Cases and Current Events/Comics Talking Shop/Humor Theories/Stand-Up Comedy/Theories About Comics

Persona

Posted on by nwilson

I’ve already written a bit on the documentary, Dying Laughing, but there’s a lot more to say there [plus, I transcribed quite a bit of stuff, so I’m inclined to use it!]. So let’s talk about who the comic is on stage.  There are a couple of views, broadly cast as “Being yourself” or “Creating a persona.”

Becoming Yourself

In the movie, comic Tom Dreeson asserts,

Every stand-up comedian starts out emulating another comedian because they know that works. But then another night, you let a bit of you out and it gets a laugh and you let a little bit more of you out and then pretty soon, you’re you on stage.

Rick Overton and Paul Provenza agree that it takes (in Provenza’s words) “a period of many, many years of growing as a human being and being on stage and developing your own material where you can really get a sense of your own voice and your own identity,” where your act “gels” and becomes “comfortable to you.” Overton adds,

And you have the greatest comfort and latitude with stuff you don’t have to feel like a thief about.  When you can use your own stuff, that’s the forever fountain.

It seems that, though the film lumps them together, Overton is here discussing the material, what topics you talk about and anecdotes you share, while Provenza is discussing the comic’s persona.  Provenza seems to agree with Dreeson that you become more and more yourself on-stage.

Then we get a testimonial from Cocoa Brown, who says she used to “do material,” but after one rough moment recovering from insulting an audience member,

I realized comedy is real, I’m telling her something that really happened to me… and that’s when I realized what my funny is, my funny is real, my funny is truth.

This idea previously appeared in the opening of the film, when Overton is discussing what comedy is: It’s “full approval or full disapproval on your essence, on what you actually believe and how you really see life.” And this is followed shortly after with Jerry Lewis’ emphatic assertion, “When you risk and it scores, it’s hallelujah.”

The idea also appears in the discussion of hecklers and booing.  Suli McCullough notes that audiences begin judging you the moment you walk on stage. Paul Provenza discusses why their disapproval hurts so bad:

It’s like there’s no oxygen and you can’t stop.  If you stop, you lose.  Because we’re all trying to just be who we are.  You know when you’re a musician and you go up there, you’ve got songs that you or somebody else has written.  If you’re a painter, you’ve got what you did with paint.  It’s all there and it’s separate from who you are.  With a comedian, it’s you, there is nothing..it’s you.  They don’t not like you’re material, they don’t not like the clothes that you wear, they don’t like you.  It’s about as personal as it gets.

Update: Chris D’Elia, in an interview with The Interrobang’s Dan Murphy (7/2/2017) about his 2017 special, Man on Fire, says something similar:

I’ve always shied away from being too personal,” he said. “I’m an actor, too, and as an actor, you don’t really want people to know the real you because that helps you as an actor. But as a comedian, you want people to know the real you because it makes you funnier and more relatable. I was always trying to ride that balance. But for this, I just thought ‘fuck it,’ I’m going to go out and tell people who I am and how I feel about things…. People really like when people get vulnerable and open up. It’s been great.

Further, in an interview with oregonlive.com’s Mike Acker (7/3/2017), Solomon Georgio discusses getting personal:

Like most comedians, part of what Georgio discovered was that stories about his life and personal experiences made for great material.

“Personal experience was definitely the way in. Trying to find a way to relay my own life so it doesn’t seem crazy. That’s kind of been the thing that I’ve had the most practice in, having to explain where I’m from, what I am,” Georgio said. “Anyone who’s a minority in this country is sort of put in the position to have to explain their existence. I kind of had to do that my whole life.”

This brings up the notion, told to every person trying to find love: “Just be yourself.” To which we respond, like the minor character in Free Enterprise : “I AM myself!  I’ve been myself for 20 [or 30, or 40!] years!  It’s clearly not working!” [I know, my friends and I were the only ones who saw that movie]

Sometimes, this gets confused. Christian Becker of Pastemagazine.com (7/5/2017) talking about Deon Cole’s Netflix episode of The Standups, says,

In his episode Cole walks on stage with a piece of paper in hand, as if he’s a beginner trying to work out material for a later act. But he’s anything but a beginner, and that persona he puts out there is all intentional.

But then, at the end of the same paragraph, he ends with,

While comedians will often times play a character or show off a larger than life personality on stage, Cole is taking off that mask and just being himself.

And then again, later in the article, he again refers to the comic as “self-aware,”

How self-aware does he get? He opens by literally explaining to the crowd that he’s there to try out some jokes, “and if they don’t work out then you’ll never see me again.” His closer is him just leaving the stage, purposefully skipping the “big finale” that other comics like to end on.

This strikes me as wishy-washy, it’s an intentional persona, but he’s “just being himself.” He’s self-aware, and that’s part of the act, but it’s also him being “real” and “toning down the theatrics.”  But if it’s part of the act, then isn’t it “theatrical” by nature?

Luckily, this is not the way everyone views it. Some recognize that it is not “truly” you on stage; that everyone has a persona.

Roles and code switching

Some critics, such as Joanne Gilbert, believe that every comic creates a persona, a narrator; a humorous version of yourself that helps create a space where we can laugh. Theorist Erving Goffman says that we do this all the time, taking on different roles in different situations.  Other theorists talk about “code switching,” changing not just your language and the words you choose, but also how you talk and act in the conversation – even the topics that you’ll bring up and what you’ll talk more about. Conversations with grandma are way different than conversations with friends. Why should conversations on stage with an audience be any different?

In a piece on Elle’s 2017 Women in Comedy (6/16/2017) written by Seth Plattner, Kezia Wier and Amanda Fitzsimons, Natasha Leggero says the following,

When I was showcasing for Mitzi Shore, I’d show up every Sunday at The Comedy Store, and there was this little sign: ‘You don’t have to be funny for three minutes. You just have to be yourself.’ That’s always taken a lot of pressure off me. It’s like the old quote: ‘Stand-up is your evil twin.’ You just have to find that place where you’re able to be yourself—if a little bit, well, heightened.

In these statements, Leggero seems to note that it’s not really being yourself as the sign she’s quoting would have it, but a version of yourself – that it’s a character the comic is playing. John Sheehan expresses much the same thing in an interview with Heather Barrett of CBCnews.com (7/23/2017):

When it’s stand-up [when he’s performing stand-up], it’s me, it’s my thoughts, it’s my character, it’s me with the volume turned up.

Although he says “it’s me, it’s my thoughts,” the idea of “my character” starts to twist things – does he mean character as in the mental and moral qualities distinctive to him, or the fictional person he’s created?  In any case, the next bit – “it’s me with the volume turned up” – suggests that he’s moved at least in part to the latter.

It also shouldn’t come as a surprise that what happens on stage is a negotiation.  Are comics truly finding their voice, or are they finding a voice (one of theirs?) that the audience finds funny?  Is it your identity, or the identity that works best for everyone (you and the audience)? You try things out and the audience gives you feedback by laughing; you’re all participants in the exchange.

We should note that acceptable persona are historical constructs.  Historically, much attention is given to [and I’ve already written about] the figure of the wise fool. But there would seem to be distinct types that we view as funny.

Marginal?

Where Gilbert loses me is the notion that a comic’s persona is based on their marginal status – that they have to “play up” being a woman, or a person of color, or their appearance (overly short/tall, fat/thin, even hair color). They may also change/heighten the audience expectations by dressing and/or acting in certain ways and thus can “play up” being bisexual/gay/trans/queer, or their social class, or being mentally unstable, even their political affiliations or views. Larry the Cable Guy is a prime example of creating class expectations through dressing up and speaking in an accent. We can all think of many more examples of each of the categories – or I can list some in the comments.

