The Funniest and Sweetest Person: In Memory of Richard Lewis (1947-2024)

Curbing their enthusiasm: Richard Lewis and Larry David

(Photo credit: HBO)

 

 

I. 

 

Some people think Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were the funniest duo in the history of comedy. 

 

And they were funny, no doubt about it - and hugely popular as a live act as well as on film, TV and radio - but I wouldn't call them the funniest duo in the history of comedy. 

 

At any rate, I prefer Larry David and Richard Lewis on screen together in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

 

 

II. 

 

Regrettably, I'm really only familiar with the latter due to his regular appearances on Curb throughout all twelve seasons of the show [1], where he played a fictionalised version of himself and, as in real life, an old friend of Larry's with whom he shared beautiful to watch comedic chemistry [2].   

 

However, I was very sad to read the press announcement of Lewis's death a couple of days ago, aged 76, and I shall over the next few weeks and months familiarise myself with the neurotic, self-deprecating (sometimes disconcertingly dark) stand-up comedy with which he made his name in the 1970s and '80s.     

 

Larry David paid tribute to his friend of over fifty-years by describing him as "the funniest person and also the sweetest".

 

Lewis & David (with admirers) c. 1975

 

Notes

 

[1] Richard Lewis has appeared in 41 episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm out of 114 episodes so far aired. He also appeared in the hour-long special (or pilot episode) which aired on 17 October 1999 (dir. Robert B. Weide). 

      Click here to watch Lewis and David bicker and banter their way through seasons 1-11 and here to watch their (now very poignant) appearance together in episode 3 of the twelth and final season: 'Vertical Drop, Horizontal Tug' (dir. Jeff Shaffer, 18 Feb 2024), in which Lewis tells Larry he's putting him in his will which the latter, of course, doesn't want: "If bequeathed, I will not accept."

 

[2] Richard Lewis and Larry David were born a few days apart in the summer of 1947 at the same hospital in Brooklyn, but didn't meet until they were aged twelve when attending a summer sports camp - instantly and intensely disliking one another, according to Lewis. Fast forward over a decade, and they crossed paths once more whilst on the New York comedy circuit, this time forging a firm (life-long) friendship.

 

     

Notes on Socrates and the Ethics of Sobriety (A 6/20 Paper by Maria Thanassa)

Curbing their enthusiasm: Socrates, Maria Thanassa & Larry David 

 

 

I. 

 

According to Maria Thanassa [1], notions of sobriety and intoxication are central to Plato's Symposium and Socrates is shown to be a man of self-restraint above all else; he drinks, but never gets drunk; he loves, but never succumbs to erotic ecstasy (even remaining somewhat indifferent to the charms of Alcibiades).

 

Socrates, in other words, is a man who, like Larry David, knows how to curb his enthusiasm [2] and keep his wits about him. It's not so much that he lacks passion, but he prefers to master his desires. For Socrates, sobriety guarantees the integrity of his nature.

 

But, as becomes clear later in her presentation, Dr Thanassa is not only concerned with the doings of ancient Greek philosphers. She is interested also in how the idea of sobriety can be reactivated within a contemporary culture she thinks of as intoxicated (and infantilised) by a form of liberal Dionysianism that promotes the freedom of the individual and self-expression.           

 

In other words, a bit like the Greek lyric poet Theognis, Dr Thanassa wants people to exercise a degree of control and not act in a shameless or foolish manner (enslaved by their own base instincts); to behave in an ethical and stylised manner, carefully cultivating the self [3]. 

 

II. 

 

This might make Dr Thanassa sound like a bit of a killjoy or a member of the morality police; i.e., one who wishes to enforce a code of conduct and is concerned when people transgress certain social rules. Fortunately, however, she is saved from becoming a battle-axe like Granny Hatchet [4] by that which Socrates and Larry David are both masters of: irony. 

 

Maria ironically tempers her own enthusiasm for telling others to curb their enthusiasm before it tips over into zealotry. Like Socrates - and Larry David - she seems at times to try out and test philosophical positions without ever allowing them to become points of principle or dogma. 

 

That doesn't mean we shouldn't take what Dr Thanassa says seriously - just not that seriously. And it certainly shouldn't stop us from enjoying the wine served at the end of the paper, for as Alcibiades might remind us, the 6/20 is, like the symposium, a drinking party as much as a forum of debate.

 

Having said that, food and wine is served at the 6/20 to help facilitate conversation between those in attendance, not to induce drunken excess and vomiting on the way home [5] - something that the host, Mr Christian Michel, would almost certainly not approve of.          

 

III.

I think the part of Dr Thanassa's paper I enjoyed the most was the section in which she (following Martha Nussbaum) discussed Socrates as someone who, in his strangeness, stands apart from other men - and indeed, the human condition itself. 

 

As already mentioned, Plato depicts Socrates as someone who is absent when he should be present; who drinks but does not get drunk; who is impervious to cold and hunger; who values beauty but remains unaffected by its physical manifestations; and who feels erotic desire but does not fully succumb to the pleasures of the flesh.

That certainly makes him sound like a queer fish and, according to Dr Thanassa, the oddity of his character when combined with his satyr-like ugliness makes him not only different, but genuinely other - inaccessible, impenetrable, and impossible to shut-up, even when sentenced to death.  

 

I can see why so many of his fellow Athenians hated him, just as so many of Larry David's friends and neighbours seem to find him impossible at times. But the above traits only increase my admiration for Socrates; he may lack empathy, but at least he recognises that even the most tragic events (such as the death of a pet parrot) have a comic aspect and that the philosopher must be free to ridicule, mock, or criticise everything under the sun - even if this risks offending others [6]. 

 

As the Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote: Socrates could abstain from those things that most are too weak to abstain from and enjoy in moderation those things that many indulge in excessively to their shame. His strength, his ability to endure, and his sobriety marked him out as a man of perfect and invincible spirit [7].  

In sum - and I think this was Dr Thanassa's closing line (borrowed from Baudelaire) - Keep smiling with Spartan serenity [8] and remember that curbing your enthusiasm means choosing not to burst into flame even though, as a philosopher, you will burn with a very special type of passion.

