Humor Theories/Stand Up Comedy/Theories About Funny/Theories About Jokes

Sigmund Freud’s Jokes part A. II. a. 4. The Techniques of Verbal Jokes – Final Thoughts

Posted on by nwilson

This is the seventh of several installments on Sigmund Freud’s Jokes [Witz] and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905; free eBook) – and the reactions to it. Just trying to get some clarity.

In this installment, I continue with his second chapter, where Freud gives us a laundry list of joke techniques, trying to narrow down to a few meta-types. We’re working through Freud’s first category of joke techniques or jokework, which rely on word usage:

Techniques of verbal jokes

By way of summary, Freud gives us some final thoughts about the first category as a whole.

Final Thoughts

Condensation rules

When looking at all three sub-categories – condensation, multiple uses and double meaning –  taken together, Freud finds that the underlying principle is a “tendency to economy,” what he’s previously called “the peculiar brevity of wit,” and that they can all be grouped under “condensation” (30).  Most of the those strictly in the sub-category of condensation as described above can be loosely described as sound jokes.

Sound jokes [Klangwitze] have “similarity of [word] structure or rhyming assonance, or whether they share the same first few letters, and so on” (31). However, as we start to get to the second and third class of verbal jokes, we start to get past puns and into plays on words (itself a sub-sub-category), and Freud describes this transition as a spectrum.

Beyond sound jokes

Freud notes Kuno Fischer’s distinction between two sub-categories: puns and plays on words.

A pun is a bad play upon words, since it plays upon the word not as a word but as a sound (Fischer, 78).

A play on words “passes from the sound of the word to the word itself” (Fischer, 78).

But Freud finds the distinction to be haphazard and to establish an unnecessary hierarchy in terms of technique.  Puns are, for Freud,

[T]he lowest form of verbal joke, probably because they are the ‘cheapest’ – can be made with the least trouble. And they do in fact make the least demand on the technique of expression, just as the play upon words proper makes the highest. (30-31)

However, in contrast, Freud finds that in terms of technique, “puns merely form a sub-species of the group which reaches its peak in the pay upon words proper” (33).

 

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Cases and Current Events/Comics in the News/Stand Up Comedy

Jim Breuer and Ali Lerman are Insensitive

Posted on by nwilson
This asshole…

I’ll be honest again: I’m not a Jim Breuer fan. He’s one of those comics who just rubs me the wrong way. A big part of it is his hyper-masculine “suck it up, sensitive snowflake” act.  My common thought in watching him is “Maybe you should try to not be such an asshole.”

Insensitivity

His insensitivity is on display in his interview with Ali Lerman of OCWeekly.com (7/17/2017); in fact, she joins in – it’s a hate-fest for a moment or two.  But what should interest us here is what they imply about the power of words.  Here’s the first (of two) relevant bits.

I know that you try not to curse on stage anymore but, what is your favorite curse word?

Oh f-bomb! When I’m really going at it I drop the f-bomb a lot! I’m also very politically incorrect when it comes to using certain words and it really drives me nuts because they’re all different terms now. People get so sensitive now. But when I’m really angry, I’ll drop a couple words. Thank god people know me though so they’re not all, oh my god he’s this phobic and that phobic. [Laughs.] No. It’s not what you want to define it as.

Yeah the world is batshit. I hate that it was fine to say certain words back in the day and if you use them now, you’re a monster. Like retard. Everything is retarded and I’m not talking special needs.

Yes!! That’s exactly one of the words I’m talking about! I’ve been so angry and yelled out, are you retarded? Or, god, that’s so retarded! Now they have rallies and conversations about what you should say. Please.

The best thing about rallies to me is that they’re marching against something “offensive” while carrying signs that are offensive.

[Laughs.] Exactly. It’s really all so stupid.

This discussion is about the power of words. First off, what counts as taboo? Is a “politically incorrect” word on the same level as a “curse word”? Breuer and Lerman seem to think they’re not. Breuer won’t even say the “F-bomb,” but neither of them has a problem with dropping the “R-bomb.” I agree that the two words are not on par, but for quite different reasons.

The power of words

I’ve argued before about the power of words as coming from their ability to change over time.  As I said,

[W]hy does the [N-]word necessarily carry baggage at all? Shouldn’t we be looking at the usage?

Perhaps this is a deeper discussion than we need to get into here, and I and many others have addressed some of it elsewhere (for perhaps the best example, see Judith Butler, Excitable Speech, 1997).  Suffice it to say that I’m one of those who argues that we give words power, and making a word taboo only increases that power and limits what it can do. In the immortal words of Hermione Granger:

Instead, we should allow the word to change meanings with use; basically that writing the word when talking about it is not the same as calling someone one. However, Michael Eric Dyson might be changing my mind on this, so I’ll not drop it again.

Phobic

Does using a word indicate that you’re “phobic” (homo-, trans-, xeno-)? Only if you use the word to demean people, which is essentially what Breuer’s (and Lerman’s) uses do.

They’re not re-purposing the word, saying “What’s up, my R-bomb?”  They’re trying to say, “By using the word, I’m not referencing people with special needs, I’m saying that something or someone is stupid.” But they’re still using the word at someone or something, to demean them. They’re still using it in a way consistent with how it has been used before. Like Bill Maher’s usage of the N-word, they’re using it as the punch line to what becomes a dick joke.

That’s the difference between “F-bombs” and “R-bombs,” we use fuck in a number of different and creative ways, and not every joke that includes the word fuck is a dick joke or an attack – Gerald Nachman characterizes Lenny Bruce as not trying to show off, but simply using the expressions of his day that came naturally to him. To a lot of people, this puts “fuck” on a different (lesser) level from the “R-bomb.”

