The idea that we can influence people with words (rhetoric) depends on the notion that the speaker is who they appear to be and mean what they say. Scholars call this authorial fidelity, or that the speaker is bona fide.
Yet frequently comics pretend to be crazy, demented, deranged – or just a bit off. Think of Bobcat Goldthwait, Sam Kinison, or Emo Philips. We hear them and say, “That boy ain’t right!” and this creates a space for laughs.
Certain comics are awesome at this, like Stephen Colbert on The Colbert Report, a nearly flawless performance of right-wing conservatism that has just a tad too much edge to be bona fide. Similarly, Larry the Cable Guy presents a front of blue-collar (when not red-necked) buffoonery that is difficult to take on-face. Or we might look to Sarah Silverman’s image as a naïve (when not ignorant), self-absorbed, Jewish nice-girl who pushes in exactly the wrong direction just a few times too often. In each case, a great deal of humor comes from this discrepancy between construct or narrator and the author implied by the gaps in the text.
Narrators and Authors
The idea that this person might be as crazy as they seem is necessary for the humor, but we know it’s often a ruse. There’s a difference between the author – the person who wrote the jokes – and the narrator – the persona telling the jokes. A narrator is “an instrument, a construction or a device wielded by the author” (Abbott, 63), a vehicle for the comedy.
The author, for all intents and purposes, is the offstage person implied via the text, or in any case inferred by the audience (Booth). Some, like Erving Goffman, argue that we have onstage selves, and an offstage self. That while we might act differently in a classroom than out of it, or act differently in front of our grandma than we do in front of our friends, we have a real self that we are in private and show to select people. Others, following from the work of a Michel Foucault, argue that our actions and their implications are all anyone ever sees of us, so they’re all that matter. To quote Nolan’s Batman:
So there’s a space or gap between the two, and this creates possibilities for humor when the difference is noticeable, giving us two types of questionable narrators, unreliable and discordant, and comics can be either or both.
Unreliable Narrators
When there is a gap between verifiable [IRL] facts and statements of fact made by the narrator, we have a true unreliable narrator (Abbott; Scholes & Kellogg). This is when they tell us things that just aren’t true – couldn’t possibly be true. Like when Bobcat Goldthwait talks about swinging his date’s cat around by the tail, screaming “Got any more pets?” If we thought it really happened, we might be appalled, and then we might not laugh. But if we don’t believe it? Hilarious! Of course, it’s always more complicated than that (Burke), but that’s part of it.
Discordant Narrators
When there is a gap between the interpretation of facts by the narrator via her/his story and the interpretation attributed to the implied author, we call this a discordant narrator (Cohn). For instance, Ron White talks about getting a pulled over, but it was B.S. “because they were stopping everybody on that particular sidewalk, and that’s profiling, and it’s wrong.” While we can question if he was actually pulled over for driving on a sidewalk, we can also question if he really was upset about profiling. Again, if that was how he truly interpreted it, we’d question his sanity. But we think “he’s just kidding,” so we’re free to laugh. Of course, it’s always more complicated than that (Burke), but that’s part of it.
Do we laugh because of the incongruity? Probably. Do we laugh because they create and relieve tension? Maybe. Do we laugh because we feel superior to them, and their crazy interpretation? Perhaps, some of us, some times. And maybe for other reasons too.
Political Potential?
Because any comic is always potentially unreliable, always potentially discordant, we never have to believe what they say. It is this very condition that creates a space for the author to say whatever they choose. However, can a comic do bona fide political work once they are set up as unreliable? The answer may depend on how the comic establishes this condition.
Sometimes comics create boundaries by simple segmentation (the way they break up and arrange their bits), like Bill Maher’s first HBO special, in which he first warms the crowd with nine minutes of topical material and a dick joke before transitioning into his more overt partisan topics. Many other comics mix and mingle political and humorous messages in this fashion, including Margaret Cho, Chris Rock and Sarah Silverman. In doing so, they establish themselves as comics before dirtying their hands with any potentially hazardous topic.
While some might argue that all “newer” humorists work this way, that only older, established comics like George Carlin critique at will, there are others like Loni Love, Alonzo Bodden and many other (at the time) up-and-comers who begin with political topics, displaying that perhaps this form is more acceptable.
However, some comics like Black, Colbert, Larry the Cable Guy, Silverman and even Maher also include other tactics, such as creating a persona, a sustained character that allows them to make overt critiques [More on this later].
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
Who is your favorite “crazy” comedian and why do you like them?
References
Abbott, H Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. London: Cambridge University, 2002.
Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Fiction. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1961
Burke, Kenneth. Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology. Berkeley: University of California Press (1970).
Cohn, Dorrit. “Discordant Narration.” Style 34.2 (2000): 307-316.
Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author?” a lecture given at the Collège de France on 22 February 1969.
Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Random House, 1956.
Scholes, Robert and Robert Kellogg. The Nature of Narrative. Oxford University Press, 1968.
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.
