Rap Meets Indie Cred, Tragicomedy Ensues

originally published September 5, 2007

It's commonplace that comedy requires distance to be effective, as opposed to drama's close-up. Mel Brooks said it: "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die." Woody Allen said it: "Comedy equals tragedy plus time." Charlie Chaplin said it: "Comedy is tragedy in a long shot."

And much earlier, Henri Bergson said it. These days, it's Kanye West who's doing the talking, with a little help from some indie-approved friends.

Ground Rules

I'm sure the idea goes back farther, but Bergson is as far as I've traced it back. In his 1901 work Laughter: An Essay on the Comic, he explicates it at length, theorizing that laughter serves as a corrective by society to the abnormal and unsocial (it has a shaming function), especially to anyone who seems to be operated by a machine, behaving in a rigid manner contrary to the flexibility dealing with other humans requires.

A quick example, perhaps more down-to-earth than the citations from Molière on which Bergson relies, is an episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" that aired several weeks ago. It seems to have been the launching pad for "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.," being the episode in which Gomer joins the Marines, but the point here that relates to Bergson is why it's comedic. Gomer, as per usual, behaves exactly the same in every situation, which is guaranteed to get him in trouble in the Marines, where you can't just be polite and chatty and slow. Behaving the same regardless of situation is behaving rigidly, like an automaton, which triggers our collective unconscious worries about appropriate social interactions and causes laughter. It's an interesting theory and one that can be borne out in any number of contexts.

One rule Bergson sets is the same as that proposed by Brooks, Allen and Chaplin, although he neglects to examine exactly why it must be the case: "Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion. I do not mean that we could not laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for instance, or even with affection, but in such a case we must, for the moment, put our affection out of court and impose silence upon our pity."

Clearly, pain is minimized the farther from the viewer it appears. Distance also results in a minimization of the face, which conveys pain, and not being able to see the emotion results in dehumanization of the person in pain and reduction of potential empathy. If the viewer isn't empathizing, he or she is free to judge the situation unemotionally, which means, as Bergson says, that there's often comedy in it. Perhaps the distance from the self also results in relief; i.e., that is not me in pain and, therefore, I am reassured of my current state of okayness despite also slightly recognizing my potential fragility and so I will laugh in a way that serves as a release of that tension. Basically, it's a rule.

Galifianakis + Oldham + West

Now look at Kanye West's newest video for his song "Can't Tell Me Nothin." Why, then, have West, comedian Zach Galifianakis, indie rock hero Will Oldham and Michael Blieden (AKA that goofy-looking dude from Melvin Goes to Dinner) produced something that is not only thoroughly comedic, but also imbued with pathos?

Having seen Galifianankis' lip-synched video for Anita Baker's "You Bring Me Joy" (he also did one for Fiona Apple's "Not About Love"), West decided that he wanted another video version of his single "Can't Tell Me Nothin,'" a move he's made before with, for example, "Jesus Walks," which had three different takes. So he called up Galifianakis and asked him to do whatever he wanted to. The result is one of the finest works of art of the year, the kind of piece that shocks your senses and reminds you of what the music-video form can achieve, that makes you force your friends to sit down and watch it and burns up the Internet for days. But why?

Like Galifianakis' previous videos, it's based around lip-synching, this time with Zach speaking Kanye's words. Will Oldham gyrates in the background, occasionally echoing the main vocal line. Blieden directed the thing, which is set on Galifianakis' farm in North Carolina, complete with cows and tractors and a lake. So, yes, it's white guys acting black, an old comedy device that not only plays into Bergson's ideas about automatism (there seems to be someone else pulling the strings in the video, acting through Galifianakis and controlling his motions), but is also fairly boring by this point. Its other incongruity is between urban (the song) and rural (the setting) environments; this, too, could make us laugh. But what's astonishing and a departure from commonplace is the way it manages to mix comedy with empathy. We're not talking Chaplin here. Chaplin cuts back and forth between the two and fairly slowly. This case is more of a true emulsion, the seemingly incompatible whipped together quickly until they form a single thing.

The profusion of close-ups alone should make laughter disappear. It's not that Galifianakis and Oldham aren't funny-looking guys, but there is great seriousness when the former stares into the camera. And there is a sadness underneath the whole thing, with its lyrics about dealing with fame and money that recognize the difficulties of doing so. It's neither pro- nor anti-conspicuous consumption, a smart and thoughtful take on how money changes your life. Thinking about all this while watching our heroes dance in satin pajamas on a rural path or hump a tractor should make those antics less funny, but it doesn't. Nor does the complete gooniness of half of what's going on push the hilarity out a window.

What's So Funny?

Like certain moments in Werner Herzog's films (the only non-documentary example I can think of, and even saying this is to overlook the huge influence of documentary style on Herzog's filmmaking and his own nonfiction work), there is a connection between the two facets of pathetic-ness of humanity: one the old definition that means moving one to pity and the other the newest definition, meaning "absurd" or "laughable."

So perhaps this video for "Can't Tell Me Nothin," in addition to being highly entertaining, is also a reflection of the direction in which comedy is headed of late, as reflected in the English language, a new path opening to new vistas of funny that don't require us to abandon our capacity to relate to others.

Hillary Brown

Liner Notes is Flagpole's music opinion column. Interested in contributing a piece? Contact music editor Chris Hassiotis at music@flagpole.com.