More about humor, societal changes, speech

As part of my series about helping people, especially the young people, have a more complete view of using discernment in faith and reasoning and also accurate societal and historical context, here is more about humor. I’ve blogged about subversive humor and irony. I intend to blog more about subversive humor, since that’s a subject where I really got a totally unfair bite in the butt. Also, just because people misunderstood my subversive humor (which they overheard through illegal wiretapping of my home, I must point out, since subversive humor is not something one uses in the workplace) that does not mean subversive humor should be avoided. That’s like saying a high performance car is no good because someone doesn’t know how to drive it! So if I teach how to recover a real understanding of subversive humor as a high performance tool for selective use, it restores it to its proper place. But as I was thinking about writing the next part of my discussion of subversive humor, I realized I need to step back and give more societal context to both humor and conversation/discourse in general.

Not too long ago even one’s average person with an average education (up to high school) had a broad range of speech. I don’t mean a big vocabulary (though that existed too), but I mean that a broader range of emotions, and humor, were conveyed among average people in day to day speech. When I type these blog postings I often have my father in mind because he was very bright but also very typical. He was born in 1903 and dropped out of school in the 8th grade in order to help his parents, my grandparents at work. This was very typical in the first half of the 20th century, where people with even a genius IQ, as my father supposedly had, left school very early in order to work. It was not until after the war years that it was taken for granted that most kids would finish high school. And it was only the GI Bill that funded college for WWII veterans that started the shift where the average American (not just the wealthy) was assumed to be able to go to college. My cousin, in fact, was the first of our family to go to college. Anyway, my dad, as many like him, dropped out of school before high school, yet had a greater diversity of speech and humor than the average person in our modern society today. This is because expectations for learning, and their exposure to literature, was very high in the lower grades. Also, the natural status of humans is that they do have a wide range of emotions and hence speech in order to convey subtleties. It is actually only the past two generations (since the 1960’s) who have had so much of their speech, thought patterns and subtlety of emotion repressed.

Yes, you read right, repressed. Another word I would use is “homogenized.” It is the height of irony that the very swinging and “liberated” generation that demanded that “anything goes” inadvertently cut down their range of day to day options rather than expanded them. And you, dear younger readers, are the victims of that. The big catch phrase of your parent’s generation was “that’s not relevant.” In other words, they would dismiss something as not being worth knowing or doing if it was not the source of instant, and I mean instant, gratification. So many forms of humor, for example, went out the window into the trash. I understand if you have been raised to think the opposite, that with the golden age of comedy and so forth that new ways of being humorous were developed. Yes that is true but do remember that is for commercial, as in public, humor that is for sale or for public offering. For example, humor explored new areas of edginess and satire, such as pushing the envelope about decency, and also new forms of political satire. Let’s look at the emergence of political satire. Many in the past two generations smugly think that they “invented” political satire. That’s not exactly true. What they invented was a commodity to sell in the entertainment media, stand up political satire that did not exist before.

Comedians earlier in the century did not mock politics, mostly because the taste of the audience was for good natured escapism, not reminder of politics. But even more fundamental a misunderstanding, you must realize that two hundred years ago the average American’s speech was absolutely loaded with political satire. If you read any of the early newspapers many of you would find that mocking of politicians was not a stand up comedian “act,” but a reflection of the speech of the population as a whole. You would be absolutely shocked by the ferocity and lack of “political correctness” of political cartoons and rhetoric from the time of George Washington right up through the Civil War, and into the beginning of the 20th century. This was not being mean or rude. This is, rather, the robust, rustic and “speak your mind” variety of speech that was very common before speech became homogenized by television and other electronic media and the societal changes that became so self oriented. So your average couple of low education farmers in the 1800’s, for example, would have been able to have a very robust and colorful discussion of politics that is virtually unheard of (and in fact, condemned) today. Conversation, and also humor, was very rooted in reality, and a more traditional education, and thus had a wider range available to each person.

See, the “revolution” of the 1960’s coupled with the electronic media dummied down and “standardized” speech, and thought patterns, just at a time the true believers thought they were being more sophisticated, more versatile and that old canard of “breaking down barriers.” For example, sexual humor was viewed as great “progress” by many. But what they did not realize that like endangered species, sexual humor became like pigeons in the city while more subtle and diverse humor was liked endangered birds that no one heard of until they became extinct, and then everyone forgot they existed. So that is the point that I want you to understand and think about. Society has not been becoming more diverse and sophisticated. Like endangered species, society has actually become more standardized and homogenized, so that speech, thought and humor today is actually impoverished compared to what the “average Joe and Mary” took for granted only a century ago.

That’s one reason why I love Yiddish, for example. Yiddish conveys a range of subtle humor and zingy life reality concepts in a range of words that are really a national treasure. See, that is an example of how “less educated” people brought with them as immigrants and in their culture a wider variety of understanding of life, and good natured humor along with it. So those of you who had Yiddish speaking relatives know what I mean. Their speech could range from very blunt political comment into a very subtle human foible humor, and that was just the way they were naturally and by culture, not because they were trying to be performers or fitting in with the crowd. See what I mean?

So I thought of another example of humor to teach you about that anyone over a certain age would understand it if they read the phrase or used the humor themselves, but I suspect very few young people even know about it. It’s called “being arch.”

To be “arch” or to say something “archly” is to use a good natured haughtiness. If you read classic American or English literature, you will occasionally see in dialogue the “Example of a literature dialogue," she said archly. Everyone of a certain older generation knows what that meant when they read it and indeed once in a while would unconsciously use that form of humor in their conversation. So when someone says something “archly,” they are being a teensy bit haughty but in a harmless way or deliberately as a mild self mocking. Girls who knew how to flirt back when it was decent and relationship oriented knew how to be occasionally “arch” in their conversations. Here is an example I thought of so you can see.

