"PERSPECTIVES Page Elegen THE M X BR OTHERS AND THE COMIC SPIRIT ...by Robert Hemenway (Mr. Hemenway's essay is of the type which the Editors wish to en- courage for Perspectives in the future. The problen treated here- that of the comic hero on the modern screen-suggests a dozen other simi- lar discussions which would be-of in- terest to our readers.) EVERY COMEDIAN wears a mask, denial-of his seriousness and excuse for our laughter. And every comedian unmasked is a preacher, though his sermon may be on the stupidity of preaching. The preacher's moral shapes the comedian's mask - the gags, word- plays, and intrigues - and is the true cause of our laughter. Understanding of the comedian comes not with a des- cription of his comic method (mask) but with the definition of that attitude (moral) which shapes his method. Un- genial though it must be, such:a defini- tion of the Marx Brothers' attitude gets to the heart of their humor in a way that surface description cannot do. The comedian as preacher may be tolerant or critical in attitude, and so liberal, as Shakespeare, or evangelical, as Jonson. The attitude implicit in the comedy of manners, that genre to which the Marx Brothers' comedy is most clearly related, is critical. In the comedy of manners, the artist surveys social man from some fibed point above, Ilointing out his foibles, and, perhaps, the more deep-set faults of his society. The critical attitude takes color and individually from the position of this vantage point, the artist's wish. For it is the wish for what Is not that engen- ders the criticism of what is. The qual- ity of the comedy is determhed by the artist's idea of the relation between that wish and reality. Only so long as the projection of the wish is known to be and smilingly accepted as impossible is the criticism comic. Believe it possible and comedy becomes polemic. Know it impossible, but refuse to accept that impossibility,'and comedy becomes bit- ter, sardonic - as in Gulliver's Travels. The farther the wish is from reality, the greater the incongruity, and the closer comedy is to farce. The nearer the wish' is to reality, the nibre deliate the crit- icism, and the nearer comedy is to irony. The wish in the classical comedy of Ifoliere and Jonson is for a society not greatly different from the actual, a soc- iety where the moral principles by which men act are more sensible or eq- uitable. Their comedyis largely ironic and witty, tending occasionally to the polemic because a society so little dif- ferent seems possible. The wish in the comedyof the Marx Brothers is for a society different in kind from the real, one in which ex- ternal moral principles woIld be no longer necessary. Their comedy tends to buffoonery and the uproarious, is never polemic or bitter because the impossibility of projecting their wish is obvious, and because, also, their wish is in a sense realized. For the Marx Brothers are the wish incarnate, acting without reference to moral principle, themselves the denial of external law. As criticism, the comedy of the Marx Brothers is an attack on rigidity in many of its forms: the rigidity of words - Groucho's madcap punning; of pro- priety - Groucho's insolence and Har- po's amorality; of politics - Chico's honesty, Groucho's guile; of machines - Harpo's gadgets; of clothes - the rapid shifting of uniforms in "Duck Soup's" closing sequence. As wish, their comedy is the assertion of the good- ness and self-sufficiency of flexible hu- man instinct. From our point of view their comedy is anarchic and destructive. The Marx 'Brothers walk into Freedonia, into high society, into the big store, into the opera, and at once all order is destroyed. But from their point of view our society is fake, illogical, unhealthy; theirs is the only true order, the logic of untram- meled individuality. The criticism is persuasive, for in the comfc arena &.of their films the individualist wins. Grou- cho, Chico, and Harpo get what they want, and their wants are ours - the blonde, the rich widow, the irresponsi- - bility. The nature of this "theory" of human behavior is made clear by their formal conception of character and plot. The classic comic character acts always on some external principle. Character, says Aristotle, is determined by moral choice; and that description'implies -a choice dictated from without (moral) and, in the good art ,work, a continuity of choice, and thus consistency of char- acter. The Marx Brothers' actions, on the other hand, are determined by no such outer morality. They act without regard to propriety, humors, or rules. So their actions are never predictable in the sense that Tartuffe's are, because he is a hypocrite; or Sir Fopling Flut- ter's are, because he is a dandy. At their greatest the Marx Brothers are "char- acterless", in the classical sense, though there is a decadence,' more evident in their recent films, in which the Marxes' known peculiarities are relied upon for laughs. At its most intense, the comedy of the Marx Brothers depends not upon the particular qualities of Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, but upon what they have in common - completely unin- hibited individuality. This characterlessness of the Marx /eripeclivei Editor...........................................Jay McCormick Fiction Editor .......................................... Gerald Burns Lois Welles, Mark Lipper, William Kehoe, Eugene Mandeburg, Nelson Bentley. Essay Editor................................. Richard M. Ludwig Erath Gutekunst, Gerald Schaflander. Poetry Editor .......... .... ........................... David Stocking Clarence Foster, Audrey Hirschl, Sam Moon, Donet Sorenson, John Ragsdale. Book Review Editor .......... ...................Guy Serge Metraux