BY MULUGETA GUDETA
Aleka Gebre Hanna, the 19th century Ethiopian palace clown-cum-entertainer to the emperor was, to my knowledge, the greatest comedian Ethiopia has ever seen. He functioned both at the palace and public levels earning respect as the major celebrity comedian of his time. Gebre Hanna was not only someone who invented funny word plays puns and told humorous stories that made people laugh until tears came to their eyes according to the metaphor of the time. He also poked fun at high and low society with his funny stories either concocted or real. Gebre Hanna was also the fear and fun of the aristocracy because his fun-making prowess transcended the bound of ordinary society and reached up to the throne.
There are numerous sayings, puns, funny diatribes and episodic statements that are collected in at least one book and available for today’s young readers. The editor of the book, whose name was Arefayne Hagos, was my old colleague at the old Ethiopian Herald who was also editor of the paper’s culture page. I would like some of the young people who are planning to join the world of laughter to read this book and learn what a true and biting satire is. This would at least spare of the embarrassment of mediocre statements and acts that pass as truly comic performance among the least informed audiences these days. Everyone seems to love comedy these days although there are fewer people who are in the mood to share a joke or laugh at a good joke.
Comedy is “a genre of dramatic performance a light or humorous tone that depicts amusing incidents and in which the characters ultimately triumph over adversity. For ancient Greeks and Romans, a comedy was a stage-play with a happy ending.” This is one among a number of definitions of comedy. However, comedy is “a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter. Especially in theatre, film stand-up comedy, television, radio, books or any other entertainment medium.”
What are the functions of comedy? “It is to bring amusement. It includes laughter in plays, movies and theatres. It entertains the audience and it also gives a message to the readers or audience. It is important to both literature and movies as it depicts the social institutions as well as persons who are corrupt.” Comedy can be uplifting, educative or critical depending on the intentions of the person who performs comic acts or according to the text of the drama. It can also be base, meaningless, confusing or causing tragic reaction instead of making people laugh. If you go to the theatre, watch TV or listen to a comic performance over the radio, failing to laugh as it sometimes happens, or unable to enjoy the pleasure of a good joke might be a personal tragedy.
Most of us go to a comic performance with the current popular belief that laughter is medicine or make you feel or look younger. It may add years to your life, as some enthusiasts of comic drama maintain. But when you spend time listening to a self-styled comedian during a stand-up performance, without a flicker of a smile on your lips, well, the “laughter session” can only be called by no other name than a big disappointment. By the way stand-up comedy is defined as, “a comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian a comic or a stand-up.” Sometimes, we pretend that we love the joke or the performance the performance of a comedian and laugh to express our respects to an artist who tried so hard to make us roar with laughter and failed to do so for reasons beyond his control.
These days self-styled as well as established comedians are making the rounds of the TV shows sometimes called ”standing comedy” or plain comedy. Unfortunately, many films have appeared on the silver screen by actors who may not live up to their reputation or to the words of the pre-performance ads that are issued on their behalf. Stage dramas fair better than the so-called stand-up comedies where non-professionals have the chance to test the audience and themselves as well with their presentations. These can be taken as sort of “test flights” to the kingdom of comic relief but in reality most of them fail to make the journey because they are ill-conceived, not practiced well and the hearts of the audience as well as the performers are not with what they do.
One does not necessarily speak in order to make you laugh. According to the history of the movies, in their earliest stages some of the best movies were silent before the advent of sound and image that are synced in order to produce the expected comic or tragic effect. There are still silent movies produced from time to time although the golden era of these films is long gone with Charlie Chaplin in his hosts of silent actors who made audiences laugh until their sides split in the good old days of innocence in Hollywood. If you don’t believe me watch Chaplin’s “Modern Times” or “The Kid” and you will know what it means to force the audience laugh without hearing a word from the actors. It may look easier to act physically than to engage in silent performance. Yet, both are difficult to do unless you are naturally endowed or well-trained to play your role. In modern cinema the actors’ looks are given overstretched importance.
Most if not all actors are expected to be good- looking womanish or macho as the case may be, tall, blond or with long hair and green eyes, if possible. By the way the introduction of the “human hair” has saved many actresses’ professional lives through make up. In Ethiopian movies for instance all the lead actors or the good guys are always good-looking while the villains are invariably bad looking if not grotesque. Bad guys are portrayed as always ugly while good guys are expected to have angelic looks. These are stereotypes that are common is underdeveloped cinema like ours. In Hollywood cinema, many gangster movies with good looking actors have often won the day and become blockbusters at the silver screen; while not so handsome guys have played successful lead roles.
In the absence of movie critics we depend on personal or audience opinions to judge the merits or weaknesses of our actors and films in general. If a comedian you know closely or is your buddy asks you about his performance in a given drama, you may often tell him that he was “fantastic!” simply because we, as members of the public, tell lies in order to make our actor friends happy. Don’t forget that most of us suffer from a social malady we call “Yilugnta” in Amharic or the feeling of “what other people would say” that is almost in our DNA and refuses to die even when we leave this world.
In the case of the actor in question who was that good in acting, none of us may be courageous enough to call a spade a spade and tell them that they have disappointed us in a certain way. Why? Simple! Such actors would think or say that we may be jealous of their work or we are out to destroy them, blah, blah, blah! Dear old Yilugnta intervenes to settle the dispute and we say to ourselves that it would be better to shut up or give positive opinions to our friend and actor for fear of losing their friendship or in the worst case scenario, resort to some kind of fistfight cause angry ripostes. Nowadays, people pay money to laugh or enjoy laughing with remote controls. The social media is one instance of enjoying a good laugh with bad performance. What is on offer on social media by way of comedy might be outright stupidity but we nevertheless pay to watch the performances and pretend that we enjoy them. We are hooked to them or suffer from a kind of toxic showmanship by amateur comedians who often base their stories on lies or fabrications.
In this country, we have lost so many comedians and artists to poverty and death. They used enthralled us with their words and acting. It is unnecessary to mention them here. What would their spirits say if we mention their good deeds? O I may offend the living ones. Long live good old yilugnta! A last point or question I would like to raise here is the following: why are most comedians live tragic lives and die in obscurity while they give us the pleasure of laughter? Anybody has the answer? Fortunately nowadays, and thanks to technology, their jokes are being recycled and listened and even watched on the internet. The trouble may be that jokes that were told 20 or 30 years ago and produced long roars of laughter now may sound like a strange tale from another planet told to zombies out there. Jokes tend to lose their flavors as soon as the “jokers” leave the platform where they fought to make the audience laugh with their tasteless invectives.
There are few surviving footages to replay the times when the good comedians were really creative, charming and natural than their peers nowadays. In the mean time, people who have the temerity or boldness to mumble incomprehensible mumbo jumbo that do not produce even a flicker of a smile on your lips, should stop calling themselves artists before they kill you with boredom.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD THURSDAY 15 JUNE 2023
