Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [31]
And yet Christ himself, that he might better relieve this Folly, being the wisdom of the Father, yet in some manner became a fool, when taking upon him the nature of man, he was found in shape as a man; as in like manner he was made Sin, that he might heal sinners (p. 174)
If we’re to understand how it is that Colbert performs philosophy and simultaneously teaches us to be free, it’s helpful to place his foolish persona in the scenery of the particular religiosity and authoritarianism of American political culture. Doing so will help us keep in mind the extent to which we have a need for play.
Recall the first grim colonists in New England. Men of the Protestant Reformation, the Pilgrims were intent to revolutionize the world. Inspired as Luther originally was by Erasmus’s radical critique of Church institutions, they were however deeply suspicious of the playfulness of the Renaissance. For those worried about sinful propensities and intent to build “a City on a Hill,” the idea that we might think of ourselves as “playthings” of the divine was anathema: much safer that spontaneity and idiosyncratic proclivities be channeled into “God’s plan,” better that punishment for sin be meted out according to the letter of the Bible.
Trusting Aristotle’s seriousness more than Erasmus’s reanimation of the Platonic puppet, the Puritans allowed for certain, regulated “Sober Mirth” necessary to recuperate from hard work, but remained deeply skeptical of playfulness itself.65 Theaters were banned as dens of depravity, “Synagogues of Satan,” the sites of all forms of depravity: idleness, effeminacy, adultery, gluttony, “temptation to whoredom and adultery,” “inducements to sodomy.”66 As a Philadelphia minister explained as late as 1840, because human nature is “depraved,” it must not be the subject of theatrical presentation, which would inevitably make it “attractive” (pp. 346-47). Sinners might be allowed “Sober Mirth,” but certainly no mocking of the divine, ridicule of legitimate authority, or subversive pagan festivity!
The Colbert Report makes a timely intervention in the contemporary “culture wars” on the side of the Renaissance and play, on the side of “the Synagogues of Satan.” Of course, in many respects we Americans are distantly removed from the original gloomy inhabitants of the Northern parts. And yet the original Puritan founding continues to haunt American culture, leading not a few observers to suggest that Americans suffer from a kind of play deficit.
As Daniels puts it,
Many people, particularly foreigners, feel that Americans do not know how to play properly. According to this view the seeming hedonism of Americans camouflages their true inability to relax. Coexisting with the American values of freedom of expression and behavior are deeper feelings that bespeak a repressive, censorious morality… . Americans work too hard at play, a sure sign that they are not too good at it. They take their leisure and their recreation just as they take their role in the world—too seriously. (Puritans at Play, p. xi)
Not only do we work ourselves to death relative to our European counterparts, but we are the most fundamentalist of modern industrialized nations. Our ideal of an embracing unity (E Pluribus Unum, “One out of Many”) is continually punctuated by spasms of hypocritical moralism and racial intolerance. Americans are free, but many feel that “others” threaten the necessary, hierarchical order of “God’s plan,” be they women, workers, minorities, homosexuals, hippies and all the others who are, as Colbert would put it, “hurting America.”
Colbert never fails to offer a caricature of a narrow-minded