Suppose a boy and a girl are talking and the boy said something the girl either didn’t understand, or chose not to understand (perhaps she thought it was a bit pushy but does not want to discourage him). And no, I’m not talking about sex, try to imagine normal articulate “getting to know you” conversation in the days before everyone only thought of “hooking up.” So suppose they are talking about a movie and the boy’s comments about the movie the girl either didn’t understand, or she wants to give him a mild warning that she does not approve of the concept of what he was trying to explain to her. So the dialogue would be:

“You mean you don’t understand what I said?” asked the boy.

“You could say that,” she said archly.

This isn’t a Pulitzer Prize winning example but it’s easy to work with so let’s use it. The girl saying something archly is to put a slightly haughty air onto it, but not as a put down to the boy, and if she is being flirty, it is even a slight self put down. It’s a subtlety that is like a flavor of vanilla among vanillas! Sometimes it is best to explain it by looking down the speech spectrum on either side. Being “arch” is a good natured haughtiness that does not go to the extremes of being “icy,” “pretentious,” “mocking,” or “reproving.” Depending on her facial expression and tone, she is letting the boy know that she is doing a genteel “midcourse correction” of the direction he was going with his movie comment. It’s not saying that what he was saying is bad at all! It might just be too soon to have that kind of conversation, for example. (Again, I’m not talking about sex. But suppose the movie is about some other topic that by commenting the way he did the boy seemed to endorsing or approving a theme the girl is not ready to discuss). Now if she was going to ratchet up into actually being disapproving, she would “reprove” him. Any girl or woman worth her salt knew how to reprove a boy or a man. To reprove someone is to let them know that you do not approve of what he or she said, but in a way that is totally gentle and not dismissive of the person or the conversation. Reprove would fall just under “chide” in severity, and chide is still a very gentle and positive technique.

There, see what I mean? I’ve just shown three progressive emotions and intentions In conversation that are subtle yet unmistakable, and were all extremely common in even the “uneducated” discourse of Americans and English one hundred years ago. People were automatically versatile enough to be “arch,” “reproving,” or “chiding” in a conversation. But you know what would happen if someone were arch, reproving or chiding today? Either it would go right over the head of the person they were speaking to, or if it was detected you’d likely get, “Bitch!” yelled at you in return. Modern speech has become arid, one dimensional, cartoonish and unforgiving, and that’s a fact. Humans have, with no exaggeration, actually lost an entire part of their spectrum of thoughts and emotions and the speech that supports that part of the spectrum. English vernacular (the everyday speech) is like all the shades of red were dropped and forgotten except for only one standard approved color of red, and that red was being touted and taught as being the “self actualizing and barrier busting red.” To apply it back to our boy and girl dialogue example, remember that the key to being “arch” is a good natured haughtiness that has an element of humor, and is not dismissive. We also discussed “chiding” and “reproving,” which are also gentle means of steering the discussion with unspoken cues that there is a problem with that particular thought, but not a desire to end the dialogue at all. So those would be like rosy shades of red, or carmine, or tomato red. But in modern conversation and thought there is just the constant search for “winner” and “loser” and one slaps the blood red “loser” on the other person over the smallest thing, with no attempt to use a full palette of generosity and humor, even with, amazingly enough, one’s loved ones.

Anyway, if you watch any of the real classic films of the 1930’s-1950’s, you might see a girl or woman being “arch” in a flirting way. But it was a serious and routine emotion and manner of speech that progresses a positive dialogue. Many people who look at a woman being “arch” in the film would not recognize its use and purpose and just think of it as being part of her being “classy,” “a snob,” or “a bitch,” even though that would be obviously wrong to anyone who grew up in a time of a full range of human emotion and thinking. The visual in a cartoon would be the lifted eyebrow, though that’s most typically the man’s version of “Oh, really?” Men and women differ in their intention and application of being “arch.” Colbert of course uses the arch visual, man’s version, and modernized to be gently satirical but edgy. But my point is pre-TV, away from TV, people were much richer in their range of thoughts and feelings and the good natured discourse that arose from it. It would have been unheard of for even the roughest man to misunderstand a woman being “arch,” and yell that he was “dissed” and “she’s a bitch.” I tell you, this society and world has become unrecognizable in so many ways that I’m scared on behalf of humans whenever I think about it.

Oh, a funny personal story about being “arch.” Back in the 1980's both my ex-husband and I were obviously familiar with the concept and subtlety of being “arch.” However, neither of us could actually do the visual, which is to lift one eyebrow! So as a personal joke and reference, if we saw someone being arch, or if one of us said something arch, we would use our own finger to lift an eyebrow! That’s another example of the ways that a couple derives personal patterns of speech. So if one of use touched and lifted an eyebrow, the other knew that it was a humorous referral to being arch. Also on this point, I hope that everyone who read this posting was able to be all adult and not think that I “selected” teaching about being “arch” because “arch” is really an anagram for “char,” which is British term for “housekeeper,” and thus I am reaching back into the shadowy past of mythical “reincarnated” housekeepers (routine reminder: reincarnation does not exist, never did and it never will).

So I’m glad I wrote this because I think some deep context setting is needed because humans have gone so far astray from themselves. Those of you who know Yiddish probably know what I mean easier than anyone else. Yiddish expresses a range of thoughts and emotions that were already there. Yiddish became so rich because the range of human experience that the language described was so rich. It’s not like today where emotion and language have been pruned so severely that many forms of speech are no longer used because shockingly the emotions and thoughts that they used to apply to are no longer “permitted,” understood or even remembered. Anyway, I really hope this helps. I don’t want people today, especially the young people, be so deprived of the fullness of good and subtle human experience and made to be so very negative as they have been pushed to become.