Merry Pranksters

The death of musician Etta Baker, and a question in my daily paper asking why people like TV pranksters so much, both brought to mind thoughts about some of the famous people I’m a fan of, and why I cotton to them.

Whenever the news pops up with the death of some famous or well known person, there’s this feeling as if we’re all supposed to nod our heads and say, “oh that’s terrible -- that person was so important.” I guess it’s just another way of living vicariously through others; those who do what we wish we were doing, or who do something worthwhile or who attain recognition for something they’ve done with their lives make us want to identify with that feeling of accomplishment. So we pick our favorites, jaw about them when they are alive, as if we know them, and when they “pass” (as the southerners put it), we breathe a collective sigh, because in an esoteric way, a part of ourselves has passed as well.

I never used to react in any way at all when famous people died, and never understood the importance to others when they did. That is, until John Candy died. At the time, I was floored. I so identified with him, not on an interpersonal level, but because he made me laugh. I loved him in most of everything I saw (Canadian Bacon notwithstanding) and really felt a sense of personal loss when he was gone. I guess it’s more than just identification, I guess it’s the selfish realization that this entertainer will no longer be around to make one smile.

Later, when Phil Hartman died (in a murder-suicide committed by his wife!), I also felt something of a shock, though lessened by the fact that it wasn’t my “first.” And I was hit kind of hard by the news of the death of physical comedian and actor Chris Farley. Farley’s antics almost uniformly involved making his own too large body the butt of the joke. There’s a scene in the movie “Tommy Boy,” in which Farley nearly kills himself trying to change into a suit within the too-small-for-most confines of an airplane bathroom. Every time I see it, even the 10th time, I burst out laughing.

I guess Farley’s death hit me hard because there was such potential for so much more of such antics. According to his friends, Farley felt so much pressure to perform, even in his daily life, that he was driven to drugs and alcohol, which is what killed his heart. So, while I mourn the loss of my funnyman because he’s not around to entertain me any longer, I wonder if it isn’t my needs who helped to kill him.

Sunday’s “What’s Up” section of the Raleigh News and Observer mentions the sequel of the movie “Jackass” and asks: “Just why do they, and all the other pranksters on the pop culture scene, do what they do?” It’s a rhetorical question, answered inside with the classic over-analyzation of pop culture that movie and music critics often employ. “The joke is on us,” is the inevitable reply, because we must be somehow morally bankrupt to prefer Stooge-like antics to Shakespearian wit. Not to say I love pop culture, there’s plenty of it I can’t stand.

But there’s a reason why the Three Stooges shows are still in syndication half a century later. And that reason is simply that it makes (some of) us laugh.