Consider: The Other Side of Discomfort

On David Byrne, squirmy entertainment, and foils to the expected

I rewatched “Stop Making Sense,” the 1984 Jonathan Demme docu-concert on the Talking Heads. Please do watch it if you have not…and absolutely in a theater if possible.

This viewing sparked something in me—synthesizing a couple disparate, floating, half-realized thoughts I couldn’t catch on my own.

Just before I walked into the theater, I had listened to the first episode of The New Yorker’s new podcast on the concept of cringe comedy. It considers a recent prevalence of shows & films within the cultural zeitgeist that all (seemingly) are intended to dial the viewer’s discomfort to excruciating, crawl-out-of-skin limits… typically involving unknowingly oblivious strangers being made a fool.

This was in my back brain as I watched the awkwardly joyful, strange spectacle that is David Byrne’s wiggly eccentricity—at moments almost feeling like a parody of itself.

I hate being uncomfortable. I hate the build-up of horror films; I hate watching someone on stage totally bomb without the self-…