About Hitting Funny

...continued HITTING FUNNY - Why?

When I looked around, I realised that those comedians were still there but they had been subsumed into the Establishment. They all had five-figure salaries and had bought houses in Hampstead. Their material had no edge, no bite - perhaps it still made us laugh but it did little else. They had talked the talk but they had not walked the walk. Their carefully constructed façade of dissent and opposition had crumbled in the face of Mammon. In short, they had sold out. And who had taken their place? The second generation of 'alternative' comedians were a different breed altogether. Frank Skinner, Jack Dee, Eddie Izzard - these, and many more like them, are the comedians we love today. And why do we love them? Because they are all very funny men. But that's all they are. They seek to entertain us with their wry and sometimes cheeky observations on the absurdities of the human condition. They make us laugh. But they do not make us think.

Feeling a void but not understanding why, I looked around for someone, anyone, to fill the gap - and I landed upon Bill Hicks. I had come across him in the early nineties and, although I had admired him then, I didn't spot him for what he was. When he came back to me in 1997 - almost by chance I found some tapes of his at a bookshop I was working at to make ends meet between acting work - I found that his was the voice I was missing. The only slight problems were that he was American and he was dead. He had died tragically young at the age of 32 in 1994 of pancreatic cancer. But his material was a revelation. Angry, bitter, cynical, despairing - his was the voice I longed to hear. He looked at the world as it really was - a place where marketing men seek to divide us by the things we own and the things we can afford, a place where governments seek to make us fear each other and numb us with the mass media so that we will continue to consume. He was fired by a burning hatred of the human race along with a burning love for it. He was terrifying and utterly hilarious. I could not listen to Bill Hicks' material with complacency, as I could with all the comedians I saw around me, but rather with shock and awe (there's a phrase to juggle with), with my sensibilities being jangled and my emotions being played with. He inspired me in the truest sense of the word - he filled me with the desire to change things - something was wrong, the way I was living was wrong. Comparisons have often been made between Bill Hicks and Jesus (in fact anybody who stays to see the second half of Hitting Funny will see this comparison taken to its logical extreme) and these comparisons make sense: he is preaching. And I was listening. But he was still dead.

Then I learnt that Bill Hicks wasn't the first person to have taken the direction that he took. Forty years previously, still in America, a Jewish comic had walked the walk and talked the talk and the Establishment had hounded him to his death - Lenny Bruce. Bruce's material - shocking, dirty, hilarious - is still relevant today in the same way that Bill Hicks' is. But Lenny Bruce was also dead - he died in 1966 of a morphine overdose, after being driven to distraction by arrest after arrest, court case after court case. I listened to his material and heard it again, the same voice I felt was missing, the same voice I'd heard in the 'alternative' comedians before the power of money and acceptance got too much for them. And finally, I realised that this voice has a name: Dissent.

What these comedians do is disagree. Like the boy in the story they tell us that the Emperor has no clothes. They examine the things that they are told and shown and given, they look at the world as they are told it should operate and they evaluate what they see - and then they disagree. But they don't just disagree for themselves. They disagree for all of us. They provide a service. When we feel shitty about our lives or our day, when we think that the world is unjust or corrupt - then these comedians allow us the freedom to think that way and in so doing they say the unsayable. And saying the unsayable is vital to a healthy society. You don't agree? Look at Germany under Hitler. Unpopular speech was taboo. And by unpopular speech, I mean, speaking out against Hitler's government. 'Popular' doesn't necessarily equate to being 'good'. After all, Pop Idol is popular … Without the freedom to dissent a society becomes drone-like - think 1984 or Brave New World - in fact, without the freedom to dissent a society becomes obsessed with trivial minutiae - celebrities, pointless technology, home decoration - without the freedom to dissent a society numbs the pain they don't comprehend through alcohol and drugs and crime and… hang on, that sounds exactly like our society!

continued... .....................................................................Page 1 2 3 4

