Thank You Maskman

Trying to understand Lenny Bruce’s dialect was a chore for me. It’s nothing personal, but my experience with heavy Brooklyn (?) accents is limited to the occasional expletive thrown in my direction on the rare occasion I venture into the city. Nonetheless, a few painful reviews of Thank You Maskman were sufficient to give me the slightest idea of what this animation was all about.

Maskman seems to be the ultimate altruist, embodying all that is good in American culture. Not only does he roam around, doing random acts of kindness of people and generally improving the quality of life in that animated world, but he does it all without expecting rewards or thanks. This sort of kindness, untainted by the expectation for reciprocal action, is all too often lacking in our society, as Bruce points out. Americans, Bruce seems to say, are suspicious of goodwill, and continually seek to figure out “the catch” in any seemingly charitable deed. Whether donations are made to receive a big tax break or to soothe ones’ ego, there is this deep-seeded perception that nothing is free. The characters in Thank You Maskman (caricatures of Americans) are so cynical that they even regard Jesus, the ultimate model for selfless love, as having sacrificed himself for selfish reasons. It’s no surprise that these animated individuals looked on Maskman with cynicism, and wanted to force him to accept something as a reward, just so their worldview that “nothing is free” could remain unshaken.

The latter part of the clip is disheartening – it seems to portray the death of altruism in America. Maskman becomes so enamored with receiving thanks that he shirks off further good works, feeling that he is entitled to take a break and reap the rewards of his prior deeds. Ironically, the fruits of his labor end up spoiling his altruistic spirit. I wonder if Lenny Bruce was also implying that Americans, even the exemplars of wholesomeness, reacted against religious revivals with “unnatural acts” that drove them even further from traditional American and Puritan values.