Word: comic
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...absurdists have heeded the admonition of their existential idol Kierkegaard, who wrote: "The comic spirit is not wild or vehement, its laughter is not shrill." Black humor has a long tradition that reached its apex in Jonathan Swift. But the humorists who dwell on death and disaster today lean too often toward the narcissistic, reflecting images of themselves as helpless heroes in a world they can neither take nor leave. Their less lugubrious colleagues, on the other hand, have been all too willing to cede the comic to the journalists and to allow the commercial to override the classic...
Twain had his circuit circus, Allen a large radio audience. But TV has exposed more Americans than ever before to a steady, if often unsatisfactory, diet of humor. It offers dozens of stand-up comics a month (on such as the Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson shows), and some 30 situation comedies every week. As the word fun becomes more and more an adjective, the comic is also spilling over into the commercials; where once the pitchman raved supreme, he now adds a light or whimsical touch to ads-in Buster Keaton's Ford-truck plugs, for example...
...quality of TV comedy leaves something to be desired, the quantity of written humor is pitifully small; most writers with a comic talent have been lured by the wide exposure and high pay of TV. No replacements have been found for such essayists as Benchley, Ring Lardner, Don Marquis. Frank Sullivan. There is no longer a Thurber, expressing in word and picture the uneasiness of modern life and the war between the sexes. "Funny men don't seem to write books these days," laments Russell Baker. Nightclub humor-what there is of it-is also in bad shape...
Such is the state of U.S. humor that, except for the comparatively small squadron of black humorists, there are almost no original comic talents left. As it is now, the choice seems to lie between the banalities of the TV screen and what are the frequent absurdities of the black humorists, a choice roughly comparable to that offered by a menu with only two items: vanilla pudding and a whisky sour...
There may be a valid satirical point of view toward Hollywood half-marriages, or even toward attempted suicide. But Natalie, poking her head in and out of a hissing gas oven to answer phone calls, seems unaware that even the silliest comic character has to believe passionately in her own folly. Deep down, Inside Daisy Clover suffers from a similar lack of faith...