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Having come from the Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, and John Belushi generation, I rarely watch Saturday Night Live nowadays. It just doesn't seem funny to me anymore...the skits seem vapid and the crowds listless. Very ho-hum. Perhaps the show hasn't changed so much as I have? Maybe...but then again, how can you ever expect to compete with the Samurai Chef!?
So it was with low expectations that I tuned into SNL last night, having been teased into watching by play-off game promos mentioning that Jim Carrey was going to be the host. Jim is funny, right? Perhaps, but his introductory remarks were somewhat less than upbeat, and strangely out-of-place for a show dedicated to humor.
"Welcome to the first show of the last year of our existence!" Said Jim, followed by an uncertain and jittery laugh, like when somebody says something stupid at the dinner table and everybody giggles in discomfort. Jim then went on to talk about the Flockalypse, rivers of blood, burning corpses and the earth 'opening up,' all as signs of the apocalypse.
Jim concludes his strange and dark repartee with a disturbing final remark, "So let's celebrate this year together, let's make it count, because frankly, its all we got." The crowd was deathly silent -- as in zero laughter -- an uncomfortable, very pregnant pause that Jim allowed, as if to say, Let it sink in folks... I'm sure they were all scratching their heads and thinking, WTF?
See for yourself, SNL 2011 Jim Carrey.
This, I presume, is supposed to be funny?
Interestingly, just this past week I came across an article about actor Ashton Kutcher, recently featured on the cover of Men's Fitness, who is pumping iron and buffing up -- getting fit, as it were -- not for an upcoming movie, but rather as a survival tool in the coming apocalypse (seriously, have a look).
While I certainly don't look to Hollywood or its agents for cues to successful living, I do find the public assertions of both Jim and Ashton to be a profound, and somewhat disturbing, indication that the apocalypse meme has tipped in public discourse. What used to be relegated to the dark halls and blogs of the tin foil hatters and conspiracy theorists is today mainstream.
Doom is apparently becoming fashionable.
According to Wikipedia, a meme "acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices which can be transmitted from one mind to another by writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena." Memes essentially define, and in many ways shape, our collective psyche. Some would characterize our collection of memes as the 'Zeitgeist' -- the 'spirit of the times.'
It is unsettling that the spirit of our times is increasingly associated with the apocalypse and narratives of doom. And it literally raises the hairs on the back of our necks when reasonable people begin talking about the apocalypse in public forums (such as SNL) that, heretofore, would have given short shrift to such musings, or at least publicly ridiculed them as fringe and radical.
Interestingly, Ashton is not being labeled or characterized as a nut-job, nor ostensibly is Jim Carrey.
And that, I think, is the most worrisome fact of all.
When apocalypse becomes acceptable, indeed even fashionable, one has to wonder if the horsemen are not far behind...
