Comedy and how it Ages

I watched the doco on Lenny Bruce last night and I enjoyed it a lot. It was quite sad considering how he was persecuted and harassed by the police and judicial system in the US because of his anti Catholic rhetoric and everything else. One thing that occurred to me after watching a lot of Lenny's material in the movie and on you tube is that 'comedy' is only REALLY appreciated in the era it is performed. The material itself I didn't find very funny or enlightening, I suppose because I am not from that time or that place and the way people communicated was a lot different. Therefore it is difficult to gauge just how influential he was because I cannot relate to his material.

I can understand based on the testimony of others like his friends and family, Bob Dylan and other social commentators that Lenny Bruce indeed was THE instigator of change in the industry. He was, as it were, the sacrificial lamb to allow other comedians henceforth to use Comedy to to express their 'HONEST' and uncensored world view without fear of recrimination from the law etc. For me comedy in general doesn't seem to age well unless there is a personal connection to the artist and era it was communicated. I noticed already my favorite sit com 'Seinfeld' is already starting to age as its social commentary is becoming less and less 'current'. For example, Stanley Kubricks's classic, Dr Strangelove' is considered one of the greatest comedies / satires about the cold war, yet if you did not live in that era it may be harder to see the ingenuity of it. Having said all that I am looking forward to watching the movie depiction of Lenny and listening to his Carnegie Hall performance if I can get my hands on it.

Another doco I watched recently was about the infamous writer 'Bukowski' - Born Into This which reminded me a little of the Lenny Bruce doco. Bukowski who I am sure you are familiar was a controversial social commentator, poet and storyteller who changed the way people write and like Lenny was a revolutionary instigator of change in his art. You have to admire people like that. I recently read the infamous but towering chronicle, 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas' by Hunter S Thompson, which is undoubtedly one of my favorite books of all time. That hasn't aged to me at all. I consider Thompson a literary genius because of his astonishing wordsmanship in that book. I don't want to watch the Johnny Depp movie based on the book, because I don't want to ruin the story that's in my head.

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