Kitty Bruce cuts the ribbon on the Lenny Bruce archive at the Brandeis University Goldfarb Library.
There is indecent language in this post.
In the last week of October, Brandeis University hosted a conference, “Comedy and the Constitution,” celebrating the life and work of comedian Lenny Bruce (1925-1966). The conference marked the accession in the Brandeis University Library of Lenny Bruce’s papers, donated by his daughter Kitty Bruce, who participated in the conference. The program was organized by Professor Steve Whitfield in American Studies and Sarah Shoemaker in Goldfarb Library Special Collections. Featured speakers included Christie Hefner, former chairwoman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises, and “outrage” comedian Lewis Black, known to many through his long-running Daily Show segment, “Back in Black.”
My own paper for the academic part of the program concerned
free expression and communication regulation.
Specifically, I looked at Bruce's technique of
repeating indecent words with the aim of disempowering them. If one repeats fuck again and again, the tenth repetition doesn’t sting the
ear as much as the first. George Carlin was there
at least once when Bruce was arrested for “obscenity” based on the use of
discrete words. There can be little
doubt that the experience directly influenced Carlin’s famous “seven dirty
words” routine. This comedic tradition
at least tracked a strengthening of free expression in U.S. culture and
law—think “Fuck the Draft” on Cohen’s jacket, 403 U.S. 15 (1971)—and might moreover have been a precipitating force. For better or
worse, the power today that attaches to many favorites in the pantheon of bad words is not what it
used to be. Ruth Wajnryb observed in her
2005 book, Language Most Foul,
“[N]owadays it takes several fucks to
achieve what one lone fuck would have
achieved ten years ago.”
The lodging of Bruce’s legacy at Brandeis is a good fit for
a couple of reasons. The university is
named for Justice Louis Brandeis, an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme
Court from 1916 to 1939. Brandeis was a
key contributor to modern First Amendment law.
In the wake of World War I, he laid the groundwork for a more vigorous
model of speech protection than had been known in the prior century. Even amid the Red Scare, Brandeis recognized
that if freedom of speech means anything, then minority perspectives on
politics must be protected, however distasteful to the establishment.
Brandeis also was the first Jewish member of the U.S.
Supreme Court, an experience that informed his views on social justice and antimajoritarianism. Judaism played a key role
in the founding of (non-sectarian) Brandeis University and remains today an
omnipresent part of the university’s social culture. Bruce was a Jewish comedian, and his cultural experience shaped his comedy.
A number of academic papers at the conference focused on the role of Yiddish in the comedy of Bruce and also in the wider tradition of Jewish comedy. I was ignorant on this point. But presenters made a compelling case that the Yiddish tongue is especially well suited to comedic devices such as double entendre and nuanced word play. In broad strokes, the particular compatibility of Yiddish with comedy seems a function of the truism that people have always turned to comedy to relieve suffering.
A number of academic papers at the conference focused on the role of Yiddish in the comedy of Bruce and also in the wider tradition of Jewish comedy. I was ignorant on this point. But presenters made a compelling case that the Yiddish tongue is especially well suited to comedic devices such as double entendre and nuanced word play. In broad strokes, the particular compatibility of Yiddish with comedy seems a function of the truism that people have always turned to comedy to relieve suffering.
Christie Hefner
In terms of political commentary, Christie Hefner traced a direct legacy from Lenny Bruce to the sharp witted comedy of The Daily Show and Last Week with John Oliver. I think she’s right. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert routinely scoffed at the notion that they produce news, despite serious research showing their influence on popular thinking about politics. Stephen Colbert’s SuperPAC bits on The Colbert Report spoke volumes on the very real role of money in politics. John Oliver eschews the label of journalist, but his work at HBO has at least raised awareness, if not effected reform, on critical social issues such as net neutrality.
Someone at the Brandeis conference pointed out that some of
our attribution to Lenny Bruce of a desire to make the world a better place--by cursing of all things--has
got to be a posthumous fiction. I
think that’s right too. Bruce was just a
person, not a legend. He wanted to
sustain himself with his flair for the funny, to fill seats at shows, and to take care of his
family. Arrests for obscenity--the more
absurd the state's case, the better--were good for business.
I’m not troubled by any dissonance in the legend and the
man who was Lenny Bruce. The Old Testament is replete with the sea changes of unlikely messengers.
Lewis Black
