I am proposing compulsory standup lessons for every single person in the country – so that we can all think more like comedians and save our society.
At the very least, “people would learn the difference between a joke and a threat.” However, before he gets there, he notes some other benefits that would accrue, including empowerment, and self-reflection. I’d like to examine these benefits in a bit more detail.
Empowerment?
Bernhardt writes that doing stand-up comedy can be empowering.
If everyone was made to have a go at standup comedy … they would feel like their words mattered, if only for a moment. They deserve to have that confidence of a mediocre male politician flow through them, even if only once.
He states that stand-up comics have an “assumed arrogance,”
[A] standup is telling the audience that their point of view deserves your undivided attention for at least five minutes – their jokes, their observations about Donald Trump’s hair, and nothing else.
He talks about the power that comics wield, including to maintain the audience’s attention, and notes that he “once span around in a circle on stage for 40 seconds for a joke.” While it sounds powerful, I think 40 seconds might have been the limit of that gag. Just because he didn’t get booed and people didn’t walk out, doesn’t mean he wouldn’t or they couldn’t.
Later in the article he talks about jokes bombing, wherein he admits as much:
[M]y jokes about squishy avocados from Waitrose are going to go down great at a corporate event for M&S, but they’d bomb in a working-class suburb of Detroit because no one would be able to recognise it, and even if they did, it wouldn’t be relevant. Moreover, if the audience is randomly selected and diverse, jokes that rely on sexist or racist tropes would bomb. It’s the same reason Roy Chubby Brown won’t ever do a show in Brick Lane, or why the men tweeting tedious jokes about Jodie Whittaker becoming the new Doctor Who will never, ever have sex with a woman, ever.
So he knows the comic does not wield unlimited power. We could also question how empowering it would be for those with severe stage-fright. It takes me so long to get comfortable with a bit in front of an audience, I question the value of having someone get up in front of an audience just once. To truly be empowered, they have to do it enough to do it well–and most comics argue that takes years. YEARS!
Further, we could dicker about how much power and leeway is granted to marginalized comics versus white males, but I think we see the point: the idea of unobstructed power a comedian wields, like wise fools speaking truth to power, is easily debunked. However, there are other benefits that may accrue, for instance, in putting together a set, we might self-reflect, and in that process we may discover things.
Self-reflection versus self-expression
In keeping with his notions of power, Bernhardt notes that,
Comedy is as much about making a connection with an audience as it is about self-expression.
Given what he said above, of course he would say this. In Bernhardt’s view, the comedian wields all the power; they don’t have an equal relationship with the audience as they have power over them.
He talks about comics having different angles on topics because they are different people, and “Standup is intensely personal.” He says you have to find out what your “take on the world is,” before you can connect with an audience.
Not enough people stop and think about what their take on the world is. We just assume we’re all unremarkable – or worse, that we’re all the same. Identifying what makes us unique – not in a bad HSBC advert at an airport kind of way, but actually analysing who you are, and what our biases, privileges and limitations are, makes understanding and empathising with other people easier.
So he admits – here and above – that there is some connection to the audience, and it’s in this section that he gets into the quote above about jokes bombing – an immediate contradiction to comedy being about power and self-expression.
He makes a good point about knowing oneself as key to understanding others. That’s why in every basic Communication textbook, chapter two is “The Self,” and chapter three is “The Other.” But are we really learning about ourselves, or ourselves in relation to the world?
The message he doesn’t say, but seems to mean is that comics have to conform to who the audience thinks they are, and tell those jokes in their range that are appropriate to the audience. That’s not self-expression, that’s reading an audience, and while it may take some self-reflection, and as I’ve pointed out before, a lot of will power to stay true to yourself and not become something you don’t want to be in chasing the laughs, it still might not be as empowering as we’d like. Still, there’s his last benefit to stand-up, that we can learn the difference between jokes and threats.
Jokes versus threats
Bernhardt writes,
[T]he most compelling [reason everybody should do stand-up] is simple: a lesson in standup would let everyone know what a joke is and isn’t. Over the past few months, it has become increasingly hard in this country to tell…. After each scandal, each gaffe, someone inevitably offers up the defence that it was “just a joke”.
The problem is that more often than not it wasn’t originally presented as one – it’s a veiled threat that is retroactively bestowed with the status of a joke when someone challenges it. Its intent wasn’t to amuse or to satirise, but to intimidate and ultimately silence. Maybe, just maybe, if we’re all forced to craft our own comedy, we’ll be able to spot the difference between a joke and a threat masquerading as a joke.
So here are the two main takeaways from the above:
- It can’t just be labeled a joke after the fact, it must be “presented as one,” perhaps including a discernible setup and punchline (from a later example).
- It has to have the intent of amusement or satire, not intimidation and silencing.
However, as I’ve tried to show in this blog, there is a spectrum of clarity when it comes to signaling a joke. Further, not all jokes have setups and punchlines. Sometimes we merely have to infer from what we know of the speaker, that, “of course this person is joking.” Because inference (supplementation of the information provided with what we think we know) is required, we have the possibility of making something a joke, whether or not it was intended as one. And that is a powerful tool to use against those who make statements we don’t like.
Also, intentionality is a funny thing, especially when you try to set amusement and satire in opposition to intimidation and silencing. While it is generally recognized that satire must be amusing to avoid being simple ridicule, there are what Max Eastman has called “degrees of biting,” with “satire proper” being on the “hot end.” But perhaps it begs the question of when and where we draw the lines–How deep did it cut? Funny to whom?
Also, satire always has as it’s intent ridicule and shaming, so how is that not “intimidation?” Satire is a joke that also has an implicit threat: Reform or else. Or else you’ll be ridiculed further. Or else you’ll be shunned. Or else further action will be taken.
Summary
Here’s Bernhardt’s conclusion:
Yes, it may be arduous…. But for the good of society, we have to try to think more like comedians–to spot those bullying threats, to empathise with our fellow man, to give confidence to those who have none.
Now here’s mine: Yes, there’s a lot of good to be had by trying stand-up–from really trying it, not just being the drunk heckler who, when invited on stage, resorts to street jokes, and cheerleading, when not blatantly stealing the bits of others.
All public speech can be empowering, if you can put in the time it takes to get to the point where you’re comfortable, and my experience is that in stand-up it takes longer to get to that point. And yes, in trying to figure out a persona that works for us onstage, we have to get in the heads of the audience and empathize.
However, I think Bernhardt’s got it a bit back-to-front. It’s not that stand-up will teach us the differences between humor and bullying threats–I’m not certain there is one–but that developing a sense of humor, a sense of comedy, a tendency to make something humorous will teach us how to dispel the veiled threat; to laugh at the bully. To turn our ridicule back on those who would threaten us and enlist the empathy of those who recognize what’s going on. Yes, it’s difficult, and yes, it’s dangerous. But it might just be our only hope.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