Another problem is that the R-word does refer to a specific type of special need.  Used clinically, it describes a particular mental condition, and that is the only time it can be safely used without danger of blow-back.  Even saying, “I used my extinguisher to retard the fire,” will get you odd looks, though that’s technically correct as well.

It’s this idea of retard as to delay or hold something back that gets translated into stupid.  But to use it to describe a person who is acting dumb (or a thing that is idiotic) is to degrade people with special needs.

Your intention doesn’t matter, when that’s how everyone else understands what you just said – or perhaps, just the people who don’t know you well, because that’s a small group. You can’t single-handedly change a word’s meaning; you can’t “Make fetch happen.”

As to this notion that “it was fine to say certain words back in the day and if you use them now, you’re a monster,” I say:

Dueling offenses

In the first part of the discussion, Breuer’s failure to drop an F-bomb, but willingness to drop the R-bomb multiple times shows that he thinks there’s a hierarchy of offense, and the F-bomb is worse.  In the latter part of the quote, he doubles down on this idea, essentially saying that people who are offended by ableism, sexism, homophobia and the like, that walk around with signs that say “Fuck Ableists!” are hypocrites.

And maybe they are – the idea that a sex act is used as an attack to some extent supports rape culture. And here’s where Breuer gets me – because he actually does have a line, and it is rape.

Breuer’s sensitive side

Later in the interview, Lerman asks,

When it comes to jokes, is there anything that is not funny to you?

Ummm… rape. It’s not that I cringe but, well, I used to do a thing, which is a true story, with Will Farrell and Tracy Morgan back on SNL. Will would be in costume and stay in character for hours. One of these characters would just degrade me, Tracy, and Colin Quinn. We then went into character as thugs and we took his character, which was this over the top flamboyant artist, and we dragged him out of the office repeatedly and would do fake horrible things to him. [Laughs.] It was very funny. We did it like three times over the night and everyone got in on it. I told that story on stage a couple of times and then I had a woman come up to me, and she didn’t lecture me but, I could tell by the trauma in her eyes that just that word disturbed her. It was that moment I was like, even though we didn’t really do that and it was fake, if I traumatized this one woman at my show with that, it’s not worth for me to do it. I started thinking about how horrifying and dark that is and you know, there are plenty of other areas to find funny.

WTF [a usage that is commonly understood not as an attack, but as surprise!]?!? Breuer dropped a bit he (STILL) thinks is funny – he describes it as “very funny” and laughed at the mere memory of it! – just because of one audience member’s “traumatized” reaction? Is Breuer going soft on us? Shouldn’t he have just told her to “suck it up” and kept telling that joke?

Summary

I’m not generally in favor of banning words. However, I think uses can be more or less problematic, more or less insensitive, and I see both Breuer and Lerman as crossing that line.

But maybe there’s hope for him after all. Maybe his insight about rape jokes will splash over into other areas. Maybe one day he’ll come to see the other people he traumatizes when he drops R-bombs and other “politically incorrect” words. Then again, I won’t hold my breath.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

Nachman, Gerald.  Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950’s and 1960’s.  New York: Pantheon, 2003.

Humor Theories/Stand Up Comedy/Theories About Funny/Theories About Jokes

Sigmund Freud’s Jokes part A. II. a. 3. The Techniques of Verbal Jokes – Double Meaning

Posted on by nwilson

This is the sixth of several installments on Sigmund Freud’s Jokes [Witz] and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905; free eBook) – and the reactions to it. Just trying to get some clarity.

In this installment, I continue with his second chapter, where Freud gives us a laundry list of joke techniques, trying to narrow down to a few meta-types. We’re working through Freud’s first category of joke techniques or jokework, which rely on word usage:

Techniques of verbal jokes

We’re discussing the third sub-set of verbal joke techniques, “Double meaning” (28), and its five sub-sub-sets: Name and thing, metaphorical and literal, play on words, double entendre, and with allusion.

  1. “Double meaning” (28).

Freud extends his idea of using a word’s “full” versus “watered-down,” meaning to commonly understood techniques of joking, particularly words that have “double meaning” or “plays upon words.” Freud notes that the distinction between his second and third group here are not clean, and he further notes several “sub-classes” of this latter group that are similarly not cleanly divisible.

    1. “Meaning as a name and as a thing” (28).

“Cases of the double meaning of a name and of a thing denoted by it” (23). Like making references to shooting (“discharge”) to or about a guy named Pistol.

    1. “Metaphorical and literal meanings” (28).

“Double meaning arising from the literal and metaphorical meanings of a word” (24). Freud’s example is quite involved, comparing a doctor who held a laryngoscope up to his contemporaries as a reference to Hamlet’s thought of a play as a way to hold a mirror up to society. [Anyone got a better one?]

    1. “Double meaning proper, or play on words” (24, 28).

These first three differ from the last two in that the meanings of the words tend to be equally prominent. Freud’s examples:

A doctor, as he came away from a lady’s bedside, said to her husband with a shake of his head, “I don’t like her looks.” “I’ve not liked her looks for a long time,” the husband hastened to agree.

Louis C.K. has a joke that’s parallel. When his bank notifies him that he has “insufficient funds,” he agrees, “Well that’s a good way to put it too. I agree with that. I find my funds to be grossly insufficient.

    1. “Double entendre [Zweideutigkeit]” (28).

In double entendres, “the effect of the joke depends quite specially on the sexual meaning,” which is less prominent as it is less socially acceptable (27). His example is:

This girl reminds me of Dreyfus [a soldier on trial]. The army doesn’t believe in her innocence.

Another good example here is Mercutio’s line from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet:

Tis no less [a good day], I tell you; for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.

