Road to Pride

 

Is comedy inherently subversive or is it inherently reactionary? Does it make fun of, and thereby attack, the status quo, or does it reenforce existing norms by taking potshots at anyone or anything that poses a challenge to those norms? I guess it all depends on what you're laughing at. If it's the Marx Brothers in the 1930s ruining a wealthy matron's dinner party along with the mansion where it's being held, then you could say what you're laughing at is an attack on the capitalist system, and thus the status quo, making it subversive.  However, if you're somebody who laughed hysterically every time the late Medal of Freedom recipient Rush Limbaugh made mention of "feminazis" on the radio, then you're laughing at, and in agreement with, a potshot taken at those who would challenge a woman's freedom to be nothing more than barefoot and pregnant, a challenge to a norm that today apparently still holds some appeal (we'll see just how much at election time), and that makes it reactionary.

Then there's the curious case of Bob Hope. A lifelong Republican, much of his material was written by lifelong Democrats (such as Larry Gelbart, who went on to create the TV version of MASH.) In his monologues, Hope pretty much made fun of anybody in the news, be they on the left or the right, though in a no-blood-drawn sort of way. And he made fun of himself (most famously his failure to win, or even be nominated for, an Oscar), the comic self-effacement a big part of his appeal. The movies he made in the 1940s and '50s, such as the The Princess and the Pirate and Son of Paleface (where his costars were Roy Rogers and Trigger), as well as the Road pictures he made with Bing Crosby, were mildly subversive in the way his cowardly heroes stumbled head first into one movie genre after another, making chaotic mincemeat out of Hollywood depictions of machismo, but as he got older, and older, and older still (he lived to be 100), Hope became much more of an Establishment figure, and the trademark self-effacement lost much of its credibility. Whatever shame he felt in not winning an Oscar was probably more than made up for by getting White House invites throughout ten different administrations. Finally, like many comedians who got their start in vaudeville, he peppered his monologues with jokes aimed at ethnic and racial minorities. He did that less and less as time passed, but there was one minority which he just wouldn't let up on:

“I’ve just flown in from California, where they’ve made homosexuality legal. I thought I’d better get out before they make it compulsory.”

By 1989, the homophobic humor had begun to catch up with Hope. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) wrote him a strongly worded letter of complaint, reminding him that whatever Orwellian fears he had of a future homosexual police state, for the time being it was gays and lesbians themselves who were uncomfortably at the mercy of a heterosexual ruling class. Whether out of sincere regret, or a realization that a public relations fix was in order, or maybe even both, Hope surprised the alliance with a letter of apology. Furthermore, he offered to film a Public Service Announcement condemning violence against gays and lesbians. GLAAD had only been around four years at that point, and couldn't afford such an announcement, so Hope went and paid for it out of his own pocket. Watch: 

Bob Hope may have been at his most subversive when playing it straight. Thanks for the memory.