Kind of a Big Hairy Deal

You may or may not have seen the viral video of the Texas woman in the Chewbacca mask. I knew nothing about it until it had been tweeted, texted and emailed around  the planet a few times. Somebody told Lynn about it. She, in turn, told me.

She’d been highly skeptical that it would amuse her to the extent that it had many millions of viewers before her. And even after she informed me that it had, indeed, sent her into hysterics, I was a reluctant viewer. Why? Because—take your pick here—(a) we are considerably more discriminating in our tastes than are the stupid masses, or (b) we are humor snobs.

This video originated on Facebook, for crying out loud! I’ll tell you how many hours a week Lynn and I spend on Facebook. Zero hours. That’s how many. Why? Because the vast majority of what’s on Facebook is time-sucking, self-absorbed crap, that’s why. (Not that we generalize or anything. And I'll have you know that my writing a blog is something entirely different from self-absorption. No, I won’t tell you how it’s different. Just shut up.)

As it turned out, in our estimation, the hoi polloi actually got this one right.

OK, I didn’t find the Chewbacca Mask Woman’s video quite as hilarious as had Lynn, because I am, if possible, even snob—, um, more exacting in my judgments, than is she when it comes to What’s Really Funny. But I must say, the giddy laughter of that Texas woman having the time of her life channeling a fur-faced Star Wars character is super infectious. It’s like how the cast of the old Carol Burnett Show used to crack each other up on camera, lapsing out of character in the middle of a skit. Their laughter somehow reflexively became ours, sitting at home in our gaudy 1970s fashions.

But with Chewbacca Mask Woman it’s more than just High Silly. Her laughter in the video is so explosive, uncontrolled and joyful. It’s self-deprecating and defiant at the same time. Hers is the unrehearsed, unrestrained happiness of a person in the midst of pleasure that has no any particular rhyme, reason or bounds. It’s primal bliss, in a way—like what prehistoric humans might have experienced when they first located their funny bones. Chewbacca Mask Woman whoop-growls in concert with the mask’s sound effects in a way that says, “I’m aware that this entire situation is ridiculous—a grown woman buying a children's item and absolutely Losing It when she sees how it makes her look and sound. But I will stay in this euphoric sweet spot for as long as I possibly can, because, well, why wouldn’t I?”

When Chewbacca Mask Woman says she’s tempted to drive around town with the mask on, I totally get it. Prolong the high and share the wealth! Teach the world to sing in imperfect harmony! Evangelize mirth in a largely mirthless world! But I’m glad that she apparently did not subsequently don and drive. America’s drivers already are plenty distracted at the wheel. They don’t need, also, to encounter a chortling Chewbacca in the turn lane.

I wasn’t yet thinking about Chewbacca Mask Woman earlier today as I sifted through the small stack of newspaper articles, op-ed pieces and entertainment items I’d printed out as possible blog fodder. A motley and largely grim collection it was. These were some of the headlines: “Poll: Election 2016 Shapes Up As a Contest of Negatives” (Trump-Clinton presidential race now a statistical dead heat), “Stephen King Raises Cry of Alarm Against Terrifying Orange-Skinned Monster” (600+ authors sign an anti-Trump manifesto), “Primed To Fight” (about the growing number of armed anti-government militia members in the United States) and “Sanders’s Scorched-Earth Campaign is a Gift To Trump” (Bernie helps the Donald by staying in the race and further souring voters on Hillary).

Do you by any chance see a pattern there?

If you’re guessing that I am petrified by the prospect of ignorant, childish, conspiracy-spouting, dangerous, megalomaniacal Donald Trump (how do you really feel, Ries?) quite possibly becoming the next POTUS—and more than a little depressed that Sanders has become the GOP-aiding Ralph Nader of this election cycle, and that this is how the literary intelligentsia intends to Make a Difference this fall—you are correct.

(After I’d read about the “Open Letter To the American People” that “Writers Speak Out Against Donald Trump” has written to rally the populace to outrage, I exclaimed to a workmate, in the imagined voice of the instantly-sobered American people, “What?! Michael Chabon’s against Trump?! That tears it! He just lost my vote!” My coworker added, “I can’t in good conscience vote for anyone Dave Eggers deems unworthy of our highest office!”)

But then I came across the lone happy news clip in my printout pile—the one that got me to thinking about Chewbacca Mask Woman, and about how therapeutic it is to laugh with abandon, heedless of all the storm clouds in our skies.

