When the Laughter Ends: Robin Williams

"Laughter," I said, "is madness. And what does pleasure accomplish?" 

Ecclesiastes 2:2

Yesterday morning, I received the Dead Poets Society DVD in the mail. Last night, I heard of Robin Williams suicide. Social Media and Twitter (and all of the other venues that I have not the time or inclination to peruse like Instagram) were a tsunami, a digital outpouring of grief, disbelief, tears, and remembrance. The local flagship television station WGAL, so ossified and brittle and out of touch, still lead in its promo of the 11:00 evening news with some "Foot and Mouth" disease that kids could pick up off of playground equipment. Really missed the Zeitgeist train there. 

In writing about this today, I don't just want to hop on the bandwagon without saying something maybe a bit different than the mainstream take on things. So, here goes.  

I had ordered the DVD of DPS to have for the College and Career Class I am teaching 2nd MP at school. I have been preparing all summer, kind of with my thoughts about the class running in the background, sort of like a computer. While I am doing other things and the like. 

I had also previously ordered Good Will Hunting and it will arrive today according to the shipping email. I was told by my Principal I cannot show Good Will Hunting because it has an R rating. When I ordered the DVDs, I figured that there may be some issues. I decided that even if it turned out that I could not show them, I wanted them for my personal library. In the emails back and forth with my Principal, I shared with him that we are living in an R rated world and sometimes I worry that we are not engaging the students on challenging topics, and that it leaves our students vulnerable and unprepared for reality. I think the R rating can be justified as worth-watching if it is redemptive, despite delving into difficult topics and controversial images. Hard to create Board Policy with such grays though. Good Will Hunting is out (R), Dead Poets Society is in (PG). 

Along with the Fisher King, where Robin WIlliams plays a broken man beaten down by life by the awful murder of his wife by a deranged man mocked and stoked by a radio shock jock played by Jeff Bridges, Dead Poets Society and Good Will Hunting are my favorite Robin Williams films. All of them are uplifting and tragic, yet show that comedy and tragedy arise from the same genome. I had thought about the suicide of the actor's character at the end of DPS and chatted with a buddy the other day that I wanted the students to discuss more life affirming choices that the kid could have made.

It is really a challenge to make this blog a post about suicide prevention. As is typical, the media will treat this as the issue du jour until Miley Cyrus does something risque again which won't be long. Perhaps the saddest thing about the suicide of Robin Williams will be how quick and clean we all move on after a bit. Rather than take a hard look, we engage, disengage, and go back to the regularly scheduled events. Like Foot and Mouth Disease or some other inane story designed to elicit Mommy fear.  

There are no recorded instances in the New Testament of Jesus laughing. G.K. Chesterton posited that Jesus was mirthful as a state of spirit and I think that is legit when we read between the lines. God is great, and Creation is good. But, the Fall in all of its devastating consequences is real. Maybe the Gospel writers decided not to include Jesus laughing--as he most certainly did--because to do so would profane the seriousness of sin, make light of the Cross, and causes readers to follow lines of thought that really would not amount to much in the end, or even lead them astray. Who knows? There has to be a reason but I am not going to uncover it. 

The Bible does record Jesus weeping many times. And I think we can deduce that tells us something profound and tragic about our R rated world.

I said of laughter, it is mad,.... The risible faculty in man is given him for some usefulness; and when used in a moderate way, and kept within due bounds, is of service to him, and conduces to the health of his body, and the pleasure of his mind; but when used on every trivial occasion, and at every foolish thing that is said or done, and indulged to excess, it is mere madness, and makes a man look more like a madman and a fool than a wise man; it lasts but for a while, and the end of it is heaviness, Ecclesiastes 7:6. Or, "I said to laughter, thou art mad" (x); and therefore will have nothing to do with thee in the excessive and criminal way, but shun thee, as one would do a mad man: this therefore is not to be reckoned into the pleasure he bid his soul go to and enjoy; and of mirth, what doth it? what good does do? of what profit and advantage is it to man? If the question is concerning innocent mirth, the answer may be given out of Proverbs 15:13; but if of carnal sinful mirth, there is no good arises from that to the body or mind; or any kind of happiness to be enjoyed that way, and therefore no trial is to be made of it. What the wise man proposed to make trial of, and did, follows in the next verses. (x) "risui dixi, insanis", Mercerus, Drusius, Amama; "vel insanus es", Piscator, Schmidt, Rambachius.      

Gill's Exposition on the Whole Bible