a. Introduction: Terry Gilliam's Brazil and British Humor
I first read Great Expectations when I was in middle school and thus had not yet had any “vivid and broad impression of the identity of things.” Naturally, given how young and stupid I was, I skimmed the book, was little impressed by it (though much confused), and only remembered the name “Dickens” a few years later when I read in some book or other (or heard from some intellectual or other) that Dickens was “flatter” than Kafka or Dostoevsky, and, importantly, “too British.” The British, this book or intellectual claimed, are too fond of assigning individuals to categories of “good” or “evil,” “silly” or “tragic,” “sophisticated” or “crude,” etc. etc. etc., such that their moral imagination lacks depth and nuance. For a long time, I took this book/intellectual’s word as truth, a new excuse for having some sort of opinion of the British—with whom I had little real engagement at all.
After I graduated from Columbia, I lived in Oxford for a year. Contrary to what you might think, I interacted with very few British people there, seeing as how Oxford has practically become what many call “an American colony in Britain.” And, indeed, I indulged this spirit by listening almost exclusively to old country music (particularly those lyrics from Delmore Brothers’ “Blues Stay Away from Me,” “Time goes by, and still I can’t be free”) and shedding “tears, so many I can’t see,” over how much I missed the freedom of the stars and stripes and detested the oppression of that Union Jack. (I am patriotic to a fault, and this unfortunately comes out most when I am abroad.)
Unsurprisingly, I jumped at the opportunity to take a job in the States instead of spending another year in the UK, where I would get yet another master’s and stay yet another year unemployed and financially trembling.
Brazil
Well, not long after moving back to the States, not long after starting my job, I noticed that one of my favorite movies of all time, Brazil, was showing at the Film Forum. But it was not a Brazilian flick; it was British. My boyfriend pointed out, after watching Brazil with me, that the movie was “rather British,” but also “rather Alectryon [except he used my real name],” and very similar to the novel I was writing.
I thought rarely of that great movie, but clearly my “inner mind,” if you will, has been endlessly gripped by it. Just look at the main character of the movie, so similar to my own Gelao Lagrima (the protagonist of my novel), so similar to all my male protagonists, in many ways so similar to my father (perhaps the source of this fascination of mine).
The main character in Brazil has two main desires in life: 1) to make a decent living, and 2) to seduce (rather clumsily) a random woman he spotted on some surveillance footage. But here’s the catch: he works in the intelligence center of a totalitarian government, and the woman whom he loves is a revolutionary against the very government that serves his livelihood. So which does he prioritize, desire # 1 or desire # 2? In the most ridiculous, clumsy manner possible, he chooses the girl, and he doesn’t even give a thought to his career, his reputation, his freedom, or his life.
There is something about a hopeless, lanky man chasing some desire that is at once very relatable and yet very nonsensical, impractical in his own context, in the world in which he lives, that fascinates me.
First of all, consider the sheer potency of his desire. Why does he chase this desire if it seems to come out of the blue, irrationally, and, not only that, but dangerously, impractically? The answer is simple: he chases the desire because he has it—or rather, it has him. He has completely given himself over to the desire; he is ready to lose everything, including his life.
But, secondly, consider the ridiculousness of the character. He is not presented as a martyr, even if he is; his dilemma is not presented as serious, or tragic, even if it is. Instead, what is highlighted is the inconvenience and impracticality of what he desires given his context, and how his relation with his context, the world around him, is therefore endlessly comical and ridiculous.
Let me clarify: thirdly, let’s consider the relationship between this character and his world a bit more. It is important to note that the tension between the character and his world is not antagonistic or marked by anger, even if the world is at odds with his desire. Why? Because the character is markedly agreeable, adaptable, polite, even deferential. He is unwilling to become combative or belligerent. We even get the sense that he understands how ridiculous his desire is (though it doesn’t stop him), and thus he perhaps considers politeness a duty towards a world that may be more sensible than he. Though he lives in a totalitarian government and is in love with a revolutionary, he is passionate about neither destroying totalitarianism nor upholding it. The only thing that makes a difference for him at the end of the day is whether or not he gets the girl. In short, just because his world is actively working against his desire doesn’t mean he can’t still have good manners….
