Full disclosure: I find fodder for this Blog via both my stand-up persona’s Facebook feed, and a Google Alert for the term “stand-up comedy.” Is it a perfect system? No, I get numerous news items that are mere announcements or advertisements for shows. Every week, I basically wade through a sea of comics’ party fliers.
I also get interviews with international comics. I’ve mentioned before that I should probably just stay in my lane, cover American comics (or at least, those that work in America), and not confuse the issue with comics who come from different environments and play to drastically different audiences.
However, for me, that’s the good stuff. If stand-up’s roots are firmly in American soil, then the stand-up that appears in other countries is an adaptation of the form. These adaptations both highlight what our own form is, and point out how malleable stand-up can be – that it could be different, if we let it.
A case in point is Pragati K B’s interview with Aakash Mehta for The Hindu.com (9/6/2017). It is at once enlightening and maddening. Mehta talks about stand-up in ways that are sometimes familiar, sometimes strange, and sometimes at cross purposes.
Destiny
He begins with the idea that he “found comedy,” but also, that it’s like,
A cat hunts and a thirsty baby wants water. There is no informed choice or decision. It is always there, even if you don’t know it.
So there’s this idea that he was destined to do comedy, constantly seeking it before he even knew it existed. It’s a quaint worldview, and not uncommon here in America; however, I question it. Many feel they are destined, and fail, and the saying is, “Well, they didn’t try hard enough, didn’t persevere…” I like the idea that it’s about effort (not some immutable trait that successful comics possess), but that seems at cross purposes with the idea he’s going for, and he doesn’t express it. And unlike the hungry cat or the thirsty baby, the jonesing comic can live without his fix.
Laughter
When asked,
What distinguishes comedy from other performing art forms?
One, you cannot have an offstage rehearsal in comedy. Two, its reception is very subjective, because laughter is an involuntary action.
This is both a familiar worldview, and a bit strange. Many American comics (and theorists, like Freud) express that comedy needs an audience, and must be performed.
Further, I’ve stated before how it’s common to view laughter as involuntary. However, is that process therefore objective or subjective? To say that it’s subjective is to make us subjects, active participants. Yet if the process is beyond our control, we are reduced to objects in the face of it. This strikes me as at-odds.
Yet at the same time, he has that unifying view of laughter,
“And yet, everyone connects in the end with spontaneous applause and laugh together. For that minute, I have made the room grow smaller.” He says that in that moment, it’s humbling to think that humanity can still come together about something.
He treats laughter as an ultimate expression of unity: we come from different places, and yet we all laugh; and yet, if we recognize that if we are laughing subjectively (from our own background and experience), then we must be laughing for different reasons. Perhaps it only matters that we laugh, as shared laughter makes us feel unified; but we’d be fools to believe it.
Spontaneous vs. mechanical
I’m also baffled by his discussion of what he’s trying to do, and why he fails. He says,
I focus on thoughts. Thoughts must be funny. I go up on stage with just those thoughts.
So it would seem his act is ad lib, at least initially, which I’ve expressed seems insane to me, but to each their own. In any case, when he bombs, he says,
I have lost the audience, and I am just going through jokes mechanically.
If you don’t write jokes, but just work with “ideas,” then how does this make any sense? It seems he’s talking at cross purposes, unless the interviewer missed a distinction between his writing process (live) and his developed set. As Mehta notes, for many performers,
Every pause, breath, expression, stance, are meticulously planned.
It would seem that his finished work is meticulously planned as well, but it must still be performed.
Self-censoring
An insightful perspective Mehta offers is that,
[The] bigger the audience, more censored and safer the performance.
Nobody is going to jail yet. It is a matter of time though. But I choose to work with reality in mind, because I don’t have faith in the mob outside my house. We comics don’t need much of external checks and balances, because self censorship is a fact- there is an internal mechanism that controls what we say.
Scholars talk about the “chilling effect,” and “the cop in your head” as metaphors for self-censorship that result from implicit threats. However, this process is not independent of external checks and balances, but in anticipation of them. Mehta fears the mob, therefore he alters his material.
And yes, it seems like a lot of comics know that if they want to go mainstream, they have to perform less edgy material. Some, like Rory Scovel, revolt, go rogue and seek a niche audience. Others water down – see for instance every comic who has ever transitioned to their own television show.
What comedy can do
Perhaps it’s a case of too much inference by Pragati, who says,
Comedy can only cause catharsis in an individual and not social change, because it lacks antiquity, according to [Mehta].
Mehta’s own statements are a bit more situated:
[A]fter my set on suicides one night, a guy came up to me and said that he had attempted suicide, and that this was the first time he had laughed about it. That is the change comedy is capable of.
And also,
Birbigla [sic] is a storyteller and he has influenced me immensely. Every set of his opens my mind.
The comment about Birbiglia is consistent with the previous, in that his stories are limited to opening Mehta’s mind; however, how many individuals have to change before society changes? True, comedy feels personal, but is that it’s limit, or it’s camouflage? If comedy about suicide can open a person who attempted suicide’s mind, then what effect might it have on others who attempted it, and how much more on the rest of us?
Summary
The interview jumps around a bit, so that’s reflected in this analysis; however, what I take from it is that although comedy can feel like a calling, I question the “destiny” of it. I’ve also called into question the idea of laughter as involuntary; it can be voluntary, and it involves thought, if only “fast thought,” and recognition of patterns and forms. One can write spontaneously (in fact, does it happen any other way? Even if it’s only at home, at my desk or on my morning dog walk?), but finished jokes are products of work, and the delivery is key. Although he recognizes self-censorship, he doesn’t recognize it as a result of external influence. Also, although he recognizes that comedy can change people, he doesn’t equate people to society. At what point does a group of people become a society? And does comedy have to do it alone? If multiple messages are arguing the same thing, has comedy contributed, or just followed the trend?
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
