Comments on: “Laughing With” by Regina Spektor

By: Sarah

Sarah — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:51:27 +0000

Hey! I recently got addicted to this song, and I set it on repeat for a couple days! Granted, a lot of Regina Spektor’s songs make me uncomfortable because of their Biblical/religious references and the ambivalence that she displays. (i.e. Man of a Thousand Faces: ‘And begins his quiet ascension / Without anyone’s sturdy instruction / To a place of no religion / Has found a path to our alikeness’) But I think this song is one of the ones that gives religion/God the benefit of the doubt.

But as for the lyrics, they gave me the impression of a sort of internal dialogue or a representation of a self-assured, contradictory society – ‘no one’s laughing’ vs. ‘God can be funny.’ The lyrics are conversational, and almost satirical towards people’s ACTUAL reactions to reality while exposing the fallacy of their alleged beliefs. I wonder if ‘we’re all laughing WITH God’ is just like an extension of the dialogue, the final self-justification that people use when they’re not taking God seriously.

But what I liked about the song was that she explores how a lot of people, in their time of deepest emotional need, intuitively DO turn to prayer and to God in whatever capacity they know how. I have a friend whose Grandma died, so after the funeral she came up to me and said ‘I decided that I’m a Christian now.’ Like Noah mentioned from CS Lewis’ quote, when we’re faced with the hard cold realities of life, something in us cries out, and turns to God…

By: Emily Kim

Emily Kim — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 20:09:32 +0000

I really like this song. I think she’s done a really great job of showing how God is viewed in our mainstream society. I like how she exposes the way God is referred to in public discourse, someone who we laugh at and make jokes about. As a graduate student at Berkeley, I experience this a lot. So witty, so smart is the person who says sardonic things about Jesus, the Catholic church, televangelists, and homophobic bigots – lumping them all all together, Christians are all the same, you know…it’s amazing how people can bring that into a conversation that has NOTHING to do with religion at all.

I especially like how she leaves it ambiguous in her string of “No one’s laughing at God when…” because during those hard times, the down times, sometimes people turn to God and don’t think He’s a joke after all…or sometimes they’re angry at God…etc.

It does give me something to think about when it says “We’re all laughing with God…”
A weird reference to “we’re not laughing AT you, we’re laughing WITH you?”
A way to subtly provoke the self-reflective question: should we be laughing at ourselves perhaps?

By: Noah Kang

Noah Kang — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:06:05 +0000

Although it is sort of difficult to understand what exactly Ms. Spektor here is talking about, I think her song does carry a good message. I think she’s just commenting that while people mock God and Christians when the good times are a rolling for them and they’re comfortable and Christians are doing and saying dumb things (which they do with enough frequency), when life hits, “no one laughs at God.” The following is an excerpt from therebelution.com (a great blog by Alex and Brett Harris, check it out!) that explains what I’m trying to say a lot better…

“C.S. Lewis wrote, “Pain is God’s megaphone to the world” — and I think “Laughing With” makes that point abundantly clear. As our brother Josh wrote on his blog, “suffering strips away our flippant attitude towards God. We can laugh at God when all is well or when we encounter a caricature of him, but when tragedy strikes we’re confronted with the reality that we’re helpless.” No one laughs at God in a hospital…”