Some folks would say, don’t you study American stand-up? What’s with the stuff on these Indian and Pan-Asian comics? Stay in your lane! Well, I justify it by saying:
- Stand-up is an American export, so they’re trying to follow our models, and how they follow it still tells us things about the models.
- Although they have a completely different culture, mindset and audience, there still seems to be a lot of overlap in terms of problems faced and views expressed on them.
- When their views don’t overlap ours, it can be refreshing and help point out important aspects of our views.
- They’re producing comedy like crazy! Both Amazon and Netflix are competing to provide a platform for Indian stand-ups, and articles about them are filling my news feed.
Take Aditi Mittal’s interview with Ankur Pathak of Huffington Post, India (7/15/2017). While she expresses the common view that she is trying to “make people laugh,” Mittal also says some of the smartest things I’ve heard a comic say recently about comedy.
On the post-modern
Mittal notes,
We are in this age right now, the post-modern age, where everyone is jaded with everything. Like television has realised that television is f**k all. You know. And television owns it. So now television is not accountable to anybody or anything because they’re like ‘We’re f**k all, we told you. Why are you still watching?‘ Ads, you know the self-aware ads, who’re like ‘Hey I’m just an ad selling you stuff, but will you buy it?‘ I mean what are you? A fool? I was very unnerved by it because I was like ‘then who is telling actual stories?‘
Yeah. If they’re gonna parody themselves then you lose the chance to call them out.
Yes! That’s what it is. For the longest time, comedy was sort of the ‘caller outer’, right. And now the ‘caller outer’ has become that thing itself. So now it has insulated itself from being called out….
And later,
I feel constantly being torn between what is calling out and what is ‘call-outable’ and irony and where to derive humour from…
This is pretty good commentary. The post-modern, as commonly understood, is characterized by a recognition that there is no Grand Narrative (grand récit; big “T” Truth), but only a bunch of competing stories (petits récits; “truths”; Lyotard).
This recognition gives rise to irony and (modernists fear) a backing away from responsibility. Television can claim that because it’s just a bunch of noise, that it’s not worthwhile, and therefore that it has no obligation to be worthwhile. Fox News can claim that all news is kind of partisan, so it can be all the way partisan, and that should be OK; plus, nobody really listens to the news anyway… Advertisements can do the ironic “wink” that says “we know that you know, but at least we know, so shouldn’t you buy from us?” And what is a comic supposed to do with that?
Of course, that’s not my notion of the postmodern, which is a term I and others use to describe something that’s a game-changer, a move that expands the conversation; that’s what postmodern art is/does (Lyotard). True postmodern art is hard to find, and everything else is modern, operating by the current rules, not trying to rock the boat. This is what Mittal recognizes.
On the return of modernity
Mittal notes that people’s response to the media, advertisers and celebrities – basically all of popular culture – backing away from responsibility is to hold them more accountable:
It’s now gone back in the other direction where people are seeking sincerity in comedy! Where people are looking for truths and saying … (If she’s said your Mom’s fat, she genuinely means it)
You know the hailing of comedy as the solution to life’s problem and all, I find that very disturbing.
It puts a lot of responsibility on comedians to not just be entertainers and joke-tellers but something more accountable…
Haan!
And it also shifts the blame from where it’s supposed to be right?
She later returns to this point:
I also feel that it’s an entirely unreasonable demand to expect your comedians to educate you. The fact that it is happening is great. But to use it as a primary source like ‘Nahi nahi vo comedy person ne bola ki [I don’t want to be a comedian] drinking and driving is okay‘. No it’s obviously not, man.
People taking their politicians less seriously than their comedians is just terrifying right?
Of course. Our lines of morality are very flexible. They can get away with a lot more than you can despite being elected by the people and holding public office…
Thank you! In the f*****g power structure, where are they? And is there any single person who is like ‘Hey by the way, you as a politician is a sucks‘.
While I think something was lost in translation, the point remains: people are holding comics more accountable than they do politicians, something I recently wrote about, as Fran Lebowitz said the same thing. As I noted, there, power doesn’t come from being an entertainer or being a politician, it comes from people. People make entertainers by watching their shows, and they make politicians by voting. They can and do grant some people different types of power, and I called the power we grant to popular culture and its icons “ideological power” (as opposed to the “legislative power” granted to the politician).
Popular culture icons are given the power to influence how people think, their ideas and goals, to educate and shape people’s worldview or ideology, which is far more powerful and subversive, but more slow and subtle, than legislative power. When we recognize this, we begin to hold our celebrities accountable – as we should also be doing with our politicians.
On the power of stand-up
Mittal also directly addresses what happens in stand-up, but it’s a lesser, “temporary” power:
I do believe that comedy has some temporary power. It’s temporary because it lasts as long as you laugh and clap at a thing. Because you realise this is something so much bigger than anybody sitting in the room and at that moment, none of us have control over it. But for that one moment, we can all take solace in the fact that it’s ironic to the outside world or we’re acknowledging how weird it is, collectively.
It would seem that Mittal views stand-up as a unifying force; that it brings people into a common understanding a la John C. Meyer. This may happen, if we accept the common interpretation that laughter means that everyone got the same message, that everyone laughs the same way and for the same reasons. However, some might be fake laughing, or guffawing, and most jokes are polysemic and polyvalent, have more than one interpretation, more than one reason to laugh.
