By B.C. Edwards
Illustration by Gwendal le Bec
It’s trite at this point to say that after 9/11 everything changed. For people in comedy, this is especially true. Surely we all remember the staggering number of fresh-faced kids who, directly after the attacks, made a beeline for their nearest club or studio or school of comedy. Sons and daughters all, still very much children, they came in droves, took classes, wrote sketches, nervously wound the cords of microphones around their wrists and arms while they attempted stand-up. And we watched in horror as they all suffered on stage and died terrible, tragic deaths.
Since the start of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, a staggering number of comedians have been killed at home or abroad. There’s no accurate number. It could be five thousand. It could be ten. It could be more. We tell ourselves they died doing what they loved, and we take some solace in that, but it is a bitter consolation. These comedians have paid the ultimate price, and so many are still paying it. We are still sending our children off to the slaughter of comedy and we will continue to do so. At this point it not something we can stop. The machine is too big. There is a comedy-industrial complex and it is a juggernaut. It demands to be fed and we feed it. It demands that we wring every piece of joy and creativity from the minds of the struggling and we do that.
It is exactly like that machine in The Dark Crystal that turned Gelflings into slaves. It sucks the vital essence out of comedians, makes it potable and digestible and easy for us to stomach. We cannot slow this machine down. We can only rev it up. We can only make it hungrier. To do anything else would further hamper our slowly reviving economy.
Those who have fallen by the wayside, they are the lucky ones. Because the survivors have it the worst. Because no one ever graduates from comedy. Once you are a comedian, that is all you will ever be. Comedy is to life as pornography is to acting.
It’s no wonder, then, that comedians account for a staggering 85 percent of the pot that is smoked in this country. It would be simple to just chalk that statistic up to the general moral turpitude of the profession. But isn’t it much more likely that comedians are using pot, alcohol, and their rampant promiscuity to help them deal with the crushing responsibility and burden of their profession? Comedians are the saddest people we know. The most desperate for affection and the least capable of receiving it. It’s no wonder they smoke so much pot.
So while we should all grieve for the satirists at Charlie Hebdo, let’s not forget the many thousands of others who are, much like them, putting their own lives and livelihoods, and well-being and mental states, at risk. All for the sake of this darkest, blackest of arts. Comedy is hell. Satire is horror.
It’s time we did away with all of it.
