A Look Back at National Lampoon

 

 

 

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead (2010)

By Rick Meyerowitz

Harry N. Abrams Publishing, 320 pages.

★★★

 

In my book on the Marx Brothers I wrestled with the question of makes something “funny?” Comedy is usually transgressive, meaning it occurs when our expectations of “normal” are overturned. Some comedy is universal, some is timebound, and some is contemporary hoping to become classic. Beyond that, you’re on your own!

 

As a child I loved Bugs Bunny and Mad Magazine. Though I enjoyed a recent exhibit on Mad Magazine, my main feeling was one of nostalgia. Once I got wind of National Lampoon, I left childish things behind (except Bugs). NatLamp was my go-to mag for the 1970s because it was cheeky, irreverent, and didn’t give a fig about authority or propriety. It was the funniest thing going–until I discovered Monty Python. My point is that people often change when the Zeitgeist shifts. Later I discovered (in alpha order) George Carlin, Billy Connolly, Joan Rivers, Robin Williams, and Stephen Wright.

 

But back to National Lampoon. Recently I picked up a $1.99 copy of Rick Meyerowitz’s  look back at the magazine for which he did a bit of everything: art work, writing, spin-off radio broadcasts, movies, stage shows…. He did the famed “Mona Gorilla” cover, in my mind, the second funniest after the brilliant “Buy this magazine of we’ll kill this dog” cover that outraged some people and made others double over in laughter. National Lampoon began in 1970, an offshoot of Harvard Lampoon, and ceased publication in 1998, though it ran out steam in the 1980s.

 

Meyerowitz bit off a big task by spotlighting the voluminous cast of writers and illustrators who passed through the doors. Founders Doug Kenny and Henry Beard hired Meyerowitz, plus such well-known wits as the venomous Michael O’Donoghue and the only slightly more contained Christopher Cerf, Michel Choquette, and George William Swift Trow. You might notice that all of those names are male. Lampoon was accused of being sexist in content and production. It absolutely was! Anne Beatts was its first female writer, but she came aboard with more male writers like Tony Hendra, Sean Kelly, Charles Rodrigues, and Arnold Roth. Beatts remained the only female creative until the late 70s. Other familiar names such as Stan Mack, Bruce McCall, P. J. O’Rourke reported for duty, but NatLamp remained well behind the feminist curve with its large-breasted women and cheap sex jokes. Lampoon was also charged with being anti-Semitic, but you will notice from the number of Jewish names in its production staff that this was self-deprecating humor.

 

A challenge in a Lampoon survey is that Meyerowitz was an insider. The staff was often drunk and/or stoned and some indeed are dead. Were they “brilliant?” Most were highly educated, but National Lampoon shared a trait with Mad in that its content can be charitably called “uneven.”  This leads to a critique of the book’s organization. It is divided into seven sections: The Founders, Present at Birth, The Cohort, The First Wave, The Second Coming, The End of the Beginning, and The Art Directors. Each of the personalities involved is introduced by another staffer telling us how utterly brilliant that person was; more times than not, that person tells us how brilliant another colleague was. Such profiles don’t tell us much and read as what they are: a mutual admiration club. Some of what they “reveal” as dazzling today reads as tedious. An example is an early 12-page piece by Henry Beard and John Weidman, “Law of the Jungle.” It’s an erudite and absurdist parody of natural law and its implications for flora, fauna, land, etc. complete with footnotes. Clever? Yes, but a violation of a principle not discussed therein: thou shalt not stretch a joke until it disintegrates. 

 

Okay, so not everything worked, but TheStupidGroup is fresh and relevant. Things such a parody of the existential threat posed by the Dutch; caricatures of Reagan and the Ayatollah; Hitler’s tropical paradise; “The Socratic Monologue,” Anne Beatts’ VW ad; “Strange Beliefs of Children;” Bernie X; fake yellow pages and New Yorker covers; and tons of zany comics are hysterical.