    1. “Double meaning with an allusion” (28).

Not all double meanings [Zweideutigkeit] have to be sexual.  Freud defines this last category generically as “Where in a case of double meaning the two meanings are not equally obvious” or “are not equally prominent but in which one lies behind the other” (27-28).

All of these forms work through the process Freud has described as the succession of bewilderment and enlightenment/illumination, as previously described.

Summary

So these are more techniques of verbal jokes, and once more, Freud takes a ridiculous amount of time describing examples, connecting them to the theories from the introduction and making arguments. These categorizations of jokes still don’t do much for my work, but they are interesting to think about when writing jokes.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Cases and Current Events/Comics Talking Shop/Stand Up Comedy

Kishori Sud on Free Speech in Indian Stand-Up

Posted on by nwilson

Kishori Sud of IANS, asked a number of Indian comics about free speech (7/16/2017), and their answers highlight an issue that pops up a lot, even here in America: Is stand-up a space of free speech, where a comic can “Speak Truth to Power”? He notes,

In stand-up comedy, artistes take bold pot shots at politicians or comment on social issues like the beef ban — yet most of them feel that people in India are not quite ready to be criticised or mocked.

A “bold pot shot” sounds like an oxymoron. If a pot shot is “a criticism, especially a random or unfounded one” then can random, unfounded criticisms be bold in a meaningful way (as opposed to just be audacious)? However, if a pot shot is “unexpected criticism aimed at something with no chance of self-defense,” then perhaps it can be meaningfully bold, but this scenario doesn’t scan, as politicians always have an opportunity for self-defense.

Further, if people are “not quite ready,” will the practice have an effect? Will it continue?

Truth to power

Whereas a number of people claim that comedy can have no effect on society, Indian comic Amit Tandon, “feels stand-[up ]comedy is ‘one of the voices’ against the negativity escalating in the country.” Stand-up takes its place alongside bona fide political discourse; however, for whatever reason – fewer people trying, audiences not biting; Sud doesn’t delve into the “whys” – “[Tandon] believes that ‘other people are doing better jobs than comedians, like RTI (Right To Information) activists, NGOs, etc’.”

Neeti Palta, says that

[S]ince the time of “[Emperor] Akbar and [his wise advisor] Birbal, comedy has always been used as a tool to sugarcoat hard truths and make them more palatable. And so is the case today”.

This reflects a common view that humor and comedy coat, clothe, cover up the truth, allowing it easier passage. My problem with this view is that oftentimes, comedy is given less credit. At base is a bona fide, political message, and the humor is just an aesthetic choice – a series of techniques: wording, tone, timing, etc.

On the other hand, my view is that oftentimes the humorous devices reveal the truth in a way that a direct statement could not. For instance, in a humorous comparison or contrast, the humor is not something added on after the fact, the comparison is what makes the fact visible.

Reflection versus revelation

Palta casts further doubt on what humor can do when she says,

It reflects the ethos of the era it exists in. Be it a poking fun at intolerance or a bunch of idiots who are all too easily offended, or the current political scenario, or even the alter lives we lead in cyber space. Everything is rich ground for material.

Yes, everything is ground for material, but the idea that art “reflects,” is somewhat problematic.  Can the comedian convince the audience of something they haven’t thought of before, or are they merely consensus seekers, telling us what we already know and believe? I would say they can be both.

We have to realize, along with Kenneth Burke, that humor must act as what he 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 of reality can present us with something new, revelatory; it can reveal new insights about the world.

Political humor in practice

In practice, we know that not all comics even try to approach political topics, much less political figures, and when they do, they’re often very careful.

Sorabh Pant says that “he thinks twice about his jokes only when it is related to Indian politicians.”

I want to make sure that I am not saying anything that is incorrect. I will criticise (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi, (Chief Minister of Delhi) Arvind Kejriwal and (Congress leader) Rahul Gandhi, but I am also going to figure out their positive side to keep it balanced because all three of them have quite a vast number of supporters in the country and it is a little unfair to disrespect them.

His answer references the idea of comic intention – that stand-up must be funny first, and that he has to get a laugh from a general audience, which will include supporters.  Thus begins the process of self-policing, he “sugarcoats” his critique by saying something positive.  This is wise as it gives the audience an opposing reason to enjoy the set, but some would say it simultaneously undercuts the efficacy of the critique.

Moral policing

Sud asks the question:

[I]s stand up comedy the only platform devoid of interference from “moral policing”?

Some comics say it is not free from moral policing. Sud quotes stand-up comedian Appurv Gupta, who says,

[O]nline trolls are making sure that even comedians won’t say what they want to say. These days, everyone is getting hurt over even small things and if we say something that affects them emotionally or forces them to think about their past decisions, then they can go to any level — especially on internet — and they make sure that either they win the argument, or you stop arguing with them.

I, as a comedian, think twice before writing a small tweet and think about the consequences; so I doubt whether I have freedom of speech, specially at this point of time. Things were different 2-3 years back. I don’t know whether this change is good or bad for everyone, but, yes, freedom of speech is facing a struggle in India.

He further quotes Punchliners comedy platform co-founder, Arjun Anand, who believes that “sensitive issues must be handled sensitively”. So again, we return to the process of self-policing, of “thinking twice,” second guessing and trying to be “sensitive,” that can hamper any creative effort.

On the other hand, comic Amit Tandon, believes that Indian stand-up is free of actual policing,

In fact, stand-up comedy shows you that there is still freedom of speech because, despite all the FIRs [First Information Reports; basically the first act of charging someone with a crime], no comedian has actually gone to jail. It shows that it is okay to speak against the government.