The headline was not in itself happy, but the place that it took me was: “Alan Young, the Affable Owner of ‘Mr Ed,’ Dies at 96.”

As the obituary pointed out, Young had a very long and impressive resume as a radio and television personality, film actor and, in his career’s final act, voiceover artist in animated films. But to Americans of a certain age, including me, he first and foremost was architect Wilbur Post, described perfectly by the New York Times as “an unlikely second fiddle—the hapless straight man to a talking horse.”

Mr Ed aired on CBS from 1961 to 1966. I was only 8 years old at the end of its run, so I know the show mostly from reruns (which continue to be broadcast on various cable TV channels). Even as a kid I surely recognized that a talking horse was a ludicrous premise—if no more so than say, a favorite Martian, a suburban witch or an ageless Persian genie on Florida’s Space Coast. But if Mr Ed was fluff, it was smartly written and thoroughly winning fluff.

The horse was the star, and his dubbed words the catalysts, but Young was the key. The story goes that legendary comedian George Burns, whose production company created the show, told his casting director, “Get Alan Young. He’s the kind of guy a horse would talk to.” And he was! Young was a gifted comic actor who provided precisely the combination of good-natured smirk, forgiving anger and duped confusion that his role as nominal “owner” of the irrepressible Ed demanded. Young’s Wilbur Post was the perfect all-American goofball—the actor’s English birth and Canadian upbringing notwithstanding. Wilbur was Mr Ed’s protector and foil—his buddy in the barn and the butt of the jokes.

One of the online obituaries of Young imbedded a video clip from Mr Ed that I vaguely remembered. For some absurd reason that’s beyond my recall, Wilbur and Ed are at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Wilbur is talking with Leo Durocher, the team’s real-life manager at that time, during batting practice. Ed stands at home plate with a bat dangling from his mouth. One of the players suggests it would be a great publicity gag for ace southpaw Sandy Koufax to pitch to the horse.

Well, you can guess the rest. Ed wallops the future hall of famer’s offering. Wilbur implores his equine pal to slide ahead of the throw to the plate. The sight of the charging palomino sends the Dodgers’ catcher leaping up onto the batting-cage netting and hanging on for dear life. Unchallenged, Mr Ed—now a sliding as well as a talking horse, thanks to special effects—completes his inside-the-park home run and cockily shakes the infield dirt from his mane.

“That’s the smartest horse I’ve ever seen!” Durocher exclaims, praising Ed’s hitting process and base-running savvy. (It’s not, however, a comment on Ed’s vocabulary, as the horse speaks only to Wilbur—and to those he pranks on the phone.)

“Ed’s not that smart,” Wilbur responds. “He missed second base.”   

 Ha! God, I loved that show—from the catchy opening song (“A horse is a horse, of course of course …”) to the closing credits. Mr Ed was crazy like a fox. So stupid that it was brilliant. Reading Alan Young’s obit and watching that clip brought it all back to me.

It brought me back, too, to Chewbacca Mask Woman, and to the profound truth underlying her simple message that life is all about about—or, rather, that life should be all about—the little things. The things that cumulatively hold the power to get us through the day, whatever the trials and challenges the wider world poses. The things that might fuel us, if only we’d recognize them and let them work their incremental magic. The things in our daily lives that not only don't hinder us, but that actually help us—because they bespeak kindness, or touch us in some way, or provide the glorious release of making us laugh out loud.

When I was watching Chewbacca Mask Woman laugh her silly face silly, when I was watching Mr Ed best Sandy Koufax to Wilbur’s utter delight, I wasn’t thinking of anything other than how happy I was in that moment. My mind was not on the rise of Donald Trump and what it Says About This Country. It wasn’t on an increasingly angry, armed America that I don’t understand and feel powerless to change. It wasn’t even on whether Chewbacca Mask Woman, when she’s not modeling Star Wars products, is politically representative of the Hard-Right Texas with which I so passionately would love to mess. All I was doing in those moments was laughing. It felt awesome. It was that simple.

I’ll probably always be distrustful of the alleged hilarity of videos that become web phenomena. I’m hard-wired to assume that if everybody loves something, it’s almost certainly overrated. But I’ll concede that some video viruses are positively—and I mean that literally—infectious.

If only that had more staying power. Perhaps that's something we all could work on.