 

In my view, National Lampoon lost it edge with its spinoffs, which had to be toned down for wider audiences. Some of what made Lampoon “funny” was that it was often offensive. Why not; “whether you know it or not, the Universe is laughing behind your back” (Deteriorata).  And, yes, it inspired Saturday Night Live.

 

Rob Weir

 

Red Clay: Black and White in Alabama

 

 

 

 

Red Clay (2025)

By Charles Francher

Blackstone, 338 pages.

★★★★

 

Red Clay is a multigenerational tale of slavery and its aftermath. Red Clay, Alabama, is the primary setting, but it also travels to New Orleans, the Côte d’Azur, and Paris. It opens in 1943 with the funeral of Felix H. Parker. Adelaide Parker shows up to pay her respects and offer an apology to Felix’s kin. What makes it more poignant is that Felix is Black and Adelaide is White. Her kin used to own those of Felix.

 

Move the clock back to 1864, when Felix and Adelaide were children. Road’s End Plantation had many enslaved servants, but the Parkers prided themselves on being benevolent owners. Author Charles Francher strips the sheen off such nonsense. Red Clay is a novel, but it is one in accordance with contemporary scholarship. Some enslavers were less brutal than others, but the very logic of slavery was that the relationship of enslavers to the enslaved was one of absolute power versus absolute subjugation. Francher shows this in numerous ways in a tale based loosely on his own grandfather. As was often the case, slaves often bore the surname of their enslavers. Felix’s parents, Plessant and Elmira, hold enviable positions on the plantation. Plessant is the valet of John Robert Parker, but he’s also akin to a manager of the estate. His word often leads to the dismissal of abusive White field drivers and Elmira is the cook whose offerings are the envy of Alabama.

 

The flip side is that Adelaide handfeeds Felix scraps from the table as if he were  prized dog. Felix hates that, but is advised by Plessant to keep his mouth shut and be thankful for the extra rations. If you know your history, the year 1864 is a significant turning point, as it is clear the Confederacy is losing the war. John Robert promised Plessant a modest parcel of bottomland and freedom. John, though, knows that Road’s End is sinking in debt, news he keeps from his pampered wife and daughter. He entrusts Felix with a secret that he cannot reveal, a horrible burden for an eight-year-old when John suddenly dies. Road’s End passes to his son Claude, who has little of the sentimentality,  work ethos, or temperate habits of his father. He sends some of enslaved to a slave trader, including Felix’s older brother and sister, who were sold “like a litter of hound dog pups” to a planter in Mississippi. He also sells the tract of land promised to Plessant, who has no legal claim to the land or his freedom, as nothing was written down. When Felix complains, Claude sends him and his best friend to the fields, where other slaves bully them. Felix, though, is clever and gets revenge on a tormentor that gains respect from other slaves. When he is whipped for another transgression, though, Elmira and Plessant respond by withholding their expertise in ways in accordance to what the Industrial Workers of the World later called a “systematic withdrawal of efficiency.”

 

The next year the war ends, the Black Parkers are freed, and they decline to work on the plantation. As it transpires, Felix has a gift as a carpenter and soon attracts commissions from customers Black and White. Claude simply can’t adjust to the new order of things and lacks Felix’s patience. Slowly Felix builds up a nest egg and acquires what was promised to his family. He has a novel way of helping other freedmen, staying ahead of Claude’s animosity, and his hooded compatriots. He even acquires a wife named Zilpha whose family was from cut from different cloth than his own. But can he avoid hubris?

 

When we return to 1943, you need to remember that slavery was within the living memory of elderly people who were children when it ended. This was the case of Adelaide. This part of the novel is both awkward and moving. How does one apologize for your family having enslaved someone else’s?

 

This is Francher’s debut novel, which is impressive given the mature nature of his storytelling and style. My only complaint is that it has revenge scenarios that stretch credulity. Like the superb movie Rosewood (1997), Red Clay sometimes feels like an alt.history that’s the way we might wish it had played out. But I could be wrong; even John C. Calhoun called a “peculiar instituition.”

