The Haunting

A recent joke has haunted me, a tiny evil poltergeist rattling the dishes in the cupboards of my mind, creaking across my cerebellum when I'm sure nobody is there.

It is one of Peter Serafinowicz's tweet jokes. You know the ones: he offers up a theme, his tweet-mates tweet him a question hashed with PSQA, he gives the punchline. It's an awesome display of comic virtuosity. One of my favourite twists is when somebody tweets him a familiar one-liner and he responds to it, taking a comic form that is supposed to be self-sustained, where the comedy is based in part on the finality and closure of the line, and then he improves upon it. Someone sent him Steven Wright's "What's another word for the thesaurus?" and Serafinowicz promptly answers: "Anothersaurus." (It has the same deflating quality as the scene in the Simpsons where a Zen monk on a mountaintop asks Bart, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" and Bart says, "This," and then flaps his fingers against his palm - try it, it works; it's the sound of one hand clapping.) Another person offered up the teenage delight of "Is masturbation incest?" to which Serafinowicz responds, "No, masturbation is nicest." A simple switch of letters turns an adolescent joke into a lesson on the pleasure of life.

Creak.

Rattle.

It's that darned poltergeist again. So, let's bring it into the light. Here's the joke:

RT @AndyD1893: #PSQA What comes after death?? A pervert.

This may be the best joke. Ever. Linger with it for a moment before going on.

Immediately, I see three interpretations, three ways of getting the joke:

1) In the tragic mode of comedy. Some poor self-asphyxiator dies, and then ejaculates.

2) In the sick mode. A person murders somebody and then jacks off.

3) In the metaphysical mode. A death-obsessed pervert stalks the figure of death, quite possibly ejaculating onto the annoyed figure of the Grim Reaper, whose cloak now looks as if a flock of birds has crapped down it.

Obviously, there are different readings of "pervert" here. In the tragic mode, the pervert is not much more perverted than your average Tory backbencher; in the sick mode, the pervert is more perverted than your average Tory backbencher; in the metaphysical mode, the figure of identification is really Death itself, limping along with its scythe, trying to do its business while some creep follows it around wanking on it.

Schadenfreude is the key to the tragic mode here: there is a moment in which you relate to the pervert before the pervert's hubris causes his fall; you take some pleasure in the notion that he cannot enjoy himself as his final pleasure shudders through his corpse, and you stand in judgement, just as you stand in judgement of the morally virtuous politician caught with a noose around his neck, his trousers around his ankles. Alienation is the key to the sick mode: you are alienated from judgement as you countenance the horror, allowing the pervert his pleasure without repudiation, without damnation; your link to the pervert is not one of identification except insofar as through the joke you share a contempt for judgement itself. In the metaphysical mode, you are operating at a much more sympathetic register but switching allegiances: incongruity is the key here, as the incongruity in the conjured image reflects the incongruity of sympathising with death.

So, a non-comic answer to the question "What comes after death?" would be "Judgement", or perhaps a psychospatial proxy for judgement, "Heaven" or "Hell". Serafinowicz pounces on this and puts a figure, the pervert, where we would put an act (of judgment), but that figure is, of course, acting in relation to that act - by ejaculating. It's perverse; but then, judgement is perverse. And that's the point.

By the way, I checked in on Brett Easton Ellis's tweets, which are admirably cross-eyed with petulance and enthusiasm: anyway, it's clear he reads this blog because his recent subjects have included Weiner, 70s movies, and Tracey Morgan. Glad to know he's a fan.

Thraft Undone

One of the most exciting developments over the past day, other than being part of a winning team at a Bristol film quiz, rampaging to victory across clammy, huddled groups of greasy-haired Tarantinians and old, bearded men who live and breath Hitchcock and who have seen every film ever, has been learning that the identity of Dr. Peter Thraft was revealed! It was in the papers on Friday. I missed it. Because I’m travelling. Hence I’m in Bristol going to film quizzes and preparing to attend a Bob Dylan conference tomorrow.

Close readers of this blog—well, I only have close readers, so all of you—will remember that Dr. Peter Thraft’s identity has come up before here and here. I suspected that the good Doctor was none other than Peter Serafinowicz, and I know I was not alone. However, it is quickly apparent that far more people thought Thraft was Steve Coogan. I will explain, in a post to follow, why I never thought it was Coogan. And in doing so, I will come back to the promise I made in an earlier post about Thraft to discuss “the real”.

But right now, while you’re waiting, I want to direct readers to the article in The Guardian where all is revealed. Go on, read the article. It's by Ben Dowell and Vicky Frost, whose names are only slightly more convincing that "Peter Thraft".

