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Blurred Lines A generation ago most Americans instinctively understood the bright line that separated comedy from noncomedy. There were subjects you could joke about, and those you couldn’t. Today those lines are being redrawn. The tolerance for humor based on race, religion, gender or sexual preference has all but evaporated (Roseanne Barr notwithstanding). At the same time, humor has elbowed its way into places that no one could have imagined it would go. A compelling example is the 2015 film The Big Short, which snagged a best picture Oscar nomination. To tackle the immensely convoluted issue of financial chicanery that lead to the catastrophic collapse of the housing market in 2007-08, Hollywood turned to director Adam McKay, a guy who began his career in SNL’s writers room and went on to create Anchorman, Step Brothers and other funny but ridiculous Will Ferrell vehicles. The serious, longform journalism of Michael Lewis’ book wasn’t enough to penetrate the public’s indifference and confusion about an event that almost destroyed the American economy. So they brought in the mind behind Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. “I was thinking of (The Big Short) in relation to Dr. Strangelove,” Jennings says in reference to Stanley Kubrick’s landmark 1964 satire. “Dr. Strangelove today still feels very transgressive and pointed. What daring it showed taking on the nuclear age the way it did. But it’s just not the same as a heartfelt plea for disarmament. It almost feels like a prank. It’s an act of mischief to
make that movie more than an act of principle. I love that through The Big Short, people will learn about the lessons of the housing bubble. But I hope that’s not the only way people experience it. Because pitch-black comedy can’t be our only response to the ills of the world. There’s a lot of those ills that need sincere, earnest responses and hard work, not just a provocative media take.” In the realm of Washington politics, Jennings’ book does not talk too much about the wild and unlikely rise of Al Franken, the second-string SNL alum who rose to the U.S. Senate, a phenomenon unthinkable a generation ago back when Franken was playing Stuart Smalley in cringeworthy SNL skits. Maybe that’s because once elected to the Senate, Franken put his sense of humor into a blind trust and morphed into the kind of earnest public servant we expect to see on Capitol Hill. Of course, that was not the case for the even more wild and unlikely rise of the man who now sits in the Oval Office. Maybe the most controversial part of Planet Funny is Jennings’ assertion that this new satirical culture is largely responsible for the election of Donald Trump, who has thus far carried his pre-presidential “act” into the White House. What liberals hear as lies and outrages, he says, Trump supporters often hear as edgy satire. “I really do think that’s what people were thinking coming out of those (Trump campaign) rallies: ‘Look at this guy. He’s such a straight shooter. He’s finally saying what we’re all thinking,’ which is kinda the same thing all those frat boys were saying coming out of Dane Cook shows. It’s not that different. I’m really afraid that Franken really was the rule before Trump, and now the unspoken thing is just to be as over-the-top as you can. Make them roar in the aisles. That’s the path to power.”
JUNE
12
7:30pm Free
This is Now: Angie Coiro & Ken Jennings Kepler’s Books, Menlo Park keplers.org
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JUNE 6-12, 2018 | metrosiliconvalley.com | sanjose.com | metroactive.com
its jump into the news business, says Jennings, may have come by way of Spy magazine, the inspirational forebear of both The Onion and The Daily Show. “They were onto Trump before anyone else,” Jennings says of the snarky, gossipy magazine that published between 1986 and 1998. “They wrote about Cosby and Schwarzenegger being awful when everyone else was giving them honorary degrees and awards for being great family men. They were very ahead of their time. They were like the Velvet Underground. They only lasted a few years, but every kid that read it figured out how to do ‘the voice.’”