by Stephen LANGLOIS

Webster’s de­fines “zany” as:

1. 1. be­ing or hav­ing the char­ac­ter­is­tic of a zany 
   2. fan­tas­ti­cal­ly or ab­surd­ly ludicrous

ex: A zany plan to dri­ve cross-coun­try on a mo­tor­ized scooter.

While I hes­i­tate to dis­agree out­right I would go a bit fur­ther in defin­ing this term. Zany more of­ten than not in­volves a pletho­ra of char­ac­ters chas­ing each oth­er around a room for in­de­ter­mi­nate rea­sons — typ­i­cal­ly to the ac­com­pa­ni­ment of a Yakety Sax-style mu­si­cal com­po­si­tion. The room in ques­tion can be any­thing from a mad sci­en­tist’s lair to an Old West-style sa­loon, any place, in oth­er words, where over­sized props are read­i­ly avail­able and break­away glass bot­tles can be eas­i­ly pro­cured. A man in a go­ril­la suit is­n’t nec­es­sary, though it is strong­ly ad­vised. And while I agree with Web­ster’sas­sess­ment that a mo­tor­ized scoot­er is zany, I would posit that a dune bug­gy is bet­ter, while some sort of wheeled, over­land boat-car is best. As for a plan be­ing zany, as in Web­ster’scross-coun­try dri­ve sce­nario, I would ar­gue that zany can­not, by de­f­i­n­i­tion, be planned. The tru­ly zany lacks reason.

For fur­ther study, let us look at the 1960s tele­vi­sion se­ries Bat­man. Any giv­en episode might in­clude one, if not all of the el­e­ments list­ed above, and it is no­table for pi­o­neer­ing the use of the su­per­im­posed ono­matopoe­ic ex­cla­ma­tion — POW!, BAM!, KER-SPLOOSH!, et al. It thrusts the view­er in­to a crazy, up­side-down world of ridicu­lous vil­lains and non­sen­si­cal bat-gad­gets with­out a sin­gle char­ac­ter to iden­ti­fy with, nor any con­text with which to ori­ent one­self. This is en­joy­ably zany for a few min­utes at a time, but to ex­pe­ri­ence this episode af­ter episode — Bat­manran for three sea­sons from 1966 – 1968 — is dis­ori­ent­ing. The za­ni­ness be­comes op­pres­sive. It’s as if one­self is a hap­less vic­tim of a poi­so­nous gas re­leased by Batman’s arch-neme­sis the Jok­er. One can no longer dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween what is zany and what is­n’t. If every­thing is zany, noth­ing is zany. Bat­manis, ul­ti­mate­ly, too zany for its own good.

Equal­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble is that which is not zany enough. For that we turn to a 1966 film en­ti­tled The Wild World of Bat­womanand re-re­leased as She Was A Hip­py Vam­pire.With its out­landish cos­tumes, a mad sci­en­tist and plen­ti­ful go-go danc­ing, this would seem to be the apoth­e­o­sis of zany. In fact, the sto­ry con­cerns an evil scheme to trick the Bat­woman and her bevy of nu­bile crime fight­ers in­to in­gest­ing a po­tion which makes them spon­ta­neous­ly go-go dance — a con­cept that sounds quite zany on pa­per. Yet wit­ness the scene where the Bat­woman shuf­fles bored­ly in­to the mad scientist’s lab and list­less­ly shat­ters the break­away bot­tle over the head of one of Rat Fink’s min­ions. This should be a tran­scen­dent mo­ment, an act of pure za­ni­ness that sets off a chain re­ac­tion of even greater acts of za­ni­ness. In­stead, the Bat­woman — or Hip­py Vam­pire de­pend­ing on which ver­sion one is view­ing — turns away from the pro­ceed­ings, be­grudg­ing­ly frees the young girl be­ing held cap­tive, and shuf­fles back out of the room as Rat Fink‘s min­ions stare blankly af­ter her. As for the much-hyped go-go danc­ing, the ma­jor­i­ty of it is done with­out any mu­si­cal ac­com­pa­ni­ment what­so­ev­er, cre­at­ing an un­com­fort­able si­lence as the out-of-breath dancers bump in­to each oth­er in a de­cid­ed­ly non-com­i­cal man­ner and their feet shuf­fle loud­ly up­on the floor. The ef­fect is not half as bat­ty as the film‘s tagline claims.

