Laughter, The Final Solution
MayorBob.
Posted to Etcetera on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 02:58:06 PM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.
Sam Gross is a cartoonist. He seems cut from the same bolt of cloth as Charles Addams or Gary Larson. His métier is to take the ordinary, give it a bizarre twist, but make sure it's funny. Gross' latest effort is one which could hit a raw nerve rather than the funny bone, however. Because, in the mind of at least one book critic, even when the cartoon's drawn by a 74-year-old Jew, not everyone is going to be amused.
Gross' collection is entitled We Have Ways of Making You Laugh: 120 Funny Swastika Cartoons. Are funny and swastika two words which could possibly be connected? Yes, according to the editorial review at amazon.com which called the collection "his most heartfelt -- and hilarious -- book yet." Not so much, according to Doree Lewak, who finds the launching of the book at around the same time as the 60th anniversary of the establishment of Israel to be as untimely as Gross' stated goal of breaking down stereotypes to be unconvincing. Of course, the swastika has a history which predates Nazi Germany. But, even if you go back before the Nazis turned it into a symbol of death and hate, you don't find a very rich trove of swastika humor offerings. According to Gross, he's been thinking seriously about demystifying the swastika for more than ten years. He first was struck by the need to deglamorize and mock the symbol when the lead story on the evening news was about a kid who spraypainted swastikas on cars:"Why is this the lead story, I thought? That kid obviously meant to be provocative, and he was doing his job... The media, though, shouldn't have given him the chance, shouldn't have made the swastika such a forbidden and exciting thing. The news gave it too much power."
After that, Gross began drawing cartoons lampooning swastikas. The current collection of 120 is the first of a series (Gross has an additional 360 more cartoons already drawn). Because Gross' attempts are so obviously aimed at Nazi uses of the swastika, the book falls into the broad category of Holocaust humor, a comic form which was even known to exist in the deathcamps. Rabbi Moshe Waldocks calls this brand of humor a legitimate coping mechanism to help, "particularly second generation" Holocaust survivors, cope with the "incomprehensible tragedy" of the Holocaust:"In every joke is the hint of the hidden horror. This is not laughter through tears, it is laughter despite tears. Humor also punctures, wounds, shocks, and reveals. If they're doing the job right, the prophet and the jester have similar roles. Both are making the comfortable uncomfortable."
Some see Gross' product and they find "the risk is not worth the reward" - the attempt at humor doesn't ease anyone's pain, it just trivializes everything. Worse yet, according to Thane Rosenbaum, it not only "trivializes history ... it traumatizes people." Rosenbaum believes only Holocaust survivors "have the moral authority" not a "putz" like Gross. On the other hand, another book review noted that Gross' primary employer, The New Yorker only bought one of his swastika cartoons, but never published it. This reviewer believes the magazine was onto something because, "as a group, the cartoons are funnier and more meaningful."
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