Problems

First off, as with just normal persona, not all marginalities are accepted as funny at all times and in all forms, so playing up marginality is not sufficient.  Yes, there are a lot of black comics doing racial humor, Jewish comics and fat comics doing Jewish and fat jokes. Josh Blue is my primary example of the differently-abled, playing that up for a laugh, and you could also point to Emo Phillips or Sam Kinison and the other unhinged comics making fun of the mentally different. On the other hand, female comics have traditionally struggled, especially if they don’t want to play the “funny” role of the ditz or the slut.

Further, not everyone successful seems to need it. There are a lot of white, middle class, straight, cis-gendered, comics of average height and weight who are quite successful – see 90% of comics working today!

Also, not everyone who can do it, does it. Because I’m a short guy, I look to those comics. There are a few short jokes, here and there, but Jimmy Pardo and Jim Norton are night and day (although maybe Norton qualifies as sexually queer), and neither has much to say about their height.  There are women and people of color (men and women) who do topical humor. Sometimes they are working within the base of the persona they created earlier, when they used to tell jokes about themselves, but perhaps not.

The final series of problems I have with the idea of marginalized persona, stem from its dark side.

The Dark side

The first problem is one I have with marginalized persona are that in trying to please the audience, you can lose yourself.  This one is personal to me, as I’ve done it. I sometimes have a sick sense of humor – I enjoy Jim Norton and Dave Attell and comics in that vein, and I wrote some jokes that got some laughs. I discovered that if I dressed down, didn’t shave, and played up the creepy factor, I got more laughs.  The problem was, I became committed to that line, that character. I had to write more jokes in the vein, and I reached a point where I was no longer comfortable with my own material.  I should say, I enjoy Jim Norton, but I didn’t really want to be Jim Norton!

Amy Schumer [I can’t find where, but I will] says something along the lines of “you have to figure out who the audience will let you be.” But that’s the problem, in chasing the audience laughter, you can surrender your part in the conversation and move to a place where you don’t want to be – and it feels alright because you’re getting the laughs, but you start to die inside. I finally had to pull back and rethink what I was doing.

Hamstringing yourself

Further, some say that if you cast yourself as a marginal person – a wise fool – then you hamstring your credibility.  We don’t have to listen to fools, because they are, well, fools! Look at screaming comics, like Lewis Black.

Through his form and application, Black’s outrage and indignation become a “humor” in Northrop Frye’s sense of a “ruling passion” characteristic of certain comedic characters, particularly buffoons.  And comics and audience alike are trained to think of him as such. Like Lewis Black’s propensity toward angry, snarling indignation, “Bobcat” Goldthwait’s (or Sam Kinison’s) screaming fits, Emo Philips’ slow, deliberative style and off-kilter intonation or Steven Wright’s (or Mitch Hedberg’s) reticent and monotone delivery each indicate a certain off-ness of mental state, signaling that the views they express in the routine are not those that the average, sane person would make.  Each provides us something else to laugh at.  We can laugh at the off-kilter presentation and/or over-the-top persona and, via laughter, trivialize/ridicule both the presentation and the persona – we laugh because their behavior is abnormal. These over-the-top persona come across as unreliable and discordant narrators, and therefore, we don’t have to listen to them.  Though Black’s position is clear, we need not accept the positions of raving madmen or the ponderings of the unbalanced – unless, of course, they are running our government.

Further still, some authors, like Gring-Pemble and Watson take humor to be polyvalent – we can evaluate them from various ways.  Through hyperbolic yelling, Black gives us other things to laugh at than his critique. So when listening to a political rant from Black, we can find his material deeply political and disturbing, but laugh in the moment due to its hyperbolic delivery.  In other words, we may not find the material funny, but we set that aside to enjoy the spectacle of its delivery, the performance of irritation, frustration or incredulity.  Thus our laughter may display that we’ve (for the moment) ignored the politics, because if we were upset by it, we wouldn’t laugh.

Unforeseen Consequences

Nevertheless, it does not guarantee that the messages of marginalized people have no effect – and therein lies perhaps the worst dilemma, because some, like Josh Blue, claim they are giving us the opportunity to laugh with them, at themselves. They tap into the tension that their presence evokes, and they relieve the tension by making self-deprecating jokes, which makes the audience like them.  They would claim that they do no harm because, if Black’s political rants have no effect, how can their self-critiques?

However, there’s also the possibility that we feel superior to them, and their self-deprecation only furthers that sense of superiority, thus eliciting the laugh.  This would be a worst-case scenario, where the comics are hamstringing, not just themselves, but entire classes of people. This is why so many women don’t want to play ditzes and sluts; this is (in part) the basis for Iliza Shlesinger’s recent critique of female comics. It’s the reason I don’t tell short jokes.

Summary

Although popular, it’s unlikely that you have “one true, essential self” that you learn about through stage-time.  It’s much more likely that you evolve a persona that meets audience expectations, and if you’re smart about it, it’s someone you see in yourself – a best, funniest part of you.

If you don’t want to play up your sex, class, gender, sexuality, physical attributes or disabilities, you shouldn’t have to. Doing so may be easier, but beware where that takes you.

It’s impossible to tell if jokes alone have any impact on society, though there are a lot of theories. My point is, why risk it? Just for personal financial gain?

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

What do you think? Do you think comics making jokes at their expense helps or hurts?

References:

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1957/1990.

Gilbert, Joanne.  Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender and Cultural Critique.Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2004.

Goffman, Erving. Presentation of Self In Everyday Life. New York: Random House, 1956.

Gring-Pemble, Lisa and Martha Solomon Watson.  “The Rhetorical Limits of Satire: An Analysis of James Finn Garner’s Politically Correct Bedtime Stories.”  Quarterly Journal of Speech 89.2 (2003): 132-53.

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

Rory Scovel’s Lenny Bruce Opening

Posted on by nwilson

If the title doesn’t already tell you: *Warning: Explicit Language*

Rory Scovel’s new special, Rory Scovel Tries Stand-up for the First Time on Netflix, begins rather oddly.

No, I’m not talking about the Goodfellas-esque, Scorsese, steadycam, follow-through-the-bowels-of-the-theater opening.  Nor the twenty-seven seconds he spends repetitively thanking the audience, though that is somewhat humorous and definitely sets up the next part – I’ll get there.

No, I’m talking about his opening joke. Both Vinnie Mancuso of A.V. Club and Graham Techler of Paste comment on it.  Techler says:

The special begins with tactless question posed to the audience; have they ever had anal sex?

Lenny Bruce’s piss joke

The joke immediately reminded me of one I had only read about in the work of John Limon: Lenny Bruce’s piss joke. That joke is as follows:

If you’ve er, [pause]

Ever seen this bit before, I want you to tell me.

Stop me if you’ve seen it. [long pause]

I’m going to piss on you. (16).

Limon says,

Bruce waits after his announcement, and for a half-second a fraction of the audience rumbles, followed – so closely that the first stage is easy to miss – by seventeen seconds of unanimous laughter, accompanied by the sound of one or two people clapping though not applauding: adding to the percussion of their laughter, as if it were not possible to laugh sharply enough (16).

Seventeen seconds of laughter is significant – it’s far longer than most jokes get – and apparently there was no milking or pantomiming. The audience’s laughter also doesn’t wax and wane but remains continuous. Limon notes that usually such a thing only happens when we reprocess the joke. Here, he argues, perhaps they laughed, and then laughed that they laughed, without a pause in between.

Joke work

In trying to parse out why it might be funny, Limon notes what Freud called the “joke work,” which others have referred to by various names [I’ll insert some here later], but basically it’s set up, delay, punchline. The format is familiar to most people in Western civilization, and we know where and when we are supposed to laugh, and often do so.

Bruce sets it up by telling us to “Stop me if you’ve heard this one…”, pauses, then hits the punchline.

Similarly, Scovel doesn’t just “begin with a tactless question.”  Instead, he says:

Let’s get right into it:

Anal.

Who’s done it?

Although the pace is quicker, the joke work is there: set up “Let’s get right into it,” pause, punchline. As with Bruce’s audience, there is a brief pause in Scovel’s audience after he says anal, and they don’t start to laugh until a half second after the question is posed.

