Recreational Grief – The Funeral of Boy Joe.

Television coverage of the funeral of the famed rock star Boy Joe following his unexpected death at a young age.

BERNIE: Welcome to all our viewers to what must surely be the celebrity funeral of the year.

DENISE: Yes Bernie the streets are packed with hundreds of thousands of mourners. Cubic miles of flowers have been laid as wreaths. The world hasn’t seen a mass outpouring of grief like this since the death of Lady Di the Princess of Wales.

BERNIE:  Acres of newsprint columns have been written in eulogies and obituaries. A star who touched so many lives but who also was at the centre of much controversy. Be it his continuing problems with drugs and alcohol, his ambivalent sexuality or his occasional foray into political and religious issues which earned him the enmity of so many. There are some unknown circumstances surrounding his death and some conspiracy theories concerned with his early demise. We can talk about those a bit latter.

DENISE: We can now get a shot of the start of the route the cortege will follow. A horse drawn gun carriage carrying the coffin of Boy Joe will lead the procession followed by a cortege of famous admirers. Police are lining the route but the large crowds seem demure stunned as they are by the sudden passing of Boy Joe.

BERNIE: This is one of those seminal events which will stick in the memory of us all. We will all know where we were and what we were doing when news of Boy Joe’s death reached us. An event such as only happens several times in a century. The assassinations of President John Kennedy or of Martin Luther King and of course of the tragic death of Lady Di come to mind.

DENISE: Revered like few other people in the entertainment business as a Christ, a Buddha or as a Ghandi. But he also attracted controversy like few others in our age. However others described him as the anti-Christ. He was as divisive an influence on our lives as he a unifying one.

BERNIE: But as we look at the crowds gathered here today all the controversies of Boy Joe melt away into one outpouring of collective grief.  We all remember Boy Joe as a singer with many hit singles and latter as a comedian using some of the tragic material in his own life. Latter and more controversial, more controversial than even his drinking and drug taking was his work on human rights and in particular with the campaign to abolish the death penalty.

DENISE: It was of course his unique style of activism which earned Boy Joe the most antipathy. Boy Joe started up a laughing club on death row. The wardens felt threatened by the sound on infectious laughter on their watch not having any training on dealing with that situation; falling as it did outside of depression and anger which is expected in that environment. It was felt that no one is sent to death row for a laugh. Relatives of the victims of the crimes for which the condemned were sentenced were outraged. It led to the pythonque situation of an American state legislating to outlaw laughter on death row. A field day for comedians everywhere.

BERNIE: And that would be a good point at which to cross for the famous confrontation between Boy Joe and the President or the American Victims of Capital Crimes Organisation on the Faux Network. This is that exchange.

                                 

BARBARA WATSON: I have here the singer, comedian, death penalty activist and laughing club convenor Boy Joe whose efforts at starting a laughing club on death row landed him in so much controversy. Hello there Boy Joe.

BOY JOE: Hi there Barbara.

BARBARA WATSON: Also here is the representing the Victims and Friends of Capital Crimes Support Network Elizabeth Battersby. Good morning Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH BATTERSBY: Good morning to you too Barbara.

BARBARA WATSON: Glad to have you both on. First I will ask you Boy Joe if you can talk to your work on the death penalty and in particular your organising of laughing clubs on death row.

BOY JOE: Yes Barbara as you know I was involved with my singing and my comedy work and that success came with its bad side, the glamour, the celebrity, the narcissism and self absorption and from which I would use all manner of uppers and downers and alcohol. But as I was wallowing in sorrow I realised I had many more advantages than the vast majority of people and I had real freedom of the sort so many people do not have. I would never have to suffer injustice.  I became interested in the death penalty issue. In the UK the death penalty was abolished decades ago and yet here in the US it continues and beings its own kind of injustices which are added to the injustices suffered by victims of crime. It was at about this time that I met up the convenor of a laughing club in a cancer ward and it seemed to me that setting up a laughing club on death row would be one practical way I could be active on the issue and at the same time help the condemned. Helping through laughter was natural because I’m a comedian. I just think of how Jung would have viewed our death denial. He would see problems arising as the shadow aspect; that in denying death accompanied by death related fears America realises capital punishment. A shadow suppressed becomes ugliness realised. In my work now I am giving light to my shadows in the service of others and in so doing I am also helping myself.

