21 Nov Laugh, and the World Laughs with You
Over the weekend, our friend Ben Hunt re-Tweeted/re-posted an old American Express commercial starring the legendary filmmaker Martin Scorsese. The ad is “enhanced” in the posted video with commentary from Scorsese himself. It is fantastic. And you should watch it for yourself – as many times as you can.
Our response to Ben was that “self-deprecation is a radically undervalued virtue.” And it is. Most people, ourselves included, don’t usually include it among the primary virtues – courage, honesty, mercy, etc. – but we probably should.
Interestingly, this is a controversial statement. Many people – in philosophy, psychology, religion – think that self-deprecation is a vice, that it is unhealthy or manipulative or insufficiently deferential to the greatness of God’s creation. There’s some truth in this, of course, but it’s a “lesser” truth, a missing-the-forest-for-the-tree kind of truth, an imperious truth that undermines itself.
So, to be clear, when we use the term self-deprecation, what we mean by that is what most people mean by it, the colloquial understanding of the term, which is the combination of humility, modesty, and a sense of humor. Those who use the term differently do so for various reasons, some entirely valid but nearly all missing the last component, arguably the most important.
At its core, self-deprecation is the art of not taking oneself overly seriously, even in circumstances that require seriousness. The money quote in the Scorsese video comes right at the end, when he is struggling to explain why he did the video and why it works. He tries to say that he thinks it’s important not to take himself too seriously but stops and concedes that, “the damn thing is you gotta be serious about making a picture.” That’s it, right there. That is the brilliance of the ad, the brilliance of self-deprecation, and the reason why it’s so valuable. Self-deprecation is the ability to inject levity into any given situation, no matter how dire, both connecting the performer to his audience in a powerful way and reminding that audience that however tough times might be, there is still much about which to be joyous and grateful. Self-deprecation allows one to stay grounded and to remember his limitations, even when the world demands his utmost seriousness and focus.
We have written more than once over the last few years about the importance of humor and of maintaining a sense of humor, even in the most unfortunate of times. Ironically, the last two times that we did so was in remembrance of the recently deceased: almost two years ago in response to the death of the inimitable P.J. O’Rourke; and almost exactly a year ago upon the death of Robert Clary, the diminutive French actor, singer, and dancer who was best known for his portrayal of Corporal Louis LeBeau on the CBS sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes.” In the former case, we quoted John Podhoretz’s obituary of O’Rourke, in which he called his friend “maybe the nicest person I’ve ever known….” In the latter, we called Clary “one of the bravest and most compelling men of the 20th century,” and then quoted from his Hollywood Reporter obit as evidence:
Born Robert Max Widerman in Paris on March 1, 1926, Clary was the youngest of14 children in a strict Orthodox Jewish family. At age 12, he began singing and performing; one day when he was 16, he and his family were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz.
“My mother said the most remarkable thing,” Clary told The Hollywood Reporter’s Peter Flax in late 2015. “She said, ‘Behave.’ She probably knew me as a brat. She said, ‘Behave. Do what they tell you to do.’”
Clary’s parents were murdered in the gas chamber that day.
At Buchenwald, Clary sang with an accordionist every other Sunday to an audience of SS soldiers. “Singing, entertaining and being in kind of good health at my age, that’s why I survived,” he told Flax.
Clary was incarcerated for 31 months (he worked in a factory making 4,000 wooden shoe heels each day) and tattooed with the identification “A-5714” on his left forearm. He was the only one of his captured family to make it out alive….
After being liberated, Clary returned to France in May 1945 and sang in dance halls. He came to Los Angeles in 1949 to record for Capitol Records and a year later appeared in a French comedy skit on a CBS variety show hosted by vaudevillian Ed Wynn.
Think about that. This guy spent more than two-and-a-half years in concentration camps. The Nazis murdered his entire family. And then, he found his greatest joy and greatest fame playing a theoretical version of himself in the setting of a Nazi POW camp. Talk about art imitating life. Like Gunga Din, Robert Clary was a better man than I am.
Taken together, these two brilliantly humorous souls specify two more sub-virtues necessary to possess and exercise the uber-virtue of self-deprecation: niceness (or kindness) and bravery.
Attempted self-deprecation without kindness is not self-deprecation at all, but merely the appearance thereof as a mask for contempt. Think here of Barack Obama’s so-called self-deprecating humor. Obama often mimics the methodology of self-deprecation but, in his arrogance and spitefulness, does so only to ridicule his critics. For example, Obama famously adopted the meme “thanks, Obama,” but he did so not to poke fun at himself, but to mock those who used it originally (the Tea Partiers) and to defend his record and tout his achievements. Like everything he does, his purported attempts not to take himself too seriously deteriorate in the face of his ego and his unkindness, making them more self-congratulatory than self-deprecating.
As for bravery, one need only look at the current president or his immediate predecessor to see how well inward-looking humor works in its absence. We know that Joe Biden tries these days to be cute and endearing about the foibles associated with his age and infirmity, but for most of his career, he was precisely the type of insecure schoolyard bully he claims to have fought. As for Donald Trump, his entire political career is premised on sticking it to the people who made jokes at his expense. To be blunt, neither man has the guts to allow himself to be made of, much less to be the one making fun. Neither could withstand the blow to his ego. Whatever other virtues each man may possess, neither can be said to be self-deprecating even slightly.
Indeed, the only self-deprecating American president in the 21st century (which is now almost a quarter over) is/was George W. Bush. Although we continue to disagree vehemently with much of his domestic policy and nearly ALL of his foreign policy, we like Bush very much, in part because he can tell a joke and in larger part because he can take a joke. We are convinced that he would not have made it through those eight years in the White House if either were not true.
Of course, the granddaddy of self-deprecating American presidents was Ronald Reagan. Today, Republicans are often vilified for their “cult of Reagan.” This isn’t the ‘80s, we’re told, and the world has changed. Cutting taxes won’t fix things now, and even Reagan had flaws and made mistakes.
All of this is true. But then, it’s also beside the point. People revere Reagan today, nearly 35 years after he left office, because he possessed a specific combination of virtues. He was kind and decent. He was brave and bold. He was humble and modest. He had a sense of humor, and above all, he didn’t take himself overly seriously. In short, he was self-deprecating – and he was good at it too. There’s a great deal to admire about Reagan’s self-deprecation, not the least of which is the fact that his virtues have not been completely replicated by a president (or presidential candidate, frankly) since.
If you ask us, our political class would do well to study Reagan and learn from him. Laughter, as Melcher likes to say, is like taking a little vacation. And heaven knows we could use a few of those right now.
If they don’t want to learn from Reagan, they should learn from Scorsese. They could – and undoubtedly will – do worse.
So…enjoy yourself. You’ll thank us.