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Dr Maria Thanassa presented a short paper entitled 'Curb Your Enthusiasm: On Socrates and the Ethics of Sobriety' at Christian Michel's 6/20 Club (London) on 20 Feb 2023. This post is based on my recollection of what was said and I apologise to Dr Thanassa should I misrepresent her ideas in any manner. 

 

[2] The Socrates / Larry David connection and comparison has been made before; see, for example, Daniel Coffeen's excellent post on the philosophy of Curb Your Enthusiasm on his blog An Emphatic Umph: click here. 

      Coffeen rightly argues that both Socrates and Larry are characters who interact with the world in a fundamentally different way from most other people, refusing as they do inherited terms and questioning beliefs and norms of behaviour at every opportunity: "But whereas Socrates is really only concerned with big ideas about truth, morality, language, politics, Larry takes on the micro interactions of the social." 

      I was rather disappointed, considering the title of her paper, that Dr Thanassa didn't make more of the relationship between Socrates and Larry David. 

[3] This is suggestive of Foucault's later work and I was pleased to hear Dr Thanassa refer to such later in her paper, as well as to Nietzsche's idea of what constitutes the most needful thing - the constraint of a single taste - if an individual is to give style to their lives. 

[4] Granny Hatchet (Caroline Nation) was a member of the American temperance movement in the late-19th century and early-20th century, who famously smashed up liquor joints with a handheld axe. See the recent post written on her life and times: click here.   

[5] See the poem by Theognis in Greek Elegiac Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC, ed. and trans. Douglas E. Gerber (Loeb Classical Library / Harvard University Press, 1999), lines 477-496, quoted by Dr Thanassa on the night. 

[6] See my post of 14 Nov 2017 - 'Torpedo the Ark Means Everything's Funny' - click here. 

[7] I'm paraphrasing here from Meditations 1.16 - a passage quoted by Dr Thanassa in her paper. 

[8] See Baudelaire, 'The Painter of Modern Life', in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays (Phaidon Press, 1995), p. 29. 

      What I say here of the philosopher is, of course, what Baudelaire says of the modern dandy - another figure who understands, style, sobriety, and self-restraint.

 

I would like to express my gratitude once more to Maria for producing a fascinating paper and to Christian Michel for hosting another very enjoyable evening. This post is dedicated to them both and I hope it brings them some pleasure. 

On Curbing One's Enthusiasm for Kafka's Drawings

 

"One of these days I’ll send you a few of my old drawings, to give you something to laugh at. 

These drawings gave me greater satisfaction [...] than anything else." [1]  

I.

 

What constitutes a doodle? 

 

I have to agree with Larry on this one: the beauty of a doodle is that it invites interpretation [2]. If more than merely a scribble, a doodle is not a detailed drawing possessing clear representational meaning. 

 

Sometimes, even the person producing the doodle has no idea what it is they've drawn. For a doodle is often composed of simple abstract lines and shapes, produced randomly without any conscious effort. 

 

A doodle is often made, in fact, while one's attention is elsewhere; such as speaking on the phone, for example, or bored out of one's mind sitting in a business meeting.  

 

Personally, I don't think there's anything foolish about these drawings and that they may very well warrent investigation by those interested in the workings of the brain. But, having said that, I'm not sure they always deserve to be framed and put on the wall, or published in a book - even when the doodler is a famous author, for example.

 

Which brings us to Kafka ...

 

 

II. 

 

In 2019, hundreds of drawings by Kafka were discovered in a private collection that had been locked away for decades. And three years later, they were published in a big book by Yale University Press, with an introductory essay by Judith Butler, in which she describes the drawings as "images that have broken free of writing" [3].

 

Kafka himself had instructed his friend and literary executor, Max Brod, to destroy the drawings. But, as is so often the case, his wishes were ignored, proving yet again that if you are a writer and you really don't want your juvenilia, marginalia, and unpublished (often unfinished) works to see the light of the day after your death, then you had better make sure you destroy this material personally before it's too late to do so.   

 

Still, it is as it is and we are where we are; the drawings survived and have now been placed within the public arena, so we can all pass judgement upon them ...    

 

 

III.

 

I suppose the first thing to say is that  these images - by the criteria outlined above - are not naive doodles, even if Kafka himself dismissed them as such and did, in fact, consign many of them to the rubbish bin. They betray just a little too much skill and attention to detail and it should be remembered that Kafka had, whilst a student (1901-06), taken drawing classes and attended lectures on art history. 

 

Max Brod could certainly see the ingenuity (and the humour) of the images and rightly recognised that they would one day have great fascination for lovers of Kafka's work (although whether that justifies his preserving them against Kafka's wishes remains debatable).

 

But, whilst I do like many of the pictures, I'm not sure they quite merit the praise that has been poured over them by various commentators who, whilst unanimously agreeing that Kafka possessed genius with a capital G, disagree about whether he understood words and pictures as entirely independent of one another, or existing on a single plane and walking arm-in-arm, as one reviewer put it [4].      

 

For me, they're good and have a certain dynamism. I also love the fact that, as Andreas Kilcher points out, most of the figures are not fully elaborated bodies:

 

"They are not fleshed out and situated in three-dimensional space, they do not have fully devel­oped physiques. On the contrary, they are generally free-floating, lacking any sur­roundings, and in themselves they are disproportional, flat, fragile, caricatured, grotesque, carnivalesque." [5]

 

But they're not that good and I'm not sure how seriously we should take them as artistic statements in their own right. Nor do I think them vital for an understanding of his written work. 

 

And so, as ever, one might do well to curb one's enthusiasm before forking out £35 for a copy of the book (particularly when, with Christmas just around the corner, you can probably persuade a loved one it would make a lovely gift).  

 

 

(Yale University Press, 2022)

 

      

Notes

 

[1] Kafka writing in a letter to his fiancée, Felice Bauer, in February, 1913. See Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice, ed. Erich Heller and Jürgen Born, trans. James Stern and Elisabeth Duckworth (Schocken Books, 1973), p. 189. 

