Humor as Social Commentary

Quality, value, style, service, selection, convenience,
Economy, savings, performance, experience, hospitality,
Low rates, friendly service, name brands, easy terms,
Affordable prices, money-back guarantee.

George Carlin - “Advertising”

I recently listened to a George Carlin monologue called “Advertising” on YouTube. The first two minutes of the nine minute piece consisted of a litany of advertising buzzwords and phrases. Typical of George Carlin, the monologue flipped to social commentary with language that is unsuitable for a family audience.

George Carlin was a national treasure, holding up to ridicule things that he found stupid and ugly, but he was only one of a number of people who have risen to prominence using humor as their medium and, in the process, delivered sharp social commentary. They appear and appeared on television and radio, on the vaudeville stage and in the pages of newspapers across the decades, adapting to the changing communications media to reach their audiences. Will Rogers performed on the stage and in the movies, wrote a newspaper column and spoke on the radio. Fanny Brice was a headliner as a comedienne in the Ziegfeld Follies.

Barbra Streisand played Fanny Brice in the movie “Funny Girl”. In the movie, Florence Ziegfeld (played by Walter Pidgeon) required Miss Brice to sing a number about being a beautiful bride in the Follies’ finale that featured a lot of showgirls in bridal attire. Miss Brice acquiesced (she was no beauty) and started the song on opening night, costumed in a wedding gown, but she turned sideways after few bars into the number and appeared in profile as if she was enormously pregnant.

The line of noted American humorists and comedians, as near as I can determine, stretches back to the Civil War, but apparently not before. This is not to say that humor did not exist in America before the Civil War, only that no writer or entertainer well known to history appears to have made humor the mainstay of his work. Mark Twain, regarded as the quintessential American humorist, did not begin his work until after the war. David Ross Locke, writing as Petroleum V. Nasby, portrayed himself as a Democrat and Copperhead during the war. Robert Henry Newell, writing as a would be politician named Orpheus C. Kerr [office seeker], also started writing during the war. Most humor is not enduring, and very few of those who enjoyed prominence for their humor in their day, like Mr. Locke and Mr. Newell, are well remembered by history but not the general public.

The pre-Civil War writers who were known for their humor are not well known today. The writers who remain well known used humor as an element in their work rather than as its principal thrust. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick has its humorous passages and episodes. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote a story entitled “The Celestial Railway”, which was a parody of The Pilgrim’s Progress in which the railroad circumvents all the obstacles awaiting the pilgrim who travels on foot – the Slough of Despond and the Valley of the Shadow of Death – only to deposit the passenger in Hell. Fanny Fern is not well known today, but was popular for her wit, as illustrated by the following sample, entitled “A Gentle Hint”:

In most of the New York shop windows, one reads: “Here we speak French;” “Here we speak Spanish;” “Here we speak German;” “Here we speak Italian.” I suggest an improvement -- “Here we speak the Truth."

Somewhat more in the nature of George Carlin, however, was Charles Farrar Browne who wrote in the fictional persona of Artemus Ward, a low rent and semi-literate version of the already famous showman Phineas T. Barnum. Artemus Ward hailed from Indiana (as George Carlin remarked in “Advertising”, “Void where prohibited by law, except in Indiana”), and he made his first appearances in 1858 while Mr. Browne was working for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. As a result of the newspaper exchange that permitted newspapers to be sent free through the mails to other newspapers, his items were picked up and reprinted in newspapers and periodicals.

Artemus Ward visited with the Shakers, the Mormons, the advocates of free love, those who communicated with the spirits of the dead, the opera singer Adelina Patti, the Prince of Wales and the proponents of women’s rights. As related in a piece entitled “Ossawatomie Brown”, Artemus Ward told of seeing a play in New York City based upon the actions of John Brown and described the show's finale as follows:

Kansis to Harper’s Ferry. Picter of a Arsenal is represented. Soljers cum & fire at it. Old Brown comes out & permits hisself to be shot. He is tride by soops in milingtery close, and sentenced to be hung on the gallus. Tabloo -- Old Brown on a platform, pintin upards, the staige lited up with red fire. Goddis of Liberty also on platform, pintin upards. A dutchman in the orkestry warbles on a base drum. Curtin falls. Moosic of the Band.