As in the U.S., Indian comics don’t usually get prosecuted, let alone convicted; however, that doesn’t mean the whole process isn’t a pain in the ass that has a chilling effect on what the comics try to do.

Comedy is not judgment free

But we should recognize that freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from judgment. No one gets to say whatever they want with no consequences. Not all people who complain and get “emotional” are simultaneously irrational. Perhaps it’s not just that “people aren’t ready,” maybe comics should try not to be assholes; maybe they should try to be sensitive when handling sensitive issues.

Further, we should recognize that the space of stand-up is policed so heavily (both in India and here in the U.S.) precisely because it is potentially powerful, and we’re worried about its use and abuse.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

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

Humor Theories/Stand Up Comedy/Theories About Funny/Theories About Jokes

Sigmund Freud’s Jokes part A. II. a. 2. The Techniques of Verbal Jokes – Multiple Uses

Posted on by nwilson

This is the fifth of several installments on Sigmund Freud’s Jokes [Witz] and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905; free eBook) – and the reactions to it. Just trying to get some clarity.

In this installment, I continue with his second chapter, where Freud gives us a laundry list of joke techniques, trying to narrow down to a few meta-types. We’re working through Freud’s first category of joke techniques or jokework, which rely on word usage:

Techniques of verbal jokes

We’re discussing the second sub-set of verbal joke techniques, “Multiple uses of the same material” (21, 28), and its four sub-sub-sets: Whole and parts, different order, slight modification, full and empty.

  1. “Multiple uses of the same material” (21, 28).

    1. “As a whole and in parts” (28).

“The multiple use of the same word, once as a whole and again in the syllables into which it falls” (20).

Freud’s examples are primarily German and Italian, one of my favorites is from Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, Act II, scene ii, Where Dromio of Syracuse and Antipholus of Syracuse meet back up after some misadventures where Dromio discovered his doppleganger’s wife:

Ant S.: “What’s her name?”

Dro. S. “Nell, sir; but her name and three quarters, that is, an ell [~18″] and three quarters, will not measure her from hip to hip.”

    1. “In a different order” (28).

John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country” comes easily to mind; it’s witty, though not particularly humorous.

    1. “With slight modification” (28).

“Taking the same verbal material and [repeating it,] merely make some alteration in its arrangement. The slighter the alteration – the more one has the impression of something different being said in the same words – the better is the joke technically” (21).

This can just be the alteration of a letter, as in Freud’s example of a Jewish woman who confronts a Jewish politician by saying, “Herr Hofrat, your ante-semitism was well-known to me; your antisemitism is new to me.” The first acknowledges he’s Jewish, the second that he’s racist.

    1. “Of the same words full and empty” (28).

Better yet is relying on usage to imply a different meaning. Freud notes, “Words are plastic material with which one can do all kinds of things.  There are words which, when used in certain connections, have lost their original full meaning, but which regain it in other connections” (22).

Freud uses the example of a blind man meeting a lame man and asking him, “How are you getting along?” The lame man answers, “As you see.” “Getting along” and “seeing” are commonly used in metaphorical terms, this use implies their full, literal meaning. Of course this overlaps with a category below, but still.

Later, Freud brings in the following joke, and says it’s “case of the same word, used ‘full’ and ’empty’ (Group II (f))” (34), but he later calls it a combination of double-meaning, (sub-species f,)” but “double-meaning” is III (i), below (37).

Two Jews met in the neighborhood of the bath-house. “Have you taken a bath?” asked one of them. “What?” asked the other in return, “Is there one missing?”

Freud argues that the full value of “taken a bath” is restored in the answer.

Summary

So these are more techniques of verbal jokes, and again Freud takes a ridiculous amount of time describing examples, connecting them to the theories from the introduction and making arguments. Once again, these categorizations of jokes don’t do much for my work, but they are interesting to think about when writing jokes.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Cases and Current Events/Comics Talking Shop/Stand Up Comedy

Aditi Mittal on the Postmodern, Stand-up’s Power and Free Speech

Posted on by nwilson

Some folks would say, don’t you study American stand-up? What’s with the stuff on these Indian and Pan-Asian comics? Stay in your lane! Well, I justify it by saying:

  1. Stand-up is an American export, so they’re trying to follow our models, and how they follow it still tells us things about the models.
  2. Although they have a completely different culture, mindset and audience, there still seems to be a lot of overlap in terms of problems faced and views expressed on them.
  3. When their views don’t overlap ours, it can be refreshing and help point out important aspects of our views.
  4. They’re producing comedy like crazy! Both Amazon and Netflix are competing to provide a platform for Indian stand-ups, and articles about them are filling my news feed.

Take Aditi Mittal’s interview with Ankur Pathak of Huffington Post, India (7/15/2017). While she expresses the common view that she is trying to “make people laugh,” Mittal also says some of the smartest things I’ve heard a comic say recently about comedy.

On the post-modern

Mittal notes,

We are in this age right now, the post-modern age, where everyone is jaded with everything. Like television has realised that television is f**k all. You know. And television owns it. So now television is not accountable to anybody or anything because they’re like ‘We’re f**k all, we told you. Why are you still watching?‘ Ads, you know the self-aware ads, who’re like ‘Hey I’m just an ad selling you stuff, but will you buy it?‘ I mean what are you? A fool? I was very unnerved by it because I was like ‘then who is telling actual stories?‘

Yeah. If they’re gonna parody themselves then you lose the chance to call them out.

Yes! That’s what it is. For the longest time, comedy was sort of the ‘caller outer’, right. And now the ‘caller outer’ has become that thing itself. So now it has insulated itself from being called out….