      In this same letter, Kafka rather amusingly claims: "I was once a great draftsman, you know, but then I started to take academic drawing lessons with a bad woman painter and ruined my talent."

 

[2] See the third episode of season ten of Curb Your Enthusiasm, 'Artificial Fruit', (dir. Cheryl Hines, 2020): click here and here for scenes discussing what does and does not constitute a doodle.

 

[3] See Butler's introduction to Franz Kafka: The Drawings, ed. Andreas Kilcher with Pavel Schmidt, trans. Kurt Beals, (Yale University Press, 2022). 

[4] Benjamin Balint, 'Graven Images' in the Jewish Review of Books (Spring, 2022): click here. 

 

[5] Andreas Kilcher, 'Discovering Franz Kafka's Nearly-Lost Drawings', trans. Kurt Beals, Literary Hub (1 June, 2022): click here.  

 

 

On the Daughters of God

Portrait of Tammi of Nazareth

the onion.com

 

"And I sayeth unto thee: Look upon mine eyes, which rest within mine head; 

not upon mine bosom, wherein no wisdom dwells."

 

 

I. Truth, Justice, Mercy, and Peace

 

A friend of mine, who happens to be a specialist in medieval religious art and literature, recently gave birth to her third daughter and joked: 'I just need one more and God's people can be restored!' I sort of smiled at this, but, at the time, had no idea what on earth she meant by this.

 

However, after thinking about it - and doing a bit of biblical research - I realised that she was referring to Psalm 85 - and the so-called Four Daughters of God who loved nothing better than meeting up and exchanging kisses [1].

 

Of course, these four daughters were allegorical; they personified the virtues of Truth, Justice, Mercy, and Peace and their uniting in Love signified the triumph of God and the fact that mankind was forgiven its sins and redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ. 

 

Attempts to pornify the motif - which was extremely popular in medieval Europe - by imagining scenes of incestuous lesbianism, are uncalled for, as the kisses were given in innocence [2]. At any rate, most people had become thoroughly bored with the idea by the end of the 17th-century, though some, like William Blake, remained fascinated by the Four Daughters. 

    

II. Tammi of Nazareth

  

In September 2010, The Onion published a piece under the headline 'New Evidence Suggests God Also Had Incredibly Busty Daughter' [3], according to which:

 

"In a discovery that biblical scholars say could alter our most fundamental understanding of Christianity, recently unearthed manuscripts suggest that in addition to His Son, Jesus Christ, God also had a daughter with absolutely humongous breasts." 

The article goes on:

"The documents, found in a cave near the Jordanian-Israeli border and estimated to have been composed circa A.D. 200, recount the life, teachings, and death of Jesus' well-endowed twin sister, Tammi of Nazareth."

And it continues in much the same comic-blasphemous (breast-obsessed) vein throughout. 

 

It's juvenile, certainly, but it is also amusing to read that whilst Tammi "promulgated similar ideas as her sibling, and appeared to possess the same miraculous powers", she found it difficult to preach the gospel as followers were only interested in gaining "a better vantage point from which to observe her 'heavenly radiance'" hidden beneath a thin linen vestment. 

 

 

III. Jane

 

Funny enough, Larry David anticipated this idea of a comely daughter born of God in a season 5 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, first broadcast in October 2005 ... [4]

 

In a now classic scene, Larry's Christian father-in-law (played by Paul Dooley) has purchased a nail used in the movie The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004) - not a film that Larry much cares for, wishes to watch, or discuss. And so he quickly changes the subject and takes the conversation in an irreverent (some might say sacrilegious) direction:

 

Larry David: 'You're nuts about this Jesus guy, aren't you?'

 

Cheryl's Father: 'Yeah. Well, I have a personal relationship with Christ.'

 

Larry David: 'Really? See, I could see worshipping Jesus if he were a girl, like if God had a daughter ... Jane. I'll worship a Jane. But, you know, to worship a guy ... like a little kinda, you know, it's a little gay, isn't it?'

 

Although his wife, Cheryl, attempts to shut him up at this point, Larry is determined to expand upon the idea:

 

Larry David: 'I would worship Jane, if he had a daughter Jane, I could have a relationship with a Jane.'

 

Cheryl's Father: [Increasingly annoyed and irritated] 'He didn't have a daughter!'

 

Larry David: 'It's a shame it wasn't a girl. That's all I have to say.'

 

Cheryl's Father: [Disgusted] 'Ugh!'

 

Larry David: 'Good looking woman ... Zaftig ... Good sense of humor ...'

 

Cheryl David: [Exasperated] 'Okay, that's fine.'

 

Larry David: 'If he had a daughter, everybody - everybody - would worship Jane. That's all I'm saying.'

It's an interesting point, as Jules would say. 

 

And I think Larry is on to something: we don't need a pale and sickly looking Jesus with his crown of thorns - or even a weeping Virgin - for our saviour; we need a voluptuous woman who knows how to laugh (and make laugh) - more Marilyn than Mary [5].          

 

 

Notes

 

[1] See Psalm 85:10 (KJV): "Mercy and Truth are met together; Righteousness and Peace have kissed each other." 

      This psalm is a community lament, probably written during the period of Israel's return from Babylonian exile. The people seek forgiveness from God for their unfaithfulness and restoration of their former status and power. The closing section expresses confidence that salvation will come.

 

[2] The Hebrew word for kiss in Psalm 85 doesn't refer to an erotic act per se, but, rather, to something exchanged by near relatives when greeting one another. In medieval Europe, where the visual motif of Justice and Peace kissing was first introduced, such an act was even more widespread than in the ancient Jewish world. However, because (male) artists have a penchant for nude (female) figures, renditions of Justice and Peace kissing were often (inappropriately) sexualised.

 

[3] 'New Evidence Suggests God Also Had Incredibly Busty Daughter', The Onion, (23 September, 2010): click here to read online. 

