Post by Jeff on Nov 5, 2005 23:41:00 GMT -5
Whimsy, Venom, Poetry and Calumny... George Carlin has a new special on HBO. I doubt that they will air it more than a few times because it is fiercely unpleasant to watch. But you should watch it, not because it’s funny. It isn’t. Watch it because it is the most searing and accurate description of the American mind we’ve heard in a long time. Carlin is so angry that he spits and forgets words. He has the wild look of a prophet in his eyes as he fires out lines like, “It’s a club, and you’re not invited. You’re not fucking invited. You’re not fucking invited!” His topics run the gamut from offensive and repulsive (necrophilia) to merely offensive (“Consumption is the true national pastime; fuck baseball!”). All along his tirade is studded with bullet-like insights; “It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
The discussion is almost entirely political, though not in a simplistic way. He insults liberal academics, Southerners (specifically Oklahomans), Christians, people who commit suicide… In fact, if he hasn’t insulted you or someone you know by the end of the show, then you aren’t really living in America. And this seems to be his point. The culmination of his act is probably the first public rendering of an apocalypse (in the literary sense) in the 21st century. He describes in careful detail--about 15 minutes worth-- the fiery destruction of the entire Northern Hemisphere. He seems utterly hopeless: At this point, things can only get better if everything is destroyed.
The most poignant part of his speech, for it is not well described as a comedy routine, is his description of what he calls “The Pyramid of Hopelessness:” Homeless people (veterans and children) are on bottom, the condemned are one layer up, the depressed after that, and the terminally ill (because cures are denied them for one reason or another) are on top. These hopeless among us he imagines as willing participants in a mass suicide (they simultaneously jump off the Grand Canyon—for a free T-shirts). It is a disgusting vision, informed in equal parts by snuff films and Dante. And it forms a nuanced and accurate picture of the debasement of contemporary American culture.
If you enjoy reading the book of Amos or Jesus' antics with the moneychangers, you might like this, too. If you didn't...well, you should probably be forced to watch Carlin's impassioned plea for national sanity.
Links:
The HBO site: www.hbo.com/events/gcarlin/?ntrack_para1=feat_main_image
You can go here and watch the reaction trickle through the blogosphere: www.technorati.com/
Here is a sampling:
"Speaking of anarchism, I'm watching George Carlin on HBO and you know what? This is an hour of anarchist propaganda on HBO. I shit you not. He's not offering a solution but his critique of culture, politics and capitalism is spot on... and very funny."
wherewearebound.typepad.com/where_were_bound/2005/11/george_carlin.html
“George Carlin is now old, bent, and over-weight, as well as even more angry at life than he's ever been… [He] has made some serious miscalculations about what is funny. No surprise there: comedy takes exquisite skating on thin ice where at any moment the clown can be swallowed up and drowned by indifference.
In the past, [he] didn't so much blame society head on, as make fun of us for taking the conventional language of everyday speech too seriously. Tonight he took on human nature point blank and found it hopelessly deficient. It was much funnier when he blamed our putrid misuse of language, causing us to live our lives second-hand…
Maybe… Carlin will self-examine, go on the road and rewrite.”
journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/entries/963
The discussion is almost entirely political, though not in a simplistic way. He insults liberal academics, Southerners (specifically Oklahomans), Christians, people who commit suicide… In fact, if he hasn’t insulted you or someone you know by the end of the show, then you aren’t really living in America. And this seems to be his point. The culmination of his act is probably the first public rendering of an apocalypse (in the literary sense) in the 21st century. He describes in careful detail--about 15 minutes worth-- the fiery destruction of the entire Northern Hemisphere. He seems utterly hopeless: At this point, things can only get better if everything is destroyed.
The most poignant part of his speech, for it is not well described as a comedy routine, is his description of what he calls “The Pyramid of Hopelessness:” Homeless people (veterans and children) are on bottom, the condemned are one layer up, the depressed after that, and the terminally ill (because cures are denied them for one reason or another) are on top. These hopeless among us he imagines as willing participants in a mass suicide (they simultaneously jump off the Grand Canyon—for a free T-shirts). It is a disgusting vision, informed in equal parts by snuff films and Dante. And it forms a nuanced and accurate picture of the debasement of contemporary American culture.
If you enjoy reading the book of Amos or Jesus' antics with the moneychangers, you might like this, too. If you didn't...well, you should probably be forced to watch Carlin's impassioned plea for national sanity.
Links:
The HBO site: www.hbo.com/events/gcarlin/?ntrack_para1=feat_main_image
You can go here and watch the reaction trickle through the blogosphere: www.technorati.com/
Here is a sampling:
"Speaking of anarchism, I'm watching George Carlin on HBO and you know what? This is an hour of anarchist propaganda on HBO. I shit you not. He's not offering a solution but his critique of culture, politics and capitalism is spot on... and very funny."
wherewearebound.typepad.com/where_were_bound/2005/11/george_carlin.html
“George Carlin is now old, bent, and over-weight, as well as even more angry at life than he's ever been… [He] has made some serious miscalculations about what is funny. No surprise there: comedy takes exquisite skating on thin ice where at any moment the clown can be swallowed up and drowned by indifference.
In the past, [he] didn't so much blame society head on, as make fun of us for taking the conventional language of everyday speech too seriously. Tonight he took on human nature point blank and found it hopelessly deficient. It was much funnier when he blamed our putrid misuse of language, causing us to live our lives second-hand…
Maybe… Carlin will self-examine, go on the road and rewrite.”
journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/entries/963