		About Hitting Funny

...continued HITTING FUNNY - Why? When I looked around, I realised that those comedians were still there but they had been subsumed into the Establishment. They all had five-figure salaries and had bought houses in Hampstead. Their material had no edge, no bite - perhaps it still made us laugh but it did little else. They had talked the talk but they had not walked the walk. Their carefully constructed façade of dissent and opposition had crumbled in the face of Mammon. In short, they had sold out. And who had taken their place? The second generation of 'alternative' comedians were a different breed altogether. Frank Skinner, Jack Dee, Eddie Izzard - these, and many more like them, are the comedians we love today. And why do we love them? Because they are all very funny men. But that's all they are. They seek to entertain us with their wry and sometimes cheeky observations on the absurdities of the human condition. They make us laugh. But they do not make us think. Feeling a void but not understanding why, I looked around for someone, anyone, to fill the gap - and I landed upon Bill Hicks. I had come across him in the early nineties and, although I had admired him then, I didn't spot him for what he was. When he came back to me in 1997 - almost by chance I found some tapes of his at a bookshop I was working at to make ends meet between acting work - I found that his was the voice I was missing. The only slight problems were that he was American and he was dead. He had died tragically young at the age of 32 in 1994 of pancreatic cancer. But his material was a revelation. Angry, bitter, cynical, despairing - his was the voice I longed to hear. He looked at the world as it really was - a place where marketing men seek to divide us by the things we own and the things we can afford, a place where governments seek to make us fear each other and numb us with the mass media so that we will continue to consume. He was fired by a burning hatred of the human race along with a burning love for it. He was terrifying and utterly hilarious. I could not listen to Bill Hicks' material with complacency, as I could with all the comedians I saw around me, but rather with shock and awe (there's a phrase to juggle with), with my sensibilities being jangled and my emotions being played with. He inspired me in the truest sense of the word - he filled me with the desire to change things - something was wrong, the way I was living was wrong. Comparisons have often been made between Bill Hicks and Jesus (in fact anybody who stays to see the second half of Hitting Funny will see this comparison taken to its logical extreme) and these comparisons make sense: he is preaching. And I was listening. But he was still dead. Then I learnt that Bill Hicks wasn't the first person to have taken the direction that he took. Forty years previously, still in America, a Jewish comic had walked the walk and talked the talk and the Establishment had hounded him to his death - Lenny Bruce. Bruce's material - shocking, dirty, hilarious - is still relevant today in the same way that Bill Hicks' is. But Lenny Bruce was also dead - he died in 1966 of a morphine overdose, after being driven to distraction by arrest after arrest, court case after court case. I listened to his material and heard it again, the same voice I felt was missing, the same voice I'd heard in the 'alternative' comedians before the power of money and acceptance got too much for them. And finally, I realised that this voice has a name: Dissent. What these comedians do is disagree. Like the boy in the story they tell us that the Emperor has no clothes. They examine the things that they are told and shown and given, they look at the world as they are told it should operate and they evaluate what they see - and then they disagree. But they don't just disagree for themselves. They disagree for all of us. They provide a service. When we feel shitty about our lives or our day, when we think that the world is unjust or corrupt - then these comedians allow us the freedom to think that way and in so doing they say the unsayable. And saying the unsayable is vital to a healthy society. You don't agree? Look at Germany under Hitler. Unpopular speech was taboo. And by unpopular speech, I mean, speaking out against Hitler's government. 'Popular' doesn't necessarily equate to being 'good'. After all, Pop Idol is popular … Without the freedom to dissent a society becomes drone-like - think 1984 or Brave New World - in fact, without the freedom to dissent a society becomes obsessed with trivial minutiae - celebrities, pointless technology, home decoration - without the freedom to dissent a society numbs the pain they don't comprehend through alcohol and drugs and crime and… hang on, that sounds exactly like our society! continued... .....................................................................Page 1 2 3 4