Tendentious jokes

Working from Freud, Limon talks about Bruce’s joke as tendentious, as having, “underneath the joke work, a repressed content, unhumorous but willing to be humored, which is either aggressive or sexual” and “‘sexual’ means ‘excremental/sexual'” (14). This is, again, Relief theory. The theory is that society represses us from talking about sex, pissing or pooping, and the joke creates tension that begs for the relief of a laugh. So Bruce’s joke easily ducks under that bar.

So does Scovel’s – perhaps precisely hitting the “slash” in “excremental/sexual.”  Scovel himself said he was “seeing if the crowd would laugh at the shock of it.” Anal sex shocks us in that it crosses all kinds of lines, the shock creates tension, which then begs for the relief of laughter. In this sense, it’s just a dick joke.

Again, for Limon, the continued laughter suggests that some people were laughing at themselves laughing – that they thought it funny that people would laugh about the possibility of being pissed on, rather than being disgusted.  Scovel’s joke doesn’t have that dimension; it’s just a dick joke. However, Scovel then builds on that.

Repetition and riffing

Whereas Bruce has to try two times to continue through that seventeen seconds of laughter, Scovel powers right over the top of it with repetition:

Who’s done anal? Who here’s done anal? Who’s done anal? Who here has done anal?

Techler notes,

But it isn’t rhetorical, and Scovel continues to ask the question so many times he can eventually suggest that this may be the only joke in his arsenal.

“That joke started by repetition,” says Scovel. “Saying something over and over again, seeing if the crowd would laugh at the shock of it, then lose them and then see if they’d come back around.”

However, Scovel isn’t simply repeating; instead, he riffs on it, changing the wording, which changes the rhythm, and he also alters intonation to milk the joke.  These are pags, follow up punch-lines, slightly different than the original, and meant to get as big a laugh. This riffing goes on for a full eleven seconds, then a five second meta-critique (see below), then another eight seconds of pags:

Anal.  Who’s done anal? But like, anal. Anal, though.  Anal. Who has done anal?

Then comes a twenty three second meta-critique, then another few seconds of pags before he starts mixing it up, getting dirtier/more obscene and doing characters:

Anal. We’re still – this is still – anal. Anal! [in a nasally voice] Anal! Does that sell it, if I added – if that’s my posture: Anal! [shouting] Who’s done anal? [still in character, but softer] I’m the brattiest comic on the circuit. [shouting] Who’s done anal, though? [laughing].

[In a country accent] Buttfuck, who – [normal voice] does that help? Does that help? Does that help, though? Buttfuck.  Somebody’ll be, [country accent] “Oh, buttfuck. Ok yeah. Ok. Yeah. Dude said ‘anal,’ I was like, ‘Who’s the doctor-lawyer on stage?’ Anal, what? Buttfuck, that’s more my speed; that’s more my style. Truth be told, that’s more my style. I buttfuck. Wanna know something about me – I butt-”

[normal] You have to say ‘buttfuck’ with an accent. If you say it without an accent you sound like a goddamned serial killer.  [In a creepy voice] “You guys ever buttfuck?”

Once the audience is laughing, the repetitive pags can hold the laugh – if he varies it a bit.  He also benefits from the word taboo that comes with all variations of fuck. Now it becomes – more truly – a dick joke.

However, if the audience didn’t start out laughing, this would go the way of Lenny Bruce’s infamous Australia show, which Limon notes created such a hullabaloo over the piss joke.  If Scovel tells that initial joke and no one laughs, would they pick him up at some point? Maybe. because of the way he set it up.

Repetition and riffing as joke work

As I mentioned, when he walks on stage, he doesn’t “Get right into it,” he instead thanks the audience – more importantly, he thanks the audience at least ten times.  And he similarly riffs; he never says it the same way twice. He plays with the name of the city to add variation: Atlanta, ‘Lanta, etc.

This is more joke work; Scovel has set a pattern in the mind of the audience, so when he repeats the line, over and over, the parallel structure satisfies what we’ve come to expect of him. He can’t milk it forever, however; eventually he has to transition to another joke, and this brings up one more part of Bruce’s joke: it fits the form of ritual humor.

Ritual humor

Limon talks about Apte’s theory of ritual humor, which “is characterized by purposeful verbal and nonverbal behavior by individuals and groups in which … sexual activities are simulated in an exaggerated manner, and simulated defecation and urination are carried out with scatological overtones.”  The argument is that perhaps in Western civilization we are conditioned to respond to these types of jokes; that they fulfill an anthropological function. Once again, this definition nails Bruce’s joke, but Limon is questionable on whether or not that’s relevant.

Scovel gets there too, some two minutes and forty-five seconds later when he finally talks about having tried it with his wife. He paints an exaggerated picture:

My wife and I tried anal sex once and I didn’t like it, and for some reason I feel like that makes me a gentleman. “Oh, that’s pretty cool, babe, we don’t have to go down that road again. Lord knows, you hated it. All the tears.”

He’s finally made it more of a sexual joke, but at this point, we’re really on to another joke.  Well before this point, the audience had to make some decisions.

Decisions

Techler notes,

For him [Scovel], it’s a page out of the Book of Glass (Todd), who would make sure the first joke of his set let the audience decide right away whether this was going to be for them. That way, says Scovel, “you’re not really begging anyone to watch your thing.”

We know good comics will “work the room;” they will mention a category or premise, pause for a response, and on the basis of the audience’s response decide if a joke on that topic is going to succeed (McIlvenny et al.; Scarpeta & Spagnolli). That’s not what Scovel and Glass claim to be doing.

Here Scovel’s suggesting he was going to do this joke regardless, to allow his audience to opt out. He wants to tailor the audience to his material and not the other way around.  That’s a fairly ballsy move for someone who’s not a household name.

Further, ten seconds into the repetitious pags that begin the joke, he spends five seconds calling attention to it.

This is the show. Who has – everybody here’s like, “Wait, so is this the show?” This is the show. This is the show.

Then he’s back to the pags for eight seconds, then he returns to his meta-critique of the act for twenty-three more:

I have one joke and I’m half-way through it.  This is – This is it. I do sort of a reverse Louis CK, I write one new joke a year.  And this is actually a three year-old joke, so it should be a pretty good special. You guys made a pretty good choice watching, thanks for being here. Oh.

I’ve talked about how a lot of comics in the documentary, Dying Laughing talk about trying to create a rhythm and a group mindset.  These statements do the opposite; they make the audience take notice, breaking the rhythm of his joke and any collective effect that he may be working toward. He offers another subtle one later on, speaking as an audience member talking to his wife.  So we get three chances to opt out of watching, where he says, “this might not be for you.”  Again, ballsy for someone who has less than superstar status.

Summary

I don’t want to misrepresent Limon; I’ve already written about his theory of absolute stand-up, and I’ll write more on his other theories later. Limon’s purpose was not to say, “This is why Lenny Bruce’s joke worked,” because it didn’t work in Australia. Humor theories are great for looking at possibilities, but none yet can nail it 100% of the time.  That’s what makes stand-up comedy (and any form of public address) exciting!

Nevertheless, I like to point out when people have done similar material, with similar theoretical backing, to highlight what’s going on.

Like Bruce’s piss joke, Scovel’s anal joke makes use of subtle joke work, to capitalize on what he thinks is shock value within a relief theory – it’s a dick joke (although Bruce’s joke may have, admittedly, more to it).

Unlike Bruce, Scovel uses repetitive pags that riff on the original to keep it going for nearly three minutes, and he does this to test his audience, before he continues onto another joke. This is a novel approach. My thoughts:

References:

Apte, Mahadev L. “Humor research, methodology, and theory in anthropology.” In McGhee and Goldstein (eds.) Handbook of Humor Research, : 183-212.

Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. 24 vols. Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1953-1974.

