Rubbish Words

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just live our lives simply and pleasantly, absent of worrisome things like facts, truth, or reality? We could see the world in a much different way if we paid no attention to these things, but few amongst us have the audacity to live like this.

Karl Pilkington is one of these few. In many respects, it takes a special person to shed the conventions of rationality and break free of trivial issues like global warming or politics, and instead, focus on what’s happening in the world of monkeys or why you never see old men

I stumbled upon Karl by accident. One boring evening I was rummaging through my roommates DVD collection and found the British version of the Office. I was hooked; I watched the whole series in a night. Immediately I searched for more comedy from Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant, famed writers of British comedy series The Office and Extras. What I found was Gervais and Merchant’s radio show starring Karl as the oft opinionated producer. I became so enthused by Karl’s babbling that I nearly forgot about the first two comedians. Rarely heard from in the early episodes, Karl began to become more of a presence when a pattern of outrageously off the cuff comments started to be broadcast with increasing frequency. Karl began to rise to fame with his commentary that some would call genius—comedic and philosophically.

Karl didn’t come in with a big bang. As a child, he grew up in Manchester and frequently missed school to go on holidays because they were cheaper when the other kids were in school. The council estate Karl was raised on (a community of low cost housing units) leaves little wonder he grew up strange, “Karl's school and its catchments area were near a chemical plant. This could explain his inherent fascination with freaks (‘I just like odd stuff’), as the school contained a couple of (unrelated) pupils who had big heads and webbed hands, together with a boy with a pigeon chest and a boy whose father had big eyelids”. Down the street, Karl often describes the neighbours who kept a horse in their living room, and the crazy lady who pushed a carriage containing a brick with a face painted on it. Dropping out at 15, he enjoyed many jobs like a paper route and dance DJ until one day he found a hospital radio room where he started a pirate station to occupy himself when his dad was in the hospital. The hospital kicked him off the air—he was scaring the patients—but Karl never looked back from that point and soon moved to London to pursue a career as a radio producer. Coming from these experiences, it’s no wonder his viewpoints come off a bit weird.

Karl has often been described as having a perfectly round, bald, Charlie Brown head. A blank expression crosses his oddly shaped face, with sad eyes that don’t seem to be looking at anything in particular. His mouth hangs slightly open, a sign many would see as dullness or ineptitude. He is the butt of many jokes, often subjected to head squeezing from friends; a reality he begrudgingly accepts. But it’s neither of these that distinguish him; Karl has made a name for himself by making outrageous comments. Karl, who has been a radio producer in London for many years, is a man of deep mediation and complex thought which he is not afraid to publicly voice. Unfortunately, it’s just most of the time these complex thoughts aren’t that good.

Still others, including close friends, claim the opposite about Karl’s intellect. As Gervais puts it, “received wisdom says there’s a fine line between a genius and an idiot. Not true. Karl’s an idiot, plain and simple. Very simple. Some people have proclaimed him a genius, but they’re idiots.” But is this always the case? Let’s take a look at Karl’s theories to put this claim to the test.
eating Twix bars. As Karl has so deftly pointed out, “if you saw an old fella eating a Twix, you would think, ‘that's a bit weird innit?’” In a world where truth and knowledge are so heavily regarded, how can any one possibly figure out the nuances of daily life? Lucky of all for us, there’s Karl.

"I look at life like a big book and sometimes you get half way through it and go 'Even though I've been enjoying it, I've had enough. Give us another book'"- Karl describes his life in “book form”

Somewhat amazingly, Karl has managed to write a book full of musings and life philosophies in The World of Karl Pilkington. With the help Gervais and Merchant, Karl speaks to all topics, a modern day renaissance man. To many it’s amazing that Karl can read a book, never mind write one; “unencumbered by knowledge and impervious to logic, Karl ambles down a heuristic path to enlightenment under the edifying influence of Ricky and Merchant.” Much of the fodder comes from Karl’s tendency to absorb seemingly random trivia from all around him, leading into surreal stories that come from misunderstood and misattributed stories. Famously, Karl tells of the time NASA sent a monkey up on a space shuttle. But the truth ends there, as Karl continues to explain how the monkey controlled the spacecraft by using banana dispensing levers. And as far as he’s concerned, it’s the absolute truth. It’s as though once a story leaves his lips, it becomes crystallized knowledge in his own mind because he will disregard any rebuttal regardless of fact, probability, or reason. Actually, as he often claims, "knowledge is almost annoying", and he frequently laments substantiated knowledge shown to him that he feels merely complicates his life. Gervais “attributes [Karl’s idiotic theories] to what he calls Pilk mental ‘filter’, describing it as a process in which Pilkington receives sensible, accuringtonn'sate information and mentally translates it into what Gervais and Merchant frequently describe as ‘absolute twaddle’”.

