News from Patriot States of America—2
There had been a decay in humor all around. The only thing that was sort of funny was that nothing was funny anymore, and since that was a different kind of humor to understand or explain, most people denied that it existed. The majority had degenerated into this abject state of mind since the Partition, unlike the architects of the PSA, who were congenitally devoid of humor. These men had felt they had the means and the momentum in this historic moment to create a world tailored to their peculiar humorless psychology and privilege, and like everything else in their lives, they didn’t see anything funny about that. They could manage an acidic mockery of the Bugmen they felt they had permanently vanquished, but the truth is, they were genetically predisposed to narcissism, taking themselves too seriously for laughter—unless, “winners” that they fancied themselves, they “won” something—but that’s not ha-ha laughter, that’s self-vindication laughter—like that’s not really sex since it’s with a donkey.
The Bugmen—or less slightingly, the Blues—had likewise suffered a decline in the comic instinct. Back in the day, they had enjoyed a hearty ability to laugh at themselves, and of course, with gusto at Them, but now that They were no longer a threatened but an accomplished reality, it just didn’t seem that funny anymore. In the early days after the Partition, the Blue late night talk show hosts had kept up the jokes, but everybody knew They weren’t listening, and there’s just no real gratification in telling endless jokes to the choir. Only the wisest philosophers pointed out that there wasn’t really the difference between the two camps as each had been engineered to believe—that living a competitive, profit-driven, resource-depleting, environment-wrecking life on this little watery rock could result in nothing but resentful, finger-pointing humorlessness—but nobody wanted to hear that, so they didn’t.
Still, though humor was essentially non-existent in the PSA—as mistrusted as high IQ—vestiges of it remained in the Blue States of America, and continued, though diminished, as one of its distinguishing traits. And perhaps played a role in the motives of defectors from the PSA to the Blue States—rare, but unlike the other way around, not unheard-of. Of course when someone did defect from the PSA, they were sent immediately to Humor Camp.
* * *
Even the instructors—recruited of course from the old-regime ranks of pontificating, narcissistic Knowledge Elites—found it difficult not so much to teach humor as to say what it was. They approached the task like world-weary drill sergeants—“How am I supposed to teach you idiots anything?”—an attitude so repulsive it had inspired no small number of counter-defections. It’s hard enough to explain funny even while things still are funny—but almost impossible when dealing with someone from a place where laughing in public could get you arrested.
But the fact remained, if you wanted to do well in the BSA, you had to get the idea of something being funny, and with devoted practice, learn how to laugh again.
* * *
“Okay. Watson.”
Watson sat up straight.
“Which of these is funny? A: a man comes home and his family’s been murdered—or, B: a man comes home and his wife meets him at the door wearing a nose and glasses mask?”
Watson’s brow furrowed. “Does it depend on how the family was murdered, Bill?”
“No.”
“Okay—was there some kind of subtext,” Watson said proudly, having recently discovered the word but not quite its meaning, “to the wife choosing to wear a mask?”
“Yes.”
“Was there a subtext to the family being murdered?”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“I’m what?”
“Never mind. They’re just murdered, okay? That’s what matters.”
“So that’s funny?”
They don’t pay me enough, thought the instructor. “No, Watson. That’s usually not funny.”
“But sometimes it is?” puzzled Watson asked.
“It depends.”
Johnson’s hand shot up.
“Johnson?”
“I notice you often say ‘It depends’. Is that funny?”
“It depends.”
The class stared at him. The instructor stared back.
A hand went up.
“Anderson?”
“Was that a laugh opportunity?”
“Shrewdly observed, Anderson.”
Another hand.
“Miller?”
“Would that be an example of dead-pan, as opposed to conventional, humor?”
“Very likely.”
Miller looked around at his classmates smugly.
“Okay,” said the instructor. “Let’s do a few laugh exercises. Ready? Laugh!”
The class gave it their best shot, which wasn’t particularly convincing.
“Come on!” coached the instructor. “Put your whole body into it!”
They tried again—a little better. Like an orchestra conductor, the instructor waved them dead. “Okay, people,” he said, “you’re laughing with your mouths, but how many of you are laughing with your eyes? None of you!” Remember the sequence: you listen, then the pause where you briefly step back from what the words seem to be saying, reflect, then “get” it.”
A hand. “Grier?”
“What if you don’t “get” it?”
“Fake it. Either way, it should show in your eyes. Go home and practice. And now let’s try a joke. Who will be able to tell the right place to laugh? Ready? Okay. A giraffe walked into a bar . . .”
Several of the students laughed.
“Wrong.”
“He walked up to the bartender . . .”
Several more laughed.
“Wrong. Not yet. And what did the giraffe say?”
“I give out,” said Carter.
“Up.”
“I mean up.”
“He said—the highballs are on me!”
Silence.
“My God, people, this isn’t rocket science, it’s comedy.”
A lone laugh.
“Thank you, Johnson. The rest of you have work to do. Okay, writing prompt for tomorrow’s essay: My life is a joke. Put some thought into it. Any questions?”
Another lone laugh.
“No, Baker. It’s just a question for questions.”
Another laugh.
“Stop it. Okay, go out there and study people laughing. And try to say or do something funny yourself—if you can. Class dismissed.”
Fools, thought the instructor—who, of course, had never gone “out there” to anything truly alien and tried to understand it in his life. But, dammit, he knew a joke when he heard one.
October 2, 2023