I’ve already written a bit on the documentary, Dying Laughing, but there’s a lot more to say there [plus, I transcribed quite a bit of stuff, so I’m inclined to use it!]. So let’s talk about who the comic is on stage. There are a couple of views, broadly cast as “Being yourself” or “Creating a persona.”
Becoming Yourself
In the movie, comic Tom Dreeson asserts,
Every stand-up comedian starts out emulating another comedian because they know that works. But then another night, you let a bit of you out and it gets a laugh and you let a little bit more of you out and then pretty soon, you’re you on stage.
Rick Overton and Paul Provenza agree that it takes (in Provenza’s words) “a period of many, many years of growing as a human being and being on stage and developing your own material where you can really get a sense of your own voice and your own identity,” where your act “gels” and becomes “comfortable to you.” Overton adds,
And you have the greatest comfort and latitude with stuff you don’t have to feel like a thief about. When you can use your own stuff, that’s the forever fountain.
It seems that, though the film lumps them together, Overton is here discussing the material, what topics you talk about and anecdotes you share, while Provenza is discussing the comic’s persona. Provenza seems to agree with Dreeson that you become more and more yourself on-stage.
Then we get a testimonial from Cocoa Brown, who says she used to “do material,” but after one rough moment recovering from insulting an audience member,
I realized comedy is real, I’m telling her something that really happened to me… and that’s when I realized what my funny is, my funny is real, my funny is truth.
This idea previously appeared in the opening of the film, when Overton is discussing what comedy is: It’s “full approval or full disapproval on your essence, on what you actually believe and how you really see life.” And this is followed shortly after with Jerry Lewis’ emphatic assertion, “When you risk and it scores, it’s hallelujah.”
The idea also appears in the discussion of hecklers and booing. Suli McCullough notes that audiences begin judging you the moment you walk on stage. Paul Provenza discusses why their disapproval hurts so bad:
It’s like there’s no oxygen and you can’t stop. If you stop, you lose. Because we’re all trying to just be who we are. You know when you’re a musician and you go up there, you’ve got songs that you or somebody else has written. If you’re a painter, you’ve got what you did with paint. It’s all there and it’s separate from who you are. With a comedian, it’s you, there is nothing..it’s you. They don’t not like you’re material, they don’t not like the clothes that you wear, they don’t like you. It’s about as personal as it gets.
I’ve always shied away from being too personal,” he said. “I’m an actor, too, and as an actor, you don’t really want people to know the real you because that helps you as an actor. But as a comedian, you want people to know the real you because it makes you funnier and more relatable. I was always trying to ride that balance. But for this, I just thought ‘fuck it,’ I’m going to go out and tell people who I am and how I feel about things…. People really like when people get vulnerable and open up. It’s been great.
Like most comedians, part of what Georgio discovered was that stories about his life and personal experiences made for great material.
“Personal experience was definitely the way in. Trying to find a way to relay my own life so it doesn’t seem crazy. That’s kind of been the thing that I’ve had the most practice in, having to explain where I’m from, what I am,” Georgio said. “Anyone who’s a minority in this country is sort of put in the position to have to explain their existence. I kind of had to do that my whole life.”
This brings up the notion, told to every person trying to find love: “Just be yourself.” To which we respond, like the minor character in Free Enterprise : “I AM myself! I’ve been myself for 20 [or 30, or 40!] years! It’s clearly not working!” [I know, my friends and I were the only ones who saw that movie]
Sometimes, this gets confused. Christian Becker of Pastemagazine.com (7/5/2017) talking about Deon Cole’s Netflix episode of The Standups, says,
In his episode Cole walks on stage with a piece of paper in hand, as if he’s a beginner trying to work out material for a later act. But he’s anything but a beginner, and that persona he puts out there is all intentional.
But then, at the end of the same paragraph, he ends with,
While comedians will often times play a character or show off a larger than life personality on stage, Cole is taking off that mask and just being himself.
And then again, later in the article, he again refers to the comic as “self-aware,”
How self-aware does he get? He opens by literally explaining to the crowd that he’s there to try out some jokes, “and if they don’t work out then you’ll never see me again.” His closer is him just leaving the stage, purposefully skipping the “big finale” that other comics like to end on.
This strikes me as wishy-washy, it’s an intentional persona, but he’s “just being himself.” He’s self-aware, and that’s part of the act, but it’s also him being “real” and “toning down the theatrics.” But if it’s part of the act, then isn’t it “theatrical” by nature?
