Abstract
That humanity is genetically inclined toward myopic, individualized self-interest is a virtual given. That we can potentially memically alter our genetic inclinations is one great human hope. But against that hope is the point that generating such alterations through some rationally motivated collective act of will is an untenable strategy given that no matter our noble intentions, selfishness in the form of individual opportunism will always hover menacingly above selflessly altruistic attempts to improve the survivability of humanity as a species.
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Notes
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People, 1895 (New York: Avon Books, 1965), 23.
Alexander Leggatt, English Stage Comedy, 1490–1990 (New York: Routledge, 1998), 30.
Michael Patrick Gillespie, The Aesthetics of Chaos. Nonlinear Thinking and Contemporary Literary Criticism (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 105.
Paul de Man, “The Rhetoric of Temporality,” in Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1983), 212.
Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves. Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2002), 206, 207. Hereafter cited in the text.
Kelly Oliver, Witnessing: Beyond Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 9. Hereafter cited in the text.
In addition to Wilson’s book on the subject, Malcolm Gladwell’s accessible book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (New York: Little, Brown, 2005), is an excellent introduction to this concept.
Clifford Odets, Awake and Sing!, 1935, in Famous American Plays of the 1930s, ed. Harold Clurman (New York: Dell, 1959), 22. Hereafter cited in the text.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892, in The Writings of Oscar Wilde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 373.
William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life, 1939, in Famous American Plays of the 1930s, ed. Harold Clurman (New York: Dell, 1959), 387. Hereafter cited in the text.
W. Somerset Maugham, The Constant Wife, 1926, in Collected Plays of W. Somerset Maugham, vol. 2 (London: Heinemann, 1931) 160, quoted in Susan Carlson, Women and Comedy: Rewriting the British Theatrical Tradition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), 28. Hereafter cited in the text.
George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara, 1923, in George Bernard Shaw’s Plays, 2nd ed., ed. Sandie Byne (New York: Norton, 2002), 243. Hereafter cited in the text.
Peter Barnes, The Ruling Class, in Landmarks of Modern British Drama, vol. 1: The Plays of The Sixties (London: Methuen, 1985), 643. Hereafter cited in the text.
Trevor Griffiths, Comedians (London: Faber and Faber, 1979), 64. Hereafter cited in the text.
Andrew Stott, Comedy (New York: Routledge, 2005), 118. Hereafter cited in the text.
Tony Kushner, Angels in America. A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Part One: Millennium Approaches (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1991), and Angels in America. A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Part Two: Perestroika (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1992). Hereafter cited in the text.
Tony Kushner, A Bright Room Called Day (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1994), 51.
The scale is locatable on numerous Web sites, of which the following is one: http://gaylib.com/text/homophobia.htm.
Tom Stoppard, Salvage, The Coast of Utopia, Part III (New York: Grove, 2002), 118. Hereafter cited in the text.
Tom Stoppard, Rock ‘n’Roll (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), 107.
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© 2008 William W. Demastes
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Demastes, W.W. (2008). Comedy Confronts Commodity via the Adaptive Unconscious. In: Comedy Matters. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230612426_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230612426_8
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