Drug Satire
If I had to pick the number one reason why I don’t do drugs, it’s because I’m cheap. Drugs cost money, and I’d rather spend that money on my wife or dog. Besides, alcohol and coffee suffice. And, honestly, who really needs drugs anymore? Drug culture has already come and gone. It was a supplement to the rebellious counter-culture of the beats and hippies. It made for some fun psychedelic art back then. But now we have computers. We have an Internet which allows us to expand our consciousness the old fashioned way—consuming new information.
Ethically, drugs aren’t wrong. They alleviate stress, bring immediate pleasure, and inspire altered thought processes. So why was Cheech and Chong such good satire? Why is it so hilarious when Hank Hill accidentally smokes marijuana? Both are funny, for two extremely different reasons.
First of all, it must be established what the vice of drug-use is. In America this is easy: it’s illegal. You could make the argument that it’s addictive, but that which is debatable is not ideal for satire. Satire needs clear avenues to attack obvious vices. If a government declares something illegal, then it becomes an instant vice.
When do the biggest laughs come in a Cheech and Chong movie? When they’re paranoid about getting busted. The absurd situations don’t occur in reality, but in satire, stoners come into a court room high. But this is brilliant satire, because it is pure irony. Flying in the face of authority is the dumbest kind of pothead. Even though regular guys unfairly get arrested for marijuana every day, Cheech and Chong are so stoned out of their mind that they couldn’t avoid coming to court high if they wanted to. If getting high is illegal, then Cheech and Chong will take it as far as possible. They get high right in front of the justice system.
Hank, on the other end of the spectrum, obeys the laws his country established (especially if they were stressed by his favorite first lady during the 80s’). He got high because he thought he was just smoking a funny-looking tobacco cigarette. He got high accidentally, and once he found out that he was stoned, he confessed. This is satire. Nobody smokes a joint by accident, and even if they do, they’re not going to turn themselves in. Why not? Because it doesn’t hurt anybody. If Hank got high, the only thing he hurt was his reputation for being a guy who has never done drugs.
But the only person who respects you for not doing drugs is the justice system. If they haven’t legalized it, that means you’re not paying taxes on it. If they don’t have their fingerprint on everything that you either buy or sell, they don’t want you to buy or sell it.
The satire of drugs works best when it attacks the hypocritical attitude that the government has towards them. Hypocrisy. THAT is the prime subject for satire. Simply getting high, there’s nothing funny about that. There certainly isn’t anything satirical about the process of taking a drug.
Then again, I do remember the first time that I hung out with kids who were smoking pot. I was living in Wilmington, Illinois, one of the white-trashiest cities in America. Ugly 8th-graders with rat-tails under bowl-cuts, sitting in a trailer smoking weed. It wasn’t appealing. Even as a 13-year-old, I decided that I wasn’t interested in partaking in a trashy lifestyle.
Mike Judge knows how good satire can be when it comes to American white trash. See Extract for a perfect scene about the inanity of social pot-smoking. When some important task needs to be accomplished, smoking pot is probably the last thing you want to do.
