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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for November 4, 2020

From my files: men, women, and farce

November 4, 2020 by Terry Teachout

A Terry Teachout Reader, my self-anthology, came out sixteen years ago. I’ve published hundreds of pieces on various subjects since then, and I have no plans to put together a sequel to the Teachout Reader, so I thought I might instead launch a series of occasional posts drawn from my fugitive essays, articles, and reviews. I hope you like this one, which came from “Trapped in Eden,” a review of Christopher Guest’s A Mighty Wind.

*  *  *

We are never so funny to others as when we are least funny to ourselves. This seeming paradox is the piston that drives the engine of comedy. In the greatest of all comedies—the Shakespearean tales of romantic reconciliation and their operatic counterparts, Verdi’s Falstaff and Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte—a pompous man’s thick carapace of earnestness is penetrated by humiliation. All at once, the unwitting butt of the joke realizes that he, too, partakes of the human condition, and is thereby made whole. It is in these transformative moments that the moral force of comedy is most evident, for it reminds us that we are not gods, merely men.

That’s one way to be funny. Another is to show us serious people who not only don’t realize how funny they are but never acquire any insight into their condition, wrapped as they are in their own bulletproof dignity. This sheer obliviousness is what makes them funny to us—but it also tempts us to feel superior to them, and that is a dangerous business, an invitation to vanity. This, I think, is the reason why women as a group tend to squirm at pure farce, for it outrages their protective instincts. Farce, after all, is a peculiarly hopeless kind of comedy, one in which the dignified boob learns nothing from his elaborately prepared Calvary of embarrassment. Instead, he is utterly vanquished by the other characters—and by the audience. Men naturally think in such triumphalist terms, but most women don’t. They want the victim (if he is a man) to learn from his misfortune, and be the better for it.

Almanac: Edmund Burke on principle and the people

November 4, 2020 by Terry Teachout

“Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.”

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

Snapshot: “Tuesday in November”

November 4, 2020 by Terry Teachout

“Tuesday in November,” a 1945 documentary featurette about elections in America made by the Office of War Information for overseas distribution. It was directed by John Houseman and scored by Virgil Thomson:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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