The tragic comedy of conservatives

Last month, the film An American Carol hit theatres — a satirical representative for the small conservative faction that still exists in Hollywood, despite the predominately liberal mindset that has always spoken for the industry. While it’s true that Hollywood has typically maintained a left-wing majority, you’d be interested to know that there is in fact a tiny faction of conservative film-stars out there who meet once a month and propagate on their own lonely beliefs; including Dennis Hopper, Jon Voight and Kelsey Grammer, among others. With this film release, they finally decided they were tired of living in the closet, and An American Carol is their self-professed response to a world that has endlessly shunned them. Not surprisingly, all three of the aforementioned actors are featured in the film, which was directed by David Zucker — himself an open conservative. An American Carol may be satire, but it’s satire with a bitter agenda, plain and simple.

There’s just one problem: conservatism isn’t funny, and it never has been.

While I can appreciate the effort to create a balanced equation in the world of political comedy, history has taught us that conservatives who believe in the prospect for their own ideological goofiness are at the whim of a lost cause.

Dan Savage, a sex-advice columnist and journalist, once said, “The left is snide and sarcastic; the right is dangerous and violent.” This was in response to his perception of hateful and violent rhetoric that comes from right-wing commentators in the name of comedy. For instance, he brought up Ann Coulter, who once remarked that Timothy McVeigh should have parked his van in front of the New York Times building as opposed to the one in Oklahoma City that he bombed in 1995. This, in context, was meant to be a joke; but my question is: who was laughing? Sick people, that’s who. The comedy of conservatives, whether they like to admit it or not, is nothing more than wishful thinking, because its necessity for blunt statements and literal abhorrence makes it next to impossible to properly execute. In the end, all of the jokes come across as either callous, or nothing more than honest conservative beliefs in the guise of “sly” commentary.

Left-wing comedy, on the other hand, relies heavily on a structure built from sarcasm and irony. It exposes the innate preposterousness of some of the beliefs in this world by exaggerating them to a laughable extent; hence, there is humour. Stephen Colbert, for example, has constructed an entire character based on this model. Colbert’s right-wing pundit personality is one big irony, generating laughs from his clever brand of mockingly eye-opening satire. It is your standard left-wing Hollywood spoof, and it works.

A couple of years ago, the ever-conservative Fox News Channel attempted to respond to this explosion of leftist political humour in TV land. Does anyone remember The Half Hour News Hour? If you said “no,” you’re not alone; it didn’t even last long enough to give it a proper eye-rolling. Of the few times I gave it a gander on youtube.com, I was lucky if I made it through two minutes. My distaste honestly had nothing to do with my own opinions about the topics — it just wasn’t funny, period. I have a vague recollection of them, at one point, trying to extract humour from the idea that left-wing journalists don’t want the Second War in Iraq to end because it would mean they’d have nothing to complain about. Unfortunately, that is something some conservatives actually believe. So I ask, where’s the sarcasm? Frankly, there is nothing funny about saying what you think to be true.

If, at some point, conservative comedy did attempt a sarcastic remark, it would only makes themselves sound more righteous. What, for example, are they to do with an issue such as gun-violence? A sarcastic remark on the subject would play out something like, “Guns are harmful.”

I was hoping to view An American Carol before writing this article, because I was honestly curious as to whether the trend might be overthrown. David Zucker is the person who made Airplane, after all. The project was not void of talent, so it was undeniably intriguing to see if conservative comedy had the dormant potential to be done right. However, the numbers and the critics speak for themselves. Film critics on the popular website Rottentomatoes.com gave the film a twelve percent approval rating. Further, An American Carol’s theatrical run seemed minimal to non-existent, thus explaining my inability to actually see it.

Conservative Hollywood seems truly unable to put to rest what is, in my mind, a fool’s hope. Their regressive policies, behaviour, and ideals leave no room for joking around. Any joke just comes across as “violent” and serious; nothing more than a showcase for the inherent contradictions of right-wing politics.

Matt Abra is the Culture Reporter for the Manitoban.