Luckily, this is not the way everyone views it. Some recognize that it is not “truly” you on stage; that everyone has a persona.
Roles and code switching
Some critics, such as Joanne Gilbert, believe that every comic creates a persona, a narrator; a humorous version of yourself that helps create a space where we can laugh. Theorist Erving Goffman says that we do this all the time, taking on different roles in different situations. Other theorists talk about “code switching,” changing not just your language and the words you choose, but also how you talk and act in the conversation – even the topics that you’ll bring up and what you’ll talk more about. Conversations with grandma are way different than conversations with friends. Why should conversations on stage with an audience be any different?
In a piece on Elle’s 2017 Women in Comedy (6/16/2017) written by Seth Plattner, Kezia Wier and Amanda Fitzsimons, Natasha Leggero says the following,
When I was showcasing for Mitzi Shore, I’d show up every Sunday at The Comedy Store, and there was this little sign: ‘You don’t have to be funny for three minutes. You just have to be yourself.’ That’s always taken a lot of pressure off me. It’s like the old quote: ‘Stand-up is your evil twin.’ You just have to find that place where you’re able to be yourself—if a little bit, well, heightened.
In these statements, Leggero seems to note that it’s not really being yourself as the sign she’s quoting would have it, but a version of yourself – that it’s a character the comic is playing. John Sheehan expresses much the same thing in an interview with Heather Barrett of CBCnews.com (7/23/2017):
When it’s stand-up [when he’s performing stand-up], it’s me, it’s my thoughts, it’s my character, it’s me with the volume turned up.
Although he says “it’s me, it’s my thoughts,” the idea of “my character” starts to twist things – does he mean character as in the mental and moral qualities distinctive to him, or the fictional person he’s created? In any case, the next bit – “it’s me with the volume turned up” – suggests that he’s moved at least in part to the latter.
It also shouldn’t come as a surprise that what happens on stage is a negotiation. Are comics truly finding their voice, or are they finding a voice (one of theirs?) that the audience finds funny? Is it your identity, or the identity that works best for everyone (you and the audience)? You try things out and the audience gives you feedback by laughing; you’re all participants in the exchange.
We should note that acceptable persona are historical constructs. Historically, much attention is given to [and I’ve already written about] the figure of the wise fool. But there would seem to be distinct types that we view as funny.
Marginal?
Where Gilbert loses me is the notion that a comic’s persona is based on their marginal status – that they have to “play up” being a woman, or a person of color, or their appearance (overly short/tall, fat/thin, even hair color). They may also change/heighten the audience expectations by dressing and/or acting in certain ways and thus can “play up” being bisexual/gay/trans/queer, or their social class, or being mentally unstable, even their political affiliations or views. Larry the Cable Guy is a prime example of creating class expectations through dressing up and speaking in an accent. We can all think of many more examples of each of the categories – or I can list some in the comments.
Problems
First off, as with just normal persona, not all marginalities are accepted as funny at all times and in all forms, so playing up marginality is not sufficient. Yes, there are a lot of black comics doing racial humor, Jewish comics and fat comics doing Jewish and fat jokes. Josh Blue is my primary example of the differently-abled, playing that up for a laugh, and you could also point to Emo Phillips or Sam Kinison and the other unhinged comics making fun of the mentally different. On the other hand, female comics have traditionally struggled, especially if they don’t want to play the “funny” role of the ditz or the slut.
Further, not everyone successful seems to need it. There are a lot of white, middle class, straight, cis-gendered, comics of average height and weight who are quite successful – see 90% of comics working today!
Also, not everyone who can do it, does it. Because I’m a short guy, I look to those comics. There are a few short jokes, here and there, but Jimmy Pardo and Jim Norton are night and day (although maybe Norton qualifies as sexually queer), and neither has much to say about their height. There are women and people of color (men and women) who do topical humor. Sometimes they are working within the base of the persona they created earlier, when they used to tell jokes about themselves, but perhaps not.
The final series of problems I have with the idea of marginalized persona, stem from its dark side.
