Another man’s abject object can be another’s subject—it is, after all, the incongruity between appearances that produces the humorous effect. Absurdity, in particular, appears to occur when what is considered serious within a person’s inner-life is recontextualized at a cosmic scale, mocking the sincerity with which it is imagined otherwise. Nagel concurs that, “without developing the illusion that they are able to escape from their highly specific and idiosyncratic position, they can view it sub specie aeternitatis—and the view is at once, sobering and comical.” This figurative zoom-out from the daily woes of modern society is perfectly captured by Julio Torres’ series on HBO, titled Fantasmas, which is a surreal and semi-autobiographical project that retells a whimsical odyssey through a dream-like soundstage of New York City.
The clip above discovers the strange, almost Sisyphean rituals of labour through the perspective of a call-centre employee at an insurance firm—as banal as it possibly gets. It goes even further, exalting the 9-5 job through a theatrically performed inner-monologue about the beauty of “insurance, and banks, and credit-cards, and the military”. Here, however, it is evident that this hyperbole is meant to reveal the fallacy of the employee’s unwavering allegiance to the firm. This is later elaborated upon when the loyal employee, played by a tongue-in-cheek Alexa Demie, is passed on a promotion that is instead undeservingly received by the president’s daughter. This experience is inherently human, and perhaps relatable to many of us, similarly wrought by structures we do not control. However, as Freud describes, “In humour, the superego observes the ego from an inflated position, which makes the ego itself look tiny and trivial.” By demonstrating the self-knowledge of our seeming pointlessness, we are able to reconcile with “the unhappy black bile, the melancholia” that Critchley believes lies dormant in all humour.
This so-called tragedy that makes us smile is witnessed at the end of this scene, when the call-centre employee exclaims, “I will scorch the Earth. I will use the computer for personal use”. Her peripeteia arrives brutally when she must herself negotiate with a call-centre employee as she attempts to cancel the tropical vacation she booked as an act of rebellion. And so, humour allows us to laugh at her folly—and, as Critchley articulates, “the Promethean fantasy of believing oneself omnipotent”. Torres’ dramaturgy is unique in that it abandons realism, and heightens the often insignificant stakes of our lives through imagined dioramas and dreamscapes, only further alienating ourselves from our meaningless actions.