The Joke's on U.
Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff’s prop magnets connect in the shape of a heart. Smirnoff taught a weeklong psychology class at
Missouri State University last week.
(Barbara L. Johnston | Philadelphia Inquirer)
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By Jeff Daniel
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
08/15/2006
SPRINGFIELD, Mo.
The first punch line arrived about, oh, let's call it the half-minute mark. Standing before his psychology class at Missouri State University, Yakov Smirnoff - yes, that Yakov Smirnoff - promised that the one-week course on relationships would be short and to the point.
"All you need to know is this," he revealed. "Viagra. Class dismissed."
Thank you and good night. Drive safely. Don't forget to tip your waitress.
And so began "Living Happily Ever Laughter," or as the Missouri State syllabus more clinically described it, Pysch 197, a one-credit-hour course that began and ended last week. About 50 students enrolled in the class, the group an eclectic mix ranging from sorority girls to senior couples to psychology majors. Some said they were drawn by the subject matter, others by the thought of learning from an instructor who likely wouldn't bore them to tears.
That instructor, of course, was Smirnoff, a fact that prompts your inner student to raise its hand and ask: Yakov Smirnoff teaching college-level psychology? What gives?
Let's rewind a couple of years. Smirnoff, a mainstay of the entertainment scene in Branson, Mo., since 1992, picks up a copy of Time magazine one day and reads about "the science of happiness." The subject resonates.
This is what I'm involved in, he thinks to himself, but I don't have the college training. In his early 50s, he ponders a midlife shift. Why not go for a graduate degree in the subject? (Smirnoff earned an art degree before emigrating from the former Soviet Union.)
He immediately fires off e-mails to several of the professors mentioned in the Time article. All respond, but it is Martin Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania who brings the strongest connection. It just so happened that Seligman was starting up a masters program in Positive Psychology. He invited Smirnoff aboard.
This spring, the "What a country!" comic walked the stage in cap and gown, Ivy League degree in hand.
"I've been conducting seminars for a while now," Smirnoff says. "I was on local TV promoting them one day, and the host ended by saying 'Thank you, Professor Smirnoff.' And it clicked in my head: Do I have enough credentials to actually teach? Because that is something I'd like to do for the rest of my life."
Not that he'd give up the comedy gig. Smirnoff still performs more than 200 shows a year in his 1,800-seat theater, which isn't bad at all for a guy who first gained fame during the Cold War '80s.
In many ways, his performance and academic worlds intersect. Smirnoff covers relationships in his stage act, while his psychology pursuits lean heavily to what he terms the Age of Enlaughterment. (Insert pun boos here).
Without laughter, he contends, all relationships are doomed to failure.
Smirnoff speaks from personal experience, something he did quite frankly during his first class period at Missouri State. While slides of his former wife and his two children loomed large on screen behind him, the teacher detailed a marriage that started as a fairy tale and concluded with a not-so-happy ending. The couple slowly drifted apart, he said. They had forgotten how to laugh.
When talking about leaving wife and his children, Smirnoff choked up, recalling that at the time, he felt his life would never again be the same.
"It's tough to talk about those things, but I wanted to do that," he says. "I have to let the students know that I'm for real, that the pain is real."
Smirnoff says he's now on good terms with his ex-wife, Linda, who lives in Bentonville, Ark., with their daughter Natasha, 15, and son Alexander, 13.
If such soul searching sounds a bit too serious for you - this is the Age of Enlaughterment, isn't' it? - then keep in mind that minutes earlier, Smirnoff was in full shtick mood. Something along these lines:
"I married an American woman. Well, not a real American ... she's from Oregon."
The class cracked up, even if they didn't seem quite sure why. Smirnoff then reflexively launched into an old stand-up standby:
"Anyone here from Oregon? Raise your hand if you are?" For a moment it seemed as if the comic, make that teacher, was working a large room in Vegas. And for the next three hours, the line between academia and entertainment would regularly blur.
One minute, students were learning about duality and hormonal differences; the next, they watched as Smirnoff donned a goofy cap that resembled an exposed human brain. His thinking cap, as you might have guessed.
"I probably loaded this first class with more jokes," he said afterward. "That was to connect with the students, to break the ice. Once we start practicing (role playing), the laughter will come from the situations, not from my script. There will be some jokes, but it's not going to be a show."
Not that many of the students would mind the latter. Sean Murphy, 23, a second-semester transfer student from St. Louis Community College at Meramec, took the class to satisfy credit requirements. But the real lure, he said, was Smirnoff.
"I went to one of his shows in Branson two years ago, and when I saw he was teaching a class, I was like, 'Heck yeah!'" says Murphy, of west St. Louis County. After seeing a flier for the course, he checked with the registrar's office to make sure the announcement wasn't a joke.
"I don't plan on it being boring," he said. "I figure I'll get a credit, a good laugh and learn something."
Sarah Boyd, a nursing major from Springfield, Mo., enrolled on the suggestion of her adviser.
"She said it would be good to learn about healing through laughter," Boyd said.
As for the curiosity of having a Yakov Smirnoff class on her college transcripts, the freshman figured it was something of a fun curiosity.
"Everyone I've told has been like, 'A class with 'Yakov Smirnoff? What?'" she said laughing.
The class's first day was, in the end, not entirely different from the norm. A bit of lecturing. Some class participation. An explanation of the syllabus. A homework assignment.
Of course, there also was that New Age music playing on a sound system during bathroom breaks ... and the whole shebang being filmed like some sort of TV special ... and the local cameraman popping in for some nightly news footage. And don't forget that brain cap, or the appearance of a second Viagra joke.
After the last of his students had departed, Smirnoff loosened his wildly colored tie from the collar of his neon-green shirt and relaxed.
"I feel great," he said in his familiar Russian accent. "If you'd have asked me before class if I'd do this again, I'd have said, 'Let's wait and see.' But based upon the way things went today, I'd say yes - a resounding yes."
One half-expected Smirnoff - definitely excited about his college gig - to spontaneously let forth with his wide grin and a new catchphrase: "What a campus!"
But that never happened. After three hours at the lectern, the teacher was probably tapped out. And to top things off, Smirnoff had already stored away his thinking cap.
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