On the Origins of Comedy and Other Neuroses

There was a story in a paper about the French comedian Dany Boon, famous over there and genuinely funny. But where did it come from? He says it: “My mother was pregnant with me at 17. “ She was then disowned by her father because her husband was a French North African. (Black). His mother cried all of the time because she was totally rejected by the family. Dany tried always to cheer her up. He needed a happy mother, and he did his best. He had no father, of course, who took off early on. So he was reared by a young kid was neither ready for motherhood and had no support. Dany shifted from child to parent; he found he could make her laugh by acting funny and telling jokes. He elevated his neurosis to an art form, which is what a lot of us do, perhaps not so successfully but we try. We get smart in school in order that one’s parents have an intelligent child. We all try to get love in the way that parents point us, even unconsciously, both them and us.

But we see here how what happens to us as young kids has a lifelong effect. Some of us have the means to please the parent and others don’t. When we do we don’t suffer as much; we transmute in this case depression into humor. We no longer feel the hurt of not having a normal, loving mother; we are too focused on pleasing them at all costs. Dany later bought his mother a house that made both of them happy. He became what parents usually do; help out the child, and she was a child.

This cannot happen to everyone. Another child might work hard in business to support the child-like mother. Dany perfected his neurosis. Anyone else would have had to find another way to get the mother to love him. His way of trying would become a template or prototype that would follow him throughout his life. He would go on doing his schtick everywhere and for others as well. His behavior would become fixed and enduring. It starts with a parent and ends up as a lifestyle.

Dany might take drugs later and never know why. He would not know that he hurts too because he was too busy attending to his mother. All of his life would involve taking care of her so that he could finally have a loving, happy mother; something that will never happen. She was and is an unloved child. She needed a father much more than being a mother. Her need became his life. Isn’t that true of so many of us. A failed athlete like Andre Agassi’s father became Agassi’s life. A failed actress becomes the destiny of her daughter, and so on. Parental need becomes our destiny. My father felt stupid and the only way he could feel smart was to make me stupid, which he did at every turn. Later, I would never consider college because I felt too stupid to do it. I would ask him something like the meaning of the word, which he never knew, so he would say, “Look it up, dummy.” That feeling stayed deep inside and colored all of my life. Until…….I was sent to college as part of going to flight school, and I got “A’s”. For the first time I began to feel not stupid.

So to reiterate; your parent’s needs become your destiny; not only any parent but the one where there was some possibility of love to be had. That is the one that sets you on the struggle. Once the prototype sets in it applies to everyone and everywhere. It becomes your personality. All to handle a pain when you were very little.