At this point,
i've got 3-4 blog entries rolling around in my head, but the first thing that keeps
occurring to me is the concept that Adam
Sandler is sketch comedy deconstructed, a concept derived from Sunday night's
SNL in the 90s prime-time special.
Though
i've been through a University of Chicago graduate program, i have never read any Derrida, nor do i know quite what Deconstruction is. Before i wiki-
pedia that shit i will comment on it for a while. When i handed in the rough draft of my zombie-thesis
Malynne made the comment that
i'd made "a Derrida move there". I nodded knowingly and said, "...
ummm,
ok. What does that mean?" She just laughed.
I've read through my paper many times since the encounter and found nothing that i would consider deconstruction (which, for those keeping score at home, i still can't really define). My belief is that deconstruction has something to do with boiling an object down to its essentials. With language, then, i imagine it might look something like Roland Barthes'
S/Z, which takes small bits of meaning and imparts them with meaning and symbolism (see my
own attempt at using Barthes' method on Stan
Brakhage's The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes). I wonder, though, whether this act of imparting meaning is in itself anti-
Derridian. Still, i will blindly claim here that Barthes is derivative of Derrida.
According to an
snl writer,
Sandler represents
Derridian sketch comedy in that he
essentializes it with his "____-Man men" (
OperaMan, Pickle-Mustache Man, Bag-On-My-Head Man). These basic characters represent sketch comedy's core work.
Well,
i'm not really sure of any of this, but right now it's my working theory. Now to check my work...