The Dark side
The first problem is one I have with marginalized persona are that in trying to please the audience, you can lose yourself. This one is personal to me, as I’ve done it. I sometimes have a sick sense of humor – I enjoy Jim Norton and Dave Attell and comics in that vein, and I wrote some jokes that got some laughs. I discovered that if I dressed down, didn’t shave, and played up the creepy factor, I got more laughs. The problem was, I became committed to that line, that character. I had to write more jokes in the vein, and I reached a point where I was no longer comfortable with my own material. I should say, I enjoy Jim Norton, but I didn’t really want to be Jim Norton!
Amy Schumer [I can’t find where, but I will] says something along the lines of “you have to figure out who the audience will let you be.” But that’s the problem, in chasing the audience laughter, you can surrender your part in the conversation and move to a place where you don’t want to be – and it feels alright because you’re getting the laughs, but you start to die inside. I finally had to pull back and rethink what I was doing.
Hamstringing yourself
Further, some say that if you cast yourself as a marginal person – a wise fool – then you hamstring your credibility. We don’t have to listen to fools, because they are, well, fools! Look at screaming comics, like Lewis Black.
Through his form and application, Black’s outrage and indignation become a “humor” in Northrop Frye’s sense of a “ruling passion” characteristic of certain comedic characters, particularly buffoons. And comics and audience alike are trained to think of him as such. Like Lewis Black’s propensity toward angry, snarling indignation, “Bobcat” Goldthwait’s (or Sam Kinison’s) screaming fits, Emo Philips’ slow, deliberative style and off-kilter intonation or Steven Wright’s (or Mitch Hedberg’s) reticent and monotone delivery each indicate a certain off-ness of mental state, signaling that the views they express in the routine are not those that the average, sane person would make. Each provides us something else to laugh at. We can laugh at the off-kilter presentation and/or over-the-top persona and, via laughter, trivialize/ridicule both the presentation and the persona – we laugh because their behavior is abnormal. These over-the-top persona come across as unreliable and discordant narrators, and therefore, we don’t have to listen to them. Though Black’s position is clear, we need not accept the positions of raving madmen or the ponderings of the unbalanced – unless, of course, they are running our government.
Further still, some authors, like Gring-Pemble and Watson take humor to be polyvalent – we can evaluate them from various ways. Through hyperbolic yelling, Black gives us other things to laugh at than his critique. So when listening to a political rant from Black, we can find his material deeply political and disturbing, but laugh in the moment due to its hyperbolic delivery. In other words, we may not find the material funny, but we set that aside to enjoy the spectacle of its delivery, the performance of irritation, frustration or incredulity. Thus our laughter may display that we’ve (for the moment) ignored the politics, because if we were upset by it, we wouldn’t laugh.
Unforeseen Consequences
Nevertheless, it does not guarantee that the messages of marginalized people have no effect – and therein lies perhaps the worst dilemma, because some, like Josh Blue, claim they are giving us the opportunity to laugh with them, at themselves. They tap into the tension that their presence evokes, and they relieve the tension by making self-deprecating jokes, which makes the audience like them. They would claim that they do no harm because, if Black’s political rants have no effect, how can their self-critiques?
However, there’s also the possibility that we feel superior to them, and their self-deprecation only furthers that sense of superiority, thus eliciting the laugh. This would be a worst-case scenario, where the comics are hamstringing, not just themselves, but entire classes of people. This is why so many women don’t want to play ditzes and sluts; this is (in part) the basis for Iliza Shlesinger’s recent critique of female comics. It’s the reason I don’t tell short jokes.
Summary
Although popular, it’s unlikely that you have “one true, essential self” that you learn about through stage-time. It’s much more likely that you evolve a persona that meets audience expectations, and if you’re smart about it, it’s someone you see in yourself – a best, funniest part of you.
If you don’t want to play up your sex, class, gender, sexuality, physical attributes or disabilities, you shouldn’t have to. Doing so may be easier, but beware where that takes you.
It’s impossible to tell if jokes alone have any impact on society, though there are a lot of theories. My point is, why risk it? Just for personal financial gain?
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
What do you think? Do you think comics making jokes at their expense helps or hurts?
References:
Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1957/1990.
Gilbert, Joanne. Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender and Cultural Critique.Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2004.
Goffman, Erving. Presentation of Self In Everyday Life. New York: Random House, 1956.
Gring-Pemble, Lisa and Martha Solomon Watson. “The Rhetorical Limits of Satire: An Analysis of James Finn Garner’s Politically Correct Bedtime Stories.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 89.2 (2003): 132-53.
