94 And Not Dead Yet: Maybe Humor Can Save Us

If only sound could still not be matched to the moving image, perhaps the tendency to watch comedy would be strong and the Charlie Chaplins and Buster Keatons of the 2020s would be dominating the airwaves, as it were, instead of the current mountain of grim and grimmer. The Wright Brothers invented the flying machine – but it still took twenty years more for the Talkies to come along. But imagine that conundrum could never, by some quirk of physics and engineering, have been solved. We’d have only bothered to try and laugh – everything else would be not worth the effort – everything other than the aim to entertain or gladden the human race would be not. And no parts of the world would have ever suffered a comedy bypass. It’s probably the good fortune (in as much as it could be) that the Silent Era and its cheeriness lasted as long as it did. When the Talkies arrived, it is strange to our modern sensibilities to learn that there was much initial negative reaction to them as so many found it strange to hear people depicted on screen speaking. It was too magical. But the artistry of the Silent comedian would quickly evaporate.