New York Plays Itself

Appropriate Behaviour, written, directed by and starring Desiree Akhavan, is the latest film about creative, independent-minded twenty-something women trying to scratch out a living in New York, usually while negotiating complicated relationships with their families, friends and paramours. These films often feature graphic depictions of female sexuality, but by and large the characters’ lives do not revolve around male appreciation; the nuances of female friendships are at least as important. In different ways, Frances Ha, Tiny Furniture and Obvious Child meet this description, but it is undoubtedly Girls which has defined the trend.[1]

The emergence of this micro-genre is itself a good thing, throwing into sharp relief just how few coming-of-age films about young women there were until quite recently. (While the films mentioned are comic and are about romance, they are very different from standard romantic comedies, and light years removed from the likes of Sex and the City, to which Girls was bizarrely compared when it first appeared). In thematic terms they form a female response to a previous battalion of awkward young men hesitantly exploring themselves and their romantic lives (Youth in Revolt, Garden State, (500 Days of) Summer, Adventureland). In terms of tone, they are generally different: less sentimental, more sexually frank, and much more New York. A better reference point might be such films as The Squid and the Whale, Tadpole, Rodger Dodger or Igby Goes Down, each of which features a much younger male protagonist, but each of which is set in, and is very much a product of, the Big Apple.

It’s interesting to consider why Appropriate Behaviour and its sister films share this setting. New York features as a heightened version of a much broader phenomenon: a place where young people from middle-class or even privileged backgrounds look for alternative careers to suburbia or finance, living in insecure and low-income conditions without being what would be traditionally termed poor. Very similar stories could be set in many other cities, but New York helpfully combines cutting-edge trendiness (or at any rate what is perceived as such) with a long tradition of attracting precisely these kinds of people. If this story was set elsewhere, many of the characters would probably be longing to move to Brooklyn.

Appropriate Behaviour belongs if anything too comfortably in this sorority; it cleaves so closely to the tropes laid down by Girls that ‘imagine if Hannah Horvath was an Iranian-American lesbian photographer’ isn’t too bad as a capsule summary.[2] Its other main limitation is its episodic nature and lack of a strong narrative. This isn’t necessarily a problem – some of the episodes, particularly a threesome and a scene in a lingerie shop with an empowering sales assistant, are very funny, showing a flair for short-form comedy which illustrates Akhavan’s background writing an internet sitcom. But while Appropriate Behaviour never loses one’s interest, it doesn’t coalesce into something more than a series of vignettes, vignettes moreover of a world which already feels over-familiar. These limitations together suggest a filmmaker who has mastered detail but who needs to find something more distinctive to say (and perhaps a different medium – maybe a sitcom?) Perhaps the best response to New York Desiree Akhavan could have would be to leave it, at least thematically.    

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[1] These films are also for the most part written and directed by women (Noah Baumbach directed Frances Ha, which he co-wrote with Greta Gerwig).

[2] It’s amusing to read that Appropriate Behaviour is an alternative to ‘disgruntled New York hipster comedies’, when that is what it so blatantly, and for the most part successfully, is. Akhavan is well aware of this, and of comparisons with Dunham. Such are the wages of making critically-acclaimed films about young urban bohemians in twenty-first century America.

Tragedy plus time?

A number of perennial talking points were raised by the announcement that Channel 4 have commissioned a script for a sitcom set in Ireland during the Great Famine. Hugh Travers, the writer, explained his thinking:

They say ‘comedy equals tragedy plus time’.[i] […] I don’t want to do anything that denies the suffering that people went through, but Ireland has always been good at black humour. We’re kind of thinking of it as Shameless in famine Ireland.

The announcement has already generated a good deal of predictable (sought-after?) blowback, and some predictable defences. Channel 4 tells us that “It’s not unusual for sitcoms to exist against backdrops that are full of adversity and hardship”, which seems a rather harsh as a description of its commissioning department. Rory Fenton suggests that people calling for the show to not be produced “have failed to see the difference between comedy about the Famine and a comedy set during the Famine”, going on to note that

The slaughter of the First World War wasn’t funny and yet Black Adder Goes Forth, set in the trenches, was. The Holocaust couldn’t be further from humour and yet Life is Beautiful, set in a concentration camp, was very funny.

I have no desire to see an official list of topics which are or are not suitable for comedy, or for any other dramatic or literary depiction; nor would I wish to see C4 prevented by law from going ahead with this programme if they see fit. But there are reasons to wonder if this project is appropriate, or whether it has been properly thought through.