So if what Karl says is absolute drivel, why do so many people like what he has to say? Perhaps it’s because as strange as the things he says are, there’s always the sense of ‘wait, I kind of see what he’s saying’. For instance, Karl bumbles his way around the steeped traditions of the Catholic Church wondering, "it's the way they also said they've now got a new pope. He's hardly new is he? Why didn't they learn from the last one? They keep taking on old people! Me dad couldn't even get a gig in B and Q [a do-it-yourself home renovations store] and he's only 60!" Often the audience is left to sympathize with Karl, who just can’t quite grasp complicated things like evolution or longstanding social structures. However, as people openly shake their head dumbfounded by Karl, privately each of us is afflicted by instances and degrees of blissful ignorance. In fact, there are few amongst us—excluding those who are lying—who won’t admit to at one time or another feeling as though there were a train of thought that wouldn’t stop at our station. The difference may be as simple as perceptions of stupidity versus intelligence, one where we either remain on the tracks or careen off the trail and find another path.

"Does the brain control you or are you controlling the brain? I don't know if I'm in charge of mine." - Karl unintentionally expresses the complex question, who controls what and how we think?

Can it be the case that the idiot can also hold the paradoxical role of philosopher, genius, or even trusted adviser? As tempting as it might be to simply discard the idiotic ramblings as worthless, it may benefit us to take the difficult task of examining the opposite. Karl, a modern day court jester, in many ways mimics the traditional role that the jester held in court and literature. In literature, for instance King Lear, the jester was the source of “uncommon commonsense” and honesty. As Karl does on-air, the jester had an open license to speak candidly and without hesitation or regard to common conventions. Ironically, when bright men said similar things to the jester in a more academic or refined manner, they were incarcerated—or worse. In a strange twist of fate, the jester, who was the lowliest occupant of the court, became the most trusted and useful adviser to the king. Karl, a modern day jester, often unwittingly and unceremoniously fills this jester role for the world to hear.

It’s hard to convince anyone that something so superficially stupid might contain significant wisdom. That’s fine. Even if Karl gives you intellectual dyspepsia, prepared properly Karl provides a feast for notably brighter individuals to digest. If nothing else, the inane comment can be the sign as a fissure in commonsense and a good place to investigate ourselves. As Karl questions standards of beauty, something the most intelligent theorists struggle with, it’s difficult to decipher weather he is profound or obtuse:

You can be an ugly baby and everyone goes "awww innit nice?" There was some women in a cafe the other week that I was sat in, and she came up and she sat down with her mate and she was talkin' loudly goin' on about "oh the baby's lovely." They said it's got, er, lovely big eyes, er, really big hands and feet. Now that doesn't sound like a nice baby to me. I felt like sayin' it sounds like a frog. But I thought I don’t know her, there's only so much you can say to a stranger. I don’t know what kept me from sayin' it.

What’s more, he’s partly, maybe completely, right. Not everyone can be above average in looks, not everyone can be beautiful. We can’t disregard an average, and is it any better to be a low degree of beautiful as opposed to simply ugly? Furthermore, as Karl notes, these notions are so deeply engrained in our societal conventions how do we even begin to talk about them? Although not intentional, there is a lot to discuss from the philosopher with little restraint and real life practical insight.

Is Karl a genius? Perhaps. That’s up for each of us to decide. Likely, in most cases, there will be no doubt that his nonsense is merely disposable fluff. However, just as each of us can have those embarrassing “duh” moments that reveal our underlying stupidity, it’s equally possible to find those moments of sheer brilliance in the jester’s rants, because these are the starting points for deeper inquiry. Yes, we are indeed lucky to have Karl Pilkington.

Acknowledgments

When reading this essay, one will immediately recognize that there are liberal usages of quotations and facts without any regard to proper academic citations. Karl would be proud. Any attempts to properly incorporate these citations came off sloppy and brutish. I wouldn’t have that disgrace that pages of such an obviously monumental piece of fine art. I will admit, however, that I couldn’t have possibly completed this piece without drawing from a few exceptional sources that seemed to have melded into one voice. The foremost source of drawings, quotations, and facts is the fantastic book, The World of Karl Pilkington by Karl Pilkington, Stephen Merchant, and Ricky Gervais. Other sources include www.google.com’s image search feature, are personally created, on www.rickygervais.com, or are from the awesome resource www.pilkipedia.co.uk. I would suggest starting with any of these places for your now obviously burgeoning Karl fascination.