Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
In Defense of Steve Martin’s “King Tut”
On the latest Ricochet podcast, Minnesotan segue-master @jameslileks impugned Steve Martin’s classic “Saturday Night Live” performance of “King Tut” thusly:
“It’s not a funny song, it just isn’t. It’s not a funny bit, there’s nothing really to it that requires anybody to look at it now. Only, sort of, their late Boomer betters saying, ‘oh, Steve Martin is the bomb, you must watch this, this is brilliant,’ but it’s not. You were stoned in college when you watched that and you thought it was funny but it isn’t.”
Lies. Damnable lies. Now, defending any joke is like dissecting a frog: you’ll figure out what makes it tick, but the patient dies in the process. With that said, here’s the bit:
To modern eyes, “King Tut” was cheesy and lame. But in 1978, that was the point.
That decade served up a slew of “important” stand-up comedians who were edgy, cynical, and highly political. George Carlin issued diatribes on capitalism and religion. The far-funnier Richard Pryor was laser-focused on racial injustice. Andy Kaufman intentionally alienated club crowds with his anti-comedy. Robert Klein and David Steinberg were high-brow intellectuals. And nearly every comic lectured America about Vietnam, Richard Nixon, and the hollow hypocrisy of bourgeois life.
Then along came Steve Martin. Sick of the conventional joke formula, he spent years crafting a stand-up act without punchlines. And the way to make audiences laugh sans jokes was by acting silly. He paraded around in bunny ears and a fake arrow through his head, embarrassingly contorting his body to sell the act. All the while, he pretended to be just as self-important and overly earnest as his fellow comics. The juxtaposition is what made it funny. (See his intro to the song above.)
The tastemakers took themselves far too seriously to risk looking silly; they had to be smarter than the audience. Although highly intelligent, Martin presented himself as the dumbest, least self-aware guy in the room. Instead of educating Americans on their evils, he brought back comedy to its actual function: making people laugh.
In a way, he was doing what the original Star Wars did in 1977. After a decade of bleak, dystopian sci-fi, George Lucas revamped the old Flash Gordon serials into a fun, popcorn-friendly escapism.
I was just 11 when “King Tut” came out and my friends and I loved it. The Egyptian exhibition had been talked about all year and kids always enjoy watching adults make fools of themselves. So add Gen Xers to the Boomers who look back on Martin with fondness.
James is correct that a millennial watching it today without context would be underwhelmed, to say the least. But as a product of its time, “King Tut” remains a comedy classic. QED.
SaveSave
Published in Entertainment, Humor
I remember it well and thought it was a hoot. Much better was his riff “Well we’ve all had a pretty good time tonight, considering we’re all going to die.” That’s comedy!
When I was in eighth grade, we put on a pantomime production at school for charity. My friend (ex-boyfriend now) did the entire King Tut skit. He’s always been a character himself so he really acted it out and had the costumes and everything, and it was hilarious. I was 13 and although the parents in the crowd were laughing because they were familiar with Steve Martin, we kids just thought it was goofy and hilarious all on its own. Another friend did a rendition of Tiny Bubbles in which he got increasingly drunk throughout the song, and in my opinion it was King Tut’s only competition.
Who else would have a condo made of stone-a.
The social commentary was regarding the opinion of some people at the time that it was crass to ‘commercialize’ something like the body and effects of a dead king from another country. The Tut exhibit was the first time we started hearing rumblings about ‘cultural appropriation’ as I recall. Martin’s gag was basically a riff on taking priceless artifacts and the body of a king out of his grave and parading them around the world for profit. I remember the exhibition had to make lots of promises about treating the material with reverence, and that the mummy would be returned to its burial place.
And in fact, King Tut is once again back in his sarcophagus in his burial chamber in the Valley of Kings. as promised.
Personally, I had no problem with the exhibition, and thought it was snobbish of those who opposed it. The rich might be able to travel to Egypt, but for most people at the time, the only way they would ever get to see this stuff was by having it come to them. It was a bit of democratised archaeology. Of course some people hated that.
“He gave his life for tourism.”
What am I supposed to do with $3000 worth of cat toys?
You can’t return them, cuz they’ve got spit all over them.
Totally disagree. I find The Jerk to be as funny today as I did as a kid. And I’m with Jon and against James on King Tut. I’m sure someone can explain the technical reasons why I am wrong for finding Steve Martin funny and not The Three Stooges or Monty Python, but I don’t care.
Yeah, I believe that’s correct.
Well, I bet if it weren’t for King Tut, the Bangles wouldn’t have recorded “Walk Like an Egyptian,” so there’s that.
There’s a story Dennis Miller told on his radio show about going to see the exhibit in New York and contrasting the reverence shown by the exhibit itself while street hustlers were right outside the door yelling, “Tut s–t! Get your Tut s–t right here!”
(Also I recall reading that we’re not supposed to call him “King Tut” anymore because that’s racist or something, but who knows anymore?)
Er… “I know what boys like”
So we’ve identified another fault line among the membership.
MTGA and #NeverTut
Thanks, Jon! My youngest brother was a huge Steve Martin fan; Tut and “Well, excuuuuuse ME!” became running gags in our house…His “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs” cracked my mom up no end – especially the Catholic verse…Me, too.
This one always makes me smile…
And he despises Karen Carpenter. I like his writing (usually), but he’s Just Plain Wrong about King Tut.
Lileks is right about “King Tut” and Karen Carpenter.
He’s wrong about Man of La Mancha, though.
Karen Carpenter was the best singer into a microphone since young Frank Sinatra.
Matters of taste are personal, People like what they like.
I somehow missed this and I’m late, but I just wanted to go on record as saying that the King Tut routine was hilarious.