 

[4] Curb Your Enthusiasm, S5/E3, 'The Christ Nail' (2005), dir. Robert B. Weide, written by Larry David. Click here to watch the scene on YouTube.

 

[5] Thanks to the season 5 finale of Curb, we know that not only does Larry look forward to meeting Monroe in heaven, but that the latter is also a big fan of Seinfeld. See 'The End', S5/E10, dir. Larry Charles, written by Larry David, (2005). Marilyn is played in the episode by Susan Griffiths. 

 

Name That Tune

Tom O'Connor and his two lovely assistants host another edition of 

Name That Tune (Thames Television, 1976-1988)

 

 

Question 1: Can you name the theme tune used for the American TV series created, hosted and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, which aired on CBS and NBC between 1955 and 1965?

 

Yes Tom, I can name that tune: it's a short piece by the 19th-century French composer Charles Gounod, known in English as Funeral March of a Marionette. 

 

The piece was originally written for piano in 1872 and then orchestrated in 1879, which is how we best know it, largely thanks to Hitchcock (and his long-time musical collaborator Bernard Herrmann, who suggested it to him and re-arranged the theme in 1964).

 

Tom Huizenga describes the action of Marche funèbre d'une marionnette thus:

 

"Frenetic strings depict dueling marionettes. A bold cymbal crash brings one of them to his death. A moment of doleful music slowly gives way to a surprisingly perky march, the main melody sung by the clarinet. The marionettes process with the corpse but the music turns almost cheerful. A few of the puppets, seemingly tired of tramping, duck into a tavern for refreshment. They fall back in line just before Gounod's march reaches its destination." [1] 

 

Prior to Hitchcock's adoption of the tune for his hugely popular TV series - which is still shown today - Gounod's piece was used to accompany several films in the late 1920s, including a silent short starring Laurel and Hardy (Habeas Corpus, 1928) and Harold Lloyd's first talkie, Welcome Danger (1929). 

 

It is believed that Hitchcock first heard it in the silent romantic drama directed by F. W. Murnau: Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), one of the first feature films with a synchronized musical score and sound effects. 

 

Hitchcock loved the tune so much that he even selected it as one of his choices on the BBC radio show Desert Island Discs in 1959.

 

 

Question 2: Can you name the theme tune used for the American TV sitcom created by and starring Larry David, which has aired on HBO for 11 seasons, beginning in October 2000? [2]

 

Yes Tom, I can name that tune: it's a piece by the Italian composer Luciano Michelini, entitled Frolic, written for a little-known Italian movie La bellissima estate (1974).

 

Larry David first heard it, however, being used in a TV commercial for a bank and loved the lighthearted, comic quality of a mandolin played over a sola tuba's steady oompah-oompah. For David, the tune informs the audience not to take what happens in the show too seriously - it's intended to be funny [3].

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Curb signature tune has now become a popular online meme and used as background music in videos showing people in socially awkward situations or failing at some task in an embarrassing manner. Alas, the makers rarely have David's comic genius.  

 

Incidently, it might also be noted that Curb Your Enthusiasm has a rich and varied musical score, orchestrated by Wendell Yuponce; scenes are often punctuated, for example, with instrumental arrangements of songs from Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado and Bizet's Carmen. 

 

Larry himself has even been known to whistle Wagner [click here] and enjoy singing songs from the Bernstein and Sondheim musical West Side Story [click here].

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Tom Huizenga, 'Marches Madness: Puppets and a Funeral' (5 March, 2013), on the NPR website: click here.

 

[2] The series was developed from a one-hour special - Larry David: Curb Your Enthusiasm - which was broadcast on 17 October, 1999. David and his producers at HBO originally envisioned it as a one-off mockumentary. 

[3] Click here to watch Larry being interviewed on stage (alongside other cast members), talking about the tune and why he likes it.

 

 

Click here to play the signature tune to Alfred Hitchcock Presents (Marche funèbre d'une marionnette, by Charles Gounod). 

 

Click here to play the signature tune to Curb Your Enthusiasm (Frolic, by Luciano Michelini). 

 

And click here for a special treat - the opening sequence and theme from a mid-1980s episode of Name That Tune, with Lionel Blair hosting (having replaced Tom O'Connor in 1984).

 

Readers with excellent memories will recall an earlier post from Feb 2013, in which I discuss some of my favourite theme tunes: click here. 

 

 

You Know We're Living in a Society

George Costanza: defender of society and civilisation -

'The Chinese Restaurant', Seinfeld, S02/E11, (1991): click here.

 

 

In this era of identity politics, nobody wants to talk positively about society and its benefits. 

 

Instead, people prefer to speak of whatever community they imagine themselves belonging to on the basis of gender, race, religion, or a host of other identifying factors that they determine as crucial to who they are [1]. 

 

Often this sense of self is rooted in an experience of injustice or feelings of social exclusion and oppression. Communities thus often spend a good deal of time asserting their rights and (somewhat ironically) demanding recognition by the wider (mainstream) society that they either reject or wish to radically reform. 

 

People coming together on the basis of shared experiences and values sounds reasonable and can be empowering. But when communities become self-enclosed groups with special interests and are suspicious or resentful - even hostile - to those on the outside, then things can quickly develop in way that is problematic.           

 

Even Heidegger - whom one might have supposed to be very much for traditional (quasi-mythical) forms of Gemeinschaft and against modern, inauthentic forms of Gesellschaft - warned:

 

"The much-invoked 'community' still does not guarantee 'truth'; the 'community' can very well go astray and abide in errancy even more and even more obstinately than the individual." [2] 

 

Notes

 

[1] In a very amusing scene from one of my favourite episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm - 'Trick or Treat' (S02/E03) - Larry David identifies himself as a member of the bald community: click here.   

 

[2] Martin Heidegger, 'Ponderings and Intimations III', 153, in Ponderings II-VI: Black Notebooks 1931-1938, trans. Richard Rojcewicz, (Indiana University Press, 2016), p. 127. 