And later,

I feel constantly being torn between what is calling out and what is ‘call-outable’ and irony and where to derive humour from…

This is pretty good commentary.  The post-modern, as commonly understood, is characterized by a recognition that there is no Grand Narrative (grand récit; big “T” Truth), but only a bunch of competing stories (petits récits; “truths”; Lyotard).

This recognition gives rise to irony and (modernists fear) a backing away from responsibility. Television can claim that because it’s just a bunch of noise, that it’s not worthwhile, and therefore that it has no obligation to be worthwhile. Fox News can claim that all news is kind of partisan, so it can be all the way partisan, and that should be OK; plus, nobody really listens to the news anyway… Advertisements can do the ironic “wink” that says “we know that you know, but at least we know, so shouldn’t you buy from us?” And what is a comic supposed to do with that?

Of course, that’s not my notion of the postmodern, which is a term I and others use to describe something that’s a game-changer, a move that expands the conversation; that’s what postmodern art is/does (Lyotard). True postmodern art is hard to find, and everything else is modern, operating by the current rules, not trying to rock the boat.  This is what Mittal recognizes.

On the return of modernity

Mittal notes that people’s response to the media, advertisers and celebrities – basically all of popular culture – backing away from responsibility is to hold them more accountable:

It’s now gone back in the other direction where people are seeking sincerity in comedy! Where people are looking for truths and saying … (If she’s said your Mom’s fat, she genuinely means it)

You know the hailing of comedy as the solution to life’s problem and all, I find that very disturbing.

It puts a lot of responsibility on comedians to not just be entertainers and joke-tellers but something more accountable…

Haan!

And it also shifts the blame from where it’s supposed to be right?

She later returns to this point:

I also feel that it’s an entirely unreasonable demand to expect your comedians to educate you. The fact that it is happening is great. But to use it as a primary source like ‘Nahi nahi vo comedy person ne bola ki [I don’t want to be a comedian] drinking and driving is okay‘. No it’s obviously not, man.

People taking their politicians less seriously than their comedians is just terrifying right?

Of course. Our lines of morality are very flexible. They can get away with a lot more than you can despite being elected by the people and holding public office…

Thank you! In the f*****g power structure, where are they? And is there any single person who is like ‘Hey by the way, you as a politician is a sucks‘.

While I think something was lost in translation, the point remains: people are holding comics more accountable than they do politicians, something I recently wrote about, as Fran Lebowitz said the same thing.  As I noted, there, power doesn’t come from being an entertainer or being a politician, it comes from people. People make entertainers by watching their shows, and they make politicians by voting.  They can and do grant some people different types of power, and I called the power we grant to popular culture and its icons “ideological power” (as opposed to the “legislative power” granted to the politician).

Popular culture icons are given the power to influence how people think, their ideas and goals, to educate and shape people’s worldview or ideology, which is far more powerful and subversive, but more slow and subtle, than legislative power. When we recognize this, we begin to hold our celebrities accountable – as we should also be doing with our politicians.

On the power of stand-up

Mittal also directly addresses what happens in stand-up, but it’s a lesser, “temporary” power:

I do believe that comedy has some temporary power. It’s temporary because it lasts as long as you laugh and clap at a thing. Because you realise this is something so much bigger than anybody sitting in the room and at that moment, none of us have control over it. But for that one moment, we can all take solace in the fact that it’s ironic to the outside world or we’re acknowledging how weird it is, collectively.

It would seem that Mittal views stand-up as a unifying force; that it brings people into a common understanding a la John C. Meyer. This may happen, if we accept the common interpretation that laughter means that everyone got the same message, that everyone laughs the same way and for the same reasons. However, some might be fake laughing, or guffawing, and most jokes are polysemic and polyvalent, have more than one interpretation, more than one reason to laugh.

Where I think she’s right, is that people understand it as unifying – we think we laugh for the same reasons, whether or not we do – and maybe this effect is more important than the facts. That’s a postmodern realization: That appearances are small “t” truths that are more important than the Truth, especially when the Truth is unknowable.  Mittal is with John Limon in noting that laughs are ephemeral, temporary, they expend themselves in their moment, and we can’t second-guess or analyze them after the fact.

On freedom of speech in stand-up

Pathak interjects the idea of stand-up’s ability to “Speak Truth to Power”:

More importantly, it’s a voice of dissent, one that busts the State’s propaganda. It’s this alternative awareness that needs to exist and one wishes that there was more freedom for it to travel…

Yeah…

Perhaps Mittal is hesitant because Pathak introduced the opposite point a bit earlier, and she agreed with that. He was talking about how American comics play the “role of public intellectuals,” making news accessible with satire. He notes, however,

[W]e don’t see that culture in our country. Now that is obviously because of the legal repercussions and the very real physical threats and the fear of FIRs [First Information Reports; basically the first act of charging someone with a crime] and PILs [Public Interest Litigation; essentially a civil suit on behalf of the people]. Isn’t that a suffocating environment for comedians? Say you may want to take a strong political stand but you’re too afraid to go out there and say it as is…

Of-course it is! It is restrictive because there are certain things you want to say and you know it will invite the backlash that you are not equipped to handle. I don’t have the money for a million lawyers to stand by and be like ‘Nahi nahi ye theek hai, isko jaane do’. (No, no, this is acceptable, let it go)

I don’t have the resources as a single individual to face that.

Yes, India’s legal system and culture are different than ours, but this discussion could happen – and in fact has happened here: Lenny Bruce was convicted of violating obscenity laws (later overturned). He lost gigs, money and many said it killed him. His plaintiff was not an individual, but “society.”

There are defenses to be made, both here under the First Amendment, and apparently in India as well, but the problem is you have to defend, and you have to spend your own money to do so.  This isn’t censorship, defined as “prior governmental restraint,” but it does have a “chilling effect” on free speech, as Mittal notes.