BARBARA WATSON: Many psychotherapists in principle thought that laughter as therapy was most positive but many criticised some of your unconventional thinking. I am thinking of your offhand dismissal of optimism and positive thinking.

BOY JOE: Well optimism is OK in certain circumstances when there is a day after tomorrow but it only becomes a bitter delusion in other circumstances, for example on death row.  Optimists are not good at laughing at bitter turns out of their control because they imagine everything should be under their control. They have no way of dealing with anything out of their control. When we can laugh at the worse we can not control then we can really get a grip on ourselves. That is by losing respect for ourselves we can remain centred in circumstances beyond our control. That was the perspective needed in my work for inmates on death row.

BARBARA WATSON: Now Elizabeth you took umbrage at the work of Boy Joe.

ELIZABETH BATTERSBY: Every time I go into my daughter’s room I feel sick in my stomach. Not a day goes by when my thoughts centre on Tracy. Every time my family sits downs at the dinner table I am looking across to the empty place opposite. My angel died at the hands of that monster and this professional clown who gets paid for people gawking at him and listening to him is hurting me and all the other parents and relatives by having a laugh with these awful monsters who took my daughter away. I honestly don’t think he’s had a responsible thought in his whole life and this, this here thing here is propped up like a role model, this drunk and druggie.

BARBARA WATSON: Boy Joe how do you respond to this charges made by Elizabeth? Should a rock star and comedian who has struggled with drink and drugs be conducting a laughing club on death row when these people have destroyed lives?

BOY JOE: I understand your pain Elizabeth. I want to provide a circuit breaker on fear. The whole of American culture turns on fear and I think applying the principles of the laughing club movement to people who are most in fear and in particular the fear of death. I think fear is the engine of so many problems in America and if we can learn to laugh at the face of death we can move forward with so many things. America is a death denying society and that means that these fears surface instead in many ugly ways. I realised that by helping others come to terms with individual anxieties I could help our national death anxiety and also that I could also help myself. I feel also for the relatives of victims. I would be happy to organise a laughing club for the members of the Victims and Friends of Capital Crimes Support Network if you requested.

ELIZABETH BATTERSBY: How dare you! You’re having a laugh to use one of your British slang terms.

BOY JOE: I am actually. It’s my work. I am having a laugh at the expense of death and I can help other groups paralysed by fear and death.

ELIZABETH BATTERSBY: You bastard insulting my Tracy by having a good about her. I should …(Bleep. Bleep, bleep over her voice. She reaches out her hands towards Boy Joe’s throat, cut to ad break as she is restrained by studio crew)

                                 

DENISE: In the aftermath the state governor passed a law prohibiting laughing on death row.

BERNIE: And this is some more footage of Governor Rolston signing into law what has been called “Tracy’s Law”.

                                 

GOVERNOR ROLSTON: I stand here today shoulder to shoulder with the surviving relatives of capital crime victims. As a community we offer a shoulder to comfort the affected families. No longer will we have half baked comedians and musicians coming into our prisons and teaching these hardened criminals to have a good laugh at their victims while surviving relatives have had their lives ruined. I have killed even American citizens in our facilities in the name of community safety and healing bereaved families than the previous governor and I look forward to killing even more people in office. I paraphrase one of my favourite cartoon characters Yosemite Sam when I say to other pretenders to office who “speak softly and carry a large needle”. Well I speak LOUDLY and I carry an even BIGGER needle and I USE it too (uses his hand and fingers to mime the action of a needle injection and the crowd applauds). Under my administration I promise to kill even more. I now invite Elizabeth Battersby to take the stand and address this gathering.