Easter with the Anti-Christ: (2019 Version)

Eric Idle and Graham Chapman in The Life of Brian (1979)

I.

Although Voltaire advised that we crush the Church and its vile superstitions - and whilst Nietzsche became increasingly hostile towards der Gekreuzigte, pitching his own Dionysian philosophy in direct opposition to Christianity conceived as "the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity [...] the one immortal blemish of mankind" - I'm increasingly coming round to the view that the best thing to do is simply laugh at Jesus hanging on his Cross, just as the Monty Python cast laughed in The Life of Brian and as Larry David often laughs in Curb Your Enthusiasm ...

II. 

One of the most controversial scenes in The Life of Brian (1979) is the ending in which Brian Cohen - who has been mistaken for the Messiah throughout his life - is crucified. Christian critics and protesters said it was mocking the Passion of Christ, which, of course, it is, no matter what the makers or defenders of the film may like to pretend.

But then that's precisely why it's so amusing and subversive of all the unnecessary suffering and pain that Christianity fetishises and foists upon us. I agree with director Terry Jones, when he argues that any creed that transforms a form of torture and execution into an iconic symbol before which to kneel, is a perversely corrupt form of religion.   

In just eight words, the Pythons perform a magnificent revaluation: Always look on the bright side of life. Such stoicism and, more importantly, gay insouciance, is profoundly anti-Christian and lyricist Eric Idle is to be congratulated. If only Jesus had of cared less about sin and dared to give his followers a grin ...


III.

In a season five episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry's father-in-law has purchased a nail on the internet and is wearing it proudly around his neck. The nail, he says, was used in The Passion of the Christ (2004) - Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic piece of Christian torture porn.

Clearly, not the kind of film likely to appeal to Larry (or any sane individual), he can't resist trying to provoke Cheryl's idiot father:

"'You're nuts about this Jesus guy, aren't you?'
'Yeah, I have a personal relationship with Christ.'
'Really?'
'Yeah.'

'I can see worshipping Jesus if he were a girl, like if God had a daughter. Jane. I'll worship a Jane.' 

'No.'
'But, you know, to worship a guy, it's like a little, you know, it's a little gay, isn't it?'
'It's the Son of God! What's the matter with you?'
'I'm just saying. A girl ... I would worship Jane, if he had a daughter Jane. I could have a relationship with a Jane.'
'He didn't have a daughter!'
'It's a shame it wasn't a girl. That's all I have to say. Good-looking woman, zatfig, you know? Good sense of humour.'   

'No! No! No!'

'If he had a daughter, everybody - everybody - would worship Jane.'"

This scene isn't perhaps as outrageous or as provocative as the Python scene, but it's beautifully blasphemous in its own way. It's worth noting also that, later in the episode, Larry takes the nail and uses it to hang a mezuzah to the door before his own father's arrival.

And on that note ... Happy Easter to all torpedophiles. 

Notes

In a letter to the mathematician and philosopher Jean le Rond d'Alembert (28 November 1762), Voltaire famously wrote: Quoi que vous fassiez, écrasez l'infâme, et aimez qui vous aime. Those interested in Voltaire's correspondence can visit Oxford University's Voltaire Foundation: click here.   

Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), section 62.

Click here for the end scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979). The song, 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life', can be found on the film soundtrack album released by Warner Bros. Records (1979).  

Click here for the scene transcribed above from 'The Christ Nail' (S5/E3), Curb Your Enthusiasm, written by Larry David,  dir. by Robert B. Weide, (2005). 

Finally, for the 2013 version of Easter with the Anti-Christ, click here. 

In Praise of the Fatwa Boys 2: Larry David's Finest Hour

The Fatwa Boys: Salman Rushdie and Larry David 
in a scene from Curb Your Enthusiasm [S9/E3]

In the long-awaited ninth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry incurs a death sentence from the Supreme Leader of Iran after satirizing the Ayatollah on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in promotion of his latest project - a musical comedy called Fatwa! - based on The Satanic Verses controversy in which a similar religious ruling was passed against the novelist Salman Rushdie in 1989 [see part one of this post]. 

This, I think, is a brave thing to do - arguably far more daring than his usual schtick of breaching social conventions and examining the micropolitics of every day life in obsessive detail. Brave too, I might add, of HBO to agree to this; for these days there aren't many producers willing to be involved in a project that might offend the religious sensibilities of Islam (they might claim their reticence is a sign of respect, but I think we all know it's a sign of fear).      

Post-The Satanic Verses controversy, post-the murder of Theo van Gogh, post-the Danish cartoon crisis, and post-the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the West has learned to appease Islam and limit its own right to freedom of expression. In other words, fear of deadly reprisals has succeeded in bringing about cultural self-censorship. So again, hats off to Larry David!

And hats off too to Salman Rushdie for not only agreeing to make fun of what was, for many years, a truly horrible situation, but also to take part in an episode of the show, where - to brilliant comic effect - he instructs Larry on all the advantages of living under a fatwa (including fatwa sex, which, according to Rushdie, is the best sex there is). 

As one commentator on this episode pointed out, the reason such jokes constitute one of the most effective weapons against Islamic fundamentalism is precisely because - as Khomeini once said - there's nothing funny about Islam.

The ninth season of Curb met with mixed reviews and audience figures were, I believe, much lower than for season 8. Critics said the world had moved on in the six years between the two seasons and that the show belonged to another time.

Maybe that's true: but, ultimately, what matters is the fact that Larry David, in collaboration with Rushdie, demonstrated how best to respond to those fanatics who would have us all submit to their religious mania: with courage and with humour.      


Click here to watch a scene with Larry David and Salman Rushdie (the self-styled Fatwa Boys) from 'A Disturbance in the Kitchen', episode 3 / season 9 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, dir. Jeff Schaffer (HBO, 2017). 