Are you done? No, seriously, did you go read it? Look, go read it, and then come back here.

Okay. Good. Did you see who is quoted there?

What the—? Who’s this “blogger” called “privatematters4publicthings”? Well, I can tell you it’s definitely somebody who evidently did not create a tag based on how it would look in print. I pity the poor sub who had to edit the piece: “Are you sure that’s the handle? What’s it mean? Is there really a number in it? Oh for fuck’s sake.” Sorry!

Anyway, stay tuned for my wrap-up on Thraft; it’ll be coming later in the week. Right now, as the film quiz victory fades into memory, I have to prepare for a whole day-long conference on Bob Dylan. I considered live-blogging, but then thought I could only push the "Z" button about four hundred times before I either got carpal-tunnel syndrome or really did fall asleep.

The good Dr Peter Thraft

An alert reader emerged from the white-capped rapids of twitter, thrusting a hand out of the roiling flood of tweets to attract my attention to this twitter account, before being hauled back under and carried away, quite possibly to a pool of ecstatic aphorisms, although that might be more hopeful than realistic: I caught sight of his face and he had # for eyes.

In any case, I hope you go to that account, wherein Dr Peter Thraft, a relationship expert and sex therapist, offers invaluable advice about sex and relationships for men and women in the sensitive but clinically-unembarrassed manner befitting a true professional. I would highly recommend that you spend some time at the site. You can work your way forwards or backwards through time, because it's not the narrative that counts as much as the truths dispensed by the good doctor.

Now, of course, the question has been raised: is Dr Peter Thraft real? Is Dr Peter Thraft for real? Is it, as the alert reader suspects, the great Peter Serafinowicz? The tone would be just right for Serafinowicz, exquisitely attuned to just the right whiffs of innocence, ingratiation, and indignation while revelling in the corporeal and indulgent.

But what if, what if Dr Peter Thraft is real? The tweets are funny because Dr Peter Thraft is so fully alive and so realistic he almost could be real, and yet if he were real, he would only become funny, if at all, in very different way? (And if it were discovered that he is real, then much of the amusement one derives from those people getting rebuffed and blocked by the kind, offended doctor for tweettacking (tweet-attacking?) his misogyny and his advice would double-back: instead of being the gulls, they would be the ones who were perceptive; instead of being rigid moralists who can't get a joke, they'd have been true to a moral universe we thought we inhabited.)

More later, I hope, on the question of reality in comedy. But in the meantime, spend some time with Dr Peter Thraft and you might pick up a tip or two.

Wilde, Arrested

What would happen if Mitchell Hurwitz, who created Arrested Development, made a show starring Will Arnett and David Cross (dearly loved in Arrested Development as Gob Bluth andTobias Fünke respectively), adding Peter Serafinowicz as a character named Fa'ad Shaoulin, and called it Running Wilde?

Before I stumble towards an answer, let's just take a moment to admire Arrested Development one more time. As it turns out, the critics who thought the show was the only situation comedy to address its times were doing it a serious injustice. It was not only about the times; it was prophetic. Running from 2003 to 2006, the show was about a family whose riches came from the housing market (and, admittedly, the Cornballer) in the era of George Bush's "ownership" society, well before subprime mortgages and Credit Default Swaps became part of the common lingo; the Bluths bounced on the bubbly cornerstone of the economy, which finally burst two years after Arrested Development was cancelled, in 2008.

Running Wilde was cancelled after airing only eight episodes. There was a painful hush, a silence all the more apparent after the raucous disapproval that met arresting Arrested Development's development. Even those of us who wanted to love the show, who approached it primed like a sailor on shore leave, couldn't muster up much than a bored sigh as the expected kimono-clad vamp coming through the bead curtains turned out to be an actor auditioning as a longshoreman in the newest Tony Kushner play. Yeah, so there were some major problems with the show. I don't want to go into too much detail. You may want to see it. And it's not inconceivable that in years to come Running Wilde will secure a place in the cultural heart as a series ended tragically soon by short-sighted, small-souled fools who whimpered into their lattes about "major problems" with the show.

But anyway, the problems. The first is that the wealth in Arrested Development was never real. The yacht, the diamonds, the membership in the private club, grown children who saw no need to get real jobs--

--all of this wealth was a mirage, and however hard the family clung onto their torrid dream, reality kept imposing itself. The shabbiness of the Bluth family wealth and their desperate vulgarity made their fiction that much more wonderfully grotesque, and had a number of consequences for our viewing pleasure. First, it made every fall from grace delicious, as we watched scrabbling rich vulgarians getting their comeuppance; second, it made every fall from grace heart-breaking: willful, proud people scrabbling to keep their phony lives and broken family together. And if every set on the show seemed cheap, all the better. That was one of the jokes, played out in two ways: the family was trying to keep up appearances, squirming as their house fell apart around them; and the real economy itself was no more than a cheap set. Their fiction was the fiction of the West.