Fourth, consider the relatability of the character. The character’s desire is simultaneously inconvenient/impractical and relatable. He just wants a pretty woman in his life! Who doesn’t? And who hasn’t made their life difficult and a bit ridiculous for some woman? In many ways, the character is utterly normal, almost to a fault, and he is ridiculous merely because of his unusual circumstances.
British Humor
Why is this archetypal character “rather British”? I recall an interview with Ricky Gervais, in which he explains the difference between American and British humor. In a skit, in which a which a man walks up to another man and drunkenly smashes his guitar, American comedians want to play the drunken man; British comedians want to play the man whose guitar gets smashed. In other words, American humor is marked by overstatement, climax, and premises that explode through big personalities. It is filled with over-the-top displays (think Jim Carrey, Kevin Hart, Robin Williams, Adam Sandler, etc.). British Humor is marked by understatement, anticlimax, and absurdity that ensues, not through explosive characters, but through stupidly unsuccessful attempts at deescalation. (Of course, every generalization has exceptions.)
Monty Python is perhaps a great example of this theory, though I am no connoisseur of their work. Consider, for example, the “Knights of the Round Table of Camelot” scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. For most Americans, the funniest part of that skit is probably the over-the-top dancing of the knights. But in all likelihood, the joke, for the British, is really that, despite having oriented their entire trip around getting to Camelot, when they finally get there and consider all the ridiculous dancing of the knights at Camelot, Arthur says, “On second thought, let’s not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.” The heart of the joke is not in the over-the-top display of the dancing; it is in the understatement and anticlimax of Arthur’s decision to not go where he was planning to go all along, simply because he cannot tolerate silly dancing. (I would even argue that there is a fair amount of this British understatement and anticlimax in the dancing, though that is perhaps far more ambitious than what I have thus attempted.)
Part of what drives this British sense of humor, I believe, is the British stereotype of remaining subdued and polite even in unfortunate circumstances. From the interactions I’ve had with my British tutors comes a wealth of examples. Perhaps the funniest was when I unintentionally crashed an undergraduate formal dinner, believing the missing spot at a table was my own and that the event was for graduate students. I realized about ten minutes into the dinner that I was, in fact, an hour late to an event that was not even meant for me, but I stayed, and, to the (subdued) surprise of the tutor sitting across me at the table, he had met in me an “undergraduate” that seemed “rather well-informed.” But then, about ten minutes before dinner was over, when he found out, to his (subdued) surprise, that I was not at all an undergraduate but rather a graduate student, he said (though neither in an amused nor angry way) that what I did was “rather funny.”
The British sense of humor is perhaps related to the British fascination with social class, social order, and “good manners” (acting “as expected”). This fascination is maybe downstream of their interest in categorization. The origins of this sense of humor do not concern me much here, though in later essays I will wish to explore how British pragmatism relates to many aspects of the archetypal character described above.
Anyway, not long after returning from Greece, when I was somehow feeling a heightened interest in the British, I decided to reread Great Expectations. But when I told a student of mine what I was reading, I was surprised (in a subdued manner) to find that he was disappointed (in a not-so-subdued manner). He said that he “wanted nothing to do with high British society and class and all these boring moral tales.” He complained of how “flat” it all was—moral, unusual, boring—compared to Kafka or Dostoevsky’s variegated landscapes of characters, complex plots, psychological obsessions, philosophical tangents, and so on and so forth. And how surprised I was with myself, that though I voiced the same insults years ago, they were now insulting to me after having gotten through the first few chapters of Great Expectations. But when I tried to defend Great Expectations and the Brits, I had little of worth to offer. Now I endeavor to find something of worth to offer, for the sake of the British.