Bananas, a Woody Allen film

For the first ten minutes or so, I enjoyed Bananas. It starts with an assassination-as-sporting-event gag which is funny because it's more true than ever. I have watched the last few Democratic candidate debates just as less geeky people (or an earlier version of myself) watch sporting events. Both politics and sports tap into our tribalism. In sports, tribalism is defensible because there really is nothing more at stake than who won (unless the Cowboys or Yankees are playing, in which case their loss is cosmic retribution for their inherent evil). Politics should probably be different since what (in terms of policies) prevails is the important question, but the truth of course is that politics often aren't different. The media is partly to blame and Woody Allen's gag at the beginning of Bananas makes that clear.





These schticks are great for ten minutes or so, but I get tired of them after that and don't bother to hit pause when I get up for a bathroom break. Same thing with Monty Python really. They would be better as 2-5 minute YouTube clips than 90-minute awkward amalgamations of 2-5 minute gags.