Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America (review)

Defining comedy is no laughing matter; many have tried and a few have had limited success. Aristotle provided some ground rules, but the transgressive nature of comedy demands that rules are made to be broken. As this six-part series from PBS demonstrates, laughter-production is better explored within genres and thematic categories than any attempt to create any all-encompassing criteria for comedy. Although some early film and radio comedies and comedians are introduced, the series emphasizes television's efforts to "make 'em laugh." With almost a century of comedy being surveyed, many favorite performers may have not made the final cut, but director Michael Kantor and his crew have managed to cover many milestones in the social and cultural shifts in American laughter. The historical contextualization in each episode connects the anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian positions of American comedians in not only film, radio, and television, but also solo stand-up and even vinyl platters. Billy Crystal is the comfortable on-screen host, and Amy Sedaris provides connective narration.

Episode One, "Would You Hit a Guy With Glasses?: Nerds, Jerks and Oddballs," examines the outsiders, beginning with bespectacled silent star Harold Lloyd aspiring to participate in the American dream. Working chronologically, this episode shifts from the Crosby/Hope road movies to comedians like Jonathan Winters, Phyllis Diller, Woody Allen, and Cheech and Chong, underscoring post-WWII and Cold War anxieties, as well as the marginalization of both women and minorities. The commentary provided by both media historians and comedy stars helps to develop these themes. For example, Phyllis Diller is described as the last woman comic who had to be a clown, manifesting suppressed anger through her appearance. Steve Martin evokes "an idiot being arrogant," providing a segue to the rise of Saturday Night Live (SNL).

For the second episode, the popularity of the domestic sit-com is examined. In "Honey, I'm Home: Breadwinners and Homemakers," the groundbreaking success of I Love Lucy sets up a comic look at the American family. Leonard Maltin notes that audiences are drawn to family, and Jeff Foxworthy suggests why, commenting that every family is a little crazy. This episode skillfully connects the sit-com to earlier forms, both radio (Molly Goldberg) and vaudeville (George Burns and Gracie Allen). From tenement to suburb, family stories could "make 'em laugh" at daily trials and tribulations, and misunderstandings, which would be happily resolved within thirty minutes. Problems could be of the over-blown, spectacular sort created by Lucy Ricardo, or the much more "slice of life" difficulties of Rob and Laura Petrie. In either case, laughter was a way to consider everything from independent working women (The Mary Tyler Moore Show) to the working class itself (Roseanne). That both Archie Bunker and Cliff Huxtable could succeed in popularity introduces ways to examine race in the safe-zone of laughter.

Slapstick comedy, as Robert Thompson points out in episode three is "funny in any language." Because, for many, the earliest memories of comedy are not of Harold Lloyd, but rather The Three Stooges, perhaps this should have been the lead show of the series. Slapstick is probably the more broadly appealing comedic genre, appreciated by young and old across demographic statistics. "Slip on a Banana Peel: The Knockabouts" covers icons who continue to be synonymous with comedy—Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, W. C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx Brothers—connecting them to the later work of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, as well as Red Skelton and others. Just as laughter can be visceral, examining these performers reveals the physicality of comedy. Like the outsiders of episode one, these comics put to the test the possible attainment of success and prosperity in America. They are often quite literally "knocked about" by the self-appointed arbiters of social and cultural norms threatened by appearances and behaviors that question those norms.

The next episode emphasizes the comic violation of language standards. "When I'm...