Comedy: It can save your life!

Years ago I had a conversation with a Jewish friend about the movie Life is Beautiful. He hadn't seen it, because some of his own relatives (or his parents? I forget) had walked out of the film. My friend pointed out that he's got relatives with numbered tattoos still on their arms.

Fair enough, I would never try to tell anyone that they *must* enjoy a movie about such a sensitive subject. (Though what you don't know if you don't see the movie til the end is that the father does die at the end.)

Best Scene: Translating the Camp Rules

I'm thinking about it now cause I just saw an interview snippet with Benigni where he says the movie was partly based on his father, who spent three years in a Nazi work camp, and the way he would tell those stories to his children.

"Benigni recalls that his father never told the story of his internment in a way that would frighten or depress his children. This respect and protection of innocence had a profound impact on Benigni, who sought to repeat his father's approach to the subject." (quote from this essay)

The thing is, I kind of get that. Not the protecting innocence thing--thought that's sweet, and it's what makes Life is Beautiful poignant--but dealing with bad things using humor. My grandfather didn't like to talk about his WWII experience, except for telling funny stories. He had this one story about drinking grappa and then taking a long hike up a mountain with friends. And then they looked back and realized... they were still down at the café, drinking grappa. My mother once gave him a t-shirt that he loved, which said on the front "Here he cometh" and on the back "There he goeth." ...What can I say, this is the family line from whence comes my sense of humor.

Not that I've ever had to employ it in such a horrific way as a concentration camp! But for whatever crapitude has come into my life, humor has been my best line of defense. And I confess... there are some very good jokes about the Nazis. Like Chaplin's dictator dance with the balloon-world.

And Seinfeld getting caught for making out throughout Schindler's List. And the protagonist in Hannah and Her Sisters asking his parents about why there's evil, and his father shouting: "How the hell do I know why there were Nazis? I don't even know how the can opener works!"

And Springtime for Hitler!

I'll never forget, eons ago, I was with a girlfriend when she realized she was locked out of her house, and her roommate wouldn't be back for a few hours. It was a really nice day outside, so it was no big deal. I started to crack jokes, as per my usual method, and she snapped at me: It's not funny!

Well my friend... it's even funnier now that you don't see the humor in it. I didn't say that--I guess I just switched into sympathy mode. And ever since then I've been more alert to the fact that not everyone approaches life as one big joke, like I do. It got me into trouble several times at work too, until I learned to tamp down my joking tendency. (To this day I have a friend who thinks I reamed her out for having fur on the hood of her jacket, while I know I was just joking. She refuses to believe it. "You were mad!" "But I don't get mad about stuff like that!" "You were really mad.")

My brother is my preferred Partner in Crisis because he's genetically wired to do the same thing as me. Years ago we had to make a long drive through The Snowstorm of the Century, and thank God he was my companion for that trip... made it that much more bearable to drive in such nerve-wracking conditions. I still remember him telling me, halfway through the long slow drive, that the worst thing was... he needed to pee. Bwah ha ha ha! -- was the reaction.

He was also present when the neighbor upstairs flooded my kitchen--I think when I was in the middle of university assignments too. (Fernando was out of town.) I was so grateful he was there, offering his help, but also making jokes the whole time.

Two of my closest friends, Maewitch and Gilby, also have a tendency to make jokes along with me when we're talking about something crappy that's happened in our lives. Probably one of the reasons they're Two of My Closest Friends. Hmm in fact my Friend-like-a-sister Swiss Girl is the same way. Whenever something bad's happening to me, and someone cracks a joke and then apologizes, I tell them not to apologize. Just keep 'em coming.

I know some people who only like black humor, or political humor... not me, I love all out fluff like Wodehouse (whose humor Stephen Fry likened to a soufflé) and the Marx Brothers and The Vicar of Dibley and Georgette Heyer. One of Heyer's most ridiculous books once sustained a bunch of Romanian political prisoners, throughout their incarceration. And the best part of Hannah and Her Sisters is when the protagonist is suicidal, and goes to see the Marx Brothers, and it gives him a reason to life. So I don't see fluffy humor as unimportant. I think it's life sustaining!