It's Not Funny, Stupid

I like how subjective a joke can be and how disagreements over humor can often turn into accusations about the other side being stupid: either stupid enough to find such a sophomoric joke funny, or too stupid to get the joke in the first place. Then there's the distinction between a joke not actually being well written, and the subject of the joke being no laughing matter, both of which are noted with the highly confusing "it's not funny" idiom. Take this conversation between Jon Democrat and John Republican.

Jon: What do Republicans call a retarded woman? (pause) Vice President.
John: That's not funny.
Jon: Why so sensitive all of a sudden?
John: I'm not offended, it just isn't that great of a joke.

There's no doubt that Jon and John feel a bit more superior after these few lines and that they attribute the other with having some sort of character blemish. Jon thinks John's too sensitive to laugh at himself, and John thinks Jon is too immature to have a fully developed sense of humor.

So is the dilemma with Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid and why I'm still thinking about Jonathan Rosenbaum's take on the film a few weeks back. JR sees small town American Johns as people who either get offended easily or who don't even get it in he first plae. ("He doesn't get it" is after all the Democratic talking point against John McCain.) But does Wilder's film actually explain why small town American Johns don't "get it," or does the film instead only ask "why don't they laugh?"

Take the opening scene to the film:

Going beyond the visual tension in the opening shot between the "S'wonderful" blue collar truck and the "S'marvelous" classy Las Vegas theater, we are next greeted by Dean Martin's liberal sense of humor. Everyone laughs except for one conservative waiter. The film asks: Is Dean Martin not actually funny? Maybe. Is the waiter too much of a square to get the jokes about sex and booze? Maybe. But at no time does the film give the answer. Though JR writes his review as if it does. And so at some point in his blog post, he stops talking about the film's view of small town American, and starts talking about his own view of small town America, but wrongly ascribes his interpretation as existing in the film. (Just for the record, my own take is that the film satirizes how big city liberals view small town conservatives with condescension and ridicule, and vise versa. But that's neither here nor there.)

To paraphrase Godard's Notre Musique, Kiss Me, Stupid, like most good films, comes with a lock, but not with a key. When you unlock the film, you do so with your own key. Because of this, when you discuss the key or the interpretation of the film, you are talking about yourself more than you are talking about the actual film. Likewise, you only begin to talk about the film when you discuss it's lock or specifically how it forces you to find a key. JR's take on Kiss Me, Stupid comes across as an exercise in cognitive dissonance as opposed to actual criticism. Or -- to come full circle -- maybe I'm the one who's too stupid to see that which JR clearly sees in the film.

And on a side note, it's nice to see that I'm not the only one who wrongly assumes that all the great filmmakers share my political beliefs.