In Running Wilde, the protagonist is a filthy rich billionaire playboy, Steve Wilde (Will Arnett) who re-connects with his childhood sweetheart, Emmy Kadubic (Keri Russell), an anthropologist and activist living in a rain forest in the Amazon. The first mistake the show makes is that Steve Wilde (and his neighbouring millionaire, Fa'ad Shaoulin) are essentially secure in their wealth.

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We may be invited to laugh at their vulgarity and their extravagance, but there are obstacles to accepting that invitation. Cheap, tacky sets don't convey luxury and wealth, they convey cheapness and tackiness; whereas this made perfect sense in the Bluths' world, we lacked anything similar to latch onto in Running Wilde: if Wilde is ridiculously rich but also cheap and tacky, so what? Who cares? It just doesn't work. Another obstacle is reminiscent of the tagline to the current Russell Brand re-make of Arthur: "Meet the World's Only Lovable Billionaire." Lovable? That makes you want to kick his teeth in even more.

This may be in part an issue of class discomfort. Who wants to watch monstrously-rich people in the aftermath of George Bush's economic collapse? I might - but it's unfortunate that Running Wilde found no way to address the very real financial catastrophe. And it may be that we really wanted a Zizekian middle-finger directed at the purportedly well-meaning, golden-hearted, lovable rich (cf Violence, for a take-down of Gates and Soros for their double-dealing as cut-throat capitalists and the benefactors of what Zizek calls liberal communism while they parade around as generous philanthropists and even spokesmen for the unfairness of the system; they will always have already taken far more than they could give). If that's what we wanted, Running Wilde was again disappointingly mute.

But I also think it's a function of comedy's own two faces. Arrested Development had its finger on the pulse, you could feel the systole of sympathy and the diastole of loathing in every beat; you were drawn into a dynamic of Schadenfreude and empathy. Running Wilde wanted to do the same thing with two brilliant comic actors, Arnett and Serafinowicz, who can deliver casual cruelty and sweet charm over the course of a single line, who have been cast as comic villains (say, 30 Rock or Spaced, respectively) and whose every thrashing is truly deserved and yet whose presence is magnetic and pathetic and even loving. Anchoring them to wealth, in an era in which wealth is not a solid, grounding anchor but rather is an act of force, like the wind, called into creation and then into action by politicians and their financiers, stultified them.

The second major problem was in casting Keri Russell as Emmy Kadubic and Stefania LaVie Owen as her daughter, Puddle. Russell, raised on the neurotic-ironic patter of Friends, had no conviction as an anthropologist-activist (except for the lines where she said how much conviction she had); Owen was far too harmless.

The show's dramatic tension, between the rich and the poor, the carefree and the caring, the socially-oblivious and the socially-committed had little resonance; the comic tension, as the various ironies and inconsistencies, weaknesses and foibles, vanities and desires subverting or parodying or mocking the distinction between rich and poor, carefree and caring, socially-oblivious and socially-committed, had nowhere to go.

And, frankly, I didn't spot a single Oscar Wilde reference during the entire 8-show run. Was I missing something?

So, anyway, speaking of kimono-clad vamps . . . tomorrow, DNA and sex slavery.

Vive le différence

I was invited by an alert reader to compare the difference in tweeting styles between Steve Martin and Peter Serafinowicz, a task for which I am doubly grateful: not only is the comparison a rich one, but I had never thought to check out Serafinowicz's tweets.

With Steve Martin, it's like you're a guest of a friend at a friend in the afterhours bar of an exclusive jazz club and just happen to be sitting next to Steve Martin; for most of the time, he's turned away, holding court, discussing art and music and LA, but every once in a while he turns to you and deadpans a funny line, which is by no means great in and of itself, but it's Steve Martin, you're next to him, you're a bit drunk, and you love him, so the joke makes you warm and happy. You know that if you repeat it the next day, you'll get a patient smile in response, but it doesn't matter.

Peter Serafinowicz, however, approaches you in the harsh glare of broad daylight in the middle of a crowded pavement, comes up to you - no, looms over you, and says with Pinterian menace in his brass baritone, "I'm going to make you laugh seven times today." And you think, "Well, a) that's impossible, and b) you've not exactly put me in the mood," and then he makes you laugh seven times, and, even better, after the first couple, you're completely on his side.

Is that how you see it?

UPDATE: Typo in title; sigh.