This points out that, perhaps because of its power, stand-up is not a free space where anyone can say whatever they want without consequences (it’s not simply carnivalesque). As we’ve noted about wise fools throughout history, they don’t always get off scot free. Instead, such spaces and people (comics and other pop culture icons) are policed because they have been given power. For this reason, it’s far safer to stick to your own material – stories about your life experiences.

On personal material

Early in the interview, Mittal begins with an epiphany:

And I realised the more personal you make it, the more identifiable it becomes for people.

Here, Mittal is talking about mining personal experiences for the topics of comedy. Later in the interview, she continues in this vein:

I’ve noticed that at times, comedians tend to repeat themselves. There’s a pattern which functions like their safety-net, leading to a lot of cyclical jokes. How do you avoid that?

People often get trapped in ‘Audience ko mere se ye sunna hai, to main sirf ye bolunga ya ye bolungi‘ (People want to hear this from me so I will say only those things). And that becomes almost suffocating to you as a creative person. I’ve realised that when it comes to people liking you and loving you, being fans and all that stuff, it’s really embarrassing. I mean I find it really weird because people will come and go, audiences will come and go. The reason they came to you was because you were being authentic and true to yourself at that point in time. So, now to start lying to them, because you think this is what they want to hear, is dishonest. It’s disingenuous and it’s stunting your growth.

This answer addresses the issues that can arise when the comic’s intention is solely to get a laugh, whatever the cost, especially when trying to satisfy people’s expectations. While some think that comics surprise their audience and violate expectations (basic incongruity theory), Mittal stands with theorists like Kenneth Burke in recognizing that (at least) some comics are actually satisfying expectations and getting a laugh.

Mittal contrasts this with authenticity, being “true to yourself.”  But, as I’ve described before, the comic’s persona is probably always a negotiation.  You tell your personal stories, but you don’t tell ALL your stories, and the ones that don’t get a laugh get revised or cut out completely.

About improving as a comic

I really believe that my breakthrough moment will be in my fourth special. And that’ll be many, many years down the line. I think it’ll be when you’ve shown some level of consistency. In fact consistency is the wrong word, it’s when you’ve improved and are saying more intelligent things than before.

Her view is basically that improving in stand-up comedy means saying smarter things, and – if we add the section above – more honest things. This suggests a hierarchy for her comedy that places the social or critical comic above the entertainment comic, and I’m all in favor of that. This is hard to do when there is a constant pull to go for the laugh.

Summary

So despite the fact that Mittal is an Indian comedian, dealing with Indian problems, they bear a certain similarity to the problems of American comedians. Her commentary on the challenges of the postmodern era are smart.  She grants comedy a certain, temporary, unifying power, but hints at its greater power: to affect people’s views and beliefs. She notes that (perhaps because of its power) stand-up is not a free space where anyone can say whatever they want without consequences (it’s not carnivalesque). Finally, she notes the difficulty of audience expectations and stresses continuing to improve, which she defines as doing more intelligent and authentic jokes – better social commentary.

Mittal also talks about sexism in Indian comedy, which is still happening over here as well [and I may or may not address it in a future post; this blog is currently more about joke work than identity politics, though that can change].

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

Limon, John.  Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America.  Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.

Lyotard, Jean François.  The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.  Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi.  Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1984/2002.

Meyer, John C.  “Humor as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humor in Communication.”  Communication Theory 10.3 (2000): 310-331.

Cases and Current Events/Comics in the News/Stand Up Comedy

Bill Maher and Fran Lebowitz on Comedy That Cuts Deep

Posted on by nwilson

In an interview with Philip Galanes of the New York Times (7/15/2017), Bill Maher and Fran Lebowitz talk a bit about Maher’s recent controversy, and entertainers being treated as politicians and visa versa [and other things: see the end].

N-word controversy

Maher sticks to his guns, as I’ve argued previously, that he’s not a racist, just a comedian, and what he did was make “a mistake”:

BM I think most people understood that it was a comedian’s mistake, not a racist mistake.

PG Your first guest on the follow-up apology show, Michael Eric Dyson, was pretty softball with you. But Ice Cube was righteously indignant. He wanted to hold you to account.

BM Listen, I hope we had a teachable moment about race: trying to make something good from something bad. But maybe also about how to handle something like this: apologize sincerely if you’re wrong — and I was — and own it.

PG Mission accomplished, as President Bush said.

So, OK, perhaps he’s not a racist, and yes, it was a teachable moment, if one that was forced upon him. As I previously argued, I can’t speak to Maher’s sincerity of the apology, I can only speak to his execution, which seemed overly defensive; he keeps saying “Yes, but….” And in his next quote, he continues this defensiveness with another “but”:

BM But we don’t have to grovel, and we don’t have to admit things that aren’t true. When Ice Cube said something about my telling black jokes, I wasn’t going to be: “Oh, well, I made one mistake; I might as well admit mistakes I haven’t made.” I’ve never made black jokes. I’ve made jokes about racists. But my fan base knows that, so it never went anywhere.

In practice, I know that you write a joke from a particular perspective (jokes about racists), and you hope that is how it comes across, and just being called out in the current political climate doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve done anything wrong.

However, to be dismissive about it displays a lack of sincerity.  If he had said, in the interview with Ice Cube, “Which jokes are you talking about?” and shown some interest, and if he could say now, “I went back after that interview and reexamined those jokes, and I’m pretty comfortable that they were jokes about racists and not ‘black jokes,'” it’d be different.

