JOLLY DAYS

Ali G and Andy K

The Chairman of the Arts Council of England Gerry Robinson was flummoxed when Ali G began an interview with the question Why is it that everything you fund is so crap? — wikipedia

We've been renting the Ali G Show DVDs at the same time Larry Charles Of Seinfeld is releasing an Ali G (as Borat) movie, which looks very funny in the clips.

If the theatrical arts require a willful suspension of disbelief, Ali G asks you to welcome discomfort. Alternately funny and unnerving, Ali G follows simple logic to its final sputtering incoherent roots. He gets people to say things they don't mean to say, and sometimes to say things they think, but would never say in polite company, because he puts them at ease: he presents as a non-aggressive imbecile.

Ali G reminds me of the discomfort / fascination which I felt in watching Andy Kaufman, whose brand of performance-art-mental-instabiliy-which-is-it-? was pretty much unique at the time. People and societal strictures can be so weird, but social conventions and the sympathy inherent in communal politeness, keeps us from admitting it to ourselves; when you see the weirdness of the everyday burble to the surface, it makes Ali G's goofiness seem not that far out at all.

From the Andy Kaufman site linked above here is the description of an incident @ SNL in which mid-sketch, Andy announced, “I feel stupid (doing this sketch)” :

…(You don't stop a sketch in the middle of a live telecast!) Michael Richards stood up, walked offstage, grabbed the cue cards and tossed them in front of Andy. Andy responded by throwing a glass of water on Richards. Exasperated, Chartoff and Burrell began throwing bread and butter at Andy as stagehands and cast-members moved to jump into the fray. Jack Burns shouted (to Director Bob Bowker), "Bob cut to commercial!!" as Andy began yelling at Chartoff for throwing butter in his hair. Burns, after moving Chartoff and Burrell aside, lunged at Andy. People everywhere began pushing and pulling at Andy…and Andy was terrified. Finally, cooler heads prevailed and Kaufman was escorted off the stage as the studio audience sat in stunned silence. After a commercial break the final two minutes of the show became an improvised farewell. Brandis Kemp quipped, “We'd like to thank the portion of Andy that showed up tonight.”

Sarah Silverman and Johnny Knoxville also inhabit this corner of the sideshow. Knoxville rides the fascination of masochism as exhibitionism. Silverman said when she was very young that her parents thought it was a hoot if she uttered an obscenity; Silverman is still chasing that shock-attention. In different ways this theater of distraction, of discomfort, is rooted in despair and nihilism.