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

McIlvenny, P., Mettovaara, S. & Tapio, R. “‘I really wanna make you laugh’: Stand-up comedy and audience response.” In M.K. Suojanen & A. Kulkki-Nieminen (Eds.) Folia, Fennistica and Linguistica: Proceedings of the Annual Finnish Linguistics Symposium, 16. Tampere, Finland: Tampere University Finnish and General Linguistics Department Publications, 1993: 225-245.

Scarpeta, Fabiola & Ann Spagnolli. “The interactional context of humor in stand-up comedy.” Research on Language and Social Interaction, 42(3), 2009: 210-230.

Transcript:

Let’s get right into it: anal. Who’s done it?  Who’s done anal? Who here’s done anal? Who’s done anal? Who here has done anal?

This is the show. Who has – everybody here’s like, “Wait, so is this the show?” This is the show. This is the show.

Anal.  Who’s done anal? But like, anal. Anal, though.  Anal. Who has done anal?

I have one joke and I’m half-way through it.  This is – This is it. I do sort of a reverse Louis CK, I write one new joke a year.  And this is actually a three year-old joke, so it should be a pretty good special. You guys made a pretty good choice watching, thanks for being here. Oh.

Anal. We’re still – this is still – anal. Anal! [in a nasally voice] Anal! Does that sell it, if I added – if that’s my posture: Anal! [shouting] Who’s done anal? [still in character, but softer] I’m the brattiest comic on the circuit. [shouting] Who’s done anal, though? [laughing].

[In a country accent] Buttfuck, who – [normal voice] does that help? Does that help? Does that help, though? Buttfuck.  Somebody’ll be, [country accent] “Oh, buttfuck. Ok yeah. Ok. Yeah. Dude said ‘anal,’ I was like, ‘Who’s the doctor-lawyer on stage?’ Anal, what? Buttfuck, that’s more my speed; that’s more my style. Truth be told, that’s more my style. I buttfuck. Wanna know something about me – I butt-”

[normal] You have to say ‘buttfuck’ with an accent. If you say it without an accent you sound like a goddamned serial killer.  [In a creepy voice] “You guys ever buttfuck?”

[In a feminine voice] Oh my god!

[As an audience member] Karen put your fucking hand down!  It’s obviously a trap.  It’s a death trap.

[Feminine voice] Well I don’t know, I’ve never been to one of these things.

[Country accent] Y’all ever buttfuck?

[Normal] Isn’t that – it’s kinda – immediately you’re like “Oh that’s not so bad.”

[Country accent] Y’all ever buttfuck?

[Normal] Hey, it’s the guy from the gas station. Answer his inquiries.

[Country accent] I just wanna know if y’all ever buttfuck before? Y’all come on now, oh [breaking character; back] Unleaded, fill it up, you got it! You every buttfuck?

[Normal] Hi, I’d like to fill it up, I’m over on pump 10.  I gotta tell ya, that one employee, he is a lively sort, I – What’s that? That’s not an employee? I’ll be right back. I’ll be right back. No. It’s on me, there were a lot of red flags and I – I don’t – I should’ve – I should’ve tuned in. I should’ve tuned in.

[Country accent] Y’all ever buttfuck? Buttfuck!

[Normal] My wife and I tried anal sex once and – [at a sound from the audience in the wings] Shut the fuck up! Shut up! I already asked you if you did it, nobody said shit! And now I have to talk the entire show. This job sucks.

I feel like, right now, some people are like, oh, maybe he does only have the one joke. Where we thought he was being facetious. The twist in tonight’s show, was honesty. Hmmm.

My wife and I tried anal sex once and I didn’t like it, and for some reason I feel like that makes me a gentleman. “Oh, that’s pretty cool, babe, we don’t have to go down that road again. Lord knows, you hated it. All the tears.”

If your wife cries during sex, she is telling you something. Check in, you know what I mean? Do it. Check in. [High pitched voice] “You Ok?” Just one of those, “Hey everything cool? What’s going on? You got a little misty here. I don’t. Huhh.” [Normal] Also, talk like that. That’s a big turn-on for women. That’s a huge turn on for women. [High pitched] “Hey, just a quick question, what’s going on with the tears?” [Normal] Be that ecstatic. Be like [Yelling high-pitched] Hey! What’s the deal with the tears? Let’s get back into it [pantomimes thrusting].”

Where did I lose some people? The visualization of my wife crying during anal sex? Is that where some people were like, “You know what, no. No. Next exit. We’ll take the next exit. I’m not here for this.”

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

The Difference Between Silverman and Maher

Posted on by nwilson

I’ve already written about Bill Maher’s recent N-word problem; however it’s not the first time he’s been a part of a discussion about racist language.  I thought I’d revisit that event, and point out some key differences between Silverman and Maher.

Silverman

On July 11, 2001, comic Sarah Silverman made an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, where she told the following joke:

I was telling a friend that I had to serve jury duty and I wanted to get out of it. So my friend said “Why don’t you write something inappropriate on the form, like ‘I hate chinks’?” But I don’t want people to think I was racist, so I just filled out the form and I wrote “I love chinks.” And who doesn’t?

NBC aired the joke uncensored.  Asian American rights activist Guy Aoki saw the joke on television and began a media campaign claiming that Silverman was in fact a racist.  After Silverman made a guest appearance on Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher (7/22/2001), Aoki was invited to debate Silverman on that same program (air date: 9/22/2001).  Maher asked that the language of the show not be censored, and in his summary statements noted that this issue was dangerously close to impeding our free speech.  Silverman retold the joke on both programs, stated that censoring words, especially those used by comics, does nothing to end racism, and then included several other jabs (such as calling Aoki a douche bag), most of which now appear in her act and her 2005 concert film, Jesus is Magic.  Aoki made most of his points well, stating that racist language use, even in an ironic (or presumably, commentary) form, allows their use – and therefore their ability to harm – to continue.

The “with/at” question

There’s a problem in here that I call the “with/at” question. Are we laughing with someone? Or are we laughing at someone? Or both? And who is the object of each?

Victims & Butts

Joanne Gilbert offers a distinction between the victim of the humor, the person or group who receives negative treatment within the narrative of the joke, and the butt of the humor, the person or group who is at fault and therefore worthy of ridicule.

We should note that this distinction comes from a model of superiority.  In a frame of tension release, we could imagine a distinction among stressors and triggers; what is creating the tension and what triggers that release.  We would always laugh at stressors in light of the release, but even this relationship can be complicated when one delves deeper.

This would seem to solve the “with/at” problem: we always laugh with the victim, at the perceived butt (to the extent that these are different).  This distinction is crucial because, as Samuel Janus states, “The ability to make a person laugh with [a minority group], not at them, is a vital one” (as cited in Horowitz, 7).  However, this distinction makes things more complicated as we now have to navigate new potential sources of humor.

Application

For instance, in Silverman’s “chink” joke, she is the focal point of the joke.  However, we can read her as the butt of the joke, as the one who believes that hate is the most hateful term in the declaration and we can laugh at her.  Or we can read her as the victim of a racist system in which chink is ok to say, but hate is not, and we can laugh at the problems of such a system.

Note that both of these interpretations rely on the notion that she’s a reliable and harmonious narrator – that this really happened she actually means what she is saying – and most of us don’t believe that for a second.

Thus we may infer that she has ulterior motives. If we believe that Silverman has a good reason for telling this joke, we may then perceive our laughter as laughing with her, at the racist system.  If we believe she’s just trying to get away with saying a bad word, we can either laugh with her as she subverts the system that prohibits her from saying chink, or we can be outraged (as was Guy Aoki), thus supporting that system.

Similarly, while Maher tries to cast himself as the butt of the joke – he is the “house n-word” – his critics thought he was just trying to get away with saying the word, and were outraged.  True, we can laugh at him for having the audacity to say the word, or we can laugh with him for getting away with saying the word – but then, he didn’t really, did he?

