I talk a lot on here about a comic’s persona, how they create it, whether or not it differs from their person/self, if so, in what ways, and whether or not some comics are shooting themselves in the foot. In this vein, Jesse David Fox writes a nice article for Slate.com (9/12/2017) about how the age of a comic’s persona matters.
Constructive perception
Basically, Fox points out that,
[W]atching comedy is an act of constructive perception—you construct an understanding of the joke by combining the stimuli of the sound of the joke itself with your existing knowledge of jokes, the comedian, comedians generally, the topic, etc. Context isn’t more important than the joke itself, but it’s essential to what it means to be a comedian.
Fox puts this in contrast to the
sort of comedian who likes to contest that their jokes are like undeniable, perfectly crafted comedy bombs.
From a rhetorical perspective, everyone since Isocrates has known that yes, careful crafting can help, but because of situational factors (kairos), including the persona and perception of the speaker, that crafting has to take a different form at least for each speaker, if not for each audience. This is why I can’t do Chris Rock’s set, no matter how “perfectly crafted” the jokes are.
Fox pulls back (as he should) from calling persona the most important factor:
I don’t want to overstate the impact this sort of framing has. There are plenty of reasons people become more and less popular, and there are other contextual cues that could be factored in.
Nevertheless, persona and expectations are an important part of the context, and further, this expectation can also change over time as the context changes.
What audiences want and expect from comedians at different points in their life is ultimately a personal bias. In some instances though, if enough people share the same opinion about a given comedian, it noticeably affects his or her career.
Perfect age
Fox is therefore curious as to how the perceived age of the comic and material relates.
I often think about whether certain comedians have an ideal age or time in which their style, persona, and areas of interest perfectly line up with how old they are and look.
Using Marc Maron as a model, Fox points out that,
[T]he way Maron’s jokes are perceived benefits from the audience knowing he is well into his 50s….
Maron used to blame his ever-changing look for the shortcomings of his pre-WTF career, but maybe there is one thing he just needed to wait for: getting older. He always had a “get off my lawn” quality to his routine, as a young, twice-divorced man, obsessed with mortality—his years around the sun had to catch up so the audience could relate…. One way of thinking about it is: If Marc Maron were a character in a play, what age would Marc Maron, the human being, be most believable in the role?
Fox has other examples, Rodney Dangerfield and Louis C.K. had to wait, similar to Maron, while Sarah Silverman, Dave Chappelle and Dane Cook seem to have had trouble transitioning from a youthful style as they’ve aged.
Summary
There’s a lot that goes into a successful joke, let alone a career in stand-up. Finding a persona that the audience finds fitting to your material is tricky. When a comic hits the sweet spot, where persona, expectation and material combine for maximum effect, that is when they break out. Though it seems to happen frequently, we don’t see the ranks of open mic’ers, constantly trying and failing, even when their material is funny. Sometimes they can become writers, or sell their better efforts, but that just serves to further the image that others are doing it easily.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