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Is Anora Pornography?

 

 

 

Anora (2024)

Directed by Sean Baker

Neon Films, 139 minutes, R (strippers, extensive sex, nudity, language)

★

 

I’m not a prude, but the movie Anora made me understand why some people think Western morality is on death row. I can recall my teen years when any film with the slightest bit of nudity was rated X. A Swedish film called I Am Curious Yellow was infamous because it actually showed people having sex, hence was considered XXX. (I think that meant that no one under 40 could see it and even elders needed a note from their mothers and grandmothers.) Some of us sneaked into a drive-in to see it. I can tell you that today it would be an R film, perhaps even PG-13!

 

So let me start my review of Anora with the observation that it’s pornographic. We don’t see close ups what English comics call “the naughty bits” ready for action, but you see pretty much everything else. Actress Mikey Madison who plays the titular (pun intended) character Anora Ani Mikheeva is starkers–another Britishism– for most the film. She won an Academy Award for this role. Judges must have liked what they (literally) saw, as her vocabulary consisted mostly of dropping more F-bombs than heard in a junior high locker room. The rest of Madison’s scenes were so overacted that she’s been sued by the American Histrionic Association. (Okay, I made up that last bit.) Imagine if Marissa Tomei and Joe Pesci galivanted around naked in My Cousin Vinny. Even if you had to look at Pesci’s mickey (see what I did there?) for over two hours, the dialogue in My Cousin Vinny would be sharper than what director Sean Baker wrote.

 

If you were like me–one of the few that hadn’t seen it–the skinny is that  Anora (“Ani”) works as a stripper in a sleazy men’s club whose clientele has more testosterone than brains. She is popular among the other strippers, except for Diamond (Lindsay Normington), who sees her as a rival. The “girls” depend upon tips and whatever else they can squeeze out their clients, a cut of the overpriced watered-down drinks, lap dances and, for the right price, a room and sex.  Ani hits sex worker gold in 21-year-old Ivan aka/ Vanya (Mark Eydelshyeyn)  the son of a billionaire Russian oligarch. He’s a spoiled jerk, but he offers Ani a lot of dough to be his rented girlfriend. She agrees and accesses a life she never could. Vanya claims the house is his, but it actually belongs to his father. For a week the two have non-stop sex, party, trash the apartment, and even fly to Vegas, where they get married. In other words, Anora is one of approximately 500,000 Cinderella variants. Except in this one, the wicked stepmother wins.

 

Vanya’s family is not happy. Mom and pop Nikolai and Galina (whose relationship reminded me of Trump and Melania) get in touch with their Armenian handler, who sends a few heavies around to try to get the marriage annulled. Ani refuses and Vanya has had so much dope and alcohol he’s incoherent. Hence, the ‘rents fly over in their private jet to “fix” things. Galina calls Ani a “prostitute,” which sends her into hyperspace. She insists she’s not a hooker, but what would you call someone who has sex for money? Galina fumes; Nikolai laughs. There are side stories about Ani’s boss, her colleagues, and her sister. There are also cheap laughs at the expense of the Keystone Kops-like guards who can’t contain Ani, but nearly all of movie’s “humor” is of LCD variety, as in “lowest common denominator.” And since when is abduction funny?

 

Anora has been billed as a “romantic comedy.” Given how the movie resolves, it flunks the romance part of the equation and if LCD is the best one can do, stick some clothes on the actors, cleanup the language, and aim it at the PG audience. I’m not saying that every comedy needs to have characters who discus the flaws in Hegelian dualism, but I do insist that humor shouldn’t be so broad it can only be seen on an Imax screen. Let’s call Anora what it really is: a male gaze film in which the story and the funny bits are irrelevant; the “girl bits” are all that matter. Much was made of Madison being the first Generation Z actress to win an Oscar. This  doesn’t portend a great future for American films!

 

Rob Weir