http://www.wickedlocal.com/whitman/news/lifestyle/columnists/x1444028317/OPINION-Why-the-Three-Stooges-will-always-matterOPINION: Why the Three Stooges will always matter
By David Maril
Sat Jan 02, 2010, 10:16 PM EST
BROCKTON - It’s galling to some and a mystery to others as to why a new year isn’t allowed to begin without the airing of a Three Stooges marathon on television.
It was easy to rationalize “Twilight Zone” marathons as being reflective, examining our values.
But what social value is offered in Three Stooges movies? And why does the popularity of this slapstick group continue to grow?
As a tribute to the departure of 2009, Boston-area New Year’s Eve celebrants had not one, but two Three Stooges marathons to enjoy.
AMC, which finds a way to insert more commercials into its broadcasts than the old AM top-40 radio stations, offered a selection of Three Stooges classics.
Locally, TV-38, with a long history of being a flagship station for the Stooges, had its traditional marathon.
Personally, I prefer Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields because the humor is more subtle and has greater depth. However, as time marches on, my respect for the Stooges has grown. Larry, Moe, Curly and Shemp, who have been popular for more than 75 years, are more durable than Cal Ripken. They are timeless and nothing — including political correctness — can get them down.
There remain plenty of stuffed shirts who criticize this slapstick brand of humor. The Stooges are attacked for being too violent. We’ve all heard that their pie-in-the-face and frying-pan- slammed-on-the-head humor is a bad influence on children.
At one point, in the late 1970s and 1980s, it became fashionable to treat the Three Stooges as if they were trash. Publicly, some people would denounce the Stooges as lacking any redeeming qualities while laughing their heads off when they’d watch the movies in the privacy of their homes. There was a sizeable group of “closet Stooge watchers,” who would not admit they were devoted followers.
There have been behind the scenes campaigns to “purify” the airwaves and keep Stooges movies off regular TV. A few decades ago TV-38 attempted to cut back on programming time for the zany trio. But every time the Stooges were removed from the program lineup, the station’s weekly “Ask The Manager” show seemed to be barraged by viewers demanding to know when the Stooges were going to be put back on the air.
Today, the arguments against the content of their movies seem ridiculous when you look at where television has been heading. When compared to the narcissistic, shallow and senseless programming networks offer with all of the current reality show nonsense, the Stooges seem like a PBS production of “Masterpiece Theatre.”
And, with the low standards we have embraced from the Internet and video games, that old argument about the Stooges being a bad influence on children is laughable.
Still, it’s hard for some to understand the appeal of the Stooges. Sure, a large part of it is escapism from headache-inducing arguments over healthcare reform, the economy, war in the Middle East, terrorism and global warming.
But what really hits home is the way the Stooges, and many other stars of comedy, lambaste the phoniness and hypocrisy that seems to be a growing part of our corporate culture. We find the Stooges in all walks of life.
In the double-talking and pompous world of government, a large percentage of our of elected leaders behave as if they are working on a Three Stooges movie set.
It’s common when any of us deal with three people who are incompetent enough to screw up a one-car parade, we refer to them as Larry, Moe and Curly.
How many times when you hear the soundtrack from a Stooges movie with that “Three Blind Mice” music and the boys making their absurd noises will someone joke it sounds like a management meeting at the place they work?
Most importantly, the Stooges provide all of us a chance to laugh and realize we often take ourselves too seriously. And in today’s world, that’s significant and not a bad way to begin a new year.
David Maril, an Enterprise copy editor, can be reached at dmaril@enterprisenews.com.
