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"That two plus two equals four is right, but that sometimes it also equals five is really amusing"(Fëdor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky)
The year 2009, among other things, took away Vezio Melegari: even though it doesn't directly concern the art of Humor, this piece is dedicated to his memory and is also an invitation to acquire his "Manual of Humor". Then maybe open it to page 58.
When one decides to talk about an artistic expression, be it a record, a painting, a movie, or a book, three more or less winding paths open up. The first starts from the historical analysis, unraveling between causes, effects, and consequences and must by necessity be indebted to a critical and popular substrate that the older the object in question, the more complex but also sedimented it is. The second is based only on the personal experience of the writer and requires an act of faith from the reader: this approach, while generating decidedly pleasant writings and indeed fun debates, always teeters between the weight of intellectual honesty and that of the vanity of the "reviewer". Consequently, the "credibility" in the universe-world, but also in smaller environments like the universe-of-DeBaser, often depends more on conjectural facts than on pure objective findings.
The writer of this "review" is not a fan of objectivity, if it ever existed at 100%, at any cost and believes that a healthy relativism, in defiance of both the current Pope but also, to quote friend Odradek, the "Criticism Sages" and their navel-gazing approaches, is the right seasoning to flavor the soup of Artistic Criticism otherwise at the mercy of "tasteless" cerebralisms. However, and there is a "however", it's necessary to give to History what belongs to History, and if a reviewer plays too much, for purposes that rarely stray far from those of a, "half-asleep", personal vanity, between "what he would like to have happened" and "what happened", taking advantage perhaps of a critical status, more or less deserved, in this or that other universe, the risk is facing an attempt at manipulation of Art which is scarcely critical and can have two purposes: one "vainly" artistic, and Criticism becoming Art is a sad thing, and one "vainly" subservient to single "truths", more or less, but often more, in bad faith.
The third way is to cross the first two and develop a personal vision that nonetheless respects History, even if we don't like it, culturally, politically, socially, etc. etc. It is obvious that it is very difficult to achieve, and if you allow me a small personal digression, in my small way, I often fall into imbalances either one way or the other: dichotomously combating between encyclopedic essences and instinctual ones. Having said that, the criticisms received in the first reviews, both in one sense and the other, confirm that the path is the right one: besides, it's impossible to make everyone happy. It would be interesting to delve into the fact that the fight against Relativism is often waged by philosophically opposed environments and personalities, the aforementioned Pope and the fundamentalists of certain scientific environments for example, but this would take me to fascinating multiverses too far from the little "intrigue" I'm weaving in this review: whether it makes you laugh or not, whether it makes you think or not.
It is quite obvious that the photo, topic of the "review", is a pure pretext to talk about something else: artistically irrelevant, it has the main merit of creating a visual and conceptual trick which if on one hand, rationally, is soon revealed, on the other hand, creates a humorous effect that endures, even after 40 years, still today: yet to dismantle it would be enough to place the two protagonists in each other's place. Leaving aside extremes on how facts are equally easily manipulated and not wanting to make evident invitations to pay attention to the risks of manipulation, which I don't intend nor have the qualification to make, nor, God forbid, references to current political issues, from one side or the other of the barricade, the review would indeed close here and apologies for too much or too little instinctiveness...
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