I’ve been a fan of Mike Birbiglia for a long time now, bought his merchandise, watched all his specials and both his movies (Sleepwalk with Me, 2012 and Don’t Think Twice, 2016). And while there are good and bad parts, his best bits – like his “Cracker please!” bit and the bit about positive stereotypes – are pure gold.
In his 2017 Netflix special, Thank God for Jokes, Mike Birbiglia tells a lot of jokes, but he also talks a lot about jokes. [Why am I discussing this? Check out Why Academics Should Listen to Comics.] So here’s a summary of his take on what jokes are.
Volatile and offensive
About a minute and forty seconds in, he says:
But jokes are something I think about all the time. They’re a volatile type of speech. I mean, you just look at the news. The Charlie Hebdo incident two years ago where these ten satirists were killed for drawing a disrespectful cartoon of Mohamed who the killers believed to be the prophet of Allah, their lord and savior, which, by the way, he might be [Looks around nervously]…. The point is, is that these were comedy writers, like me, and they were murdered. And I was so shocked by this at the time, I remember talking to everybody about it, and my mother said to me, she said, “Well can’t these writers just write jokes that aren’t offensive?”
And I thought about it. And I said, “I’m not sure that’s possible, because all jokes are offensive to someone.” I’ll give you an example….
So jokes are volatile, which means unpredictable, and usually with bad connotations, perhaps because they are always offensive to someone. His whole show can be read as a series of examples of this definition.
To be fair, it seems, when looking at his examples, that all jokes are only potentially offensive to someone. At the end of the show, he gives a laundry list of things he’s said, that when taken out of context, could be read as offensive.
A chunk that wasn’t on the list was a story about accommodating another airline passenger who has a nut allergy, where he says,
You know who doesn’t like this story are people with nut allergies. And you know who does like this story is everyone else. And, I feel genuinely conflicted about that, you know because there’s like almost a thousand people in this room together right now, and about 997 of us are like, “Ha ha! Nuts in the air!” And then three of us secretly are like, “That’s my life.” You know. And I don’t want to be that to you, but jokes have to be about something.
So here’s more the point of his statement: jokes have content and context, and the content can always be taken badly in a different context.
He also points out that you can be hit for the things you avoid. Part of the laundry list of things that supposedly might offend his audience were jokes he didn’t say: “Then he didn’t tell one joke about Muslims, because he loves ISIS!” [Nevermind that he did have a nonverbal joke about the Charlie Hebdo incident, which was, in a way, a joke about Muslims.]
Superiority and Relief
To put this in the larger conversation, we might say that jokes offend people when they feel they’re being ridiculed or corrected (in the sense of John C. Meyer’s model of the enforcement or differentiation functions), both of which are part and parcel to Superiority theory. While Birbiglia’s jokes aren’t aimed at anyone and they don’t seem mean-spirited in nature, they still might be read as a critique, particularly when he goes after an audience member for referring to a female cop.
However, the offensive can also refer to things that are taboo, things that we shouldn’t talk about and therefore we offend people when we do. This type of language is often attributed to Relief theory, it’s not an attack on their person, so much as an attack on their sensibilities. This was the violation of which people accused Kathy Griffin.
Context matters
Birbiglia continues,
Which is why I’m cautious when I tell jokes on stage, because anything can be taken out of context, people’s careers are taken down instantly, and some people are killed. So I’m putting this is your hands. You can choose to leave here and quote me out of context, or you can choose not to, but I trust that you won’t.
While Birbiglia is primarily talking about Charlie Hebdo, we could apply this statement as much to Lenny Bruce, who went to trial for obscenity in San Francisco and New York, as to Kathy Griffin.
Historical note: By 1965, Bruce had been arrested nineteen times and convicted of obscenity once (later overturned). Bruce’s legal battles and an inability to get gigs – even though he never paid any fines, never served any real jail time, and was, in the end, never convicted – eventually bankrupted him; he died before the final appeal was settled, though he was pardoned posthumously in 2003. It’s unclear if Griffin will suffer that much.
Birbiglia’s overarching point is that being a good neighbor means, in part, “listening to people and the context in which they intend their words.” Generally a good message for any type of communication.
Specific audiences are harder
Early on, Birbiglia says,
I’ve been a comedian for 15 years and what I’ve learned, is that you should never tell jokes to the people who the jokes are about.
He says that when performing for specific audiences, every relevant topic is potentially a mine field. He gives the example of a Christian college performance that didn’t go over well.
John C. Meyer might state that these audiences are too familiar with the incidents, and therefore too invested in the material to find the humor.
Crossing lines
After a joke about Janis the Muppet doing heroin, Birbiglia notes he “crossed a line.”
That’s what you always have to think about when you’re writing jokes, is sort of, “Where is the line?” And you don’t want to cross it, but you want to go near it. And, you know, it’s subjective, sort of, where the line is, and that’s where it becomes complicated.
Once again, Birbiglia seems to be referring in statements like this to Relief theory – approaching a line may be akin to approaching a taboo, which creates tension, which the joke can then relieve – unless it completely transgresses. Once the line is crossed, the tension boils over into action.
