You never can tell what a summer will be remembered for. The summer of 1975 got Jaws, the summer of 1916 got the Somme. One summer gets a hummable ditty from Mungo Jerry that will be played on the radio until the end of time, and another summer gets Hurricane Katrina. With about four weeks left, the summer of 2009 has its identity: it is the summer of the penis joke.
Of course, penis jokes have been around a long time and in recent years become increasingly prevalent. But this summer, with the new films Funny People, The Hangover, Bruno (above left) and who knows what else I’ve missed, and with the new HBO series Hung, about a middle-aged man who starts a career as a gigilo, penis jokes have reached a critical mass. Now comes a report that MTV is working on a series called Hard Times, a story about an unpopular 15-year-old whose anatomical gift is revealed in front of the whole school.
I don’t get it. I mean, I do get that all humor is inherently anti-authoritarian, that it has the effect of elevating the teller and reducing the person who is the butt of the joke. And I do get that anatomical humor does that especially effectively, since no matter if a person a pope, a president or a pasha, he or she inevitably is subject to the requirements of anatomy. And for some people, these jokes are the gold standard, the never-fail punch line that always elicits a laugh. “There are no limits to the amount of time a comedian will talk about his penis,’’ said Jud Apatow (left), the writer and director of Funny People on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, “because the jokes are endlessly funny.’’
Well, as unpromising as it may be to argue humor with the auteur behind The 40 Year Old
Virgin, Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (right), and other penis joke laden hits that have earned a bazillion dollars, let me try. Perhaps penis jokes are endlessly funny, but the problem is not that Apatow and his ilk have lots of penis jokes in their shows, it’s just that they have a lot of penises. The jokes aren’t funny. Much of the humor that is generated by invoking the penis is based on the shock or surprise of its unexpected appearance. But that wears off, and the result is not a joke but simply an intruding penis, which is not exactly funny. Lots of penis-laden phenomena ca be funny: lust, desire, anxiety, propriety, dignity, ego—all these things can be quite funny when entangled with sex. But saying that some character has a small penis is just exhibitionism. Saying it becomes a badge that says “I’m a comedian” or “This is a comedy.” There was a time that the ability to elicit laughter was the badge that identified a comedy or a comedian. Now it’s just sort of a coincidental by-product.
Of course, penis jokes aren’t always unfunny. In this summer’s very funny, very profane political satire In the Loop, for example, the frequent obscenities are hilarious–creative, original, shocking, mean, and always, always indicative of character (I will never be able to hear the phrase “lubricated horse cock” without thinking of Malcolm Tucker). In Funny People, though, the penis jokes don’t really go anywhere. And it’s weird–Funny People is an interesting, intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful film about aging, mortality, ambition, and love, set among a group of people who tell lots of penis jokes–to no apparent humorous benefit. It could just as well have set in a language institute, where every once in a while the characters have to start speaking Russian just to establish their bona fides.
As anyone who has seen the documentary The Aristocrats knows, comedians happily compete to outdo one another with their coarseness. For years the competition took place in private, and by knowing that the jokes could never be told in public, amusement was generated in imagining the audience’s shock and horror. The very idea of transgression was hilarious. But now the jokes are told in public, and audiences aren’t shocked any more. And because there is no transgression, they’re not very amused. Indeed, if one can rely on the tepid box office that Funny People has so far received, audiences might in fact be bored. Of course, the danger is that Hollywood may conclude that not that it has given audiences too many penis jokes, but that they haven’t been given enough.