## Colophon tags:: [[&arc]] [[&article]] url:: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-banal-horror-of-jimmy-fallon date:: [[2026-05-11]] %% title:: The Banal Horror of Jimmy Fallon type:: [[clipped-note]] file:: published:: 2026-04-20T22:22:19.000Z [Click to Archive](https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-banal-horror-of-jimmy-fallon) %% archive:: ## Notes short:: - There is a distinctive, deeply uncanny horror to the way Jimmy Fallon [laughs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P54ohvf_WY). Look it up—there are literally hundreds of videos showing him breaking out into [laughter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wZEQqocsx0) at the slightest provocation. It is not a reaction (he sometimes won’t even wait for his guest to get to their carefully scripted punchline). Rather, it is a *performance,* a sudden, corporeal convulsion. - Fallon acts as the high priest of a terrified optimism, his rictus grin serving as a shield against the encroaching silence of the real. Here, in the sanitized, over-lit heart of the American culture industry, there is an inescapable horror. But it isn't a monster lurking in the shadows; it is the manic, unblinking insistence that actually, there are no shadows at all.