By Ian Ebright
December 7, 2012
Ian Ebright is a former film critic who writes about faith, life, culture, and human rights while working on film projects. You can read more from Ian by visiting his blog The Broken Telegraph, or connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.
“Somehow, directness has become unbearable to us.” These chilling words, written by Christy Wampole in her recent New York Times piece "How to Live Without Irony," bear witness to a generational descent into routine insincerity.
The creative efforts of John Stewart, Tina Fey and Sacha Baron Cohen, to name a few, remind us that satire has the potential to be not just hilarious but insightful. At the same time, we understand that mockery can become excessive. Ridicule is direct at times—a dagger shoved into one person by another—but at its core, it is not so different from insincerity. These tactics are often a piece of armor used for self-preservation, a way to flee human connection by focusing on the other as a caricature while exempting one’s self from the same level of scrutiny.
Yet ridicule as a routine leads us away from progress and into a cultural tailspin. It also does a number on our soul.
Ridicule as a routine leads us away from progress and into a cultural tailspin.
As individuals, it appears the cast of The Comedy are the casualties of too much privilege and too much free time. They have been stimulated and entertained to the point that they can no longer manufacture a rise. The film begs the question: When everything is subject to ridicule, what then is left to feel? If nothing is sacred, what can possibly matter, and what becomes of meaning itself?
My own story may look something like yours. I spent my high school and the first half of my 20s hiding behind inside jokes and a veil of mockery. Maybe it’s just aging or maybe it is God’s steady work on my frequently resistant heart, but I’ve become burnt out on mockery as a lifestyle. I am by no means perfect today, and I still enjoy the jabs my closest friends and I exchange, but that is because I trust the people they are and know where the jokes are coming from.The same cannot be said about the larger sphere of mockery in our culture, which often aims at people we know far less than we think we do, from a distance which creates a sense of comfort so that we can fire away with ease. National tragedies and personal failings are no longer given the chance to take a breath before fingers are pointed, jokes are made and points are scored. No person or event is safe.
These days, I’m enjoying life with my wife and raising two kids, and we’re busy just like everyone else. I can’t help but notice that time is flying by. You may agree that this creates a sense of urgency for a life of value, discovery, meaning and, hopefully, positive contribution. I increasingly fear a life of consuming, commenting and then one day dying.
When everything is subject to ridicule, what then is left to feel?
But there must be a boundary on ridicule, and it seems our culture has raced beyond it—including people of faith at times—as we engage in personal mud-slinging over theological and political differences. Once we convince ourselves that we’re on the correct side of an issue and there is nothing further to understand, it’s not difficult to use that certainty as justification to smear an opponent on behalf of the greater good. That’s ironic, too.
Mockery, like sincerity, is habit-forming. The curse of this kind of ridicule is that it implies freedom of expression but ensures an enslavement to competition, insecurity and paranoia; we often fear that others will eventually say what we first said about them. Mockery desensitizes, masking the finer things and tiny pleasures, dulling the vibrancy and colors of life itself. What creates refreshment and surprise in this life is encouragement, vulnerability and honest confrontation.
Mocking comes easily. But a compliment or an authentic conversation? That takes real courage.
3 Comments
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Phillip Tippin commented…
I could not agree more. This piece simply adds evidence of the current Ironic Era in which we live. http://www.theinksociety.net/journal/2012/4/19/the-ironic-era.html
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Rob commented…
Mr. Ebright's points ought to be well taken.
We may form a tendency to deride people and ideas before we understand them, before we give them a fair shake. When this happens beneficial discourse can be displaced by satire that is becoming less clever and unfunny to those who might actually have a grip on the subject.
Should we call it the Colbert-Stewartization of dialogue?
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Morf commented…
The parable of the two stand-up comedians
If Jesus were among us today, this is almost certainly a story He would tell…
There were two comedians featured at a local comedy club. Each one had a distinctive style.
The first one built his comedy routines on the fears and biases of his audience. He encouraged hecklers and matched, or magnified their incendiary attitudes.
He nurtured the crowd’s prejudices as he exaggerated and confirmed them. He congratulated them, and himself, for their obvious superiority over those “other” ethnic or religious groups.
He mocked women, foreigners, old people, rich people, poor people and anyone not like himself.
He was painful, though reassuring to listen to – he said things the audience felt but dared not put into words.
The audience laughed at his jokes – but it was a bitter, caustic, forced, nervous and embarrassed laugh.
They left the club loud and boisterous – or in sullen, offended silence.
The other comedian was quite different. He quietly told stories that were stirring and memorable and reminded each listener of the fragility – and absurdity –of everyday life.
His heroes were those who muddled through life who made occasional sense of ridiculous situations. He rarely spoke of himself, but when he did, he himself was the hapless victim of his own punctured expectations.
The crowd listened closely and laughed in recognition of their own unfounded pretentiousness.
His stories reminded them of their own vulnerabilities even as they stirred them to be better, stronger, as well as more courageous and forgiving.
The audience left his performance cheered, encouraged and somehow filled.
If you asked people under 35 which person they thought would call themselves ‘Christian’, most young people I know would say the first one.
But if you asked which one was more like Jesus, they would certainly say the second one.
It’s an interesting – and revealing – distinction.
What has happened when the message is so different from the medium?
I know too many ‘Christians’ who are judgmental and hostile toward anyone of any different belief, yet are certain that they, if anyone, and certainly more than those ‘others’ deserve Heaven.
There is a strange glorified self-absorption at work here. It strikes me as being far distant and alien to anything like the character of God, the person of Jesus and any hope of ultimate ‘Good news’.
Self-promotion is quite the opposite of redemptive sacrifice. Self-promotion is certainly easier, and more socially acceptable. Self-sacrifice makes us all uncomfortable. Our first instinct is to turn away and distance ourselves, but as we do, we turn away from what makes us whole, and we find ourselves embracing shadows.
Sacrifice is never easy to do – or even watch.
Sacrifice is central to Christianity – but we rarely hear of it. Or think about it. It still costs too much and we’d rather focus on how what we do will get us into Heaven – and what ‘they ‘do won’t get them into Heaven.
It’s a complete circle; we proclaim our own righteousness, as we refuse the true cost of it, and as we dismiss anyone else’s right to salvation no matter what they believe or do.
Perhaps everything, from a favorite pair of shoes to theology, gets brittle with age.
Faith is ever new, the only God worth believing in is always making all things new (2 Corinthians 5:17, Revelation 21:5).
The Pharisees of the New Testament have been out-classed by the rigid unyielding shell of contemporary religion.
But the real ‘good news’ is that God Himself is the ultimate improvisational comic who dares to stir and challenge us far beyond what we could ever imagine.
He reminds us of our failings, even as He lifts us and steadies us for the next challenge.
This ‘good news’ is mercurial and just out of reach.
The journey is worth every strained and stumbling step.
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