Cult

You get to the point where you think the whole electoral system is such a fucked up mess that you just want to take a leap into the abyss—meaning voting for Donald Trump. Why not do something really extreme, like Jim Jones’ followers? The worse that can happen is that the pied piper will lead his children into a figurative vat of cyanide characterized by even more destruction than we have already experienced. If you think ISIS is bad, then wait until the Donald takes over. But unless you’re an illegal immigrant you start to get taken in by the brashness of this pater familias you once rejected. It’s very enticing when someone comes along and seems to have all the answers. Isn’t this what we all want? The model for the dictator is a God who will fulfill all our wishes and dreams. No need for taxes, no problems with illegal immigrants (we’ll build the Great Wall of Trump), no problems with health care (who needs it?) and if you’re a bully in the schoolyard, ie Kim Jong-un or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, watch out because Daddy’s coming. Remember those oft quoted Yeats lines “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are filled with passionate intensity.” Well Mr. Trump may lack an exact plan when it comes to foreign policy, but he has no lack of conviction. If you're thinking about taking a leap and playing the Trump card, you’ll be in good company. One of his big fans is Vladimir Putin ("Vladimir Putin Chides Turkey, Praises Trump and Talks Up Russia's Economy," NYT, 12/17/15). Or you could bid no Trump.

Kim Jong-un’s Social Anxiety Disorder

A recent Times editorial (“North Korea’s Horrors,” 5/18/15) points out two recent incidences where hyperbole has fueled accounts of the horrors of current regime in the DPRK, led by its brash young leader and film critic, Kim Jong-un (“Kim Jong-un and the Auteur School,” The Screaming Pope, 12/22/14). The first rumor, according to the Times had Kim Jong-un feeding his uncle Jang Sung-taek “to a pack of dogs.” A story in The Guardian made a similar point, “Story about Kim Jong-un’s uncle fed to dogs originates with satirist," 1/6/14. This is almost as comforting as finding out that the latest accusation which, according to the Times, involved having “the minister of the armed forces blasted to pieces with an antiaircraft gun, purportedly, among other things, for dozing off while Mr. Kim spoke,” was also apocryphal. For instance the Times editorial points out that “South Korea is now saying that Gen. Hyon Yong-choi was purged, not probably killed.” The point of the Times piece is that even if prominent officials are simply being executed by firing squad, it’s not a good thing and goes on to speculate about Kim Jong-un that “one explanation is that he is unstable and threatened, and needs to fuel the terror that his power rests on.” Fair enough, but let’s cut the Supreme Leader a little slack. How many times have you been snubbed at a cocktail party and fantasized about feeding a dismissive person to dogs? How many times have you contemplated turning an antiaircraft gun or worse on someone who hasn’t returned your Email inquiry or phone call? When we feel small and powerless in the face of an unfriendly superpower or person, we all engage in these kinds of fantasies. The DSM-5 lists such symptoms under the category of social anxiety disorder. And if we were to be armchair psychoanalysts we might even wager that these anxieties might derive from having to live up to the reputations of his powerful father Kim Jong-il (who kidnapped the South Korean film star Shin Sang-ok) and grandfather Kim Il-sung whose founding of the dynasty might be where all his problems started in the first place.

Selma and The Interview

If you think Selma is a film about your mother’s best friend, then perhaps you believe that The Interview is a comedy about Kim Jong-un’s psychoanalysis (that is if you are too scared to go see it, purchase the streamed version or even read the reviews). If you believe that Selma is about your mother’s best friend you will also be able to picture the North Korean dictator on the couch in the Pyongyang office of Dr. Carl Jung-il. One of the things doctor and patient are working through is Kim Jong-un’s feeling of entitlement. This is the real reason for the hacking and the threats against the major theater chains who were scheduled to exhibit the film. You will imagine a film based on secret transcripts of Kim Jong-un’s psychoanalytic sessions, which have been bugged by Sony. This is not to justify the fury of the response, but it should be noted that few patients in analysis or any other form of therapy like to have their dirty laundry aired and there's no doubt that the issue of entitlement is a profound one for a figure who has taken on the title of Supreme Leader. Analysis is a very expensive form of therapy and outside of Kim Jong-un, there are few other North Koreans who could afford Carl Jung-il’s fees— comparable, as they are, to those of New York analysts who charge upwards of $400 per hour. In your imagination of what the film is about, you envision the actor playing Kim Jong-un (Randall Park) getting very upset when the encrypted recordings of his sessions with Dr Carl Jung-il are deciphered by a character who is described as the Alan Turing of South Korean intelligence. You see Kim Jong-un terminating his analysis with Dr. Carl Jung-il, by placing his once beloved analyst before a firing squad.

Kim Jong-un and the Auteur School

Reading about the North Korean hacking scandal, and the role the persona of  country’s leader plays in the controversial film about his own assassination, one is reminded of the internecine battles that flared up amongst auteur critics like Truffaut and Godard, whose careers began as writers for Andre Bazin’s Cahiers du Cinema back in the 50’s. Significantly, of course, this was a around the time that Madame Mao (Jiang Qing) who would be an instrumental force in China’s cultural revolution, was refining her own interest in film. One thing that leaders in both China’s and North Korea’s totalitarian regimes and the auteurs shared was an infatuation with Hollywood and the stamp that one sensibility can have on an oeuvre or country. Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il was reputedly a great lover of Hollywood cinema (“Kim Jong-il: The cinephile despot," BBC News, 12/19/11)and what father and son would eventually share was an unwanted casting in films about their own demise (in Team America: World Police, 2004, Kim Jong-il is vanquished)—which when you think about it is a really auteur idea. Kim Jong-il’s tastes apparently ran to Liz Taylor and Sean Connery while Kim Jong-un's love of film has taken the form of an inurement in Disney characters with whom he has cavorted on North Korean television. Many commentators have been taken aback by Kim Jong-un’s heavy-handed tactics in creating a cyber attack on Sony in revenge against The Interview. But his behavior becomes more understandable when it’s considered in the light of his family’s generational interest in film and the generally competitive atmosphere that has always existed amongst film critics. While neither Godard nor Truffaut ever threatened viewers of films they disapproved of, as Kim Jong-un, did when his proxies warned of a 9/11 type response against chains which exhibited the movie, there were always heated battles about film. And one wonders if Kim Jong-un’s current tactics are not ultimately aimed at achieving cultural hegemony for his people, in a world dominated by eurocentric critics like Manohola Dargis and A.O. Scott of The New York Times. Whatever the result of the strategy, it’s plain that Kim Jong-un is positioning himself to be a major kingmaker (like the late Andrew Sarris of The Village Voice) in those precincts where auteur criticism still holds sway.