The Critical Comic

Mo’Nique, in an interview with Blake Hannon of Kentucky.com (7/20/2017), had a few things to say about her past and present on-stage persona that are relevant to our discussions here.

Hannon notes,

Mo’Nique broke into comedy as a no-holds-barred, brutally honest champion of heavyset women when appearing on stage or on revered stand-up showcases like “Showtime at the Apollo,” HBO’s “Def Comedy Jam” or BET’s “Comic View.”

Late in the article, Hannon writes,

[A] stand-up comedy stage is the place you’ll most likely find her and find that even after all these years, she is evolving. She has learned to be more honest on stage, revealing both the sweet and the sour while spreading the laughs and the love in her own unique way.

Then we get a quote from Mo’Nique:

I think when I first started, it was I was a big, fat, black woman and that’s what I knew how to be funny with, and that was my honesty, but there was so much more to me than that. I tell people that, if you want to get to know me, come to a show. You truly walk away knowing exactly who I am, and you may find out who you are.

Honesty

In all three paragraphs, “honesty” is a key descriptor, she’s “a no-holds-barred, brutally honest champion of heavyset women,” which echoes Mo’Niques own statement that “I was a big, fat, black woman and that’s what I knew how to be funny with, and that was my honesty.” This seems straight-forward, a “heavyset,” black woman speaking her Truth.  However, there’s another part to this: that Mo’Nique is more than just a “heavyset,” black woman.

More honest

Hannon says, “She has learned to be more honest on stage,” which suggests that she wasn’t being completely honest before.  Yes, she has evolved into “more,” as we all do, but it’s also true that she was never just anything.

It’s that next part of Mo’Nique’s quote – that “but there was so much more to me than that,” the past tense – that should catch our attention. She always was more than that. The theory that I often think of here is Michel Foucault’s idea of the prediscursive. To get there, we have to backtrack a moment to a model of signs from Structural Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, the basis of semiotics.

Signs

Saussure posited that any sign – any thing that is meaningful, a word, an emoji, a picture, etc. – can be broken into two parts: signifier and signified. The signifier is what we see or hear or experience.  The signified is what we think of, perceive or interpret. So when I see the letter “c” I think the sound I hear when someone says it, and visa versa; they come to signify each other.  Further, when I see a sequence, like “c-a-t,” I think – not just of the word “cat” – but about an idea of a cat, whatever that is in my mind: cats I’ve seen or encountered, purring, growling, biting, clawing, grumpy, etc.

Prediscursives and the discursive

Similarly, Foucault claims that there are things that exist in the world – IRL – there are objects, bodies, events, practices, institutions, etc. These are prediscursive, existing outside of and perhaps prior to our talking about them or even our knowledge of them.

However, there’s also the discursive, the way we talk about these things. We interpret the prediscursive through the way that it is caught up in the discursive, which represents a whole vast cloud of knowledge and assumptions about characteristics, connections, relationships, etc. that Foucault calls a discourse formation.

It’s not that the prediscursive doesn’t matter outside of the discursive – it really does – but its complicated.  First off, ‘this prediscursive is still discursive,” that is to say, it signifies.  While it doesn’t “specify” how the object should be taken up and interpreted, it does serve to limit, to “characterize” and “define rules” (76).  In this way, the prediscursive elements are kind of like signifiers: we see a body that is marked by physical attributes, we see that this body is a certain size, we see that it has a particular skin color. These are real characteristics of bodies.

When we add the discursive on top of it, we get a set of signifieds that together create a sign; we begin to assign things meanings: those physical attributes mark her as a “woman.” That size of a woman is “heavyset,” or “big, fat.” That skin color is “black.”  Each of those interpretations comes along with a whole gang of other attributions – and taken collectively, they create more – about her lifestyle, her habits, her character, and why and how she’s funny.

More

To really blow your mind, the prediscursive exceeds the interpretation it’s given in any set of discourse formations. They say, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” that’s what we’re going for here.

When I try to describe an older photograph to you, you might agree that I did a better or worse job, but I will never capture all of it. Further, someone with a background in art or composition will see more than me. Someone with a background in photography may see more and different things. A historian would see different things.  With a great photograph, we could all sit around and talk for days and never express everything that the photo means, what it evokes in us.

That’s a single picture; a snapshot of time. How much more complex is a person?

More human

In an interview with Tre’Vell Anderson of the Los Angeles Times (7/20/2017), Zainab Johnson expresses a more fleshed-out view on this topic.  Anderson notes that she “battles expectations of what she and her set … should be.”

I had a shaved head and I wore my hair in an afro a lot, so people expect the strong black woman thing. But I love to say some ratchet …, just so that you understand that nothing — not my hair, not my look, not one particular joke — defines me. I’m a person in the world, and so the way that I approach stand-up is I tell my story.