On Learning to Laugh at Everything with Larry David, Georges Bataille and D. H. Lawrence

Credit: durantelallera/Shutterstock

I. Everything's Funny

As I said in a recent post, one of the things that the phrase torpedo the ark means to me is having the freedom to criticise everything under the sun - even if that risks offending others. Nothing is sacrosanct or off limits; everything can be targeted and everything can be ridiculed, mocked, or poked fun at because, as Larry David rightly informs his friend Richard Lewis, everything's funny - even the death of a beloved parakeet.*

Here, I'd like to expand on this idea with reference to the work of Georges Bataille and D. H. Lawrence ...

II. A Philosophy of Laughter

Bataille discovered the importance of laughter very early on in his career as a writer.

It wasn't, however, until a lecture made many years later, in 1953, that he was able to admit with a smile that, insofar as he'd been engaged in serious philosophical work at all, he'd been constructing a philosophy founded upon (and exclusively concerned with) the experience of laughter as that which escapes reason and understanding.    

In other words, it's not just the unknown or unknowable that causes us to laugh; laughter is itself inexplicable and we often have no idea why we laugh when we do - joy bubbles over or bursts forth unexpectedly and as a form of excess (or what Bataille terms unproductive expenditure).

And - crucially, from the perspective of ethics - laughter is often infectious; when we laugh, others laugh too. Indeed, whilst it's perfectly possible to weep alone, I'm not sure one can ever really laugh in isolation (without being a madman). It's laughter - not sorrow (or mourning) - that is the social practice par excellence.     

But what, for Bataille, is there to laugh at?

The answer, as for Larry David, is everything: Bataille encourages us to laugh not just at the world and the things that are in it, but at being itself and, ultimately, at that which all being is a being towards: death. This is clear in his short poem entitled 'Laughter' [Rire]:

Laugh and laugh
at the sun
at the nettles
at the stones
at the ducks

at the rain
at the pee-pee of the pope
at mummy
at a coffin full of shit

Commenting on the above verse, Nick Land writes:

"It is because life is pure surplus that the child of Rire - standing by the side of his quietly weeping mother and transfixed by the stinking ruins of his father - is gripped by convulsions of horror that explode into peals of mirth, as uncompromising as orgasm. [...] Laughter is a communion with the dead, since death is not the object of laughter: it is death itself that finds a voice when we laugh. Laughter is that which is lost to discourse, the haemorrhaging of pragmatics into excitation and filth."

Ba-dum-tsh!

III. Curb Your Enthusiasm

D. H. Lawrence is another writer who makes an important contribution to the philosophy of laughter - perhaps surprisingly so, as this self-styled priest of love is thought by many to be utterly humourless, though often unintentionally comic or absurd.   

However, as Judith Ruderman points out, the mistaken idea that Lawrence had no sense of humour is an opinion held for the most part by those who are misled (or disconcereted) by his intensity. He is often over-earnest and can sometimes be a bore. But Lawrence also values (and utilises) humour in his work, often deliberately undermining his own seriousness and tendency to preach.    

Ruderman also reminds us of this crucial passage written by Lawrence in his essay on Edgar Allan Poe (a passage that LD would surely approve of): 

"The Holy Ghost bids us never to be too deadly in our earnestness, always to laugh in time, at ourselves and at everything. Particularly at our sublimities. Everything has its hour of ridicule - everything."

The Holy Ghost, according to Lawrence, also helps us to keep it real; "not to push our cravings too far, not to submit to stunts and high falutin, above all not to be too egoistic and willful [...] to leave off when it bids us leave off".

In other words, the Holy Ghost helps us curb our enthusiasm and recognise that the latter - particularly when tied to moral and ideological fundamentalism - is what threatens us today.

Notes

*I refer here to a scene in the first episode of the ninth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm entitled 'Foisted!', dir. Jeff Schaffer, written by Larry David and Jeff Schaffer (2017): click here.

Bataille, 'Nonknowledge, Laughter, and Tears', in The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, ed. Stuart Kendall, trans. Michelle Kendall and Stuart Kendall, (University of Minnesota, 2001). 

Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism, (Routledge 1992), p. xvii. The translation of the poem is also found here. 

Judith Ruderman, 'D. H. Lawrence on Trial Yet Again: The Charge? It's Ridiculous!', Journal of D. H. Lawrence Studies, ed. Susan Reid, Vol. 5, Number 1, (2018), pp. 59-82.

D. H. Lawrence, 'Edgar Allan Poe', Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 73. 

On D. H. Lawrence's Fascination with Male Legs

Robyn H. Fitzpatrick: Male Legs 

robynart.com 

As David Ellis reminds us in a recent blog post, Lawrence was a great admirer of the male leg; particularly those legs that have a certain quick vitality, even if rather thin looking like his own. But he's not a fan of stocky, stupid looking legs, no matter how finely muscled; or knees that, in his view, lack meaning or sensuality.

Nor is Lawrence particularly keen on bare legs; his preference is for male legs clad in red trousers - or tight-fitting tartan trews in the case of Capt. Hepburn - and female legs wrapped in brightly coloured stockings.

Thus it is that one could easily imagine Lawrence offering a little travelling tip to a fellow passenger who happened to have his legs exposed: Try not to wear shorts. It's not all that attractive to look at ... Even if, unlike Larry David, he doesn't find naked, hairy male legs intrinsically grotesque.         

Indeed, one suspects that rather like the narrator of 'The Captain's Doll', Lawrence secretly thrilled at the "huge blond limbs of the savage Germans" parading around in their lederhosen and displaying their "bare, brown, powerful knees and thighs".   

And that, like Connie, he ultimately regarded legs as more important than unreal faces ...

Notes

David Ellis, 'Legs' (28 Oct 2018), can be found on dellis-author.co.uk: click here. 

Larry David, Curb Your Enthusiasm, S7/E4: 'The Hot Towel', (2009): click here. 

It might amuse readers to know that Larry also has a strong aversion to other male body parts, including testicles, which he regards as disgusting, hideous and rightly reviled. See Curb Your Enthusiasm, S8/E2: 'The Safe House', (2011): click here. Obviously, this testicular aversion is a very unLawrentian. Connie famously discovers the balls of her lover to be the primeval root of all that is lovely; full of a "strange heavy weight of mystery, that could lie soft and heavy in [her] hand!" See Lady Chatterley's Lover, Ch. XXII.   