ELIZABETH BATTERSBY:  Thank you Governor Rolston. The process of healing will be greatly aided by Tracy’s Law for my family and many others. This law will greatly assist my family come to terms with the loss of Tracy. The time for empowering criminals is over. We will not tolerate alcoholics and drug addicts using humour with their half baked psychological ideas to empower the monsters who killed my Tracy. DIE SCUM BAGS! DIE!

Crowd applauds. Governor Rolston takes a seat at a small table and with a pen puts his signature to the document.

GOVERNOR ROLSTON: I thank Elizabeth for good work of pursuing justice on behalf of victims and surviving family members. As a result of her work and her campaigning it is now an offence for any person to cause or to indulge in laughter individually, under instruction of any group, official or unofficial in any state correctional facility. Further as Governor I will be psychological programs aimed at improving the welfare of prisoners at all in our prisons. No one should go to prison to feel good about themselves. Here’s a hint. If you don’t want to feel bad about yourself under prison conditions don’t do the crime in the first place. Instead let such psychological services be available for the victims’ families.

At the back are the New Guardians of America dressed in black uniforms. At the conclusion of Governor Rolston’s speech they raise a clenched right fist and arm at 45 ° to the horizontal.

                                 

DENISE: Boy Joe was running a show at the time called “The Last Laugh” and this headline at the time following Tracy’s Law (Denise holds up a newspaper) said “No Last Laugh for Condemned”.

BERNIE: Comedians everywhere took a Pythonique angle to the law outlawing laughter including “The Ministry of Silly Laughs”, “Die Laughing” and “A Funny Thing Happened in the Way to the Scaffold” All of these were parodying Tracy’s Law”.

DENISE: And let us not forget “Don’t Laugh, we’re Americans”.

BERNIE: Indeed. Do not mix death and laughter. Boy Joe was making the point that many human dramas with a tendency towards Shakespearian of Greek tragedy endings can be recognised and moderated under laughter and he thought at the macro level this would be most beneficial.

DENISE: This philosophical waxing was in contrast to his much less serious life of drugs, his androgynous costumes and drink. All part of the enigma that was Boy Joe.

BERNIE: There are many different ideas going through the minds of mourners today as they watch the cortege past by. It really is a beautiful day for recreational grief.

DENISE: It is indeed Bernie. We can all share in this moment of collective mourning. We can all have our hearts broken by the departure of a charismatic personality.

BERNIE: Boy Joe was also famous for interrupting fundamentalist churches with an infusion of laughing club members. It was his way of protesting the more extreme agendas of these churches.

DENISE: That earned him no end of enemies in the conservative Christian community. Death threats and demonisation of Boy Joe followed. Yet other Christians praised him comparing Boy Joe to Jesus overturning tables in the temple.

BERNIE: The death of Boy Joe was very unexpected and sudden. This has given rise to all sorts of conspiracy theories from the CIA, the Vatican, pro death penalty people and many others.

DENISE: It has but we should remember that Boy Joe had led life in the fast lane and very often he had crushed so on the other hand we can not be surprised if the price of his fast life had been higher than realised even though his life in the  last few years had slowed a little as he devoted more time to his causes and less to his singing.

BERNIRE: Yes although he was still doing some comedy work. He had also put a few noses out of joint by opining that some NGOs were more concerned with themselves and their celebrity sponsors than they were with the supposed beneficiaries of the NGO’s work.

DENISE: They were especially piked when Boy Joe worked some of that criticism into his comedy routine.

BERNIE: And as we speak the coffin of Boy Joe makes its way past our position. I think I can sum up his death by saying he died as he lived. A true artist. This has certainly been a magnificent tragedy; a tragedy that Shakespeare may have written both in life and in death.

DENISE: I agree. If tragedy and comedy are near relatives then that is no more so than in the life and death of Boy Joe.

BERNIE: We will not hand back to the studio. Bye.

DENISE: Bye.