Further, because it was an off-the-cuff remark and not a prepared joke, Maher can’t claim he was trying to comment on a racist system. It’s just a simple dick joke. And not a particularly good one.

References:

Gilbert, Joanne.  Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender and Cultural Critique. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2004.

Horowitz, Susan.  Queens of Comedy: Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, Joan Rivers, and the New Generation of Funny Women.  Amsterdam, Netherlands: Gordon and Breach, 1997.

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.

Wilson, Nathan. “Divisive Comedy: A Critical Examination of Audience Power.” Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 8 (2), 2011: 276-291. 

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

Iliza Shlesinger and Jokes About Vaginas

Posted on by nwilson

Controversy

I’m a fan of Iliza Shlesinger; seen her live, watched all her specials. So when, on Monday (6/12/2017), Deadline’s Matt Grobar posted an interview with Iliza Shlesinger, promoting her third Netflix special, Confirmed Kills, her TV show, Truth & Iliza, her new short-film series for ABC, Forever 31, and her upcoming book, Girl Logic–she’s been busy–I heard about it.

In the interview, Shlesinger expresses that

I think the landscape of what’s available out there for women is not as extensive as it could be. That’s something that drives me; … I wanted to speak in an open and honest way that wasn’t always sexual, that didn’t always limit us to women that are desperate for marriage or babies.

Then she was asked, “How do you really feel about the way women are represented, or represent themselves, in this arena [comedy]?” and she said [I quote her here for clarity and reference – I’ll pull it apart below]:

As tracked by Megh Wright on Splitsider, the Twitter response was huge, and “pretty brutal.”

replied, “Iliza, you’ve joked about sex & vaginas. Why police what other women are saying? We can talk about whatever we want. Why focus on this?”

Eliza Skinner (@elizaskinner) Tweeted, “Suggesting that female comics should limit what subjects, words, or attitudes they use is just a way of trying to limit female comics.” And, “I don’t care if you think we’re too dirty, self-deprecating, sexual, or ukulele-dependent. Men get to use all their words, so do we.”

Many called Shlesinger a “bad feminist.” Shlesinger followed up with a series of Tweets, long since deleted, but archived by Wright, in which she further defends her position.

However, perhaps we’ve got enough here to work with. More than just a discussion about female comics, this is a discussion about the rules of stand-up comedy (or, at least, “good stand-up”).

Systemic rules

The first insight lost in the discussion is that Shlesinger points out the systemic problem, that “[W]e [women] have to work hard to get that attention,” from (primarily male) audiences, talent scouts, agents, promoters, club owners, producers – right up the line.  Shlesinger’s ending line is: “[Q]uite frankly, I’m appalled by what is expected of women, and what women offer in response in that.”  She clearly feels that women are offering a response to a felt or implicit expectation, and this is a systemic problem. However, it’s just as true, for her, that the reaction is too easy.

Specific reactions

Shlesinger’s problem is that women try to act like men within the system:

I do think many women think, ‘Oh if I just act like a guy, if I go for that low hanging fruit…’ Everything’s about sex, or how weird I am. It all just kind of runs together….

From a theoretical stand-point, it’s a knee-jerk reaction that perpetuates the system, instead of a thought out response that transcends the system – that tries to do something new and get us to laugh and think in a new way (Lyotard; Phillips).

What Shlesinger is calling out is originality.  Reactions breed stale, pat, unoriginal responses. This is what she sees:

I could walk into The Improv, close my eyes, and I can’t tell one girl’s act apart from another…. every woman makes the same point about her vagina, over and over.

For my part, I’ve seen this just in our local scene – and I agree with Shlesinger,

That’s not saying that 30-something white guys don’t all sound the same sometimes,

They do.  Oh my glob, do they.  If I hear another joke about masturbation, even female masturbation….

Dick jokes

The decision to talk about a dick or a vagina isn’t really the issue for Shlesinger. She says,

I think shock value works well for women, but beyond that, there’s no substance. I want to see what else there is with such complex, smart creatures.

A good joke has more to it than a general topic or the use of a word.  It’s gotta have substance, insight.

The problem with the true dick joke is it’s blue for blue’s sake. Contrast that with the sexual joke, which actually has something to say about sex, or feminine hygiene, or the plethora of other topics that occur in that area and can be mined for meaningful insights. Shlesinger’s problem is that a lot of comics–not just women, but she’s talking here about women–aren’t pushing for meaningful insight.

The problem is, shock and dick jokes often get a laugh, especially from a younger crowd.  It’s believed–and therefore used calculatingly–to play on relief theory, as sex is a titillating topic. It’s taboo to talk about your dick, or your vagina, or your sex life, and perhaps women have more tension there because “good girls don’t do that.” Acting like a man is forbidden.

Relief as intervention

This, however, is where it becomes a feminist point: A woman speaking about her vagina and sex life is more of a social intervention than a man doing it because she’s not supposed to. However, when everyone is doing it, is it necessarily an intervention any more?  Has the goal line moved?

Her critics say, “We [women] should get to use all our words and not be limited,” but if the words you choose to use, and the subjects you choose to discuss, and the way you choose to represent yourself is done in order to “fit-in” and excel (make money) by working within the rules of a sexist system, then are you not, already, “limited?”

Shlesinger’s follow-up tweets are pretty good here:

As comics, it’s our job not just to find something new and interesting to say, but also to transcend the rules and transform both ourselves, our audiences and stand-up itself.  Keep pushing my friends.

References:

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

—.  The Différend.  Trans. George Van Den Abeele.  Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1988.

—.  “Lessons in Paganism.”  The Lyotard Reader.  Ed. Andrew Benjamin.  Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1989/1993. 122-154.

Phillips, Kendall R.  “The Spaces of Public Dissension: Reconsidering the Public Sphere.”  Communication Monographs 63 (1996): 231-48.

—.  “Space of Invention: Dissension, Freedom, and Thought in Foucault.”  Philosophy and Rhetoric 35.4 (2002): 328-344.

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.

Cases and Current Events/Comics Talking Shop/Stand-Up Comedy/Theories About Audiences

Are Audiences Dying Laughing?

Posted on by nwilson

Audience Metaphors

There’s a lot going on in the series of interviews masquerading as a documentary, Dying Laughing.  However, I’d like to start with one I’ve been working on of late – audiences.

I’m a big fan of metaphors and similies. When you ask people to describe things by saying what it is similar to, you find out a lot about what they think. Some metaphors, as described by George Lakoff, are old and have become so common, we don’t even think of them as such.

Objects

One such metaphor is “making an audience laugh.”  In the documentary, Dying Laughing, it rolls off the tongue of Jamie Foxx and Jeff Joseph; Steve Coogan says it three times, and Stephen K. Amos says he wants to “make them laugh and think,” but he’s still the one doing all the work.

This is that metaphor of the audience as an object that gets acted upon.  It shows up in other places as well, such as when Jaime Fox talks about the comic’s desire: “you want to be dangerous. You want to provoke. You want to move the needle.”  Again, the needle is the object that measures the change in the audience.

It’s also present in Tommy Davidson’s metaphor for comedy as shooting zombies, the zombies are not full-fledged people.  Paul Provenza says, “We’re asking a room full of hundreds of people to have an involuntary physical response simultaneously. It’s f–king weird.” The idea of humor as an “involuntary physical response” is born of Relief theory, which basically reduces audience members to unthinking, unconscious, dare we say, zombies.

Tommy Davidson uses a second metaphor of surfing, which is not much better; not much thought going on in a force of nature.  Jamie Foxx, also talks about a laugh as a wave: “”When you tell that joke and it goes to the back of the house and it comes roaring back to your face… there’s nothing like that feeling.” The wave goes out and (hopefully) comes back. Same can be said of Jeff Joseph’s metaphor about driving a car; the car has no thoughts of its own.

