Hilarious by Louis CK

Hilarious by Louis CK

Louis CK has experienced a dramatic downfall, after having reached the peaks of acclaim, recognition, popularity and admiration, a fantastic, spectacular fall has followed and the talented comedian is now in disgrace.

Maybe- probably- he deserves it, if the allegations- some of them apparently confirmed by the accused- are verified and the performer had masturbated in front of shocked and humiliated women.

With hindsight, hearing some of his shows, it seems that the extreme to which he takes his lines may have announced, anticipated, maybe even warned (?), about the sexual aberration that was about to be unleashed.

Take one piece from Hilarious, where the showman shares with the audience the story of the beautiful couple- handsome man...here CK adds that he may suck his dick, for he has been straight so far, but maybe he wants to be gay for the last part- after all, gays have parades to celebrate the way they have sex, whereas heterosexuals have nothing of the kind - and then the comedian sees near the couple someone he thinks is the baby, a Chinese woman in fact that with his slow brain - he jokes on this too - he still thinks should be the child of the couple...

„Oh, so this is what their child looks like...”

But then he has another jest, that is so bizarre that hearing about the sexual misconduct makes it sound like alarm bells...maybe I wanted to fuck their baby...and emphasizing that it is to annoy the public so he can laugh- maybe a dead baby, it would not feel anything.

This is just absurd, we can see that clearly, it is all a game, pushed so that the further it gets, the more preposterous it becomes and hence, ridiculous and amusing...Insha'Allah.

In some ways, criticizing a type of humor that pushes the boundaries is in the same vein with the attacks on masterpieces like Pulp Fiction, Goodfellas, classics that conservatives and fundamentalists hate because there is too much violence and /or expletives.

Louis CK has a tremendous power of observation, which is a large part of the reason for his - alas, now gone - huge former success.

He is more than sarcastic when he talks about the attractive girl that he saw at the gym- where he went just to wear athletic gear, by his own admission - but whose attitude, mentality, philosophy- if that is the word- seems to be summarized by "you want to fuck me"

This is where Louis CK may appear funny or obnoxious, depending on one's point of view, but the observation is accurate, at least for a group of individuals who have an exaggerated care for their bodies and own personas, but little to offer beyond a great shape.

The humorist is also provocative when he talks about the use that people make of grandiose sounding words like amusing and Hilarious, which is the title of this feature.

He reminds me of a story by Thomas Mann, in which the protagonist is upset by the frequency with which we resort to lines like:

I love you so much that words are not enough...

That character said that actually, we can only find the meaning of love in fiction, in real life, we do not have the resources to love somebody, being loyal to the end, dedicated and all that Love implies.

Therefore, the point made by CK is more than jocular and sensible, it can be argued that indeed, amazing and hilarious must be reserved for somethings overwhelming, glorious and otherworldly.

On the other hand, Harvard Professor Tal Ben- Shahar maintains that

„Words create worlds”

The performer is anyway over the top when he attacks the woman that made two interlocutors say...Hilarious...

„I saw Lisa today

That is hilarious

How can that be, says CK”

He then wishes Superman took her from a gruesome fall, take her higher, only to...drop her again...fucking Lisa...

Why? Just because it may be funny, absurd?

The other thing, with Amazing might sound more decent, in a way, for he is right to criticize using the word for chicken wings.

What if Jesus comes to earth and makes love to you all night and then you give birth to the Child...what would that be, if you use amazing on chicken wings.

The point made regarding flying is both Hilarious and pertinent, for we keep complaining about waiting for the take off, when it is such an Amazing achievement.

Louis CK puts in perspective the thirty years it took in the past to get from the west coast to California, the arrows and frequent deaths, compared to spending time on a chair, up in the air.

Many are critical of their mobile phones, without pausing for a second to think of the time when there were dial phones with discs- mentioned by the artist- or no such wonderful machines at all...we did not have one at all in our home, just a few decades ago and we had to wait in long queues to use a public phone, in the paradisical communist days...they were saying this is heaven, but we knew it was hell.

In conclusion, I have enjoyed Hilarious tremendously, in spite of the ostracism of the protagonist, after all, if you read the wonderful chef d' oeuvre Intellectuals by Paul Johnson, you learn that geniuses have often been really obnoxious, even abhorrent and criminal at times:

Tolstoy, Hemingway, Ibsen, Rousseau and the list is evidently longer...

What to do if the human behind the writer was evil, throw away War and Peace?