As for the ap­pro­pri­ate­ly zany I of­fer up The Mon­kees, which ran from 1966 to 1968 — the same years, in fact, as Bat­man. From ex­tend­ed se­quences set in fast mo­tion to the mo­tor­ized scoot­ers that Web­ster’sso likes to her­ald to leop­ard-print cos­tumes there is much za­ni­ness in the se­ries. Not on­ly that, but there is a bet­ter bal­ance here be­tween the zany and non-zany than in Bat­man. Ground­ing the view­er is the cen­tral sto­ry of friends and band mates Mike, Mick­ey, Davy and Pe­ter, four dis­parate char­ac­ters who, through the course of each episode, learn to work to­geth­er and over­come what­ev­er ob­sta­cles may lie in their path, whether it be es­cap­ing from the ghost town where they are be­ing held hostage by bank rob­bers in “Mon­kees In A Ghost Town,” or con­tend­ing with a Red Chi­nese spy ring in “Mon­kee Chow Mein.” This isn’t zany for the sake of za­ni­ness, but rather zany with heart, a pur­pose, a sto­ry to tell and a les­son to teach.

But what, ex­act­ly, is that les­son? Per­haps if the read­er is to take any­thing away it is that the tru­ly zany is as un­com­mon and sin­gu­lar as any so-called high art. Just as the pro­duc­ers of one of the ti­tles above could nev­er hope to match the tech­ni­cal per­fec­tion­ism of Stan­ley Kubrick or one of the oth­er great film di­rec­tors so too would Kubrick be lost amid the zany. That man­ic en­er­gy, that go-for-broke, any­thing-for-a-laugh at­ti­tude so in­te­gral to the zany is not an ac­ci­dent, is not, when done right, a symp­tom of low-bud­get or poor script-writ­ing; it is culled forth from the imag­i­na­tion and made re­al by the deeply pas­sion­ate as much as any oth­er form of art. Had Kubrick ex­tend­ed the go­ril­la se­quence of 2001: A Space Odysseyand re­leased the movie un­der a ti­tle such as I Was A Hip­py Ape-Man From Out­er Spaceper­haps this would be a dif­fer­ent story.

As it is, the pub­lic’s ap­petite for the zany de­clined in the late six­ties. The can­cel­la­tion of both Bat­manand The Mon­keesin 1968 co­in­cid­ed with what is thought of as the of­fi­cial end of the peace and free-love era that very same year. It’s quite sad, for in the war-torn and tough eco­nom­ic times in which we live, we might just need the zany more than ever. This au­thor en­vi­sions a bet­ter, zanier world in which tanks are re­placed with dune bug­gies, bat­tle­ships are re­placed with boat-cars, and peace talks are held in Old West-style sa­loons with plen­ty of break­away bot­tles at hand. For it is these mo­ments, when a prat­fall is so per­fect­ly punc­tu­at­ed with a slide whis­tle it bor­ders on the sub­lime; when a go­ril­la gropes a biki­ni-clad girl at a lim­bo con­test in or­der to re­mind us how far we’ve evolved and yet just how far we have left to go; when men and woman mag­i­cal­ly speed up, de­fy­ing the laws of physics and leav­ing, how­ev­er briefly, the con­fines of our world; it is these mo­ments that are as rare and beau­ti­ful as any we are like­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence. Life is, af­ter all, zany. Let’s em­brace it.

Filed under Commentary on November 5th, 2010

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