the lost continent

Tonight I watched a DVD that opened a door on a lost world - the lost world of British comedy of the first half of the 20th century. It was a black-and-white world populated by Rob Wilton, Little Tich, Sid Field, Chesney & Allen, Max Miller, Max Bygraves, Max Wall, Tommy Cooper, Tommy Handley, Norman Wisdom and Monsewer Eddie Gray. It was a world of innocence, relying on funny dancing and funny walks and mental abnormality that became outdated and unacceptable. Audiences in those days seemed easily pleased, but they were seeing these acts for the first time. It was new then, just as Monty Python and Fawlty Towers and The Office were screamingly funny the first time they were shown.
It also opened a door on relations between the sexes. Women were more passive, we were led to believe, while men jumped around trying to impress them like kids in a playground.
Max Miller seemed to be the gatekeeper to a hidden world, a world of smutty and therefore unimaginably sophisticated humor that - on screen at least - he never actually entered, just hinted at.
So humor has moved on, and will continue to move on, which essentially means that society and culture move on, develop. Will we look back on today's comedians with the same wonder that their forebears triggered so much laughter and pleasure? Maybe, but if so it also means that we can look forward to the human race progressing, which it surely must however much we may imagine that we have reached the end of the road. And the picture quality will be better.
Either way, I am immensely grateful to my friend Ian Whitcomb for lending me that DVD. It was worth every second.