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Posts
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@wordsworth60 wrote:
Hi Scep, I found Lenny Bruce too much the first time I heard him, avoided listening to him after that because I didn’t want to support something that might be harmful, not merely embarrassing. I’m a bit more sophisticated now, I can wear polo necked jumpers and adopt an ironic smirk as well as the next man. But I still don’t find him funny.
I do find him shocking and I think there’s a context for shock tactics, for exposing something to the public gaze and reminding people so it doesn’t happen again. I think Lenny Bruce achieved that for his audience.
I’m not sure that the use of inappropriate terms achieves that per se, unless it’s done with supreme skill and fits its context well. So I’m not sure many of his claimed successors achieve it either.
Shock delivers trauma, if trauma heals well the result can be positive, if trauma heals badly the result can be far worse than before.
I don’t mean inappropriate because of some rule that says “you can’t say that no more”, but more in the sense of inaccurate, unhelpful or damaging – especially when a better alternative is available. The usage of “schizophrenic” and its derivatives had become at best misleading. A resurgence wouldn’t help. “Bi-polar” might be boring, but someone who has a bipolar condition is not in that state to amuse, excite me or interest me. I don’t believe I possess the skill of Lenny Bruce, so I’ll leave the term alone and if it dies out, I won’t miss it.
he was a comic, not just a shcok jock.
And I really don’t smirk, though a lot of the self-styled sophisticats of the time certainly took on a superior air about it all.
I have loved irony since a boy. Irony is the weapon of those who can’t speak, of those who have to hide something.
I know that some people here have had experience of dreadful suffering as a result of quite a few mental problems.
They’re not alone.
I understand a condition of imprisonment in which someone can consider suicide, killing a baby, even murder, anything to escape.
I also know that mental illness evokes a lot of smirks and mocking comments.
so there’s a lot of room for comment and (a protean) humour.
@wordsworth60 wrote:
@sceptical guy wrote:
oh dear..do you reckon I could get banned???!!
The stupid dopes are idiotic enough to censor the name of a writer like Philip K Richard, just as Lenny Bruce was prosecuted by the courts, so maybe I will!!!
Help! mummy!!!
Hail to scep! The new Lenny . . . . . . . .
falls off chair laughing
mocking is also a form of humour on these boards
@sceptical guy wrote:
@wordsworth60 wrote:
@sceptical guy wrote:
oh dear..do you reckon I could get banned???!!
The stupid dopes are idiotic enough to censor the name of a writer like Philip K Richard, just as Lenny Bruce was prosecuted by the courts, so maybe I will!!!
Help! mummy!!!
Hail to scep! The new Lenny . . . . . . . .
falls off chair laughing
mocking is also a form of humour on these boards
Straightens turtle neck, adjust shades, plays meaningfully on his bongoes and almost wishes he’d learnt to smoke when he had the chance . . . . . . . 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8)
Black humour as a coping mechanism when you’re in a situation is one thing, the sick mocking humour that is becoming so prevalent in modern comedians who try to emulate Lenny (who, incidentally, I never found funny either) is something that I personally find distasteful and the increasing acceptance of such humour disturbing.
No doubt some will say I don’t have a sense of humour…I do, a healthy one.
@jen_jen wrote:
Black humour as a coping mechanism when you’re in a situation is one thing, the sick mocking humour that is becoming so prevalent in modern comedians who try to emulate Lenny (who, incidentally, I never found funny either) is something that I personally find distasteful and the increasing acceptance of such humour disturbing.
No doubt some will say I don’t have a sense of humour…I do, a healthy one.
something tells me that Lenny Bruce didn’t laugh at lenny either.
a healthy sense of humour?? =D>
[-X
one-dimensional maybe?
my mother said,
I never should…Oh multi-dimensional, just not at the expense of the suffering of others.
@sceptical guy wrote:
@jen_jen wrote:
Black humour as a coping mechanism when you’re in a situation is one thing, the sick mocking humour that is becoming so prevalent in modern comedians who try to emulate Lenny (who, incidentally, I never found funny either) is something that I personally find distasteful and the increasing acceptance of such humour disturbing.
No doubt some will say I don’t have a sense of humour…I do, a healthy one.
something tells me that Lenny Bruce didn’t laugh at lenny either.
a healthy sense of humour?? =D>
[-X
one-dimensional maybe?
my mother said,
I never should…Are the two necessarily mutually exclusive? 8) 8) 8) 8)
the first time I came across someone who’d had the wonderful experience of est was when I was 22.
He was only about 3 years older than me, eyes that soemtiems seemed really hurt and sometiems full of a defiant humoour, but had a beard as long and rough as his hair, and walked with his arms swinging fomr one side to the other. All the kids followed him around. imitating his walk – one of the funniest things you could see.
We latched on to one another, and explored the streets of the town in the hours when ghosts walked. I learned that you could get free bread and cakes from bakeries when they opened, and that you could always tell when your turn had come for getting your miind fired because you had no breakfast that morning. There were other things he said.
He was the first person I met who had had est – not the last.
There was another guy from the bin who came to stay, and my friend hated his guts. He couldn’t abide Reuben (let’s call him). When I asked why, I was told that Reuben was had no sense of humour – he didn’t know how to laugh at himself or at the cruel world around him.
From others I learned how to read.
I dont profess to know a lot about schizophrenia but as a cat lover I chanced upon the Victorian artist Louis Wain. Often held up as THE classic example of a schizophrenic artist. His paintings of cats illustrate his mental health the paintings becoming more dramatic when he was deep in a schizophrenic episode.
He had an unusual life… some of his pictures of cats are adorable… some are quite troubling but I do think it gives an insight into the effects that schizophrenia has on the mind, although I’m sure every case is different….. I tried to put a link for images of his work which is really worth seeing but for some reason it wouldn’t let me… so just google Louis Wain if you want to see more :D
that’s interesting, Mrs T.
The poet Kit Smart was an 18th century schizo vicar who wrote a lot of poems about ‘my cat Jeoffrey’. Stramnge rhythms and a very physical description of Jeoffrey’s shape and moods.
Thomas Gray (of the famous and boringly normal Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard) correctly prophesied that Smart “must come to a jail or Bedlam, and that without help, almost without pity”
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