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Captain's Doll', in The Fox, The Captain's Doll, The Ladybird, ed. Dieter Mehl, (Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 122. 

D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 254. 

Interestingly, one of the queer after-effects of Connie's affair with Mellors is that she becomes conscious of legs, including the thighs of her father. It strikes her, however, that most modern legs - of either sex - simply pranced around in leggy ordinariness without any significance, or were so daunted as to be "daunted out of existence". One can't help wondering, however, if this new awakening to legs isn't also a reaction to her husband's disability.

On the Mythology of Wood (with Reference to the Case of Larry David)

Tile coaster by cafepress.co.uk 

I.

According to Wikipedia:

"Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin that resists compression."

Mankind has been using wood for millennia; as fuel, as a building material for ships and houses, and for making a wide variety of other essential objects (including tools, weapons, furniture and totem poles). Peoples everywhere love it for its firmness, its softness, and the natural warmth of its touch. Wood is not just an organic material, it is also a poetico-magical substance.

But high regard for wood, including the pleasure of its feel, is one of the things on which I differ from Larry David. The latter not only respects wood, he reveres wood and is considerate of it as a material, refusing to discriminate between types and grades of wood. Pine, walnut, or oak - it doesn't matter - Larry holds all wood in equal esteem.   

But in so doing, of course, he's subscribing to a certain mythology and reinforcing what Barthes terms a hierarchy of substances - a way of thinking in which certain natural materials are privileged over man-made ones, particularly those belonging to the family of plastics.


II.

As I wrote in a very early post on this blog with reference to marble contra plastic, the fact that certain materials, including wood, retain their high-ranking status within such a hierarchy and continue to be used by craftsmen and manufacturers who want their work to be seen as belonging to a long and noble tradition, means nothing to me. I prefer synthetic substances, such as laminate flooring, for their democratic cheerfulness and affordability, free from cultural pretension and snobbishness (even if bourgeois in origin).

Plastic may be a disgraced material with a purely negative reality - the product of chemistry, not of nature - but it enables the euphoric experience of being able to reshape the world and endlessly create new forms and objects, limited only by our own ingenuity and imagination. It doesn't necessarily allow one to live more beautifully or more truthfully, but I'm bored of these things posited as supreme values and of being bullied by our grand idealists who mistakenly equate them with the Good.


See:

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 7, Episode 10, 'Seinfeld', dir. Jeff Shaffer / Andy Ackerman (2009). To watch the relevant scenes on YouTube, click here.  

Roland Barthes, 'Toys' and 'Plastic', in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers, (The Noonday Press, 1991). Click here to read this text online.  

Note: the early post I refer to was 'Why I Love Mauro Perucchetti's Jelly Baby Family', (1 Dec 2012): click here.  

Islamism: What Would Nietzsche Do?

I. If Islam Despises Christianity, It Has a Thousandfold Right to Do So

Whilst it's true that Nietzsche does praise Islamic civilisation - particularly the wonderful culture of the Moors - within The Anti-Christ (1888), you rather get the impression he's doing so in order to provoke his mostly Western readers who pride themselves on the superiority of their own Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian inheritance.

For Nietzsche surely knew that Islam - as part of the same moral-religious tradition as Judaism and Christianity - is as problematic in terms of his own critique of values as either of the latter. He might like to romanticise the Arabs as a noble and manly race in comparison to the modern European, but such orientalism was common in the 19th century and needn't detain us for too long.

Besides, Islamism - a militant form of fundamentalism - is very much a phenomenon of the 20th and 21st centuries and so wouldn't have been something that Nietzsche would have been familiar with. He did, however, anticipate the rise of such murderous ideologies and he did directly address the question of revolutionary fanaticism in his mid-period writings.

It is, therefore, perfectly legitimate to speculate how Nietzsche might have responded to the question (and the threat) of Islamism ...       

II. Serenity Now

Firstly, it's important to point out that, despite what many of his adherents as well as opponents often claim, Nietzsche - for all his anti-humanism - remained pro-Enlightenment; that is to say, someone with a deep admiration for the faculty of reason. It was important to Nietzsche that he not be regarded as an irrationalist or fanatic; i.e., one who demands faith and obedience from his followers, whilst displaying all the irritable impatience and resentment of the invalid.  

As Keith Ansell-Pearson reminds us, Nietzsche conceived of philosophy as a method for curbing excessive forms of enthusiasm and tempering the emotional and mental hysteria that we encounter in the world's hot-spots. As so many of these hot-spots happen to be Muslim majority countries, one is tempted to characterise the entire Muslim world as one huge tropical zone full of absurdly violent passions and "the most savage energies in the form of long-buried horrors and excesses of the most distant ages" [HAH 463].

Ultimately, moderation is the key to Nietzsche's mid-period therapeutics. And the main aim is to counter all forms of religious and ideological stupidity. It is the duty of those he calls free spirits to cool things down in a world that is "visibly catching fire in more and more places" [HAH 38], via an analytical naturalism and a dose of eudaemonic asceticism.

Ansell-Pearson is keen to trace such a practice of philosophy back to the ancient Greek thinker Epicurus and he makes a very strong case for why it is instructive and legitimate to do so. Personally, however, I'm more interested in how Nietzsche's thinking resonates within contemporary popular culture; such as in the work of comic genius Larry David ...


III. Zügel deine Begeisterung

Like Nietzsche, Larry is driven by a stubborn and sceptical form of honesty that tolerates no bullshit or groundless idealism. And like Nietzsche, Larry encourages us also to find joy in the small things - in details and in the minutiae of daily existence (including our language). Ansell-Pearson writes:

"There remains a strong and firm desire for life but [...] this voluptuous appreciation and enjoyment of life [...] is modest in terms of the kinds of pleasures it wants [...] and in terms of its acknowledgement of the realities of a human existence." [43] 

Such a philosophy is clearly antithetical to any faith that claims absolute moral authority. And so, it's little surprise then that in the most recent season of Curb Your Enthusiasm Larry runs foul of the Islamists and has a death sentence placed upon him by the Iranian Ayatollah.

