In his sortabiography, Last Words, George Carlin talks about the success he enjoyed in the late sixties:
I really felt out of place. I was living with a lot of private misery. All these fucking stupid TV shows with all that lighting shit, meaningless banter, all that garbage, all that wasted time and energy. My brilliant act, which was doing so well, had nowhere to go. I was writing and performing material that went around in circles… I felt I’d somehow stained myself with this middle-class show-business shit.
And however much kinship I had with the counterculture, it brought up again the eternal dilemma: of longing to belong but not liking to belong—even though the group I wanted to belong to now were non-belongersMaybe it wasn’t belonging that I longed for so much as being able to fulfill my proper role. I wasn’t doing my job. I wasn’t using my mind to produce the external evidence of my inner state. I was superficially skimming off the top of these mild and passable parodies. The very fact that they were parodies is telling. There was nothing of me in them.
Carlin was seeking his persona, or his stage identity. In philosophy, questions about what constitutes a person’s identity deal with how a notion of identity or sameness or continuity might be rooted in a thing that’s constantly changing – a person. Carlin was struggling with a similar issue, but from a slightly different angle. He had a sense of who he was as a person, but that identity didn’t mesh with what he was expected to do on stage. On stage, there was the George Carlin who parodied TV commercials; off stage, there was the George Carlin who disliked a culture that promoted commercialism.
The term persona is rooted in the Latin per/sonare, meaning the mask through which (per) the actor’s voice sounds. Both the visual element of the mask and the aural element of the voice combined to create a façade of the person which was presented to the world and, more importantly, recognized by others. The persona was originally used in clan ceremonies and rituals where celebrants wore familiar masks depicting deities and clan members. Families also displayed ancestral death masks (imago) in their homes – the mask or image enduring after the breath had passed. These practices easily adapted to use in drama, actors wearing masks and playing roles, but there was a more important development in Roman law, where a persona signified the official recognition of a person’s family, status, and privileges. It was more than mere citizenship; the persona established one’s legal name and public standing as a free individual, a true person. There was something tangible to it. By contrast, on the other end of the scale of Roman society, slaves were viewed as having no property, no ancestors, no name, no personality.
The term persona is rooted in the Latin per/sonare, meaning the mask through which (per) the actor’s voice sounds. Both the visual element of the mask and the aural element of the voice combined to create a façade of the person which was presented to the world and, more importantly, recognized by others. The persona was originally used in clan ceremonies and rituals where celebrants wore familiar masks depicting deities and clan members. Families also displayed ancestral death masks (imago) in their homes – the mask or image enduring after the breath had passed. These practices easily adapted to use in drama, actors wearing masks and playing roles, but there was a more important development in Roman law, where a persona signified the official recognition of a person’s family, status, and privileges. It was more than mere citizenship; the persona established one’s legal name and public standing as a free individual, a true person. There was something tangible to it. By contrast, on the other end of the scale of Roman society, slaves were viewed as having no property, no ancestors, no name, no personality.
George Carlin had a well-recognized, in-demand, successful persona, but it made him feel slavish. He had the mask, but it felt like the imago, or death mask; there was nothing of him inside. He needed the second element of his persona, a voice.
He found it over the next few years:
I would no longer deal with subjects that were expected of me, in ways which had been determined by others. I would determine the ways. My own experiences would be the subject. I went into myself, I discovered my own voice and found it authentic. So, apparently, did the audiences…
What Carlin discovered, and keep in mind, this is after he was a “successful” comedian, was that ultimately, there has to be some aspect of you in your comic persona. Unless you’re Jerry Seinfeld or maybe Bill Cosby, you won’t be the same person on stage that you are in your private life, which might sound trivial if you think that it’s natural for people to act differently in different roles. But comedy is another animal. Playing different roles in various aspects of your life involves degrees of anonymity (to those who only know you in only one particular role) and familiarity (to those who know you in more than one role), both of which insulate against a bad social performance. Particularly bad social performances in daily life matter less than they do on stage because those who don’t know you well don’t particularly care, so long as you continue to be a decent boss, keep making the company money, etc. It matters even less for those who know you, your family and friends, because they already know your faults and blemishes, and they’re still hanging around.
With comedy, the audience brings certain expectations. First and foremost: make me laugh. Why do we want to laugh? Talk to scientists and they’ll say laughter is something like the universal sign of wellbeing that helps to normalize social situations, improves cardiovascular health, and reduces stress hormones. So maybe there’s a deep genetic urge. The social aspect is easier to recognize. There’s a personal element to laughter, and a relationship that’s forged between the comic and the audience. Laughter is the signal that we’re at this good place, together, and thanks funny person for bringing me here. Think of when someone makes you laugh unexpectedly: you feel appreciative, you think better of that person, maybe even that they’re smart or clever.
With comedy, the audience brings certain expectations. First and foremost: make me laugh. Why do we want to laugh? Talk to scientists and they’ll say laughter is something like the universal sign of wellbeing that helps to normalize social situations, improves cardiovascular health, and reduces stress hormones. So maybe there’s a deep genetic urge. The social aspect is easier to recognize. There’s a personal element to laughter, and a relationship that’s forged between the comic and the audience. Laughter is the signal that we’re at this good place, together, and thanks funny person for bringing me here. Think of when someone makes you laugh unexpectedly: you feel appreciative, you think better of that person, maybe even that they’re smart or clever.
Now consider the audience. They’ve come specifically to be made to feel that way. If you don’t meet those expectations, the audience will feel let down. So it’s important to remember that the comic gets one shot, and the opportunity narrows, maybe closes with time. In this case, minutes.
Carlin’s story tells us that we can keep an audience polite if we do certain set pieces. That’s what he did in the sixties. He’d hit upon something, developed his routine, and became increasingly miserable doing the same thing in various ways. The audience was fine, because he kept that mask on. He became known for certain routines and delivered. But George the person was changing, or maybe emerging. In the seventies, the new George or the George who was always in there was allowed to come out. I’m being wooly here because I’m dancing around the philosophical issues associated with our concept(s) of identity.
What we can say in this case is that George decided who he was going to be on stage; it was going to be him. He decided authenticity was important for his act. He felt he had to portray on stage who he believed he was and what was going on in his head. He had to be comfortable in his own skin. At the same time, he knew he had to maintain the universal aspect that would appeal broadly and make people laugh.
So what can we learn from this...?
(To be continued)
What we can say in this case is that George decided who he was going to be on stage; it was going to be him. He decided authenticity was important for his act. He felt he had to portray on stage who he believed he was and what was going on in his head. He had to be comfortable in his own skin. At the same time, he knew he had to maintain the universal aspect that would appeal broadly and make people laugh.
So what can we learn from this...?
(To be continued)