Asked about the difference between this incident and his 9/11, “Suicide bombers aren’t cowards,” comments, Maher said:

BM Part of the difference, as Fran says, is that I was on a network with sponsors. And when sponsors pull out, the network has no choice. But also, the 9/11 statement had meaning behind it. The recent thing was just a mistake. I should not have used that word, even reaching for a joke.

So he meant his previous statements; they were bona fide political statements.  His recent problem was attempting to joke, and a mistake – not bona fide, and he doesn’t stand behind it.

However, he’s falling back on a classic defense – one he stated in the moment – one that we should examine critically [and I have]: “I’m joking!”  When the statement comes out, it is what it is; it can be interpreted in a number of different ways.  Just because he doesn’t back it after it’s reception, we’re supposed to say, no harm, no foul?  It’s a premise Maher refutes in Catholicism: The idea that one can repent and all is forgiven. Perhaps I’m being too harsh, I’m a big fan of recoveries, and yes, “To err is human”; however, does the response to the audience reaction outweigh the original statement itself?  Can you ever “Take it back?” Unfortunately, no.  You can only hope to put it under erasure.

Entertainers and politicians

Lebowitz immediately picks up the point:

FL The worst thing about this is that there’s always outrage over people in show business, who have no actual power. They’re entertainers. We would prefer that they agree with us, and do the right thing. But moral outrage should be reserved for Congress or the Supreme Court. To me, the fact that people can’t tell the difference between these things is why we have Donald Trump as president. People want to be entertained 24 hours a day. And they’re seeking from entertainment what they should be seeking from other branches of life.

PG Have you ever had to do a public apology?

FL No. This is very specific to people who have mass audiences. Remember that whole period when Charlie Sheen was news. That’s not news, O.K.? You can watch Bill; you cannot watch Bill. But you can’t not have this Congress. That’s the misplaced moral outrage.

PG Better to save it for Paul Ryan?

FL I’m glad you brought him up. Every time I see the sentence “Paul Ryan is the conscience of the Republican Party,” I think: What is that? Is that like being the quarterback of the New York City Ballet? But yes, that is where your outrage should be.

Lebowitz’s points seem to be:

  1. Entertainers have no power; legislators have power
  2. We shouldn’t seek agreement from people with no power, but those with power
  3. Our moral outrage is thus misplaced

However, I see another option: People are granting entertainers as much (if not more) power than they are granting legislators.  Understand, power doesn’t come from being an entertainer or being a politician, it comes from people.  You weren’t born a politician or entertainer, people make you one. People make entertainers by watching their shows, and they make politicians by voting.  Thus they can further give these people other types of power.  We could talk about this in terms of the differences between ideological power and legislative power.

Lebowitz is calling our politicians for their legislative power, which is the power to create and enforce laws, which have a real-world impact on people. However, she’s pointing out that celebrities have ideological power, which is the power to influence how people think, their ideas and goals.  The power to shape people’s worldview or ideology is far more powerful and subversive, but more slow and subtle, than legislative power. Ideological power helps decide who gets elected to public office – to whom we give legislative power. We base our votes for people (and our attendance to their shows) on the overlap between our (perceived) ideologies. And the more we realize this, the more we hold our celebrities accountable – as we should also be doing with our politicians.

“Comede-ing” versus stumping

Maher says one other thing that struck me as odd.  Galanes asks,

PG Both of you spend a lot of time on the road, doing speaking engagements and stand-up.

BM When you’re a comedian, there’s nothing greater than comede-ing, getting up on a stage and making people laugh. It’s also a great benefit for doing “Real Time” because I see the country. People talk about “flyover states.” I land in them. I do shows in them. I talk to people, and I think I have a greater understanding of America because of that.

This idea that, because he did a show there, he knows the country is strange.  After all, political candidates travel the country, do “shows” and talk to people.  Also, if audiences “vote” with laughs, then every show is potentially a town hall, or at least a focus group. But there are subtle differences.

Unless they’re huge (like Maher), comics are unlikely to have security guards and aides, so they are less likely to be surrounded by their “bubble.” Comics are also more approachable, and this seems more likely to yield honest interaction with people. So perhaps a comic sees more honestly than a politician.  And maybe Maher’s “greater understanding” is simply more than his understanding prior to touring.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

***Warning: Political rant ahead!!! Warning!!!***

The problems with these kids today…

They begin the interview with a question about racial and ethnic humor – which really becomes a discussion more about religion, identity politics, “busybodyism,” protecting lives versus protecting feelings, bashing millennials for trigger warnings and helicopter parents, and “quit complaining because it used to be so much worse”:

FL Or at Princeton, where they want to change the name of buildings. When I saw it on the news, the protest was full of black women. I thought: Girls go to Princeton now. When I was that age, girls couldn’t go to Princeton. Hardly any black people or Jews could go to Princeton, girls or boys. But they don’t know that, so they never think, “I’m pretty lucky to be here.”

Yes, we’ve progressed, but this is not the time to say, “Haven’t we come far enough?” Galanes is quick to point out the the playing field is far from level, and Lebowitz agrees, but Maher chimes in:

BM We need to find a middle ground on race. If you look at the polling of conservatives, Republicans and Fox News watchers, they think racism is over — which is insane. Denying racism is the new racism. And on the other hand, you have that liberal white guilt, #WhiteSoLame. They think they’re making things better by beating themselves on the back like that albino assassin in “The Da Vinci Code.”

First off, why’s he gotta pick on albinos?  No, but seriously, everyone he’s talking about in this equation is white (or passes for it). He’s also making a false dichotomy; yes, there are racism deniers and self-flagellators, but there are also those who think the situation is better than it is, and guilty allies, and everything in between.  Cries for “middle ground” and moderation skew toward indifference, and we still need activism and allies, even if only guilty ones.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Ramblings

Quotable Quotes

Posted on by nwilson

In Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Sigmund Freud quotes Georg Christoph Lichtenberg as quipping,

It is a pity that one cannot see the learned entrails of authors so as to discover what they have eaten.

