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A Tale of Two ComicsMeet the anti-Seinfeld, Jerry's brilliant, twisted, evil twin.

By Ron RosenbaumPosted Friday, Nov. 2, 2007, at 2:55 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

If Shapiro is the Sydney Carton to Seinfeld's Charles Darnay, does that mean he'll also prove more memorable? Seinfeld may never be forgotten, alas, although he certainly is forgettable. But I'd argue that Rick Shapiro will be remembered, if he stays alive at least a little longer, as more important. The Lenny Bruce of our time.

I'm not the only one who thinks this way. A couple of years after I first saw Shapiro, I invited talented writer Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, author of the justly celebrated Random Family (about the culture of poverty in the Bronx), to speak to a writing class I was teaching at NYU. She's legendary for her obsessive pursuit of her subjects. And to my astonishment, she told the class she had spent about three years following none other than Rick Shapiro around, thinking there had to be some kind of book to write about him and his world.

I was excited about the pairing of author and subject, but some of my students were puzzled, and—at the time—I think Adrian herself was a little puzzled by her fascination, and so I threw my two cents in: In some deeply disturbed but provocative way, you could compare Shapiro and his circle of extreme comics to the circle of philosophers—Socrates and his crew—who talked trash about the meaning of life on the Athenian agora more than two millennia ago.

Because both groups were exploring a kind of terra incognita, the nature of human nature, just how deep (or, in Shapiro's case, how dirty) one could get in analyzing (or, in Shapiro's case, anal-yzing) the human mind. Asking fundamental questions (or, in Shapiro's case, fundament questions) about the relationship between mind and body, self and soul.

I recently contacted Adrian, and she told me that after five years of following Shapiro around, she was completing a book about him for Random House. No Samuel Johnson could have a better Boswell.

I asked her why this snarling, foul-mouthed, misogynist, misanthropic, venomously sleazy, Ratso Rizzo-type engaged her interest. Here's what she wrote back:

His work implicates you. I doubt you can leave his show unaffected. His rendering of his dynamic and intricate experience of the world will make you laugh, but it requires you, blessedly, to think deeply and feel. As to my idea of a book about standup comedy—contemporary American masculinity—he's grappling dearly with all it means and can mean.

I think the key thing here is "he implicates you." Because for some—not me, of course—he touches a nerve by suggesting there's some of him in you. That horrifying recognition is why you laugh and why it's scary. Adrian's words suggest that it's possible to see Rick Shapiro's stage persona as a character he's playing, knowingly trying to implicate us by acting out our rage against the Seinfeldian hive. That, for instance, he's not misogynist, but about misogyny. He raises some of the questions that Sarah Silverman and Sacha Baron Cohen do in their work, but without any of the knowing winks that in one way or another let them off the hook. He plays on that knife edge of uncertainty: Is this him, can any human go so low, so entertainingly, or is he putting some of it on?

Anyway, when the publicity-industrial complex began gearing up to force-feed us Jerry Seinfeld's sickeningly sweet Bee Movie, I was thinking that Shapiro is the antidote—the quintessential anti-Seinfeld.

I have some history with Seinfeld. I used to ridicule him and his insipid show repeatedly in print, so much so that when NBC's Today Show did a special on the final episode, they had me on as the lone Voice of Dissent. And I heard from people who interviewed Seinfeld co-creator Larry David that he'd get apoplectic denouncing me. (Too bad, since I think David, freed from the simpering Seinfeld in Curb Your Enthusiasm, has become genuinely interesting.)

When the hype began for Bee Movie, I wondered if Seinfeld's trivializing inanity could do any more damage to the American psyche than it'd already done. And it occurred to me that rather than merely denounce Seinfeld, I should suggest an alternative, his evil twin, the Sydney Carton to his Charles Darnay, Rick Shapiro. That's me, always thinking positive.

When I say damage to the American psyche, am I exaggerating? Well, I don't know if you read Steve Martin's lovely recent memoir in The New Yorker. It was about how he became a comic before the comedy club revolution and how he participated in the birth of a new, original kind of American comedy that he and few others were exploring in the '60s and '70s. It was at once incredibly funny and incredibly silly, but also genuinely and provocatively philosophical.