Sometimes my story involves the fact that I’m a woman and sometimes it involves the fact that I’m a black woman. Sometimes it involves the fact that I’m from a big family and sometimes it involves the fact that I have body issues. It encompasses so many things that it’s just the human that I am, and I hate to say this in interviews… but it is what it is. You either … with me or you don’t.

I like this quote in comparison to Mo’Niques because it clearly displays a realization that she’s telling many parts to a larger story, and that the story has so many facets that she may never adequately cover it, they’re all just “selections.”

Reflections – Selections – Deflections

As I said in a previous post, we have to realize, along with Kenneth Burke, that any discourse, any story, description or set of terms (“woman,” “heavyset,” “black,” etc.) must act as what Kenneth Burke calls a “terministic screen” – that it frames an issue. The issue so framed is inevitably changed:

Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function as a deflection of reality. (45)

This deflection is important to note, because while we think we’re being shown all there is, it distracts us from the rest.  When comics play on their marginal personas and identities for a laugh, it further entrenches the expectations we have for all comics of that type.  These expectations, in turn may limit what we allow those comics to do.  This comes from another selection and deflection, brought about by under-representation.

There aren’t as many women – and especially black women – in comedy as there are men, so the few there are stand out more.  Johnson makes this point as well, stating that while male comics talk about their bodies or complain about the opposite sex,

But the thing about it is you get to see 100 of those, and so they don’t stand out to you. You don’t see very many women. So, if I tell you I saw three women and 100 men [when I booked shows], I’m gonna remember the three women, because they came few and far between, so they stood out to me. And if those women weren’t good to me, I’m gonna remember that and I’m gonna assign that to the entire gender — which is ridiculous.

In an interview with The New York Times (7/12/2017), Jenny Slate expresses a similar problem when asked by Ana Marie Cox:

AMC: You’re often grouped with actresses like Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer of Broad City, and Lena Dunham. Does that feel accurate?

JS: It’s lovely to be put into that group with these women. I also don’t think that we’re very similar other than that we’re women and we all have vaginas and we don’t seem to be very scared of that. It’s annoying to be oversimplified.

The selection of women we’re presented with is deflected to stand in for all women. So, similarly, fat comics stand in for all fat people, black comics for all black people, etc. These expectations create implicit rules for how we approach the space of stand-up.

More spaces

In that same article by Tre’Vell Anderson of the Los Angeles Times (7/20/2017), Amanda Seales talks about how she feels limited by race, sex and gender expectations, and how she’s trying to expand the space:

AS: My whole intention is to break down these limitations of what a black comedian is supposed to be and to open up a space. For a lot of comics who aren’t as silly or physical, but more intellectual, we get looked at as ‘alt comics. No, I’m still a black comic and there are black people who want to hear my type of black comedy, but that space hasn’t been built out for us.

AS: In the white comedy world, there are all different kinds. With us, you’re either ‘Def Comedy’ or [nothing].

TA: And Seales’ “head-y” style of comedy is making room for different types of funny black women.

AS: I think [my peers and I] are ushering in a type of comedy that’s not just [about] sex and relationships but also sinking our teeth into political and social issues in a way that black women haven’t really been lauded for in the past.

TA: Most of the time, black female comedians are expected to talk about their vaginas, she adds, using a word other than vaginas.

AS: My comedy is different in that it’s rooted in social commentary.

I don’t know which is worse, the idea of “black comedy” as a particular type (silly, physical) or set of topics (genitalia, sex and relationships), or the idea that it’s the only type of comedy that “black comics” can do. Certainly complicated human beings should have a bit more leeway to comment on their human experience.

Summary

So no, Mo’Nique wasn’t telling us her Truth, and now she’s evolved.  She knows she was always more, as does Johnson.

Before, Mo’Nique was merely telling us a part of her truth, a few of her many truths (in the postmodern sense I’ve discussed previously) because “that’s what [she] knew how to be funny with.” She created a persona, one based on a marginalized identity that was only one part of her complex life and personality.

Now she knows how to make more of her life funny, so like Johnson she’s telling more, but they’re both still using “slippery personas.” Their new personas may be more like their real life self (whatever that is), but it’s still a selection, still a deflection.

So no, we’re not going to “truly walk away knowing exactly who [Mo’Nique is],” and we probably won’t “find out who [we] are,” just parts and pieces.  I’d like to think we’re all more. For that reason, we may never be fully “with” Johnson, though we can laugh and enjoy the parts we get.

And perhaps by comics like Seales choosing to do more, we can open the door for other, different personas to emerge, expanding the pie (range of pies?) for comics and audiences alike. That sounds worthwhile. Who doesn’t want more pie?

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

Burke, Kenneth. “Terministic Screens.”  Language as Symbolic Action.  44-62.

de Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics, Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1977.

Foucault, Michel.  The Archaeology of Knowledge.  New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.