Laughter serves many purposes. It increases oxygen to the lungs, it breaks down barriers between people, and it brings us joy. Some laugh at good news, others in relief. That doesn’t explain why something’s funny. For me, the greatest humor rises out of absurdity, particularly the juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane. Or civilization and squalor. Florida Man is a wonderful example of this, as it presents the absurdity in life in a way that anyone can understand.
FLORIDA MAN GETS BEAT UP BY THE EASTER BUNNY
FLORIDA MAN BUSTED WITH METH, GUNS, BABY GATOR IN TRUCK.
NAKED FLORIDA MAN HUMPS TREE, PUNCHES DEPUTY.
FLORIDA MAN CALLS 911 MULTIPLE TIMES ASKING DEPUTIES TO BRING HIM ICE CREAM AND LIQUOR.
FLORIDA MAN CLAIMS SYRINGE FOUND IN RECTUM ISN’T HIS.
FLORIDA MAN SEXUALLY ASSAULTS STUFFED OLAF DOLL AT TARGET.
And my favorite, FLORIDA MAN ARRESTED RIDING LAWNMOWER WITH HOMEMADE LIQUOR BOMB TO BLOW UP NEIGHBOR’S CHICKEN COOP.
I don’t choose my stories, my stories choose me. After the umpteenth Florida Man story I got the message. I had to write about this guy. Many stories are about unsavory people you don’t want to meet. I had to make Gary Duba likeable. He’s got a hair-trigger temper, likes to get high, likes to get drunk, been in and out of trouble his whole life, but Gary would give you the shirt off his back. I didn’t write about a scumbag because that’s not my thing. Cormac McCarthy writes about scumbags in Child Of God. Pete Dexter: Paris Trout. George MacDonald Fraser: the lowlife Flashman, from Tom Brown’s School Days. They’re compelling writers, and Fraser is very funny. The others, not so much.
The challenge with Gary is to put him into the most absurd, humiliating scenarios imaginable without losing his likeability. In my novel Hogzilla, Gary and his best friend Floyd don Santa suits, get roaring drunk, pull up to the Church of Necroeconomics and throw a truckload of dead iguanas at the main entrance, claiming they want to feed the poor. The Church of Necroeconomics may remind you of a certain church to which many movie stars, including Tom Cruise, subscribe. It, too, is based in Florida.
In my latest Florida Man novel, Catfish Calling, I bring in the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Only I call them the Duke and Duchess of Ducats. What could be more absurd than British royalty hobnobbing with a redneck and traipsing through the swamp with a five thousand dollar custom made shotgun? Gary warns Prince Larry about the snapping turtles. Prince Larry drops his trousers to take a leak anyway, and the snapping turtle grabs on to the royal member like a boozy strapholder on the subway, or people chasing hundred dollar bills. They have video. A spirited discussion follows on whether releasing the video will help or hurt the Royal Couple. “It might make him more sympathetic,” Gary argues.
Needless to say, the video gets out. Catfish also features a naked man wearing a hippo helmet riding his bicycle on the highway. That’s what the headline said. My job was to put it together so that it made sense. The Florida Man graphic novels use some material from the novels, but for the most part, I have added bits and pieces as they come to me, often under the influence of moonshine.
There is a hierarchy of humor. Puns are at the bottom. Absurdity is at the top. Blazing Saddles is hilarious because of its shock value and in your face racial cliches. It couldn’t be made today, and if any streaming service were to show it, they would have to cut it down to five minutes, or plaster it with TRIGGER WARNINGS. Rotten Tomatoes gave Soul Plane an eighteen per cent positive. Comedy is on life support because it often relies on shock. Look at Dave Chappelle. While other so-called comedians mouth humorless platitudes, or attack the only group you are allowed to attack, Dave keeps pitchin’. College students today would riot, scream, and picket at a Richard Pryor or George Carlin. Pryor said, “All humor is rooted in pain.” The humorless Wikipedia says there are three theories: relief theory, superiority theory, and incongruity theory. “The superiority theory of humor traces back to Plato and Aristotle, and Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. The general idea is that a person laughs about misfortunes of others (so called schadenfreude), because these misfortunes assert the person's superiority on the background of shortcomings of others.” Superiority theory is no longer funny. It’s incongruity that we want.
Of course the battling bunny rabbit and Florida Man are in Catfish Calling, and will appear in Florida Man Graphic Novel #3.
Just knowing this is real makes me so happy. God bless you for bringing Florida Man to magnificent, mulleted life!
Thanks, Pat!