The Aristocrats Joke
A family walks into a talent agentâs office. Rather than attempt to describe for him what they do, they show him. They perform all manner of disturbing, disgusting and base stuff for a very long time, heightening all the while.
They end breathless, panting, proud. They say ta-dah without saying it. Except. The spent little girl actually says âta-dah.â She wasnât supposed to say it, but she said it. During rehearsals, âta-dahâ had been used as a directing note. Like âthink ta-dah.â
But then the girl, Amy, started saying it, and her parents thought it was okay that she said it because it got her to the right energy for the end flourish but her brother knew, he KNEW, she would say it, actually say it out loud on the day.
The brother was getting older. Heâd been thinking about college but didnât want to break up the act. He still believed his parents hung the moon, or he wanted to believe that, and his greatest fear was disappointing them. The act was their whole life. But was it his? He, the brother, Ian was his name, carried the weight of the world on his shoulders sometimes, which, he came by it honestly, because so did his dad.
Rather than let himself think about the future, Ian wrestled with what to do with his certainty that Amy was going to say the âta-dah.â He didnât want to overstep. He wasnât the writer of the piece - that was his mother. He wasnât the director - his father was. He knew better than to note another performer. So he lived with it.
It gave him a pain in his stomach but he lived with it.
Once, when they were rehearsing, Ian pitched âwhat if we all just say ta-dah at the end, like Amy does?â
This was as much as Ian could do. He was trying to call attention to the problem such that maybe Amy would finally understand not to do it or that his parents would tell her to stop. That maybe they would finally understand, like Ian did, the certainty of it popping up on the day.
But thatâs not what happened.
His parents went cold. They were chippy and cerebral like parents in a Noah Baumbach movie. Probably like Noah Baumbachâs actual parents. At least thatâs what Ian thought when they focused not on Amy, not on the ta-dah, but on the fact that Ian was pitching an idea, which was a taboo this family respected.
So there, in the talent agentâs office, the ta-dah hung in the air.
Ian suppressed wincing; he didnât betray his feelings. Ian was a professional. Amy didnât even realize her error, which, thatâs the fault of the director. But did their father blame himself? Did he?
No more than Noah Baumbachâs father would. The dad just filed the offense on a list he kept of slights against him. He maintained such a list for everyone in his life, which is no way to live, but the father thought it made him that much more show biz.
His wife, the childrenâs mother, mostly ignored her husbandâs list, but knew it would make its way into her writing someday.
At this point, the family looked to the talent agent. What did he think?
This moment was huge for them.
The agent smiled warmly, which he always did, as he was also a professional. His smile meant nothing anymore, which he regretted, but thatâs another story. The agent smiled and told them that their performance had certainly been energetic.
He asked with genuine interest the name of their act and then waved his hand and said âyou know what? Never mind. I shouldnât lead you on. I am sorry to tell you I already have an act just like this one, so you can see that I could not take you on as clients. I should have stopped you earlier,â he continued, âbut I could not be sure of the similarities until the finale, which was impressive, which is why I signed the act - the other one - in the first place. I wish you all good luck.â
Of course, the talent agent might suspect that Ianâs parents forced smiles upon their faces, but there was no world in which their lack of authenticity would concern him. Ian, however, saw something in them that concerned him a great deal.
His parents were flawed.
They allowed the tah dah. They had held that this talent agent would be their golden ticket to a better life. Perhaps his parents were chasing a dream they could never catch. Perhaps they were dooming him to a life chasing that same dream. Perhaps it wasnât even his dream. Perhaps his parents had not hung the moon after all. Perhaps the moon had worked its way through college in order to figure out what its dream was and then, after searching its soul hung itself in that night sky.
Perhaps that. Perhaps all of that.
In other perhapses, however, perhaps Amy would blame herself for the agentâs dismissal. Not now, but in years to come, in the reverse-scrutiny of rueful hindsight, she might, for hers was the only errant step in a routine so otherwise flawless that a talent agent might throw over a competing act in order to sign them. Was it inevitable? Would it be carved into stone, were Ian to use this moment as a crack in the wall, to be crowbarred open wide to fashion an escape from their troupe into the uncertainty and opportunity that college provided?
These thoughts were a school of piranhas inside of Ian, stripping to the bone the cow of a lifeâs path in the under a minute of however long it had just been.
But there was something else. Something stronger than the piranhas. Quicksand maybe, or a nuclear bomb or perhaps that cowâs friend. Yes, perhaps it was indeed another cow, one who could skeletonize piranhas in under a second. And that other cow was the thought of something the agent had said that started as nothing, then quickly became a seed that grew into this other cow steadily, until the other cow, robust with appetite for carnivorous fish had made short work of all of the piranhas and saved the first cow, the cow that was Ianâs life path.
He would stay in the act. He would stay with it for as long as it took. The note behind the agentâs note â the cow that ate the piranhas, was that they, Ian and his family, were marketable. If the other concern could make a good living with a similar act, so could they.
They would, Ian vowed in his thoughts and later his diary, outperform their competitors. They would make the agent regret his choice. Ianâs certainty of this seemed to radiate out to the rest of the family. His confidence - their confidence - outshone everything else.
As they packed their props, both household and exotic, Ian asked after the competition. He asked the talent agent the name of this rival act of parallel thinkers.
To which the talent agent replied dryly, like the inconsequential icing on too much cake to even care anymore, âThe Republican Party.â
âAnd just to be clear,â the agent said,â I mean the one from politics, not, like, some funny show business name or anything.â He thought about it for a second and then joked âthough politics is a funny kind of show business, if you think about it.â And he laughed, a little sound revealing that he agreed with himself.
The mom did not laugh. She said âdonât quit your day job, whichâ she continued, âalthough it is related to show business, is not the creative aspect.â She seemed finished with the thought, but she was not. âRemain rather,â she told the agent, âon this sideâ and she held out her palm towards the agentâs desk, â on this side,â she repeated âof show business.â
She knew sheâd be redrafting her barb all the way home because it wasnât perfect. It came out a little bit piecemeal, she felt, and harsher than she wanted it to too, she knew, but she wouldnât beat herself up too hard for that, because at least it felt honest. If anything, she strives for honesty. In her art, anyway.
I mean, who doesnât?
