And Now For Something Completely Different

CIIS provided the setting for an unusual meeting of minds this semester as the celebrated comic actor and writer John Cleese joined Richard Tarnas, cofounder of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program, for a seminar entitled "The Comic Genius: A Multidisciplinary Approach."

More than 80 students, alums, and staff packed into Namaste Hall for two intensive weekends dominated equally by laughter and serious note taking. The two lecturers explored the history of comedic creativity from Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers all the way to Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Tina Fey, alternating between analysis, stories, and film and video illustrations as they examined the role of comedy in the human psyche and in cultural history.

"CIIS has done a lot of integrating over the years," said Robert McDermott, CIIS's president emeritus and a professor in the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program, "but I can think of none more delicious than bringing together an archetypal philosopher and a world-famous comedian. In addition to enjoying the comedy classics, Rick Tarnas's analyses, and John Cleese's sage humor, surely everyone in the room was delighting in their special friendship."

John Cleese is best known as an actor and writer, as a member of the legendary comedy group Monty Python, and for his award-winning television series Fawlty Towers (described by Entertainment Weekly as "the Sistine Chapel of sitcoms") and the critically acclaimed film A Fish Called Wanda.

But Cleese is no stranger to the academic world. A graduate of Cambridge University, where he read Law and was a member of the famous Cambridge Footlights Revue, he later served as the rector of the University of St. Andrews and as visiting professor at Cornell University. He is also the coauthor with Robin Skynner of two books on relationships: Families and How to Survive Them and Life and How to Survive It.

Cleese had first become acquainted with Tarnas's work when he read The Passion of the Western Mind in England in the 1990s and signed a contract with the BBC to host a documentary series based on that book. In the summer of 2003, Cleese became friends with Tarnas after attending a "Psyche and Cosmos" workshop that Tarnas and Stanislav Grof, a founder of transpersonal psychology, were offering at Esalen Institute.

"To my surprise, John was always one of the first to arrive at each session, sitting there with his notebook ready, sharply attentive to the lectures," Tarnas said.

A warm friendship ensued, and since then the two have taken part in many events together, such as at the Mind and Supermind Lecture Series in Santa Barbara, where Cleese interviewed Tarnas on the stage of the Lobero Theatre after the publication of his book Cosmos and Psyche.

Last summer while at the Eranos conference in Ascona, Switzerland, the two friends discussed the possibility of co-teaching a course that would examine the complex role that comedy plays in cultural life, from broad popular entertainment to subversive social critique. They also wanted to explore comedy's unusual capacity to express powerful archetypal impulses, both individual and collective, in ways that articulate otherwise suppressed energies and tensions.

Starting with Chaplin's emergence as the Tramp in 1914, moving on to the brilliant social comedy of Mike Nichols and Elaine May around 1960, and then the surreal hilarity of Monty Python, Tarnas and Cleese sketched out a course that would approach comedic creativity from several overlapping perspectives: cultural history, biography, depth psychology, archetypal astrology, performance, and writing.

Films would be assigned in advance-Duck Soup, The Great Dictator, The Life of Brian, Annie Hall, Roxanne, Groundhog Day-while film clips of various individual performances would be viewed in class.

The Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness (PCC) program, which Tarnas cofounded 15 years ago with Robert McDermott, Brian Swimme, and others, has always been committed to multidisciplinarity, and this topic seemed especially suited for such an approach.

One person attending the seminar was Board of Trustees member Lynne Kaufman, who afterwards said, "This was a rare opportunity to learn through laughter. One of the great pleasures of this unique class was the uniting of the power of archetypes with an insider's view of comedy to reveal new insights on both."

The stars seemed particularly well aligned for just such a course, as comedy has recently been center stage in the nation's cultural life.

According to Tarnas:

"During the past year especially, comedy has come to play a crucial role in confronting the major political and economic realities of our time. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert more or less carried the moral center of gravity within the mainstream media for the past eight years, speaking truth to power through their skillful satire and acute alertness to spin, propaganda, and deception.

A cultural milestone was Colbert's sensational performance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2006, with President Bush only a few feet away, hundreds of powerful Washington politicians and journalists in the audience, and thousands of overjoyed Internet viewers in the days immediately afterwards.

Since then we had Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Will Ferrell as George W. Bush watched by many millions on Saturday Night Live week after week during the election campaign, and with Ferrell afterwards on Broadway. In England in November, Robin Williams did a masterly performance welcoming the shift from the Bush era to Obama (‘America is officially out of rehab!') at Prince Charles's 60th birthday celebration, which John Cleese hosted. In March, Jon Stewart performed a weeklong devastating critique of the CNBC network's irresponsible journalism during the financial crisis.

Even President Obama appeared with the stand-up comic Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. There are deep underlying reasons for why comedy is playing such a critical role in our time."

President Joseph Subbiondo expressed his appreciation for the gift of John Cleese's presence at the school this term. "I am most grateful to Rick Tarnas for introducing John Cleese to the CIIS community. Mr. Cleese lives and supports our mission and core values. He is remarkably intellectual, articulate, and self-reflective-a rare comic genius."

Tarnas and Cleese have discussed the possibility of doing future courses together, and many in attendance were putting in their vote.

"I hope John and Rick do this again and somehow also bring it out into the world to reach many more people," said Grof, a distinguished adjunct professor in PCC, after the final day of the course. "They're bringing a particular depth of analysis to the subject that you can't find anywhere else."

"Like so many people, I grew up deeply affected by Monty Python's comedy," said PCC doctoral student Matthew Stelzner. "So it was totally surreal, and very special, that I would grow up to take a class where I would learn about the origins of those precious sketches direct from Cleese himself."

"Rick and John Cleese chose the most interesting aspects of a large topic and facilitated a very interactive experience for everyone," said Clinical Psychology student Adriana Albano. "I learned so much more from the class than I ever could have anticipated."

Cleese himself sees CIIS as holding a unique place in an academic world that has become, in his opinion, constrained and devitalized by its limited vision and hyperspecialization.

During his opening remarks on the last morning, he cited the opinion of his friend, the philosopher Stephen Erickson, who said that what is going on in the mainstream academy today "is the same as what was going on in the later Scholastics in the fourteenth century--I think it is dead. There is nothing of importance that is going to come out of it."

And, Cleese added: "This is just why CIIS is so important. There is something going on here that I think is more important than at any other university I've ever been at."