In its place is comedy that, very purposely, does not outwardly acknowledge tragedy at all. The structure they provided simply by showing up, day after day, has been obliterated. You can know that the answer to “Is it too soon?” is “No.” But the pandemic has quarantined the comedians, too. and watch Jimmy Fallon making light of the day’s news, you can also be assured that things are, on some level, under control.
#KUMBALANGI NIGHTS LAUGH GIF PROFESSIONAL#
In the context of quarantine, though, their silliness begins to read as especially meaningful-and especially radical.Īmericans are accustomed, in times of national trauma, to asking questions that assume there is a right way to laugh, and a wrong one: Is it okay to make jokes? Is it too soon? And we have been accustomed to seeking some of the answers from figures of authority: professional entertainers, in particular, whose job has been to find comedy even in tragedy. They are part of the genre of humor that evolved with the internet: clever, democratized, visually oriented, wonderfully amateur. All the ways, right now, people are suffering. The caregivers who work without proper masks. They allow their viewers, for a moment, to forget about the things that might otherwise occupy their minds: The tents in Central Park. They’re short and silly and, above all, detached from the world’s events. These bite-size jokes, punch lines devoid of setups, flourish on TikTok and Twitter and Instagram and Marco Polo. The toilets that have been converted into brooding smokers. Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding portrait re-created with the help of a quilted comforter and a plastic bucket. It’s one of the many small jokes I’ve been turning to when I need to turn away from the news: The Adele concert attended-and “performed”-by gummy bears.
I can’t stop thinking about that video, in part because it requires so little in the way of thinking. They saunter, a ridiculous centaur, as “A Horse With No Name” plays in the background. Together, the two people … look like a horse. She situates herself in front of him, facing the viewer, then bends at the waist, flipping her hair over. T he Video starts with a woman and a man, both dressed in black.