The Whole Durn Human Comedy

Significant art is provocative. It drives the spectator to thought or action otherwise deemed too costly. This foundational tension between creator and consumer inevitably leads to dueling interpretations of challenging artistic artifacts. The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, epitomize the artist as provocateur. They use their work to interrogate the humanity of their characters and play at the intersections of drama, comedy, and violence. In short, as Joseph McBride suggests, the Coens “recognize that the quest for answers in life is all we have to hold onto besides the saving grace of laughter and that artists ... are not obligated to provide answers, only to raise provocative questions” (40). The Coens challenge the status quo while making the audience squirm and ponder. Predictably, not all audience members, moviegoers, and critics alike enjoy the confrontation. The Coens embrace this tension, though, refusing to decode or defang their work. Their dedication to an idiosyncratic approach has garnered them a reputation as “aloof and haughty,” among other things (1). McBride, therefore, devotes his book to countering the most common criticisms of their work, aiming to offer a clearer perspective of this prolific pair of filmmakers. In so doing, he exposes their calculated use of humor to critique American life.McBride uses common criticisms of the Coens as a starting point for most of the chapters in his study, pinning them to the top of the page before methodically dissecting the weaknesses of each. The introduction addresses the Coens’s reticence when it comes to explaining their work in interviews. McBride notes that their most marketable and controversial trait is “their audacious blurring of the thin lines between comedy and violence” (1). Their work is often unpredictable because of this tendency, which can leave critics and audiences perplexed or dissatisfied. McBride argues that a significant portion of their work is misunderstood because of the dissensus about its quality and cultural impact. The brothers contribute to this dissensus by refusing explanations and embracing their role as cultural irritants.Chapter 1 centers on a complaint about the Coen brothers’ seemingly pessimistic view of the world, which critics maintain is reflected in “their tendency toward extreme visual and verbal stylization” (10) across their movies, including their “dizzying changes of tone, their sarcastic approach to characters and stories, [and] their supposed lack of warmth and empathy” (10).But McBride maintains that the Coens make these stylistic choices so as to differentiate their work from others, an increasingly difficult undertaking as the continued success of major blockbuster movies pushes artists like the Coens even further to the margins (12–13).In chapter 2, McBride contends with a complaint about the Coens’s penchant for blending elements of different genres. McBride focuses on the changes of tone in Coen films, observing that audiences and reviewers do not like abrupt shifts in tone because they “like to feel emotionally ahead of a story or intellectually superior to it” (18). In this way, the Coen brothers once again embrace their role as provocateurs: ultimately, “they love to mix up audience expectations of genres, playing with conventions and reversing them in sophisticated ways that make us ponder our mistaken assumptions along with those of the hapless protagonists” (17). The brothers’ calling card remains their ability to juxtapose stylistic and narrative tropes to say something meaningful about human nature.Chapters 3 and 4 deal with complaints about the Coens’s nihilism and their use of caricature to avoid taking the most harrowing aspects of life more seriously. As McBride points out, though, “literary caricature ... is amply recognized as a valid form of mocking human vice and vanity” (25), a historically grounded literary tradition of skewering American life through absurdity and surrealism. Often, the Coens’s use of caricature, which borders on the cartoonish, as critique serves to solidify their worldview, undercutting the claim that the brothers lack any religious or moral principles. Despite their reluctance to reveal their intentions, McBride sees the Coens as deliberate mockers who use their craft to carefully critique the targets of their ire.The old tension between style and substance resurfaces in chapter 5. Here, again, McBride points to a failure to understand that the Coens’s choices are deliberate: “The brothers’ meticulous preparation and control help account for the highly designed look of their films” (48). While their films might seem overwrought and emotionally detached, they intentionally use that construction “as a counterpoint to the deliberate messiness of their characters’ behavior and [their] own fondness ... for intricate plots that mosey into the nonsensical” (50). McBride acknowledges that certainly it might please a wider audience if they made safer, more conventional choices, but he maintains that then they would sacrifice the unique perspective that informs their bold choices and that makes them notable in the first place.The final two chapters focus on specific critiques of the Coens’s origins and their supposed condescension toward their characters. The critic at the top of chapter six purports that their upbringing in a Minneapolis suburb is mundane enough to disqualify them from making art about identity and anxiety and that they are “socially irresponsible artists” who look down on their characters and avoid asking difficult social and historical questions (63). McBride sensibly responds that just because the Coens have not shared much about the roots of their films’ subjects does not mean their films can’t offer an important perspective on the world (58-59) or that they do not take their work seriously. In fact, their “work is distinguished by its pervasive antipathy to authority, wealth, and power and by the obsession with exposing the corrupt underbelly of American society” (65). To appreciate the themes, questions, and critiques that emerge from their films is to embrace the frustration that the films might provoke.McBride’s analysis in chapter 6 of the most recent Coen film, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), which he characterizes as “a distillation of the Coens’ work, an eccentric, allegorical, and often nakedly emotional presentation of the filmmakers’ deepest thoughts and feelings” (75), provides a fitting conclusion to the book that deftly details how the film, in true Coean nature, subtly addresses the previous seven criticisms while skewering various aspects of American life. McBride, like the Coens, asks audiences to live in tension with their films and scratch the generative itch offered by truly challenging pieces of art.Ultimately, McBride presents the Coen brothers as misunderstood provocateurs dedicated to poking holes in American exceptionalism. The Coens create stylistic movies characterized by deceptively deliberate choices to blend genres, complicate characters, and satirize members of their audience. McBride showcases how talented filmmakers might use their craft and wry sense of humor for cultural critique. Without this book, casual Coen fans or detractors might not understand the purposeful subversion present in many of the brothers’ films, making McBride an important interpreter of an oeuvre meant to skewer and provoke

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