Cedric the Entertainer goes so far as to cast the audience as animals:

The audience is a group of wild horses.  They’re coming in from all walks of life. They’re in there and all kinds of stuff is going on.  And you know… And so when you walk out on stage, the only thing you can do is like grab the reins, and just try to ride it, like just totally just try to like get it, like hyah, everybody get in line gyah, gyah. Like, listen to me, I’m the guy.

Voters

There are other metaphors that reference the Popular models of audiences I previously outlined.  We can see the voter metaphor when Rick Overton talks about gaining “full approval or full disapproval on your essence, on what you actually believe and how you really see life.”  Or when Kim Whitley says, “Every audience is different.  I think you should be nervous, I think there should be some anticipation of ‘oh my god are they gonna like this one, is it gonna hit?’”  Kevin Hart, Tom Dreeson and Jerry Seinfeld all similarly speak of a call and response.

Tom Dreeson: “Ask question, get a response.”

Jerry Seinfeld: “I’m in charge, and you’re… I’m going to question you.  The first thing I’m going to say is a question to you.”

Tom Dreeson: “Here’s the point: I talk, you react, I talk, you react, I talk you react. I’ve got them into my rhythm, this is my trick to get them into my rhythm and focus on me.”

The vote must always be a called.  We can petition, but not vote at random.

But this is all very adversarial, and the comic maintains control.  The same is true when Jerry Seinfeld or Jerry Lewis talk about success (perfect symphonies and risk that scores) or when Royale Watkins, Allan Havey, Kevin Hart and Chris Rock talk about bombing, they talk about skills and tools that the professional comic can use to overcome any problem on-stage.

Lovers

We can see the lover model when Sarah Silverman talks about comics as “pleasing the audience” and trying to “have approval.” Or when Bob Saget talks about what he likes about doing stand-up, “Cause It’s a relationship with that audience.  It’s a date, it’s a special moment to me, every one of ’em.”

Sandra Bernhard says, “When they love you and you’re there for them and you connect with them, it’s perfection.”

I would put in the same category, and for the same reason, Sean Lock’s statement: “There’s an element of people needing to go to see someone to either explain the world to them or talk about the world or see if some of their experiences are reflected there and they’re in touch with that.” Lock is talking about an intimate connection or resonance with the audience through the material.

Sublimation

Another model we can find in this conversation, is the idea that the audience must be worked on.  Seinfeld tells us,

The first time you go on stage, you have no idea how harsh an environment it actually is.  And… Because when you watch comedians, when you don’t know anything about it, it seems like the audience is kinda having a good time anyway, and this guy comes on and he says some funny things and they have a better time.  That’s what it looks like.  That’s not what’s happening.  At all.  What’s happening is nothing. Absolutely nothing. It is a dead solid quiet room of unhappy people and you have to start from that.

When asked, “Are you seeking their approval?” Seinfeld replies, “No, I’m seeking their sublimation.”

Steve Coogan believes a laugh to be a statement of this sublimation or unification [more on this later]:

You can have a crowd of people – a huge crowd of people – who are all disparate, politically and um, in terms of their taste and their class, and they’re all from different backgrounds and … different outlooks on life.  But if you’ve made them all laugh at the same time, then suddenly all those people, all things that made them different sort of vanish, and at that one moment of laughter they’re all united, they all agree, Because if you all laugh you’re all agreeing on one thing: that that thing that just happened was funny, and that’s really an incredibly powerful thing.

Sam Tripoli notes that,

Comedians, in my opinion, are Jedis, they play mind tricks on people. And the best comedians put an entire crowd in like kind of a trance, so the entire group is thinking as one and thinking in that comic’s mind thought process.  And that’s why it’s like when somebody messes up a line, it’s almost like the record screeched, and everyone comes out of the trance and he has to put them back into the trance.  And that’s how you get crowds thinking in rhythm with your act and that’s why the great comics have a rhythm to their act.

Hecklers

In this idea, the audience MUST be put into a trance-like state, or you lose the room. Hart notes, “The minute you lose people’s attention, they start talking and that talking can gravitate towards the stage it can fuck up the whole environment.”

Cedric the Entertainer agrees,

[I]f you start to let people kinda go off on their own, next thing you know this group over here is chattering, and now these people want to talk to them, and somebody tells that guy to shut up, and next thing you know you don’t have the room at all and it’s that fast.

Perhaps the easiest example of the potential to lose a room are the 16 separate heckler stories. Billy Connolly ties it together for us,

All that stuff about warming the audience up and all that stuff that people talk about.  You do it somewhat unconsciously, you start some way you build up, but what you do is there’s 3000 people in the room or maybe 400 or 200 whatever number there is, you get it to one, you get them all into one big forehead, and and so just speak to the forehead and there’s one big forehead in the room, but when the heckler says blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, *pshhhoom* it becomes 3000 again, now I have to go gather gather, gather, gather, and get them all in like a shepherd and then [you] blah, blah, blah, and [the heckler] goes blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, *pshhhooom*.

Agents

Royale Watkins, in talking about his bombing experience, talks about this in more positive terms, recognizing that the audience always had that power and that right:

[T]hen after maybe two or three people got you know, say, ‘Oh, we can control this,’ you know what I mean? The crowd realized ‘Well we’re part of this show too, and if this guy isn’t giving us what we want, fuck, we’ll give ourselves what we want, which is to get his ass off stage.’  And then the surround sound kicked in, and they started booing.

This is a better model, one that recognizes the audience’s ability to act, which I’ve talked about elsewhere. We can see more positive hints of this when Seinfeld, or Lewis, or Amy Schumer, or Billy Connolly talk about people laughing, seemingly spontaneously.

References:

Lakoff, George. Metaphors We Live By.  Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980.

Wilson, Nathan. “Divisive Comedy: A Critical Examination of Audience Power.” Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 8 (2), 2011: 276-291. 

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.

Humor Theories/Stand-Up Comedy/Theories About Comics

Wise Fools Speaking Truth to Power

Posted on by nwilson

When talking about stand-up comedy, a lot of attention is given to the figure of the wise fool.  This concept is traceable back to at least the middle ages (for more on this, see: Gifford; Gilbert; Goldsmith; Kaiser; McMullen; Stebbins; Welsford). An ironic, paradoxical figure, the wise fool represents an oxymoron, an incongruity,  a contradiction or gap between the expected and the received.

As Kaiser notes, “[T]he idea of the wisdom of the fool always stands in contrast to the knowledge of the learned or the “wisdom” of the worldly.  In this respect, the oxymoron, “wise fool”, is inherently reversible, for whenever it is acknowledged that the fool is wise, it is also suggested, expressly or tacitly, that the wise are foolish.”

Comics strive to create foolish personae, perhaps especially when they wish to appear wise, for from fools such wisdom and critique is more likely to be judged good-natured and thus funny, rather than mean-spirited or critical and thus not funny.  Fools can’t help themselves, thus they can’t be held responsible, and we can always ignore the fool’s points because they are, well, fools.

It also multiplies the possibilities for humor. We can laugh at the fool’s jokes, at the incongruity that the statement came out of this person’s mouth, or at the fools themselves, perhaps out of superiority, and many other ways besides. Common names for wise fools are rubes, buffoons and fish-out-of-water.

However, we can also set ourselves up as wise, and then act foolish.

Political Potential?

Jeffrey P. Jones notes that through wise fools, humor can safely advance “what is often devastatingly honest (and sometimes personally risky) critiques of power” (93).  This is the oft-cited ability to “Speak Truth to Power.”

Social contracts

Historically, understanding a person to be crazy or intellectually impaired may have led to a social contract that gave figures such as the court jester a particular, protected place from which to speak to those in power.

However, while the understanding of the jester as a fool sanctioned certain acts, Anton C. Zjiderveld points out that this sanction did not extend to any and all criticism, nor was it iron-clad – fools were always at risk of losing their heads.