His commentary on visiting Oberlin College, notorious at the time for admitting Negro students, was the first Artemus Ward letter to be widely reprinted. It used a derogatory version of the word Negro, but the newspapers of the day did not hesitate to print the word in that context and many others. When an expanded version of the piece was reprinted in book form in 1862, the word “Ethiopian” was substituted.

This shift in the choice of language occurred also in a piece that was written during the secession crisis in which Artemus Ward addressed his neighbors in Indiana about the causes of the crisis. The background is a bit convoluted in that it pulls together some diverse and ugly threads. In 1859 Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published in Britain, and the next year it was published in the United States where it raised scientific and religious interest and controversy. In 1860, Phineas T. Barnum, who operated a “museum” in New York City with authentic and doubtful curiosities, opened a new attraction called the "What Is It". It featured a diminutive dark skinned man-like creature purportedly captured in Central Africa. One of the New York newspapers said that the "What Is It" might be “the link supposed by philosophers to exist between the human race and the brutes.”

Indeed, in addressing the secession crisis, Artemus Ward stated,

The origernal cawz in Our Afrikan Brother. I was into Barnum’s Moozeum down to New York the other day & saw that exsentric Etheopian, the What Is It. Sez I, “Mister What Is It, you folks air raisin thunder with this grate country. You’re gettin to be ruther more numeris than interestin. It is a pity you coodent go orf sumwhares by yourselves, & be a nation of What Is Its ….

The "What Is It" laughed in his face. That got Artemus Ward hot under the collar, but his angry speech brought the same reaction. In reflecting upon the crisis afterward more coolly, Artemus Ward concluded that the Negro “wooden’t be sich a infernal noosanse if white peple would let him alone.”

The dramatic situation of the encounter is intrinsically demeaning, but it is also clear that the "What Is It" gets the better of it. As a result of interview, however, given the predominant racial attitudes in the United States in 1860, held both north and south, the conclusion that Artemus Ward drew about race relations in the United States generally is quite subversive.

It is impossible to say whether the use of the term “Etheopian” in the place of the vulgar word reflected either a social judgment or an artistic choice. As noted above, the vulgar word appeared often in the newspapers of the day, indicating that it was accepted as a part of common speech. The author’s election not to use it in the reprint of the Oberlin piece and in the original crisis piece moderates, if only slightly, the overtly pejorative impact of the dramatic situation. Most Americans in 1860 were aware that the term was at least vulgar, and I would assume that the author thought that his readers were white.

Shortly after the secession crisis ripened into war, another letter from Artemus Ward told of his adventures in the Confederacy and his brief encounter with a Negro. The original version used the vulgar term, and it was not altered when reprinted in book form in 1862, suggesting a deliberate decision to use and then retain it – it is the only use of the term that I found in the book. Unlike the interview with the "What Is it", the dramatic situation is not intrinsically demeaning, and unlike either the Oberlin piece or the crisis piece, the setting is in the deep south. In addition, while the "What Is It" got the upper hand in the exchange with Artemus Ward in the crisis piece, the Negro speaker in this piece is permitted a particularly sharp reply that was addressed to the whites of the nation as a whole. Whatever the reasons behind the choice, the encounter with Artemus Ward goes as follows:

I saw a [Negro] sittin on a fence a-playin on a banjo. “My African Brother,” sed I, coting from a Track I onct red, “you belong to a very interesting race. Your masters is going to war excloosively on your account.”

“Yes, boss,” he replied, “an’ I wish ‘em honorable graves!” and he went on playin the banjo, larfin all over and openin his mouth wide enuff to drive in an old-fashion 2 wheeled chaise.