Sometimes I wish America were still a British colony. Don’t get me wrong. I’m no Anglophile. I am not inordinately fond of period dramas or Colin Firth. I do not believe the word “color” should be spelled with a “u.” All the cultural clichés — the monarchy, the tea, the accent — don’t really do it for me. It’s the jokes. As far as humor goes, I think we could learn a thing from our British counterparts.
There is a clear contrast between our two countries’ comedies. Most iconic American comedic heroes — the Ben Stillers, Adam Sandlers, and Jim Carreys — are winners. They are clever. They are easy to root for. They triumph over their dim-witted counterparts and always get the girl. British comedic heroes, on the other hand — the David Mitchells and Rowan Atkinsons — are losers. They are foolish and embarrassing. They are unattractive and utterly unlovable. And yet, these poor lost souls have found favor in God’s sight. How’s that, you say?
Stephen Fry, the English actor and comedian, once argued that the difference between American and British cultures can be explained through our differing senses of humor. Whereas American humor has been shaped by optimism, British humor has been marked by a sense of original sin. Whereas Americans see life as improvable, the English see life as tolerable at best. Here’s how Fry puts it:
Comedy is the microcosm that allows us to examine the entire difference between our two cultures. Ours is bathed in failure but we make a glory of our failure. We celebrate it. We love the fact that every great British comic hero is so flawed as to be an utter disaster. But you can’t do that with American comedy … [American comedic heroes] aren’t characters. They’re just brilliant repositories of fantastic, killer one-liners.
Fry’s case in point is the iconic scene in the 1978 comedy Animal House. Bluto, the heavy-drinking, toga-wearing, seven-year college student played by John Belushi is descending a staircase during a fraternity party. Sitting further down the stairs is another student, a slim, mustachioed minstrel dressed all in black and playing an acoustic guitar for a cluster of adoring coeds. As the minstrel sweetly coos a love song, Bluto grabs the guitar and slams it back and forth in the stairway until the instrument is smashed to pieces. He hands the guitar’s remains back to his stunned classmate, gives a half-hearted apology and walks away.
The scene has been etched into the fabric of college humor. Belushi’s character is revered as the ultimate hero. He is the embodiment of American strength and victory. The minstrel, on the other hand, is a complete loser. He is, in every sense, the epitome of British comedy.
English humor is culled less from glory and more from the gallows. In other words, it is infused with a theology of the cross. Rather than laughing at the expense of others, it laughs at its own expense. Rather than finding joy in success and victory, it delights in failure and weakness. Here, the comedian is not the glorious hero but the one who subjects themself to ridicule. They make no pretention to righteousness by laughing at the failures of others but point the finger of judgment at themselves as a spectacle for others to behold for mutual amusement and self-incrimination.
If all have sinned and slipped on the banana peel of human frailty, the only people who deserve to be laughed at are those who believe themselves to be exempt from judgment. Consequently, the real enemy of English humor is righteous self-seriousness. Though our American sincerity would rather think too highly of itself than be laughed at, the Brits have a long and storied history of laughing at the self-important — from the 1300s, when Chaucer publicly ridiculed his fellow countrymen in The Canterbury Tales, to the 1400s, when Scottish poets participated in verbal abuse competitions. Perhaps it is no coincidence that verbal jousting came into its own in the wake of the Black Death. Dark comedy seems to have burned all the brighter during times of hardship.
What really lit the fire for British banter was, unsurprisingly, the English Reformation. When England turned Protestant in the 1500s, they adopted a strong dislike of anything resembling self-aggrandizement. Even a whiff of moral showmanship or boasting would invite one’s peers to promptly cut one down to size. Righteousness may be well worth striving for, but one thing it will never be is funny. But do you know what is sure to get a laugh? Someone trying to be right and proper who falls headfirst in the gutter. Someone thinking they can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps only for their pants to fall down around their ankles.
When the Puritans set sail for America, they brought along their humorless fondness for sincerity and virtue. Ever since, we’ve been striving for the good life, rather than laughing at what our actual lives have become. With all of its earnestness, it seems the American Dream has not experienced enough defeat to appreciate dark comedy (although that may change with time). Meanwhile, a collapsed empire and witnessing two world wars have only fueled England’s taste for it. As the romantic poet Novalis once said, “After a lost war one should only write comedies.” It’s true, isn’t it? A deep comedy can sometimes be dredged up from the same source as deep tragedy. After one’s dreams have crashed and burned, the ashes can serve as a worthy source for jokes.
In the comments section of an interview with Stephen Fry (from which a lot of this material comes) a viewer makes a brilliant observation: “I always thought my life was an American tragedy, but today I learned it is a British comedy.” It makes me long to see the world around me in the same way. To acknowledge the darker recesses of my life rather than to avoid or deny them. Even to highlight the shameful parts, the areas that are not improving and which I assume are unlovable. And to make fun of them. What better way to practice the theology of the cross? To believe that God is present in our pain and in our shame in order to redeem it. To trust that something down will eventually be seen as up. That something difficult will eventually be seen as funny. That something dead will eventually be resurrected.
Call me a limey, but that’s bloody brilliant, innit?
