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Alcohol Stinks

by LINDA GERMAIN 
05/05/17
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Alcohol Stinks! 

I was watching an old movie made in the 1930s. A man wearing a top hat and a tuxedo stumbles down the hall carrying a big key. He can barely stand upright as he tries to unlock several different doors with one hand while clinging to a bottle with the other.

After a frustrating number of unsuccessful stabs at gaining entrance, it’s obviously too much effort. He leans against the wall and slides down to the floor and falls asleep. His butler discovers the unconscious heap of humanity and dutifully drags him into the right apartment and puts him to bed.

The next morning, the playboy-reveler demands quiet as he tries to stave off a hangover headache. His staunch and supportive employee asks, with a correct British accent, “Did you have a good time at the party, Sir?”

The ailing, wealthy, young male answers, “Well, I must have. I can’t remember a thing.”

From the beginning of comedy genre in moviedom, foolish behavior spurred by blithering intoxication has offered a cheap shot at what passes for uproariously funny stuff. I try to figure out why these drunk people who reel on foot or in vehicles, doing inappropriate things they cannot remember, is a standard of amusement?

 Am I missing something?

 I’m sure not one person who has been hurt by another’s drunkenness finds any comfort in the hollow laughter that echoes through the decades as it tries to ignore as well as legitimize the numbing effects of bottled mind-management.

 Some things never change.

Stories from the little screen to the big screen, from silent performances to electronically enhanced loud ones, present intoxication as acceptable humorous conduct. Supposedly, the fun does not begin until the brain is disengaged and jettisons all its good sense. The ticket to losing control is merely a few swallows away.

The question is, does art imitate life, or does life imitate art?
 

There’s no debate that film of the last 80 plus years has wielded a big stick of influence, presenting the swilling of alcoholic beverages as everything from a rite of passage to the base of celebratory social events.

Granted, there’s a sprinkling of sad stories on the screen that depict ruined families and jobs and opportunities; of lives ended in tragedy almost before they’ve begun. Even with that concession to the bad consequences, the masked truth of alcohol’s real influence seems lost on every generation.

Our local newspaper prints long lists of driving under the influence arrests. More than a few of these charges include operating a vehicle with a suspended license. That tells me that the addiction to that "feeling” trumps a future of possible criminal behavior that could conceivably kill and destroy countless lives, including one’s own!

There is nothing hilarious about the reality of liquor overdoses. It wasn’t funny in those old movies made before my mother was born; it is not funny now.

Sadly, illegal drugs of all kinds continue to turn good minds into senseless mush. And yet, one of the worst substances ever concocted, swallowed from an old fruit jar or an elegant long-stemmed glass, disguised and served with fruit or little umbrellas, or knocked back from a cheap bottle or can, is not illegal to buy or sell.

Alcohol is still a respected mainstay around the world. It’s offered as a panacea for frustration, exhaustion, fear, and sadness. Glasses are raised in congratulations, or in defiance, or as a substitute answer to emotional and unbearable pain. Once in a while, with a slight nod in its defense, it’s used to disinfect a dirty wound (mostly in cowboy movies).

In the end, that compulsion to drink fermentation to dull the senses and wreak havoc on one’s liver and brain, as well as on society as a whole, is still personified by the scene in that old black and white flick I was watching.

It too often comes down to a foolish human, hiding behind a fancy suit, stumbling through life clinging to the wrong key while trying to find the right door, but ending up unconscious and vulnerable to any passing evil. One can only hope one’s butler will appear just in time to clean up the mess. 


Why do we laugh?
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