Nothing to say
What do comedian Stephen Colbert, the Black Knight from Monty Python, politician Howard Dean, film director Ang Lee, and basketball player Pat Burke all have in common?
To explain the connection between these people I first have to tell you a small something about Sherlock Holmes.
In the story “The Adventure of Silver Blaze”, Sherlock Holmes was trying to determine who had snuck into a home. One of the clues to the identity of the intruder was the reaction from the family dog. Or to be more precise, the lack of reaction. Nobody had reported that they heard the dog barking. Therefore, the intruder couldent have been a stranger, but rather a person that the dog knew.
Lack of reaction can sometimes be very telling.
This past week, the internet was ablaze with talk about the speech given by Steven Colbert at the White House Correspondent’s Association dinner. Video of this event is at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869183917758574879 Now what everyone was talking about was the minimal reaction by the audience. All the elephants were saying that it was because Colbert bombed. He just wasn’t that funny and it shows how much the Hollywood left is out of touch with the real America. All the donkeys were saying that it was because the audience was a bunch of tightwads. They felt nervous and skittish from being verbally attacked and it shows how much the Washington right is out of touch with the real America.
It would probably help to point out that the White House Correspondents Dinner is always a roast. Laura Bush did the same kind of knock-up bashing of George Bush just last year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQv0v3Xme0I Its actually rather unsettling to me that so few people even remember something that happened only a year ago. I think the reason so many people are flipping their wig over Colbert’s speech and forgetting all the other times the president has been roasted is two fold.
First, Colbert is an absolute master of comedic deadpan. Acting deadly serious in an outlandishly absurd setting is something Colbert is just real good at. This delivery technique often flies right past American audiences who have grown accustomed to having jokes punctuated. Real mastery of deadpan is probably best known to Americans by way of Monty Python. They always express a very stern and serious exterior even when people are having limbs chopped off.
Can you even imagine Jim Carry as the one hacking at the Black Knight? First he would go all rubber face followed by a few exaggerated gasps for breath. Then he would say something obvious like “Woa! Did you see that? Your arm! It came off! Thats just crazy!â€. As if pointing out to those who hadn’t already noticed that he is a wacky guy doing wacky things on a wacky show. Then he would stare directly into the camera and give a knowing look. Colbert, in contrast, could hack apart the Black Knight as non-reactionary as in the original skit.
The second reason the Colbert speech gets misunderstood the lack of any laughter picked up by the microphone. There simply wasn’t a laugh track providing audio clues as to when something is suppose to be funny. The few times there is laughter, it does not gradually fade down and away, but rather it stops abruptly followed by a few seconds of near silence. It is clear to me at least that there is a noise-gate filter on the microphone. Loud noises come through, but smaller noises are cut off. Sound engineers usually put this in place to remove the sounds of clinking glasses and shuffling feet.
Just before Colbert’s speech, the president had talked in tandem with an impersonator. Each of them had their own microphone, and during this part the audience reaction turned up clearly on the audio tract. When this part was over, the audience reaction suddenly cuts out. It seems reasonable to me that when the microphone for the presidential impersonator was cut, the microphone for the audience was also cut. You can visibly watch audience reaction however. At one point, Judge Antonin Scalia was literally doubled over in laughter and the soundtrack at that moment was next to silent. Several crowd shots show people laughing and smiling even when there is no laughter heard.
As Howard Dean can atest to, when you don’t have the audience on the audio, the finished product can appear to be quite different than what was actually going on. All the elephants and donkeys tried making a big deal about the silence during Howard Deans “I have a scream†speech even though it wasn’t actually silent there. Likewise, the elephants and donkeys are both putting their personal spin on the silence during Colbert’s speech even though I can deduct that there wasn’t actually silence.
Just like regular politics, sexual politics has its own way of making meaning out of nothing. There was surprisingly little negative reaction to the film “Brokeback Mountain†despite every ounce of marketing of the film being aimed at provoking a reaction out of the religious right. “Is America ready for a film like this?†might as well have been the tagline printed on the movie posters just under the title. Yet despite every effort in egging out a confrontation, there was little in the way of protest. A few news releases and that was it. No masive riots. No protest marches. No boycotts of movie theaters.
When asked about the lack of reaction by the religious right, the director of the film Ang Lee just spun it. Rather than say “Gee, I guess the religious right aint a bunch of bigoted intolerant hate mongers like I had assumedâ€, he tried to make it out as if the silence was an indication that the religious right was bigoted intolerant hate mongers. The silence was ‘deliberate quietness’ because the religious right knew that if they did react, that it would make headlines. So they stayed silent on purpose in order to not give any undue news time to the film. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11077661/site/newsweek/page/4/
I myself have not seen the film. This is not because of my deep seeded homophobia. Its just that romances don’t appeal to me. If there had been some car chances and explosions and an invading alien fleet then maybe I would have wanted to see it. I didn’t see “The Horse Whisperer†either. If I had no interest in seeing a cowboy and a cowgirl falling in love, why would I want to see two cowboys falling in love? (If it had been two cowgirls making out on screen, then I might have wanted to see it.)
The film “American Beauty†also showed a gay couple and was largely ignored by the religious right. But it was also largely ignored by the gay rights lobby as well. The homosexual relationship was depicted in that film as just the average suburbanite couple. In fact, the gay neighbors were the only two normal people in the entire film. Few people even remember them, however, specifically because there WASENT a big deal made over it. What shows that tolerance of homosexually has finally been achieved? A film like Brokeback Mountain where everyone was talking about homosexuality or a film like American Beauty where nobody was talking about homosexuality?
There are historical examples of where oppression has been overcome. At one time in this country, there was enormous hatred against Irish immigrants. So much so that the phrase “No Irish need apply†is used even to this day as a metaphor for bigoted hatred. Yet today, racism against Irish is so nonexistent that there isn’t even an organized movement trying to showcase how wonderful and amazing it is that America has overcome its hatred. Saint Patric’s day is just an excuse to get drunk rather than a “pride†event.
The first Irish-American to play in the NBA was not met with long winded speeches about the courageous victory of the Irish people in the face of oppression. By the time Pat Burk signed with the Orlando Magic in 2002, bigotry against the Irish was a historical memory. Nobody went around commenting that this was a major step forward for the Irish community and shows great strides toward Irish people finally being accepted and welcomed into America as a whole.
Tiger Woods on the other hand …..
People in the kink community are fond of quoting the “First they came for the†poem by Martin Niemöller. The idea being that standing by doing nothing as evil propagates is a very bad thing. The notion being that any intolerance toward alternative sexuality needs to be counterbalanced by the kink community itself all getting together and stomping its feet and waving its arms making an even bigger fuss on the opposite side of the scale. But as long as there is a reaction, even if the reaction is positive, it still points out that differences exist.
Silence is golden.