His crime: Mocking Muslim clerics on a TV talk-show whilst discussing his new project, Fatwa!, a musical-comedy based on the Salman Rushdie (Satanic Verses) affair.

His defence: Religion should be made fun of. It's ridiculous. If I believed that stuff, I'd keep my mouth shut lest somebody think I was out of my mind.

Notes

Keith Ansell-Pearson, Nietzsche's Search for Philosophy, (Bloomsbury, 2018).

Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, Vol. I., trans. Gary Handwerk, (Stanford University Press,1995). 

To watch a clip from the final episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm season 9, featuring a rehearsal scene from Fatwa!, click here.  

Torpedo the Ark Means: Everything's Funny (5th Anniversary Reflections on the Death of a Parakeet)

Sorry about your bird ...

The phrase torpedo the ark - borrowed from Ibsen - is polysemic. That is to say, it has multiple meanings within a semantic field and thus invites fluid interpretation, rather than fixed definition.

Having said that, when originally conceiving the blog, I wanted a title that would first and foremost sloganise the idea of having done with the judgement of God. This, for me at least, remains the core meaning of the phrase that underlies all others. Understand this, and you understand that torpedo the ark is opposed to all forms of coordinating authority and does not mean destroy all species of life.

Those who like to read it in the latter sense are welcome to do so, but it's mistaken to describe this blog as ecocidal, even if it is often anti-vitalist in its nihilism and ultimately regards the epiphenomenal occurrence of life as a very rare and unusual way of being dead. What's being negated here isn't bios in all its evolutionary variety, but the lie of salvation.

Crucially, torpedo the ark also means having the freedom to criticise everything under the sun - even if this risks offending others. Nothing is sacrosanct or off limits; everything can be targeted and everything can be ridiculed, mocked, or scorned because, as Larry David rightly informs his friend Richard Lewis, everything's funny - even the death of a beloved parakeet ...  

Note: I am referring to a scene in the first episode of the ninth season of Curb Your Enthusiasm entitled 'Foisted!', dir. Jeff Schaffer, written by Larry David and Jeff Schaffer (2017): click here to watch on YouTube.  

Shit Bow: Larry David and Roland Barthes on the Art of Japanese Etiquette

Larry David and a Japanese restaurant manager discuss 

bow techniques in Curb Your Enthusiasm [S8/E7]

When is a bow not a bow? Or, more precisely, when is a bow a disguised insult, rather than a sincere form of apology? The answer, according to Curb Your Enthusiasm, is when it's a shit bow ...

Having had his takeaway order messed up by his favourite Japanese restaurant due to insecure packaging, Larry seeks an apology from the manager (brilliantly played by Andrew Pang) - something which he duly receives, along with an accompanying bow much to his great delight: "We could learn a lot of things from Japan."  

However, although initially excited by the bow and expressly stating that it was not something with which he could possibly quibble, he later starts to worry that it was perfunctory, rather than invested with genuine feeling. Seeking to confirm his suspicions, Larry accosts a group of Japanese tourists in the park and asks to be enlightened on the finer points of bowing.

He is told that a sincere apology requires a deep bow and that the bow he received - which was not much more than an exaggerated nod in his direction - not only fails to express sorrow or regret, but is insulting and dismissive. In fact, Larry is told he has been given a shit bow and that no bow would be better than that bow. 

Armed with this new information, Larry returns to the restaurant in order to confront the manager. The latter, however, is uninterested in either apologising further, or discussing Japanese etiquette. Hoping that he might be able to quickly resolve the issue and get on with his job, he repeatedly tells Larry that a bow is a bow.

Of course, Larry being Larry, he's not going to let it go: "Is it possible", he asks, "you don't know the bow rules?" This naturally irritates the manager, who insists that he understands the bow rules perfectly and has done so since a young age: "I was raised by bow rules.'"

He's understandably not too pleased either to hear his bow described as a shit bow. But, if only to get Mr David to go away, he finally gives him the deep bow that the latter felt entitled to. A satisfied Larry finally leaves, but not without declaring his intention to research the matter further online.

It's a great series of scenes and one can't help wondering what it is that Larry thinks we might learn from Japan - or, rather, what he calls Japan. For like Barthes's Japan in Empire of Signs, Larry's Japan is essentially an imaginative space; somewhere faraway providing a reserve of features whose manipulation and invented interplay affords amusement and allows for the fantasy of a symbolic system that is entirely alien to that found in the West.

Indeed, as with most other things, people and places, Larry is essentially indifferent to the real Japan, living, as he does, almost exclusively in a comedic world of his own invention. What excites him is not so much "another metaphysics, another wisdom (though the latter might appear thoroughly desirable); it is the possibility of a difference, of a mutation, of a revolution in the propriety of symbolic systems".

In other words, Larry is excited by the possibility of previously unheard of rules and new forms of social minutiae. Unlike most Westerners, Larry doesn't regard formal displays of politeness, for example, as suspicious or as signs of hypocrisy. He genuinely loves the bow as he does all forms of coded behaviour - it's modern informality and inconsiderate behaviour (such as wearing shorts on an airplane, or pig-parking) that drive him nuts.

Larry doesn't buy into what Barthes terms the Occidental mythology of the person that allows for - and encourages - the free expression of one's natural feelings or authentic inner self. For this ultimately results in impolite and selfish behaviour. Larry wants society with all its complexity and artifice; for it's these things that provide him with his comic material. And, indeed, his ethics ...

See: 

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 8, Episode 7: 'The Bi-Sexual', dir. David Mandel, written by Larry David, Alec Berg, David Mandel and Jeff Schaffer (2011). Click here to watch a clip on YouTube of the scene in the park; or here to watch the later scene in the restaurant.     

Roland Barthes, Empire of Signs, trans. Richard Howard, (Hill and Wang / Noonday Press, 1989), pp. 3-4.