Further, it is a common mistake to extend this contract to today’s comics, as Kathy Griffin and others have found. We all have the ability and responsibility to speak truth to power.  Comics are objectively neither specially privileged, nor receive special dispensation, as Griffin’s case (and every other that has come before) adequately displays – unless we defend their actions.

No force

The reason acting like a wise fool is supposed to work is because crazy people cannot be responsible for their behavior and therefore their statements can be dismissed. Thus, the same expectation of a joke (intentionality), that defuses risk for the speaker and gives them the ability to “speak truth” may also diminish the force of the message, and thereby the necessity that we act upon it. We do not need to accept the positions of raving madmen or the ponderings of the unbalanced – unless, of course, they are running our government.

In any case, a belief in this situation – in a kind of social contract in which the speaker is not to be believed or blamed, the message is thought to be infelicitous, non bona fide, inert or harmless and in any case, the audience’s laughter trivializes the matter and shows no intention of further action – is almost uniformly applied to humorists to this day (For an expansion on these first two terms, see: Austin; Raskin).

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

Austin, J.L.  How To Do Things With Words.  Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962

Gifford, D. J. “Iconographical Notes toward a Definition of the Medieval Fool.”  The Fool and the Trickster: Studies in Honour of Enid Welsford.  Ed. P.V.A. Williams. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1979.  33-41.

Gilbert, Joanne.  Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender and Cultural Critique. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2004.

Goldsmith, R.H. Wise Fools in Shakespeare. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955.

Jones, Jeffrey.  Entertaining Politics: New Political Television and Civic Culture.  New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.

Kaiser, Walter.  “Wisdom of the Fool,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies in Selected Pivotal Ideas.  Ed. Philip P. Weiner.  New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973-4.

McMullen, D. “The Fool as Entertainer and Satirist on Stage and in the World.”  Dalhousie Review 50 (1970): 10-22.

Raskin, Victor.  Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Boston, MA: D. Reidel. 1985.

Stebbins, Robert A.  The Laugh-Makers: Stand-Up Comedy as Art, Business and Life-Style.Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1990.

Welsford, E.  The Fool: His Social and Literary History.  New York: Faber and Faber, 1961.

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.

Zjiderveld, Anton C.  Reality in a Looking Glass: Rationality Through an Analysis of Traditional Folly.  Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Humor Theories/Stand-Up Comedy/Theories About Audiences

Five Popular Ideas About Audiences

Posted on by nwilson

Betsy Borns begins her book, Comic Lives, with a chapter on audience, yet while the motive for audience attendance is clear (tension release, in her opinion), what the audience is able to do is less clear. Borns implies at least five models of audience agency – or ability to act: Objects, Customers, Voters, Directors, and Lovers.

1. Objects

First is the idea that the audience is a passive object upon which the comic acts; they are not agents in their own right. Borns suggests comics are “cerebral strippers, seducing us, ever so slowly, as they peel off layer upon layer of our collective repression until finally, when the laughter dies down, we find ourselves naked, brains exposed to the cross-ventilation of comic insight and age-old inhibition” (14). We just sit passively and are worked on.

You see this view a lot when people talk about “making [the audience] laugh.” We have no power over it – it has to happen, if the comic is doing their job.

Similarly, we’re unsophisticated. Borns notes that audiences are unaware of artistic distinctions (such as the distinction between the dick joke and sexual humor), and it’s up to the comic to shepherd them.

2. Customers

Another view says our agency stops once we’ve bought a ticket or entered the venue. The audience is active in seeking out the comics (i.e. as customers), but passive in terms of the humor that we get (i.e. we don’t actively determine the process). Stand-up comic Alan Havey notes

[W]hen they [the audience] come in to see a comedian they want to be grabbed.  They want someone taking over for a couple of hours, or twenty-minutes, or whatever—it’s like going to prostitutes, therapists or the movies (17).

In each case, we choose our caregiver, then agree to be “worked on.” This simile also is suggested by Bill Grundfest, owner of New York’s Comedy Cellar (13).

3. Voters

Another view is that the audience’s role is democratic ratification – voting for the joke with laughter or vetoing it through silence or taking umbrage (booing, heckling or walking out) – but always after the fact. We only get to react. George Carlin notes:

People vote when they laugh….  This happens when you get to any subject where people don’t want to reveal their comfort level with it—even if it’s not something they’re intimately involved with….  [an audience member] doesn’t want to reveal [this comfort level], so he goes, ‘Hmm, I don’t understand this at all,’ and he certainly isn’t going to laugh at it (18).

4. Directors

Also present is the notion that the comedian is the agent of the audience; they ultimately direct her/his action and thereby their consumption. Jerry Seinfeld explains:

Comedy is a dialogue, not a monologue—that’s what makes an act click.  The laughter becomes the audience’s part, and the comedian responds; it’s give and take (16).

Here we see a sort of call and response in reverse, the audience calls out for more of the same (or for something different), and the comedian obliges them.

This makes the audience more active than simple customers or voters, as it makes the comic react to them in real time, but they’re still not quite equals.

5. Lovers

Finally, Borns notes that audiences can be seen as active, so that comedians cannot just dominate, but must also seduce – they must make the audience like them as people, they must “pitch woo” (23).

Here we have the power, not just to direct or vote after the fact, but so much so that the comic must think of us in advance.  Most good comics would agree with this, when confronted with the options, but when they’re just riffing about humor they speak in terms of one of the others, which misrepresents what they’re doing.

We might also call attention to Joe Rogan, who, in an interview with Brian McKim of SheckyMagazine.com, says he likes to play smaller rooms because:

I really think something is lost when you do stand-up for a big crowd. It’s sort of that diffusion-of-responsibility thing where the audience isn’t totally connected to the show. It’s no longer intimate. It’s a ‘show,’ and you’re not really ‘one’ with the crowd for the most part.

This intimacy and sense of being “one” with the crowd points to a deeper connection than acting on them, letting them choose your show but not the material, letting them vote on the material, especially to the extent that they direct your comedy; instead, you’re in a relationship with them.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

How much power do you exercise when you watch stand-up? Do you “just watch”? Comics, how do you think about your audience?

References:

Borns, Betsy. Comic Lives: Inside the World of Stand-Up Comedy.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.

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.

Humor Theories/Stand-Up Comedy/Theories About Jokes

Dick Jokes Vs. Sexual Jokes

Posted on by nwilson

Betsy Borns differentiates the dick joke from sexual jokes as based on “what makes the joke funny: if people laugh because the word ‘fuck’ is used, that’s a dick joke (and an easy laugh); if people laugh in reacting to an insightful observation about sex, that’s a sexual joke” (45). Sexual jokes might include obscene language, the point is that there’s more to it (more reasons to laugh) than that.

The difference seems to be based on the idea that the utterance of a word invokes a simple release of tension, versus complex grouping of other types and sources of humor that better jokes invoke.

To give an example, let’s take a Sarah Silverman joke from her special, A Speck of Dust (2017):

“So now I have a new dog, Mary. I, um, I rescued her – or I’d like to think she rescued me – I don’t know which is the less ‘cunty’ way of putting it, but…”

Yes, we can laugh that she said, “cunty,” a release of tension when we realize what she said. She could have said “douchey” and the effect would be similar.

We can also laugh at the incongruity that she would refer to herself that way (or that the addition of the “-y” sounds odd).

However, she could have also said, “yuppie,” “self-absorbed,” etc. and we might still laugh – these words just wouldn’t be as funny.  This is because we can also laugh out of our superior position or knowledge, as we look down on people who act like that.  But further, there’s also a smart moment of incongruity at the realization that both types of people (“rescued her”/”she rescued me”) might be equally bad.  And there are other possible reasons to laugh.

In the hierarchy of comedy, sexual jokes are generally considered “better,” as dick jokes are “lazy” ways to garner cheap laughs. This is one of the reasons many clubs and corporate gigs won’t let you “work blue.” If you can’t get laughs without using it, your jokes aren’t that good.

