You hear it time and time again, from both comics and scholars: in stand-up comedy the only goal is laughter by any means available (Borns; Gilbert; Horowitz; Limon; Stebbins). That’s how comics make their money (Stebbins).
Update: In an interview with Pastemagazine.com’s Christian Becker (7/5/2017), Deon Cole says,
It shouldn’t be funny culturally funny, it should just be funny.
Q: So you’re willing to sacrifice a laugh or two to make a point?
A: The laugh is the most important thing. I never wanted to be a teacher or a preacher. I don’t want the audience ever thinking that they’re listening to Don Lemon or Anderson Cooper. But early in my career I was just telling jokes. I wouldn’t think about using them to send a message. But now, after studying comedians like Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Jerry Seinfeld, I know how to talk about the society around me.
These comics seem to believe that they should be trying to be funny first and foremost, and if they can do it while talking about their society, that’s good, but it’s an after-effect.
When you put it that way – about sheer exposure – how could a comic not have an effect? Still, there’s this idea that comics “don’t really mean any of it” that may create a (carnivalesque) space for both the humor to exist and for the audience to feel that they don’t have to do anything but laugh, and a common conception of laughter is that it doesn’t do anything. This effect can also be abused, as in the case of the “Just kidding!” that reads more like a “Sorry, not sorry!”
Absolute stand-up
John Limon expands on this theme, positing an an “absolute” form of stand-up, in which the only goal is laughter, and opposing it to other forms. He notes that: “Any comedian is free, of course, to thematize or editorialize or beautify, but in these respects, he or she has in mind extrinsic models” (13). Thus Limon assumes the existence of a limit where comics stop intending solely to get a laugh, and start intending to make a difference, where an “extrinsic model” becomes primary and the humor secondary. Satire and ridicule, it would seem, exceed this limit.
The counterpart of laughter, in these extrinsic forms, is what Seth Meyers dubbed “clapter,” responses that indicate agreement with the comic, but not necessarily humor. [More on this later]. In an interview for Reader’s Digest, Tina Fey used the term to describe Jon Stewart’s, The Daily Show: “It means they sort of approve but didn’t really like it that much.”
Multiple goals
Understand, comics can have all kinds of different goals. Some comics may wish to shed light on an important matter, and help people, as we assume Jon Stewart does. Some comics may want to tear down everything and everybody – as do Don Rickles, Lisa Lampanelli, and South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone – there’s a certain kind of equality in all being the butt of a joke. Comics can have multiple goals within the same set, bit and even joke.
Political Potential?
Whether their extrinsic goal is to help or harm, the comic’s other, primary goal of inciting laughter causes problems as the general wisdom is that when a topic cuts too close to the bone, when it is too personal or mean-spirited, it cannot be funny (Freud, Meyer).
Humorists often try to work around this problem by creating different spatial boundaries, by playing by their own rules – and changing both boundaries and rules at will. But in doing so, comics often create gaps between what they personally believe and what they express onstage. This extends beyond simple performance of a character, as in Andy Kaufmann’s “Latke,” Richard Pryor’s “Mudbone,” etc.; it includes elements that reflect more on the comic’s personality and even sanity. In this respect even the most activist comic remains an unreliable and/or discordant narrator.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
Are you as a comic only trying to get a laugh, or do you write jokes about things you care about, to enlighten or change things?
Do you have a favorite comic that champions something you care about?
References
Borns, Betsy. Comic Lives: Inside the World of Stand-Up Comedy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Freud, Sigmund. Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. 1905. Trans. James Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton, 1963.
Gilbert, Joanne. Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender and Cultural Critique. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2004.
Horowitz, Susan. Queens of Comedy: Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, Joan Rivers, and the New Generation of Funny Women. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Gordon and Breach, 1997.
Limon, John. Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.
Meyer, John C. “Humor as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humor in Communication.” Communication Theory 10.3 (2000): 310-331.
Stebbins, Robert A. The Laugh-Makers: Stand-Up Comedy as Art, Business and Life-Style. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1990.
Wilson, Nathan. Was That Supposed to be Funny? A Rhetorical Analysis of Politics, Problems and Contradictions in Contemporary Stand-Up Comedy. Dissertation in partial completion of the Ph.D. August, 2008.