George Kerr, Ray Ingham, Robert Hemenway. Art Editor ....... ................................. Tristan Meinecke Cliff Graham. Publications Editor .......................... ...........Carol Bundy Betty Baer, Lynn Bell, Joan Siegel, Barbara DeFries. Etaoin Shrdlu. Advisory Board: Arno L. Bader, Herbert Weisinger, J. L. Davis, Morris Greenhut, Allan Seager, W. H. Auden, Donald Martin, Emil Weddige. Brothers means the plotlessness of their plays. Plot in the comedy of manners is a putting of the character types in action and conflict; and plot of its nature must be somewhat formal and rigid. As there is no continuity of char- acter in the Marxes' comedy, so there is no continuity of action. The plot in "Duck Soup", for instance, is outside the Marx Brothers' particular actions; it is a handy peg to hang gags on. Free= donia is saved, boy gets girl, the circus finally shows a profit, but it makes no difference to Groucho, Harpo, and Chi- co. They walk in at the beginning, at the end they walk out, without really. touching the plot, and without the plot touching them. It is not the plot which draws their attention, but the (Continued from Page Ten) ' Virginia Woolf feels: "Empty, empty, empty; silent, si- lent, silent. _ The room was a shell, singing of what was before time was; a vase stood in the heart of the house, alabaster, smooth, cold, holding the still, distilled essence of emptiness, silence." And she sees: "There had' always been lilies there, self-sown from wind-dropped seed, floating red and white on the green plates of their leaves. Water, for hun- dreds of year, had silted down into the hollow, and lay there four or five feet deep over a black cushion of mud. Under the thick plate of green water, glazed in their self-centered world, fish swam-gold, splashed with white, streaked with black or silver. Silently - they maneuvered in their water world, poised in the blue patch made by the sky, or shot silently to the edge where the grass, trembling, made a fringe of nodding shadow. On the water-pave- ment spiders printed their delicate feet. A grain fell, and spiralled down; a petal fell, filled and sank." But passages such as these come in- frequently among the continuouos subtle flashes that reveal the mean and feeble, the wishing but resentful, the semicon- scious people who can desire but never achieve. "Between The Acts" is the story of a pageant; and the most absurd and es- sentially meaningless of these is Life. The characters, popping in and out like stray thoughts, are meant to illus- trate the chaos and confusion and man- gled poignancy of human feelings; they are stray weak embodiments of desire, sterile pieces of flesh endowed with longing, and they grope about in path- etic, clownish futility, and weep for no reason and laugh the laugh of bitter- ness; and though secretly they dream of lovely things, their deeds have hate and pompousness, treachery and pre- tense. Among beautiful things they plant their pettiness and dramatize it as noble. And they cling with despera- tion to their dreams. So, Virginia Woolf has pictured life. Of course it is a gorgeous tragic fllusion. Of course the mind alone lends loveliness to mortal things. But the frustration that threads our daily living is the very, thing that calls for the birth of art, imploring a creation of symmetry and ordered magic: we need books written the way Virginia Woolf writes an occasional paragraph: for we have seen enough of jumbled life. The path of the fragmentary and the disjointed is the path to suicide: we must have clarity and coherent strength to find meaning in the continuance of life. Meanwhile the world still waits for a work of classic simplicity, and the minor writers go on quietly drowning theselves in the waters of their mis- direction. --Nelson Bentley rigidity of the plot World. The wish for a life without rules is every man's wish, and the criticism of rigidity in modern life is one that many have made. Laughter at the Marx Brothers reflects our vicarious grati- fication of the wish to escape anxiety in flexible existence. The Marxes' crit- icism is incomplete, for freedom and flexibility can never be total as they would lhave it be. There must be com- promise with cultural norms and social exigency; the compromise may be made less painful and human actions more flexible eventually by altering the norms and immediately by easing the pain of the individual compromise. Because the ltfarx Brothers will not compromise, they are failures; they- remain always out- casts in the plotted-out Freedonian world. They are free from pain, as we could not-be, only because they are asocial, complete in themselves, never lonely. Their comedy is saved from the : sentimental pandering wish satis- faction of the True Story romance by our clear realization that their world is an impossible one. Their comedy is saved from tragedy only by their denial of the actual consequences of their an- archic solution. (Continued from Page Five) beers The combination is hard to sur- pass. The list, of course, is incomplete. It has to be. One cannot recount two hun- dred years of 'cookery in a few short pages. If I have done no more than in- troduce the subject, mention the most unusual and most appetizing examples, my effort has not been in vain. Penn- sylvania Dutch food has not always been a matter of pride. There was a time when Pennsylvania Dutch was a subject for ridicule, and the dishes which we nowenjoy were replaced by a new fare for a 'smarter' generation. But (once again, the simple, wholesome foods of our grandmothers and great-grand- mothers have risen in popularity among our people and are considered in their true -light by the rest of America. May they continue to be always a'part of Pennsylvania Dutch folklife.