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I don’t know if you’ve seen the two versions of To Be or Not To Be — the first with Benny and Lombard and the second with Brooks and Bancroft — I recommend both, btw.

In the 1942 version we find genuinely fearless movie making and while there is comedy it is actually quite serious.

Brooks’ version by contrast is considered comedy ... but that doesn’t really do it justice and it is because of how it turns pure drama for a bit I would point to it to talk about so-called “progressivism” and comedy.

While it is simply obvious, too plain for words, yes, Brooks owed a lot to Benny but not everything. Not only was the outcome of WW2 a known but, very important from movie making, The Producers had happened.

The two great early 40s drama comedies, The Great Dictator and To Be of Not To Be, both had to contend with not mocking the Nazis enough (being serious) on one hand and being seen as inappropriately mocking the Nazis on the other (not being serious enough) ... something Brooks really didn’t have to worry about.

But he still, I think, references that with the Naughty Nazis skit (really the Springtime for Hitler moment in TBoNTB) and how the Polish government shuts it down.

Here I’ll point out one of the big differences between the movies, which will be important for what I’m to say: in Benney’s version Benny’s Bronski did NOT dress as Hitler but a second character did.

The scene in TBoNTB is completely different than Springtime for Hitler.

With Springtime the in movie audience is shown in their slack jawed horror before they figure out that it’s viscoiusly mocking the Nazis.

But there is a scene in TBoNTB where they are sneaking people they’ve been hiding out of the theater right in front of the Nazis in clown makeup and this one elderly couple seized by terror friezes, causing the laughing Nazis to stop and gawk. This is resolved by a clown in Nazi uniform proclaiming them Jews and marching them off before a roariously laughing room of Nazis.

At that moment Brooks’ version of TBoNTB almost entirely transitions to drama, with only Brooks’ Bronski hamming it up as Hitler and Colonel Airhart getting totally comically skewered ... and it remains that way till Brooks, again still dressed as Hitler, barges into a Limey pub and demands to know if he’s in England.

This part of the movie is where Brooks really shows his range as a director and why I say his TBoNTB is underrated.

So look at the difference between the in movie audiences and how they are received by the real world audience.

With The Producers the audience is in on the joke and it’s pure screwball comedy as they know more than the in movie audience. The in movie audience’s initial horror turns to laughter once they THINK they know what is happening.

But with TBoNTB the in movie audience thinks that they understand the joke, when it isn’t a joke at all ... and as a result their laughter tears away, lays bare who they really really are ... and yes the real world audience is in on it ... there’s nothing funny when the one character say “Juden! Juden!” and no one was laughing with the in movie audience.

Not being evil is why the audience in The Producers is in stitches ... being evil is why the audience in TBoNTB is in stitches.

So here Brooks used comedy, or rather the appearance of comedy, to tear away the mask.

Now, I’m not saying “progressives are Nazis”, but what I’m trying to get to is how what progressive, politically correct comedy has become likewise tears away the mask to true outsiders and can reveal what so-called “progressives” are.

At stake is what scandalizes, what tittilates, the audience.

In the 70s and 80s you could just about carry off a comedy routine on being crude, on cussing and vulgarities ... these were the tittilating things, the nervious laughter causing things, that right or wrong were deemed funny because they weren’t safe.

By the 90s being crude couldn’t carry you. That ship had sailed. And as it sailed the society itself was cruder and more vulgar so it took ever more outrageous vulgarity.

So what is not safe to progressives what they are willing to laugh at? I ask it that way becausethe Left is defined by its demanding so much isn’t safe and you can’t laugh at them, they’re for crying, for handwringing, for feeling guilty or oppressed ... but what tittilates the Left is being a prude, being old fashioned, being Christian ... things like these. And also they can laugh at things meant to be offensive to such persons, though not because they’re offensive to Leftists (like vagina dialogues).

Everything they hate may be Nazis, just ask them, but it is because we are the bad people that they can laugh at us or what they think we would be offended by (and they’re still laughing at us, not what they think we should be offended by) just as the audience in The Producers could laugh as Springtime for Hitler.

This produces a kind of comedy that spends a great deal of effort proverbially patting itself on the back ... but it too tears away their masks. It is the comedy of those without innocence.

Small wonder they no longer get much of the comedy of days gone by, for that often required a bit of innocence to be tittilated.

I realize this post is a rambling mess but I hope you see what I was trying to get at.

And if it’s perfectly clear to you after you read it ... would you terribly mind explaining it to me later?