June 28th marked the 96th anniversary of World War II veteran and comedy legend Mel Brooks (born Melvin Kaminsky), creator of the bumbling wannabe James Bond in Get Smart, the hip Black old west sheriff of Blazing Saddles, a third-gen mad scientist in Young Frankenstein, and perhaps most famously, the award-winning prancing Nazis of The Producers.
Combining their hard-won wisdom with the new medium of television, World War II veterans like Mel Brooks, the still active 99-year old Norman Leer, and the late Carl Reiner defined the situation comedy as an art form, along with irreverent mainstream movie comedies which often doubled as social commentary. Sadly, political correctness increasingly threatens the sort of creativity pioneered by the Greatest Generation.
That first occurred to me back in the halcyon days before Covid, when in July 2018 at Western Colorado University in Gunnison, longtime TV comedy writer John Bowman gave a scintillating talk titled “Can Television Bring America Together?” Bowman, who died suddenly last winter at age 64, had earlier done a whole panel with the same title on similar themes, available online.
Left 'weaponizing' entertainment
Bowman’s Gunnison talk had two key points. First, increasingly, entertainment has become weaponized by the left to disparage the right, alienating much of the public. Though on the left, the Catholic, Wisconsin-born Bowman saw conservatives as fellow Americans deserving respect, not social inferiors to be cancelled or preached at. Despite their left-leaning themes, a few recent shows like Modern Family and Jane the Virgin by and large get that; many others do not.
Looking back, even half-century old All in the Family, created by Norman Lear, humanized its bigoted foil, showing main character Archie Bunker as a basically decent guy who worked hard, loved his family, and sometimes even got things right, a sort of white working-class version of the characters on the (long banned) Amos and Andy. Nobody hated or feared Archie Bunker. Maybe your uncle was Archie Bunker.
Related to All in the Family, Bowman’s second point was that more years of formal education have combined with social media to make our culture ever more politically correct, limiting what we get to laugh at. Bowman showed an episode of the classic sitcom featuring Archie Bunker’s usual cracks about ethnic minorities and women. The older half of the audience nervously laughed at (and sometimes with) Bunker; the younger half squirmed uncomfortably in offended silence, not sure what to think or how to feel.
Will sit-coms disappear?
It is quite possible that in my lifetime, the situation comedy will die as an art form, killed by woke fundamentalists, particularly sheltered young elites. This will make American life duller, sadder, and crueler. We will be less able to laugh at, laugh with, and feel empathy toward other Americans.
Across the broad arc of history, perhaps the artistic freedom of the mid and late 20th century reflected the unique experiences of the Greatest Generation in at least three ways. It takes a certain national confidence to allow apostasy, confidence earned by winning the worst World War, both in Europe and the Pacific.
Second, serving with diverse fellow Americans while standing up to fascists abroad gave World War II veterans a special appreciation for freedom, tolerating creators and dissenters. Third, if you fought real Nazis, then nothing seems stranger than fears non-work language might pose any danger. For veterans, trigger warnings involve guns, not feelings.
It may be that the grandchildren of the WW II generation, led by the upper classes among them, are now returning to the prudish censorship of earlier eras, albeit with different targets, and with bureaucracies, universities, and social media platforms magnifying their power to condemn and censor. Imagine what kind of twitter mobs would have come out of the temperance movement, or for that matter the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
If I am right, then our remaining WW II veterans really are the Greatest Generation, not just politically but artistically.
With that, here’s hoping Mel Brooks had an amazing 96th birthday. Thanks for the laughs.
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