Opinions and inner thoughts
After telling his stories about dealing with late people, Birbiglia says,
But that’s just my side of the story…. That’s what I love about jokes, they’re just your side of the story. They’re your opinion, which isn’t to say they’re always just opinions, sometimes they’re an externalization of your inner thoughts, and often your inner thoughts are inappropriate.
Here we see some links to the idea of comics as truth-tellers; that we are ourselves on-stage, not some role or persona, as discussed by several comics in the documentary Dying Laughing. Their our bona fide opinions, our take on events, our inner (read as deep seated, and therefore more true) thoughts.
The mention of appropriateness seems another reference to Relief theory, as mentioned above.
Tragedy plus time
In an off-hand way, Birbiglia mentions that “Comedy equals tragedy plus time.” This is a quote attributed by Goodreads and other sources to Mark Twain, who may have said “Humor is tragedy plus time.”
However, Quote Investigator attributes it to a 1957 Cosmopolitan interview with Steve Allen, and his full explanation is worth quoting:
When I explained to a friend recently that the subject matter of most comedy is tragic (drunkenness, overweight, financial problems, accidents, etc.) he said, “Do you mean to tell me that the dreadful events of the day are a fit subject for humorous comment? The answer is “No, but they will be pretty soon.”
Man jokes about the things that depress him, but he usually waits till a certain amount of time has passed. It must have been a tragedy when Judge Crater disappeared, but everybody jokes about it now. I guess you can make a mathematical formula out of it. Tragedy plus time equals comedy.
Mark A. Rayner, attributes a similar quote to Lenny Bruce, who supposedly said,
Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it.
Good stuff, but at it’s base, it seems like a rehash of Hobbes’ 1640 statement that laughter is “a sudden glory, arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly” (Chapter ix, § 13; Morreall, Humor). With distance from our own weakness, we can look back and laugh. That’s the tragedy plus time in a nutshell. It is this recognition of people’s ability to change and therefore laugh at our former ignorance or infirmity that really gives a boost to the applicability of Superiority theory.
I’m joking/Just kidding
A topic on my list of things to cover in this blog are statements of “just kidding” and “I’m joking.” Birbiglia can get us started:
Like if you think about jokes…. you can’t tell jokes in life almost ever, like at work, or school or the airport is a great example. I read a story where a guy sneezed on a plane, looks around and he goes, “I have ebola.”
Here’s why that’s not a good joke: they landed the plane. They landed the plane, and they’re met by the guys in hazmat suits, and his defense was “I’m joking!” Which is always this catchall defense when people say dumb things. Like, you can’t tell jokes at work, because at some point in history, some idiot showed up at work and was like, “Nice tits, Betsy!” And Betsy’s like, “What?!” And that guy’s like, “I’m joking!” And the boss is like, “Uuuuuuh, no more jokes!” Jokes have been ruined by people who aren’t good at telling jokes. A joke should never end with, “I’m joking!” or “Git’r done!”
He later includes Fozzie Bear’s catchphrase, “Waka Waka,” in this mix. The message seems to be that if you have to defend it by labeling it a joke – which catchphrases can also do – then it either wasn’t, at base, a joke, or it really wasn’t funny. As I’ve pointed out, that seemed to be Bill Maher’s biggest problem with his N-word incident.
“I’m joking” and “just kidding” are often abused ways of “taking back” a statement, but nothing that is said or done can truly be taken back. It’s at most placed under erasure, which Jacques Derrida talks so much about [REALLY looking forward to revisiting that author *sarcasm*]. In a nutshell, all you do is strike-through; in Birbiglia’s example, the coworker has (now) said (back then) “Nice tits, Betsy!” It’s still there, he just added a line about not meaning it, or meaning something different by it (if it were ironical). The original statement can still be read underneath.
The comic process
Birbiglia has a bit about a visit to his urologist, and how he’s not funny on-the-spot. He then says,
I feel like we’re led to believe this false cliche from romantic comedies that we’re all just whipping off jokes all the time. Like, we meet a girl in a coffee shop and we’re like, “What’s in your latte, cum?” And she’ll be like, “You’re hilarious! We should be married in ninety minutes!” But in real life, that guy gets arrested, or runs for president.
On the conversation with his urologist, Birbiglia notes, “I’ll take this conversation home and work on it, and that will be the bit.”
A lot of comics make statements like these, which for me are nice. Some comics are obviously hilarious in real life, for instance, Robin Williams, anyone from Whose Line Is It Anyway?, etc. Other comics have our moments, but most of our work is done in rewriting and editing. Birbiglia places himself in this category.
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
Do you agree with Birbiglia’s perspectives? Did you see something different in his statements (even the ones I didn’t quote)?
References:
Hobbes, Thomas. The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic: Part I, Human Nature, Part II, De Corpore Politico; with Three lives. Ed. J.C.A. Gaskin. New York: Oxford University, 1994.
Morreal, John. “Verbal Humor Without Switching Scripts and Without Non-Bona Fide Communication.” International Journal of Humor Research 17 (2004): 393-400.
