The real ‘material’, the genuine foundation of humour, are the people who are still strong enough to find everything comical.
Laughter defending the spirit is the foundation of all our humour. In the vicinity, and elsewhere.

Voja Zanetic

‘Now you’ve got so much material!’

Those who aren’t involved with humour and satire, or those who have not become more or less well-known to others because of it, have never heard this sentence uttered. The rest have, including the author of this piece.

The sentence usually comes from dear, unknown people, who often approach the author they know to say hello and have a little chat about the quality and the quantity of the humour / satirical potential ‘the situation’ and ‘this here’ have. So the ‘situation’ and the ‘here’ become some sort of ‘material’, helpful to humourists and satirists in doing their job.

A small digression. Writer Slobodan Selenic once said that only in Serbia people are ‘involved with’ things, whereas in other countries they ‘do’ them.

 

So it seems that this ‘material’ presents the basis for humour and satire. And without this ‘material’ there would be no people who do the job of making people laugh, or making them think in a bitter-sweet sort of way, free of logic or purpose. In that sense, and in this Vicinity, satirists and humourists have a lot of work to do.

Because there is a whole lot of ‘material’. Let’s just try and figure out what it is exactly.

 

* * * * * * *

 

Steve Allan, star of the early days of US television, musician, actor, comedian, gave what is probably the most precise definition of the comical in his column for Cosmopolitan in the long gone 1957 – ‘Comedy is tragedy plus time’.

 

So, if we give something tragic enough time, it will end up being comical. Of course, there should be a need to laugh. This usually happens when we can’t easily forget or overcome something sad. Comedy, in that sense, shows us that we understand that the tragedy is ours.  And we want to study all aspects of this ‘material’.

 

Wars, occupations, poverty, lack of agency, this health-social disease now, are all elements of the tragic which, sometimes for decades, formed integral parts of reality in this Vicinity. In addition to that – like fruits and vegetables added as a free sample at the end of the check-out in a market – a variety of lively Leaders who promise to show us the way out of the tragedy. Towards a better life, a better future, whatever. Can all of the above really be understood and lived through without laughter? Yes, via dementia or the immigrant existence. But if we are of sound mind and have not fled to Canada, we have to laugh so we can bear it. There is nothing else to the tragedy but – comedy.

 

 

The comical and the satirical can also be accused of calming anger, and disabling revolutionary change. Of ‘ironing out’ the corners of reality. That they are a ‘vent’, without which the blood of the guilty would be flowing our streets, spilled by the angry mob. Because all that is rebellious happens where there is no humour, and it’s what we should really be striving towards in order to achieve change.

Like in North Korea, for example.

 

* * * * * * *

 

The other day I got a letter, they’re called emails nowadays. Two people, both infected with Covid. The husband has vertigo, terrible headaches, can’t eat – the wife writes. They made soup, that’s the only thing he can put down. They have the TV on, they’re watching PLJIZ.[1]  The rest of the letter says:

‘He got up, ate a little bit, and watched it. He was laughing so hard, all pale and weak. You really lifted his spirits.’

Reading that gave me a bloody lump in the throat.

You can’t be doing anything funny, except if you know many things that are sad. That’s the ‘material’.

The greater recognition than the satirists, though, should be given to those who keep laughing, even though it gets harder to do so by the day.

The real ‘material’, the genuine foundation of humour, are the people who are still strong enough to find everything comical.

Laughter defending the spirit is the foundation of all our humour. In the vicinity, and elsewhere.

 

[1] Satirical show, produced by Voja Zanetic and this week’s columnist Draza Petrovic, among others