First, there is Travers’ pocket description: ‘Shameless in famine Ireland’. Granted, this may well have been a throwaway remark rather than a summary of his pitch to C4, but it’s a pretty worrying comment to include in an interview. It’s hardly stretching things too far to suggest that much of the humour in Shameless comes from a family whose members are presented as feckless and irresponsible, though often sympathetic and even lovable. For all that can be said about the structural and cultural causes of long-term unemployment and the serious problems faced by people in that situation in modern-day Britain, their predicament pales in comparison to people dying in their thousands for lack of food. The premise of Shameless is that no matter how hard things get or how badly the people behave, the safety net of social welfare is always there. In Ireland in the 1840s, this was emphatically not the case.

Second, to return to Fenton’s distinction between a comedy about the Famine and a comedy set during the Famine, it is worth asking why a sitcom should be set during that period, unless the situation itself can be mined for humour? In order to deliver on its audience’s expectations, and in order for the decision to make creative sense, the script will have to address the reality of what happened, even if in a light-hearted way. What’s required is something much more like Blackadder Goes Forth than Dad’s Army, a sitcom set during a terrible war but which scarcely addresses it.[ii]

Finally, there is the choice of genre. The famine is, in principle, perfect material for black comedy – indeed, one of the earliest and greatest examples of that genre, Swift’s Modest Proposal, concerns similar conditions of dire poverty in Ireland. More recently, Alan Partridge famously gave his considered opinion on the matter: "at the end of the day, you will pay the price if you're a fussy eater".

However, Swift and Steve Coogan were driving very different comic vehicles to that which C4 are considering. Swift’s is a short and pungent essay – any longer and it would be in danger of becoming fascinated by its morbid subject-matter and descending into horror-show tourism. Coogan gave Partridge a few lines about the famine in a longer episode, lines which, in the context, clearly reveal him to be the butt of the joke. This kind of distance won’t be available for a sitcom set during the famine; nor will it enjoy Swift’s brevity.

A good rule of thumb for black comedy is that less is more. The butt of the joke is usually something pretty simple (the pig-headedness of military leaders during WWI, or the stupidity and ignorance of a certain kind of Englishman when it comes to the sometimes complicated history of Empire). To keep going after the point has been made risks losing the humour and (even more importantly) changing the tone, from the casual understatement which is the genre’s hallmark to something shrill or blankly nihilistic. It may be that Travers can pull off the delicate balancing act his project requires, but it will take some doing. It might have been better for him never to have mounted the tightrope.

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[i] They do, although the most famous use of this phrase is perhaps the mocking employment of it in Crimes and Misdemeanours.

[ii] Which is not to say that Dad’s Army is not about WWII, just that it considers that war not as a colossal waste of life but as Britain’s Finest Hour; and because the war was widely remembered along those lines, there was no expectation that it would address any of its more grim aspects.

Jeremy Thorpe: A Life in Comedy

The flamboyant former leader of the Liberal party, Jeremy Thorpe, passed away last week. A noted raconteur and apparently a devastating impersonator of political rivals, he will be remembered for, among other things, two contributions to comic history. The more direct of these was his famous quip about the Night of the Long Knives, when Harold MacMillan sacked seven of his cabinet ministers: “Greater love hath no man than this – that he lay down his friends for his life”.

The other contribution was a more roundabout affair. The exact details of Thorpe’s relationship with Norman Scott and his possible involvement in a plot to kill the latter are still a source of dispute. Thorpe was acquitted of conspiracy to murder Scott, but the judge’s remarks to the jury before they retired to consider their verdict were widely seen as prejudicial (see the section on Committal and Trial here).

The following week Peter Cook, appearing in Amnesty International’s first Secret Policeman’s Ball, needed some new material to respond to a critic’s complaint that the show lacked satirical bite. The rest is comedy history:

Dissecting the Target: Ben Target interview

One-man comedy laboratory Ben Target was the subject of the very first post on this-here blog. Three years later he is still every inch the idiot-savant man-child. I caught up with him on the last day of his Fringe run to find out what made him tick.

The interview, complete with incredibly unprofessional opening sequence, can be found here.

Dissecting the Fringe: Edinburgh Diary

Saturday 23^rd

Until last Saturday I had never seen Late Night Gimp Fight. This might seem like something of an oversight on my part given their prominence at the Fringe and in London over the past few years, but everything I had read and heard about the group had suggested that they were not what I was interested in, comically speaking. Sitting through their greatest hits in a raucous Pleasance Beyond confirmed this suspicion: rarely have I felt more out of place in an audience, or felt that a show was aimed at people other (i.e., younger) than myself. This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy it. The troupe are relentlessly professional and dispatch their sketches with ruthless aplomb. A couple of the presentational ideas (sock puppets made using the legs of the performers, and a silent piece where all the audience can see are translucent gloves and other accoutrments) were superbly executed, and one of their songs was wittier than any ditty about bestiality has a right to be.

