Today at the Convention Center, Austin icon and OG “outsider artist” Daniel Johnston told two jokes before a jam-packed day stage crowd:
“I heard they just sentenced a man to the death penalty… for trying to commit suicide.”
“I heard the Jews are having a pajama party… at the concentration camp.”
Daniel punctuated the last one, which drew a pretty uncomfortable silence, with a Nazi salute and a screechy “Heil Hitler.” I had a hard time watching The Devil and Daniel Johnston, the 2005 documentary that told DJ’s pretty unsettling story, but I had an even harder time watching this guy first hand. His set was tough. For at least 18 or the 20 minutes, he shook uncontrollably, gripping the microphone sometimes with two hands, singing music from an upcoming release entitled The Death of Satan. His “new” backing band (The Nightmares), who had a few scenes in the documentary, sounded disapointingly disinterested. The guitarist chewed gum and sat lazily on a stool (I also later overheard him talking outside—“Danny can be a bit frustrating sometimes,” he said to a handful of smokers). By the time Johnston wrapped things up with the classic “True Love Will Find You In The End,” everyone seemed ready to cheer, sort of.
Daniel has bipolar disorder, and took more drugs in the 80s than the entire city of Austin will take at the next 21 SXSW’s. Still, is he allowed to get away with something like joke #2? I really don’t know.
Daniel has been telling those jokes for at least four years now. He started them while we were touring together in Germany. I worked as his tour manager on and off from 1999-2004. I could never figure out what sparked them but i believe being in Germany might have influenced those statements. The challenge here is that everyone wants a logical explanation for why he would say something so insensitive and horrible but I truly believe some things that come from his mouth are beyond his own logic. They could be ideas built up subconsciously over time. I also believe Daniel still loves to shock people even after all the medication. He had that trait as a kid. I am sure Jeff Feuerzeig has an opinion he experienced this strangness while filming the Devil and Daniel Johnston.
Comment by Don Goede — March 20, 2007 @ 1:05 pm
I am a big fan of Daniel Johnston, I really don’t see how the last joke is necessarily anti-semetic?... I agree that it is severely an insensitive joke, but not a racist joke. Generally people with mental illness, don’t have the capacity to really understand how a statement like that may be recieved, and sometimes I have noticed that perhaps the original intention is lost in the delivery. Danny is not anti-semetic… he is mentally ill. Are people that overcome with victimism, that they might take an insensitive comment by a person who is mentally disturbed, seriously to heart? That is just ignorant. As much as I love Danny, I may be biased, but I also happen to have Jewish friends and family, and I don’t believe that they would take that statement seriously. How can you? when you are dealing with a person who lacks mental control and stability. how can you possibly know his intentions?
Any person who would be offended by something a mentally unstable person said.. is a fucking baby… the same type of person who would excute the retarded…
Quit trying to rationalyze the irrational… quit trying to catagorize and label that which can not be labeled and catagorized. He is a sweet man, who believes in love, but he is also very very disturbed, he isn’t a racist.. and you’re an asshole for trying to say something so fucking retarded and ignorant!
Comment by Mary — July 30, 2007 @ 3:21 pm
hey there—
i didn’t write this post, but calling someone retarded over a thought is pretty retarded and ignorant, eh?
just sayin!
Comment by grayson — July 30, 2007 @ 9:50 pm
i’m jewish, and i don’t think his weird little joke was anti-semitic. the uniforms jews wore in the concentration camps did kinda look like pajamas, and i can see why he thought this was funny. pajamas are funny.
the heil hitler thing is not funny, but Daniel has a formidable mental illness, as the previous poster mentioned. When he’s in the manic phase, Dan hears voices, sees visions, and sees Satan and demons all over the placee. Medication can keep him sane, but he goes off the meds before shows so he can bring that crazy energy onstage.
I kinda wonder how his parents feel about Jews, tho- they came off as the strictest foot-washin Baptists ever in the film. And most fundamentalists, even the ones with a token Hebrew friend or two, are still kind of mad that the Jews (they say) had Jesus killed.
Anyone ever heard Dan talk about the Jews in any other context?
Comment by Dan Tastic — August 21, 2007 @ 10:13 pm
The issue is problematic in my mind. But Daniel Johnston isn’t the first or only person to make such a joke or an offensive statement and get away with it. John Lennon made homophobic and anti-semitic remarks during his life, one of such he made while during a drunken tirade saying about Eliot Mintz, “I don’t want to talk to that bastard Jew!” He called the next day to personally apologize to Mintz. I think, in hindsight, people saw that he was suffering from alcoholism and forgave him, even though what he did was wrong. That’s the way I see it and still deeply admire him, because he wasn’t homophobic or anti-semitic wholistically.
As for Daniel Johnston, the issue is even more problematic. I doubt that he meant any harm with the jokes, as inappropriate as they are. But he isn’t the only one either. Rivers Cuomo has made similar jokes during performances, and he isn’t mentally ill.
However, I find it problematic in my mind, and understand that it is upsetting. But what really are we going to do about this? We should acknowledge that it is inappropriate, but I don’t really think it’s something he needs to be labeled as anti-semitic or bad for it.
I didn’t find joke #1 to be offensive at all. I found it to be a great, dark, and cathartic joke. But sometimes dark humor can be carried too far and can be offensive and insensitive, like the second one.
Comment by Andy Jones — October 2, 2007 @ 10:05 pm