However, changing a word in the interest of making an already funny concept funnier isn’t a horrible idea – as long as the word isn’t too wrong (Bill Maher’s N-word problem is a guideline here). So maybe you should be able to tell the joke both ways.

Political Potential?

Dick jokes generally upset people and make news.  Politicians in particular seem averse to obscenity.  However, as Lenny Bruce famously said, “If you can’t say ‘fuck,’ you can’t say ‘Fuck the government!'”

There are contemporary political, social and cultural struggles over what words we can and cannot say, and who cannot say them – beyond the use of the N-word or other racial terms – that are meaningful.

But many of these struggles overlap with the area of sexual jokes.  Is the problem that a female comic said “Fuck,” or that she, as a woman, was “talking about fucking?” Is it that a black man said “Fuck,” or that he sounded angry?  John Limon argued was the real problem with Lenny Bruce was that he was talking about the pope and public figures in ways that were not flattering.

For some, the language can obscure the point of a really good joke about a social issue, so we should probably use it with caution.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

Borns, Betsy. Comic Lives: Inside the World of Stand-Up Comedy.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.

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

Humor Theories/Stand-Up Comedy/Theories About Audiences

Nathan Mills on Hasan Minhaj and Comedy Audiences

Posted on by nwilson

Talking about Hasan Minhaj’s new Netflix special, Homecoming King, Nathan Mills of The Joplin Globe has a lot going on, but I want to call attention to three points implicit in his arguments, two of which I agree with, one not: 1) stand-up audiences are (or can be) thinking audiences; 2) material that causes us to think is not part of the joke, but in-between jokes, and 3) that stand-up is what we allow it to be.

Stand-up audiences

Mills’ whole argument seems to start from the presumption that “audiences come to laugh, not to think” and develops from there.  This seems to be a common conception, not just in everyday conversations about humor and stand-up (see for instance Borns), but in academic conversations as well (see for instance Gilbert; Limon; Stebbins).

Lloyd Bitzer talks about an active, engaged, thinking (“rhetorical”) audience, those “who are capable of being influenced by discourse and of being mediators of change” (8). Stand-up audiences are commonly excluded from this category because we expect humor, not political messages, we presume the speaker to be unreliable and because “getting” most jokes requires us to make a particular mental leap (what I’ll call a process of supplementation [more on this later]), and that it’s trivializing – once we’ve laughed, we have no intention of acting further on it – although perhaps the opposite of this is booing, heckling or walking out [more on these later]. In short, we’re not interested in the speaker’s views, save as fodder for humor.

Mills is right to point out that audiences do think, and that they are powerful, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere.  We have the ability to react in any way we choose, and we don’t just give a pass to everyone.

The in-between and transitions

Mills trips up a bit, for me, when he says

Homecoming King is full of these lessons in between well-built and well-rehearsed jokes. Minhaj seamlessly transitions between the moments as if they’re two separate pieces of him.

It’s the notion that Minhaj’s personal stories are filler “in between” the jokes, and that he has to “transition” in and out of them that irks me. Or perhaps it’s the implication that the personal stories are the only part of the act in which we, the audience, think.

My retort is that we think more than most people give us credit for – look at the examples of fake laughs and guffaws (some of it may be “fast,” [more on that later] but it’s thought nonetheless). It’s most clear that audiences think when they boo, heckle or walk out, but that doesn’t mean they’re not doing it at other points too.

What is comedy

Mills is on track, however, when he answers his own question, “Didn’t we come here to laugh, not think?” with: “Minhaj’s audience loved it. I loved it.”

This implies that stand-up comedy is what the audience or market will bear.  As long as the audience loves it, it’s fine. Some might try to say Minhaj is a storyteller who tells some jokes [I’m betting I’ll see one before the week is out – and I’ll post it here], or that Reggie Watts is a musician who tells some jokes [ditto], but the bottom line is comics are entertainers who tell jokes.  As long as they are successful (sell tickets) and have a decent amount of jokes, who cares?

Political Possibilities

Some scholars think that stand-up comedy is about pandering, drawing people in and giving them what they want. If this is true, then the political value of stand-up is, as Lawrence A. Mintz suggests, that of a simple social barometer; tracking the important issues of the time, without any inherent value as social critique or potential for meaningful change.

At the other end of the spectrum, so the thinking goes, is the political speech, the sales pitch, or yes, the TED Talk, in which the audience is changed via the process.  Mills seems to reinforce this split when he talks about the in-between material that Minhaj transitions into and out of.

However, audiences have the power to determine what we allow our stand-up comedians to do.  We make the rules of stand-up comedy, and we don’t do it passively.  We think, we engage, and if necessary, we act.

References:

Borns, Betsy. Comic Lives: Inside the World of Stand-Up Comedy.  New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.

Gilbert, Joanne.  Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender and Cultural Critique. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2004.

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

Mintz, Lawrence E. “Stand-Up Comedy as Social and Cultural Mediation.”  American Quarterly 37.1 (1985): 71-80.

Stebbins, Robert A.  The Laugh-Makers: Stand-Up Comedy as Art, Business and Life-Style. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1990.

Wilson, Nathan. “Divisive Comedy: A Critical Examination of Audience Power.” Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 8 (2), 2011: 276-291.

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.

Humor Theories/Stand-Up Comedy/Theories About Spaces

Play Space – Johan Huizinga

Posted on by nwilson

Several theories of humor address the idea of the spaces where it takes place as being in part, how we approach it.  Johan Huizinga has one such theory.

Play and seriousness

For Huizinga, play is not the opposite of seriousness, but logically prior to it.  Seriousness cannot be played, you either are speaking earnestly, or you’re playing.  However, play can be conducted seriously, but only when it plays by the rules.

Rules

These rules are implicitly created by the participants, agreed upon in advance and limit the spaces and times in which play can take place, and the behaviors allowed by the participants.

So, for instance, we have a lot of implicit rules in stand-up comedy as to times and spaces: You may do stand-up in this particular club, on the stage, Monday (open mic) night after 9pm, when your name is called.  You can’t take the stage or address the room at other times. You will end your set promptly when you get the light. You’re free to tell jokes to your friends at the bar or on the patio before or after your set, but it’s not a part of the set, and it’s generally frowned upon to do your set before you will do it or after you have already done it.  Unless you go to a different club.

As far as behaviors go, word usage is big, particularly with the N-word, but also with many others, and a lot of clubs won’t let you work blue (obscene) material.  This is mainly enforced by the audience, though if it gets to be a problem, you can be banned. However, there aren’t a whole lot of other rules in stand-up, for as Huizinga notes, when over-encumbered by rules, play ceases to be fun.

False play

And fun is the goal of humor, for Huizinga.  Like John Limon’s absolute form of stand-up, when the object is something other than fun or laughter – for instance, when the primary objective is to forward an argument–Huizinga would classify it as false play, a form of play that is “used consciously or unconsciously to cover up some social or political design.”

Freedom to disengage

To maintain the sense of fun, Huizinga argues that a play space must be free of obligation–one must be free to engage in it or to disengage at any time, and there may be no necessity of dealing in it at all.  Nobody’s forcing you to stay in the club. You can always stop watching, walk out, change the channel, etc.

Political Potential?

Huizinga’s notion that seriousness cannot be played, and the notion of a “false play” causes some problems for political potential.  You’re either serious, or you’re joking. However, this position still acknowledges that a form of–if not humor, at least joking that seeks to influence people does exist.

The elective quality of the humorous space is also frequently referenced as limiting our political possibilities.  If people can walk out, change the channel, or just shrug it off–if they don’t have to engage, then can we really accomplish anything? On the other hand, if people are having fun, are they more likely to stay and listen to the parts they wouldn’t normally have?

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Do you think that so-called social comedians, or those who are trying to further a message are not doing good comedy – is it false play?

References:

Huizinga, Johan.  Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture.  New York: Harper-Row, 1970.

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.