Nevertheless, there’s arguably less to LNGF than meets the eye. The point isn’t that too often they fall below the level of their best ideas – after all, this is true of almost any sketch troupe. Rather, what was surprising to me was how unchallenging the show is, in the sense of how closely it conformed to its audience’s expectations. Unlike the traditional late-night Fringe gig, with drink-fuelled heckles and put-downs and a genuine battle of wills (if not wits) between audience and performer, this was entirely slick and controlled from the word go. In fact, it put me in mind of a children’s show, albeit one marketed at children who found references to masturbation and paedophilia hilarious.[i] The edgy humour which is the group’s selling point was delivered in spades, but a show where the audience expects shocking material and is there precisely to see it is one whose edge is automatically blunted.

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[i] Not to mention, somewhat more dismayingly, a number of sketches where the punchline involved nonconsesual sex.

Dissecting the Fringe: Edinburgh Diary

Thursday 21^st- Friday 22^nd

That hardy perennial, the one-liner comic, is well represented at this year’s Fringe. A couple of different acts I saw illustrated the variety of approaches available to the most stripped-down form of stand-up. In particular, they each found different ways of dealing with what is often a characteristic feature of one-liner comedy: the comedian, since they are giving us the joke and waiting for us to get it, assumes a high-status role, remote from the cares and worries of the audience members they are deigning to guide towards enjoyment.

Mark Simmons wears the de facto uniform of recent one-liner comics, a suit, but it’s rumpled and not particularly intimidating, much like the man himself.[i] He does tell us that if we don’t get a joke we should raise a hand and he can explain it, which sounds very high-status but in practice undercuts his role. He’s also a naturally warm performer: ‘warm’ can mean a number of different things depending on the kind of show in question, but in this case it means he giggles endearingly at his own jokes. In other circumstances, giggling indicates a nervousness which can ruin a show, but Simmons is a fluent enough performer that the audience never worries about his ability.

Sean Nolan takes the theme of non-dominant performer even further. He wears a t-shirt and jeans and reads most of his jokes from a notebook (many of which, interestingly, are the same as when he performed them here last year without visual aid):

The vocal delivery is very deadpan, which is a classic trope of one-liner comedy, but lightened by a shy grin after each one. In some cases this is a necessity, given that some of his material is edgier than anything in Simmon’s set. Nolan is obviously influenced by Demetri Martin in how he constructs his jokes,[ii] but some of the jokes themselves would sound more appropriate coming from Frankie Boyle or Jimmy Carr. Nevertheless, the impression remains one of a cheeky young ‘un nudging at the boundaries of what we will accept, rather than an alpha figure striding confidently over the line.

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[i] He also changes his clothes as the show progresses, which is intriguing and only slightly spoiled by the rather weak punch-line to which it leads.

[ii] And in the drawings he presents at the end of his set, which were the most consistently funny element of the show.

Doing Penance

John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary has received glowing praise in the British press, though a somewhat more lukewarm response in Ireland. Much of the coverage has centred on the question of whether or not it succeeds as a critique of post-Catholic, post-Celtic-Tiger Ireland. Without providing an answer one way or the other, I want to briefly consider its use of humour.

Calvary was billed and reviewed as a black comedy. The humour is certainly black enough, with smalltalk about paedophilia, domestic abuse, pubs being shut down and other socially unacceptable practices. The problem lies with the ‘humour’ side of the equation. I found it a strikingly unfunny film, in a way that is helpful in thinking about how it takes up those big themes of religion and society. 

Comedy need not be uplifting to be funny – or rather, even if good comedy is always amusing, it can carry more disturbing emotional or satirical undertones. The difference between a point made through comedy and one advanced by other means is often little to do with the point itself or the emotion it seeks in the audience, and more a matter of the tone in which it is delivered. While it need not always provide relief, comedy must work by a light touch. Satire which is not deft is mere propaganda, and black humour will slide into nihilism or despair without a spark of enjoyment to light up its darkness.

The comedy in Calvary is, by and large, ponderous and unsubtle. This may be particularly true for an Irish audience, but it is hard not to wince at each clichéd scene Brendan Gleeson’s troubled priest is faced with: politically correct fellow-clergy, a dissolute former banker, achingly casual references to homosexuality and adultery, and so on. With the mise-en-scene stacked in this way, there is no sense of normality against which irony or understatement can work. When almost every character offers little but a jocular challenge to Fr. Lavelle’s moral system, the power of irony to reveal something terrible without displaying it – the electrical charge of genuine black comedy – fizzles out.

Black humour ultimately relies on the laughter of recognition. We laugh because we understand the gulf between how characters speak and act, and the things which they reveal in doing so. McDonagh’s script leaves no gap across which our recognition can reach. It is merely blackness in search of comedy.