Where I think she’s right, is that people understand it as unifying – we think we laugh for the same reasons, whether or not we do – and maybe this effect is more important than the facts. That’s a postmodern realization: That appearances are small “t” truths that are more important than the Truth, especially when the Truth is unknowable. Mittal is with John Limon in noting that laughs are ephemeral, temporary, they expend themselves in their moment, and we can’t second-guess or analyze them after the fact.
On freedom of speech in stand-up
Pathak interjects the idea of stand-up’s ability to “Speak Truth to Power”:
More importantly, it’s a voice of dissent, one that busts the State’s propaganda. It’s this alternative awareness that needs to exist and one wishes that there was more freedom for it to travel…
Yeah…
Perhaps Mittal is hesitant because Pathak introduced the opposite point a bit earlier, and she agreed with that. He was talking about how American comics play the “role of public intellectuals,” making news accessible with satire. He notes, however,
[W]e don’t see that culture in our country. Now that is obviously because of the legal repercussions and the very real physical threats and the fear of FIRs [First Information Reports; basically the first act of charging someone with a crime] and PILs [Public Interest Litigation; essentially a civil suit on behalf of the people]. Isn’t that a suffocating environment for comedians? Say you may want to take a strong political stand but you’re too afraid to go out there and say it as is…
Of-course it is! It is restrictive because there are certain things you want to say and you know it will invite the backlash that you are not equipped to handle. I don’t have the money for a million lawyers to stand by and be like ‘Nahi nahi ye theek hai, isko jaane do’. (No, no, this is acceptable, let it go)
I don’t have the resources as a single individual to face that.
Yes, India’s legal system and culture are different than ours, but this discussion could happen – and in fact has happened here: Lenny Bruce was convicted of violating obscenity laws (later overturned). He lost gigs, money and many said it killed him. His plaintiff was not an individual, but “society.”
There are defenses to be made, both here under the First Amendment, and apparently in India as well, but the problem is you have to defend, and you have to spend your own money to do so. This isn’t censorship, defined as “prior governmental restraint,” but it does have a “chilling effect” on free speech, as Mittal notes.
This points out that, perhaps because of its power, stand-up is not a free space where anyone can say whatever they want without consequences (it’s not simply carnivalesque). As we’ve noted about wise fools throughout history, they don’t always get off scot free. Instead, such spaces and people (comics and other pop culture icons) are policed because they have been given power. For this reason, it’s far safer to stick to your own material – stories about your life experiences.
On personal material
Early in the interview, Mittal begins with an epiphany:
And I realised the more personal you make it, the more identifiable it becomes for people.
Here, Mittal is talking about mining personal experiences for the topics of comedy. Later in the interview, she continues in this vein:
I’ve noticed that at times, comedians tend to repeat themselves. There’s a pattern which functions like their safety-net, leading to a lot of cyclical jokes. How do you avoid that?
People often get trapped in ‘Audience ko mere se ye sunna hai, to main sirf ye bolunga ya ye bolungi‘ (People want to hear this from me so I will say only those things). And that becomes almost suffocating to you as a creative person. I’ve realised that when it comes to people liking you and loving you, being fans and all that stuff, it’s really embarrassing. I mean I find it really weird because people will come and go, audiences will come and go. The reason they came to you was because you were being authentic and true to yourself at that point in time. So, now to start lying to them, because you think this is what they want to hear, is dishonest. It’s disingenuous and it’s stunting your growth.
This answer addresses the issues that can arise when the comic’s intention is solely to get a laugh, whatever the cost, especially when trying to satisfy people’s expectations. While some think that comics surprise their audience and violate expectations (basic incongruity theory), Mittal stands with theorists like Kenneth Burke in recognizing that (at least) some comics are actually satisfying expectations and getting a laugh.
Mittal contrasts this with authenticity, being “true to yourself.” But, as I’ve described before, the comic’s persona is probably always a negotiation. You tell your personal stories, but you don’t tell ALL your stories, and the ones that don’t get a laugh get revised or cut out completely.
About improving as a comic
I really believe that my breakthrough moment will be in my fourth special. And that’ll be many, many years down the line. I think it’ll be when you’ve shown some level of consistency. In fact consistency is the wrong word, it’s when you’ve improved and are saying more intelligent things than before.
Her view is basically that improving in stand-up comedy means saying smarter things, and – if we add the section above – more honest things. This suggests a hierarchy for her comedy that places the social or critical comic above the entertainment comic, and I’m all in favor of that. This is hard to do when there is a constant pull to go for the laugh.
Summary
So despite the fact that Mittal is an Indian comedian, dealing with Indian problems, they bear a certain similarity to the problems of American comedians. Her commentary on the challenges of the postmodern era are smart. She grants comedy a certain, temporary, unifying power, but hints at its greater power: to affect people’s views and beliefs. She notes that (perhaps because of its power) stand-up is not a free space where anyone can say whatever they want without consequences (it’s not carnivalesque). Finally, she notes the difficulty of audience expectations and stresses continuing to improve, which she defines as doing more intelligent and authentic jokes – better social commentary.
Mittal also talks about sexism in Indian comedy, which is still happening over here as well [and I may or may not address it in a future post; this blog is currently more about joke work than identity politics, though that can change].
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
References:
Limon, John. Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.
Lyotard, Jean François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1984/2002.
Meyer, John C. “Humor as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humor in Communication.” Communication Theory 10.3 (2000): 310-331.
