Making fun of political evil doesn’t always work. Having fun in the face of it does.
Watching the PBS series Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution, I was inspired. Not just by the music, which is inspiring, but with the idea that you could have a social and cultural revolution that you could—you had to—dance to.
I thought about hip-hop, another revolution, which also emerged from American society’s marginalization/oppression of some Americans. Emerged triumphant, like disco, since hip-hop and dance music are the two dominant genres not only in America but in the world.
I have also been thinking about the limitations of mockery in the face of political evil. It can make the resisters and insurgents feel better, but those who hold unassailable power are rarely moved to reform or surrender by it. Sometimes all it does is embarrass them to the point of payback.
Making fun is still worthwhile, but expectations should be low. Having fun while rebelling is a different story. Having fun, it turns out, is essential. It is the thing that keeps the spirit of resistance alive, that reminds us of one of the things we are fighting for.
The most recent attempt to fight the power, both during the campaign and now, were and are low on fun. There is a lot of well-founded earnestness, accompanied by outrage and depression.
Every thing should be done on all available fronts to restore governing integrity and political sanity. One of those things must be to have more fun.
Watching people who were social and legal pariahs (same-sex dancing, for example, was illegal in New York in the time before disco) have the kind of fun that ultimately gifted us all was exhilarating. A benighted segment of American society tried clumsily to destroy disco, with its threat of freedom, but the next fifty years demonstrated how hatefully wrongheaded that was. The same happened with hip-hop, as it had years before with rock and roll.
You can’t keep fun down, even if it’s outlawed. Let’s use it.
© 2024 by Bob Schwartz
Bob Schwartz 