Exhibiting the Violence of Cancellation Against Comedy

For the ancient Greeks, “humor” was a state of health. Today it seems that the “acid humor” has died. If we had to make an immediate reference to the most mediatic  award in the history of cinema, we intuitively remember a slap in the face and countless interpretations and connotations about it.

The gala disappeared, the other winners and industry workers too, all abducted by a decadent phenomenon that served to increase three-person followers by thousands, harming the other attendees and, most importantly, the audience, which a very clear ethical message was reaffirmed: the limits of comedy, already broken by the prevailing culture of cancellation, have to be further retracted.

For the ancient Greeks, “humour” was a state of health, which represented the balance of four liquids, each of which symbolized some element, namely: blood (air), yellow bile (fire), black bile (earth) and phlegm (water). From this conception comes the linking “being in a good mood” with “being healthy”. Subsequently, the Latin translation humoris will strictly mean the liquid state or humidity, which applied to the earth will conform to humus, the fertile earth.

As we will have been able to appreciate in the brief etymological description, since archaic times there has been a close relationship between humor and health, since from the very use of the word in its beginnings, it has referred to the state of mind resulting from a harmonious balance of factors that determine it.

Humor and comedy

Another thing, although commonly associated with humor, is “comedy”, a word that in its Greek etymological conformation was made up of the word “komos” (song, proclamation); “odé” (song, rhapsody) and the suffix “ía” denoting quality. What we understand today as comic representation comes from the dramatic genre (as opposed to tragedy) whose greatest representative in ancient Greece was Aristophanes (444 BC-385 BC). The satirical drama accompanied the theatrical presentation of two tragedies in each edition and its function was, in short, to “lower spirits” that were exalted by the intensity of the tragic drama.

Now, we all know that there is a type of acid comic humor, also known as “black humor” which is a type of satirical comedy that seeks to provoke in the viewer a confused feeling that moves between the funny and the unpleasant through irony, sarcasm and, to some extent also, mockery. Its essential consistency is based precisely on being a politically incorrect genre, since it plays to twist (and in some cases, break) the established status quo of what is “expected.”

It could be said that the “funny” of this humor consists in the disruption of a “normality” to make it questionable through a comic criticism that aims to reveal something that is beyond the simple appearance of trivial and banal consensualism.

Within the framework of the aforementioned, it is that we analyze the paper (for us, totally orchestrated) of the North American film gala. But before we jump right into the Will Smith/Chris Rock charade, let’s take a brief look at the Academy’s timely embarrassment to garner higher ratings.

Remember La La Land?

In the 89th Edition of the Oscars, the legendary actor Warren Beatty made the “mistake” of naming “La La Land” as the winning film of the contest, when in fact the award should have been given to the film “Moonlight”. What seemed to be a confusing situation, a rare mistake in the gala’s script, went through an extremely violent moment: Jordan Horowitz, the producer of “La La Land” violently pushed aside the elderly actor who had committed the “mistake” and in a quite aggressive and allegedly obfuscated manner indicated that the statuette did not correspond to his work.

The ridicule that was carried out on the veteran actors who “misread” the file did not have, on the part of the well-thinking criticism that bears the contradictory postmodern morality, the slightest objection to naturalizing the idea that there are people too old to do certain things.

Postmo-progressive morality of selective deconstruction

What happened in the last edition, commented on, disseminated, viralized ad extremum through the endless factory of memes, is not an isolated event but it does set a pathetically unfortunate precedent.

As is often the case in the prevailing postmo-progressive morality of selective deconstruction and systematic cancellation, one can see, a few days after what happened, two prevailing interpretations: on the one hand, it is argued that what Smith did is a clear demonstration of affection towards his wife and a primordial defense of his wife’s honor and, on the other, the clear demonstration of a media montage that serves the very specific advertising interests of those involved (even the one who received the punch).

What remains of this, apart from the pathetic show?

As always, we insist on inviting our reader friends to go deeper than the surface of what is given by the immediacy and eagerness for news. The naturalization of violence in the face of disagreement remains.

A precedent is established indicating that when one finds oneself in a situation in which the contextualized discursive regime allows certain jokes within the legal framework of the montage, one can respond with physical violence and massive ridicule without any hesitation.

The vacuous and incoherent postmodern ethic that seeks to disguise a totally unpleasant and illegal act as poetic justice is made explicit (if Smith were not Smith, that night he would have been dragged by two-meter-tall boys into the back alley of the building, and not precisely to discuss what happened).

The total fragility in which comedians must now work is evident: if everything offends to the point of receiving physical reprimands, humor will be severely conditioned (deconstructed, some would say) and the freedom, typical of the comedian, of playing with the actors would be lost. limits of what is politically correct and with criticism capable of causing laughter through stupor.

Finally, it should be noted that acid humor is dead. Bourgeois postmo-progressivism has definitively assassinated it in the decadent montage of a supposed representation of the defense of a person’s honor in pursuit of a rather hypocritical meaningless sensibility that always bets on closing the doors of everything that challenges the prevailing agenda of a subverted and allegedly deconstructed morality.

Having exposed the risks involved in any act of violence that violates the freedom of expression permitted in a discursive context with clear rules, I must conclude this reflection by indicating that whoever shares these lines with you has had hereditary baldness for many years and has been the subject of teasing, comments and suggestions from relatives and strangers. I never saw the need to go handing out slaps for it, and I assure you that the day I try to do it, far from receiving ovations, I will be strongly reprimanded with the weight of the law.