on getting electrocuted
by Adam Soto
Growing up in the nineties I was inundated with an abundance of confusing, oft problematic male role models in film and television. These men were typically divided into three groups: the sigma apartment-dweller—writers, cops, and comedians; the alpha family man—a mainstay of 1950s family television; and the bumbling dad. Personally, I gravitated towards the bumbling dad. Think Homer Simpson and Peter Griswold. Homer Simpson seemed charmingly innocuous. Griswold, although a bit of a lech, really isn’t as creepy as Ward Cleaver. These were accident-prone, mildly depressive, but far from disabused men who, despite seeing through the fakeries of the American Family performance still loved their families and the simple, if vestigial, roles they played in them. They reminded me, in a way, of the men in my own family. I became convinced, in the way that children are all subconsciously convinced by media, that recognizing one of these men in my future self would mean my arrival. At what, I’m still not quite sure, perhaps a mildly pained stasis, a sturdy-enough raft to carry me into old age, where I’d adopt the role of the elderly kook or curmudgeon—peripheral but dependable.
Slapstick ruled the day. Or at least the ten-year-old’s television set. Comedy was at its purest form in bodily harm and the harm that came to a man’s body was usually the result of some failed attempt at taming his abode or automobile. The first was his domain to protect. The other, some adventure on the frontier. There was nothing nearly as funny as electrocution. Picture Chevy Chase with his skeleton lit up on Christmas Eve. This was the image of the All-American Male in my book.
One of my parents’ favorite stories to tell involves a four-year-old me sticking a key inside of a wall unit socket. Evidently, the shock sent me clear across the room, scooting, frictionless, on my bottom, and my hair straight up. The tips of my fingers were blackened and a scorch in the shape of a winter tree climbed half the length of the wall above the socket. The story is supposed to be funny. No real harm came to me, after all, and so the image is really cartoonish. Imagine the look on my face. Something out of Looney Toons.
Since then, I’ve successfully avoided getting electrocuted ever again. At least until the other day. My wife and I are new homeowners and have been busy setting up our home. For years, we’ve carried around an antique reading lamp. It’s a real beauty. Brass, it swivels, and has a warm industrial light bulb. I’d taken it apart to tighten its cylindrical shade, which had been randomly falling off lately, when I touched an internal component and found myself shaking and muttering nonsense. Pulling my hand from the lamp took tremendous effort and my wife almost intervened with a straw broom. The shock sent me to some place surprisingly familiar, and I’ve been trying to parse out where exactly ever since.
Wikipedia hosts a page entitled “List of inventors killed by their own invention.” It’s a dynamic list, always growing. There’s the Segway guy. There’s the sculptor who made those freaky giant horses with red eyes—like the one in the Denver airport—who was crushed by one of his giant horses. Way back, there was a guy who invented wings that didn’t work. The latter, with its Icarian undertones, is hubristic in a way. The rest are sort of ironic. Blown up, this is the stuff of Jurassic Park, another early nineties essential, a science fiction moral parable. Pared down, it makes its way onto a curious list on Wikipedia.
A person’s house isn’t their invention. Unless they’re the architect, or something. But it is seen as an extension of themselves. The domestic comedies of the early nineties made themselves at home in the houses of middle America. Their heroes (less Don Quixote than Sancho Panza) were mostly immune to the dangers of their own designs (or real estate investments), so when they got electrocuted, fell through the roof, or were pummeled by myriad kitchen accouterments, they were by no means in harm's way. These were not the same half-hearted Gothic tales of 1980s horror where people were actually being attacked by their haunted houses. These were the minor skirmishes of an otherwise pleasantly innocuous life. The comedy is sourced from the high fructose corn syrup-sweet life. These are comedies without struggles. Where electrocution is a funny mishap and not a death sentence; though, mind you, the electric chair was still much in use at the time of the films’ releases.
In a new documentary about the comedian Andy Kaufman, Kaufman is recorded asking a question of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at a Transcendental Meditation conference. He asks the guru what will happen to comedy after everyone is enlightened? He wonders what will come of tragedies. What purpose will entertainment have when nobody is looking for a distraction? Maharishi Mahesh Yogi seems entertained by the question in his own right but latches onto the idea that comedy is capable of creating moments of high contrast in a person’s life. Points of chaotic confusion. Enlightenment is sought in the connective lulls between.
Kaufman was a dangerous comic. Homer Simpson, Peter Griswold, not so much. The electrical current that surged through my body from my Art Deco lamp in my living room the other day was not enough to kill me but it was terrifying enough to shock me into having a quaint epiphany.
One needs to protect oneself from the dangers of innocuous life.
