If you listen to enough
WTF with Marc Maron, then you know that he or a number of his guests have referenced Ernest Becker’s
The Denial of Death during interviews. As a result, I felt the need as a comedian and as a human being to read the book and take away from it what I could since it is a book that apparently meant a great deal to a number of comedians.
First off, my relationship with psychology is complicated. I enjoy reading about it, but I question its existence as well. How can we sit and use our minds to analyze our minds? That doesn’t seem to make sense and also just seems to be a waste of time. Also, these psychologists are rather sick people. Must it always come back to genitals? Look, I just want to know what could trigger me to feel sad some times. Oh, it’s intense castration anxiety, you say? Well, that solves it!
As I read The Denial of Death, I fell into my normal traps involved with reading psychology. I zoned out during a number of pages of reading because I lost complete interest in what was being discussed. I questioned the reasoning behind certain theories then I questioned the reasoning behind why I was even reading the damn book. However, I had to bring it back to comedy, which was why I picked up the book in the first place.
The best part of the book is when Becker discusses Kierkegaard. I have read The Sickness Unto Death, but Becker analyzes and puts more things into light from that work (Hint: I learned from reading The Denial of Death that I also zoned out during some important stuff in The Sickness Unto Death.) Now, for actual passages from Becker, which no doubt could lead to a copyright lawsuit against this website without proper MLA citation:
“There is the type of man who has great contempt for ‘immediacy,’ who tries to cultivate his interiority, base his pride on something deeper and inner, create a distance between himself and the average man. Kierkegaard calls this type of man the ‘introvert.’ He is a little more concerned with what it means to be a person, with individuality and uniqueness. He enjoys solitude and withdraws periodically to reflect, perhaps to nurse ideas about his secret self, what it might be. This, after all is said and done, is the only real problem of life, the only worthwhile preoccupation of man: What is one’s true talent, his secret gift, his authentic vocation? In what way is one truly unique, and how can he express this uniqueness, give it form, dedicate it to something beyond himself? How can the person take his private inner being, the great mystery that he feels at the heart of himself, his emotions, his yearnings and use them to live more distinctively, to enrich both himself and mankind with the peculiar quality of his talent…” (Becker 82)
“Kierkegaard’s introvert feels that he is something different from the world, has something in himself that the world cannot reflect, cannot in its immediacy and shallowness appreciate; and so he holds himself somewhat apart from that world. But not too much, not completely. It would be so nice to be the self he wants to be, to realize his vocation, his authentic talent, but it is dangerous, it might upset his world completely. He is after all, basically weak, in a position of compromise: not an immediate man, but not a real man either, even though he gives the appearance of it…And so he lives in a kind of ‘incognito,’ content to toy—in his periodic solitudes—with the idea of who he might really be; content to insist on a ‘little difference,’ to pride himself on a vaguely-felt superiority.” (Becker 83)
Heavy stuff! However, the “introvert” signifies what most artists are. Obviously, I will centralize these paragraphs to myself or to the majority of stand-up comedians.
At least from my perspective in comedy, the “introvert” hit home. There is a desire for something deeper and inner within comedy. I enjoy telling jokes and making a crowd laugh, but my hope is that there is an appreciation beyond the laughter, and that whatever I have created has provoked thought in some way or provided something beyond simple entertainment.
Do we enjoy solitude? Usually, yes, and we have no choice considering writing in general is a solitary experience. Stand-up is solitude as a whole – solitary as a writer and then solitary as a performer.
The emphasis on uniqueness is what stood out to me the most. I obsess over uniqueness, and if the comedy that I create is something that is actually new and inventive. I often think that it is too difficult with the rise of the Internet and so many different mediums with which to put comedy out there to create something that hasn't been done before. Comedy has been going on for so long, and now it's a race as to who can get an idea in the best and quickest possible way for the most exposure. If you get beat to the punch, even if your idea was better, you can't do it. It's no longer unique and could go so far as to being theft.
The “peculiar quality of talent” could be the talent of being a comedian in general or it could be the type of comedy that the comedian creates. Either way, it is a specific talent which we want to communicate with an expectation of understanding and appreciation.
The characteristics of the “introvert” are comparable to the comedian. The idea of being “not an immediate man but not a real man either” is a way of putting the undefinable that comes with comedy. A great example of this feeling was depicted on Louie when Louie speaks to the father of the teenager who accosts him while on a date, and he tells the kid's father that he's a comedian to which the father responds, “That's not a job.” In certain ways, there isn't a reality to comedy or art or a purpose behind it. For as much as art could trigger change or thought, the majority of it is nothing beyond meaningless entertainment and analysis and criticism of that entertainment. Can comedy or art change lives and have an effect? Certainly. At its core, it should be making people feel better and allow them an escape. But, it realistically shouldn't be seen as more meaningful than advancements in so many other fields that truly save lives or progress society.
“Priding ourselves on a vaguely-felt superiority” also has its place to an extent. In creating comedy that has successfully entertained a crowd, I often feel a high or a sense of accomplishment. I've never built a spice rack, but another man has successfully. Does he feel the same sense of accomplishment? Do I feel more accomplishment over him because getting in front of a crowd to tell jokes is far more risky to the average person than building a personal spice rack? I haven't even tried to build a spice rack, and I use spices.
If there is a point to this (that previous paragraph was nonsensical), it is that I could identify with the “introvert” and see its connection for comedians as to why they may align with Becker's thoughts in a further understanding of life. Beyond that, though, Becker is realistic even about the apprehensions that I have toward psychology that I mentioned in the beginning of this post in his conclusion to The Denial of Death.
“Modern man is drinking and drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing. As awareness calls for types of heroic dedication that his culture no longer provides for him, society contrives to help him forget. Or, alternatively, he buries himself in psychology in the belief that awareness all by itself will be some kind of magical cure for his problems” (Becker 284).
Awesome. I read through this entire book to get to a point that I often battle with, and feel no better as a result. But, at least a few pages before, I found some kind of a conclusion to whatever I'm talking about in this post.
“The empirical facts of the world will not fade away because one has analyzed his Oedipus complex, as Freud so well knew, or because one can make love with tenderness, as so many now believe. Forget it. In this sense again it is Freud's somber pessimism, especially of his later writing such as 'Civilization and Its Discontents,' that keeps him so contemporary. Men are doomed to live in an overwhelmingly tragic and demonic world” (Becker 281).
The introvert finds purpose in venting against this tragic and demonic world or analyzing and attacking it or making fun of it creatively. The crowd escapes their reality in the tragic and demonic world to be entertained for at least a brief period of time by the creations of these introverts.
The Denial of Death is worth picking up for any interest that you may have in psychology, death, and even comedy as was the case for me. It's best to interact with psychology and this book in whatever way you see fit. As you can tell from this blog post that I expected to have a point when I started writing it, I take The Denial of Death as having meaningful portions that I can relate to in a free-flowing manner.
Or, maybe this is all just a mind-screw (cleaning it up). Comedy!
Just read my book.