But suddenly almost all that died, and I blame Seinfeld and the so-called "sweater comics" he inspired for killing it off with their smirking frat-boy blandness. Their idiot "observational humor" made a religion out of self-congratulation. Most of the Seinfeld show's humor was about making fun of anyone who was in any way "different"—immigrants, people with any kind of accent, any kind of idiosyncrasy, any kind of deviation from the Charles Darnay mold.

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You could argue that a nation's character is defined at least in part by its sense of humor, and Jerry gave us the sense of humor of self-satisfaction. Anything that didn't fit the suburban Massapequa mindset was something to be held up for piddling laughs. He was so deeply in love, so deeply satisfied by his own trivial quirks that those who didn't share them were alien subjects of ridicule.

The promotional booklet really says it all. I'm not going to waste my time or yours reviewing this saccharine little animated fable which is NSFD (not safe for diabetics). Instead I invite you to stare at a drawing of Jerry's bee "Barry B. Benson," and tell me that you don't eventually see Satan.Bee Movie. Click image to expand.

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Ron Rosenbaum is the author of The Shakespeare Wars and Explaining Hitler.
Photograph of Rick Shapiro by Heidi Kikel/www.comedynet.com. Still from Bee Movie by DreamWorks Animation © 2007 reamWorks Animation L.L.C. All rights reserved.
COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray

What if I went down to Rosenbaum's office and criticized him? He'd throw me out! You know, people don't throw each other out as much as they used to, do they? The old-fashioned throw-out? You don't see much of that anymore. I mean, are guys grabbing other guys by the scruff of the neck and just tossing them out? Not so much, I think. By the way, do you really need "of the neck" after "scruff?" Does any other body part even have a scruff? What is a scruff? What genius came up with this concept?

--ClubhouseCancer

(To reply, click here)

Let's leave aside the Seinfeld and Shapiro comparison, since that is not really a fair match. Shapiro needs instead to be compared to in my opinion…the greatest comedian ever: Bill Hicks. And here is where Shapiro fails--he never takes the joke or the concept to that next level, to that next spot in the thought process that leaves just merely making fun of a group of people (trendy 20-somethings for example) into a higher level of social commentary. This is where Hicks beauty was. He realized that the greatest tragedy of them all was that all of our problems and faults are the result of our own failure to pay attention and think outside the box society has formed around us. ..

Shapiro on the other hand, by failing to take it to that level, comes across as someone who just is angry the beautiful girl at the bar denied his advances. And this is where Shapiro becomes disturbing, which, actually is in a way, beautiful and repulsive. It is beautiful to witness someone so willing, so open to communicating the demons in his head (which face it, are all in our head at some point to), and to openly discuss it with us. Perhaps it is therapy for him, which helps him deal with them. And hey, if you are going to have psychological issues, at least profit from them, no? But the other side of the coin is that you really feel that this man will never truly be happy. His loathing of others is nothing compared to the self-loathing that seethes within him. This is partly why most comics are usually deep down, depressed and self-conscious. It is the ability to see themselves for what they are, that also allowed them to see everyone else for who they are. It is also likely why Shapiro will never catch on. Most people have never been able to see themselves for who they are, and because of that, the sight of someone with such a crystal clear ability to cut through our own self-delusions usually upsets them. Seinfeld on the other hand, succeeded as Rosenbaum said, because it allowed all of us not to ever look inward, but always point the finger.

--VTbiker

(To reply click here)

What is funny to me is the vitriol that some people invest into a debate about an "Art form" that is slightly more interesting and relevant than mime, but finally, by definition, laughable. There is no good stand-up comedy about the holocaust, not because the holocaust is a sacred thing about which no humor can be found, but because stand up comedy is facile and populist: everyone has to get the joke in the exact moment its being told. If it takes almost a second to get it, that's a sleeper in stand-up terms. Not a lot of room for subtlety or insight.

So if you want someone with subtext who's funny, read George Saunders, if you want to have an easy laugh about crack whores or muffin tops, watch a stand-up comic. Liking an unfunny comic who used to live the life of a druggie doesn't make you authentic or Real, whether that comic is Tim Allen or Shapiro.

--Billdave

(To reply, click here)

(11/06)

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