By Jamie Malanowski
FIRST POSTED AUGUST 19, 2009
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 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 (as promoted in Berlin by Sacha Baron Cohen, above) 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 gigolo, penis jokes have reached 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, the writer and director of Funny People on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, "because the jokes are endlessly funny."
The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and other penis joke-laden hits have earned a bazillion dollars. 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 can 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 the 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. 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.
As anyone who has seen the documentary The Aristocrats know, comedians happily compete to outdo one another with their coarseness. 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, not that it has given audiences too many penis jokes, but that they haven't been given enough.