That may be the best description of the theory side of this blog.

Humor Theories/Stand Up Comedy/Theories About Funny/Theories About Jokes

Sigmund Freud’s Jokes part A. II. a. 1. The Techniques of Verbal Jokes – Condensation

Posted on by nwilson

This is the fourth of several installments on Sigmund Freud’s Jokes [Witz] and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905; free eBook) – and the reactions to it. I’m using this blog to make public my notes, both to help people to understand the theories as well as to help me clarify in my own mind what philosophers and theorists have said about comedy, humor, jokes, etc.

In this installment, I address his second chapter, where Freud asserts that the characteristic of jokes lies in their form of expression, and thus he gives us a laundry list of joke techniques, which he tries to narrow down to a few meta-types.  This chapter is not particularly interesting to me at present, but let’s get into it for the purposes of rigor. Freud notes that sometimes a joke relies on word usage, and sometimes it relies more on the situation, thus he arrives at two categories of joke techniques or jokework:

  1. Techniques of verbal jokes
  2. Techniques of conceptual jokes

I’ll deal with the former over the next several days, and address the latter in future posts.

Techniques of verbal jokes

Freud notes that there are three major categories for the techniques of verbal jokes:

  1. “Condensation [Verdichtung]” (28).
  2. “Multiple uses of the same material” (21, 28).
  3. “Double meaning” (28).

I’ll deal with the first of these, Condensation and it’s two sub-variations, today.

  1. “Condensation [Verdichtung]” (28).

Condensation is Freud’s attempt to incorporate the “peculiar brevity of wit” that he gets from Theodor Lipps and discusses in his introduction (b).  For Freud, condensation is a process of reducing by bring things together, “accompanied by the formation of a substitute” (10). Freud notes two types of substitutes.

    1. “With formation of [compound or] composite word,” (28).

These include creative words like “anecdotage,” “alcoholidays” (12) or my current favorite “carcolepsy”.

Such words make use of the classical rhetorical trope of allusion, they hint at a crossover of meaning of the two words to form something bigger.

    1. “With [alteration or] modification” (28)

This is a modification of the form of expression – the slighter the modification, the better the joke.

Freud’s example is a Minister of Agriculture, formerly a farmer, when he resigned, another said of him that “Like Cincinnatus [a Roman], he has gone back to his place before the plow,” when the common expression is “behind the plow,” in front of the plow is the ox (16).

A face made for radio.

Another old favorite is Fred Allen’s quip that he didn’t do movies because, “I have a face that was made for radio.” Voices are for radio, faces are for film and television.

Freud links this condensation process to one he described in his The Interpretation of Dreams.

Summary

So these are the first techniques of verbal jokes, and Freud takes a ridiculous amount of time describing examples, connecting them to the theories from the introduction and making arguments. These categorizations of jokes doesn’t do much for my work, but they are interesting to think about when writing jokes.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Cases and Current Events/Comics Talking Shop/Stand Up Comedy

Dawn Picken on Comedy and Laughter

Posted on by nwilson

Dawn Picken of the New Zealand Herald (7/21/2017), expresses a few common and scientific interpretations of comedy and laughter, but she also expresses a better view.

What’s funny?

Picken notes:

Conventional wisdom and even scientific research suggest something is funny because it’s true.

Not exactly.  More specifically, research (and David Misch, who I’ve talked about before) shows that sometimes it’s funny because we believe it might be true – it’s believable, tenable, truth-adjacent, truths. Sometimes, we hope it’s not true – we hope they’re unreliable narrators telling us outlandish stories, like when Bobcat Goldthwaite talks about swinging his date’s cat around by the tail and inquiring about more pets.

The point is, when we recognize something in the joke that resonates with something we believe – or want to – or like, we often are amused, whether or not we laugh.

Why laughter?

Picken has more “conventional wisdom” thoughts on the causes of laughter.

Laughter is more than frivolous fun – it’s a survival skill. So say social scientists. Or anyone who has weathered a life crisis, like Louis C.K.

Laughing, even in death’s face, is what we do when we’ve run out tears, courage or stamina.

These quotes draw primarily on Tension Release/Relief theory (and other, more nuanced theories I have yet to address). This is the idea that when we are truly in a crisis, we build up so much psychological and emotional tension and pressure, that it must be released or bad things will happen. Most theorists argue it doesn’t work this way, but the popular view persists.

The quotes also point to theories of guffaws and fake laughs, where we perform a good-humored personality in front of our bosses and critics to survive and fit in, which is the first part of the next quote:

Laughter promotes attraction, social bonding and learning. It can dilate the narrowest of views, softening our armour while palpating our brains’ frontal lobes.

One of the  common views of laughter is that we all laugh for the same reason, so if you’re laughing and I’m laughing, you instantly seem similar to me, and loads of social scientists have shown that similarity increases attraction. Further, part of John C. Meyer’s theory of humor was that it acts as a unifying force, bringing people into communities and clarifying our beliefs and values.  In this sense, it also promotes learning – through choosing to laugh and noticing others doing the same, we learn about our community.

Active audiences

I like that the focus is on the laughter as active, rather than the comic as active.  The general view is that it’s the comic that dilates narrow views, softens armour, palpates frontal lobes. Picken seems to note that the audience does it themselves.

In choosing to laugh, they open their minds, let down their guards, and begin to think. She seems to acknowledge that laughing is not a passive, unconscious reaction to an overwhelming funny joke force, but an active, thinking response.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?