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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Humor Theories/Stand Up Comedy/Theories About Comics

Political, Social and Entertainment Comedians

Posted on by nwilson

Comic and internet sensation Kenny Sebastian, in an interview with Letty Mariam Abraham of Mid-day (5/14/2017) about his recent special, Don’t Be That Guy on Amazon Prime, said,

There are two types of comedians, one is the social comedian and the other one is the entertainment comedian. I consider myself the entertainment comedian. Neither am I trying to change minds nor am I trying to make people aware of anything or say anything. I don’t have an opinion.

Social comedians try to “influence people;” they “need to get a point across.” He admires social comedians, but “I don’t have the smarts to do it.”

Sebastian, on the other hand, considers himself “very entertainment focused.” He notes “[A] comedian has to gauge the audience and make jokes accordingly.” He says he will pull away if he feels the particular audience is getting offended, even avoiding things like swearing and sex jokes, saying, “I want people to get their money’s worth.”

Social vs. political

This isn’t the only way to cut it, some make the distinction between social and political. In an interview with Neal Conan on National Public Radio, Lewis Black describes himself as a ‘social’ (or perhaps ‘topical’) comic, not a political comic, because he draws material from whatever is in the news that excites him, from Superbowl half-time performances to the weather.

Hip hop

In an interview with Rolling Stone’s Jesse Serwer about his 2017 Netflix special (7/1/2017), They Can’t Deport Us All, rapper turned comic Chingo Bling talks about his stance on immigration:

A lot of comedians have bits about growing up Mexican, but I feel like [immigration] is one of those things where people think they might hurt endorsements or it might make them seem too political if they talk about it. People are scared to touch it. I like to consider myself a hip-hop comic, somebody that is going to say something of substance. And that’s what I’m working towards.

Summary

Any way you slice it, as Mike Acker of oregonlive.com notes in an interview with Solomon Georgio (7/3/2017) about his upcoming special: “Conscious comedy is on the rise, whether it’s overtly political or social commentary.”

Political Potential?

The idea of a social or political comedian acknowledges that we can do things with our humor, and that there are people actively trying. Bill Maher puts himself in that category.

I don’t know if he’s paraphrasing another source, but this thinking mirrors John Limon’s discussion of an “absolute” stand-up, where the intention is purely laughter; however, Sebastian’s view seems an all-or-nothing affair; you either address social issues or you avoid them, when it’s always more complicated than that (Burke).

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Do you think you have to do (or make a name for yourself in) one type of comedy versus another? Are there successful “one-trick ponies?”

References:

Burke, Kenneth.  Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology.  Berkeley: University of California Press (1970).

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

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 in the News/Stand Up Comedy

Bill Maher’s On-Air Apologies

Posted on by nwilson

I make my Advanced Public Speaking students write and give a speech of apology for a public figure, so when we’re talking about comics giving apologies, we’re kind of in my wheelhouse. Maher’s on-air apologies on his show the week after his N-word incident did a number of interesting things.

In a previous post, Bill Maher On What Comics Do, I talked about the discussion of comics and comedy first, as that is my purpose for this blog, in this post I talk about how Maher responded to the issues.  This isn’t humor theory, but humor stuff used to justify his actions; Maher used his status as a comic both to remind us why we like him and to separate himself out from the rules of “normal people.” In any case, I need to do a write up for my class in the fall anyway, so since I’m already hip deep into it, I’ll share.

I’ll begin with the style and tone of the interview and the problems that presented for his apology.  Then I’ll get into the content: how he framed what he did (a “mistake”) and what he did wrong (said a word), then how he strategically built himself up, and gave us a reason to believe that he’s changed.

Interviewus Interruptus

My first problem with the interview went beyond that Maher used it as an excuse to defend himself – that is kind of a problem, since the segment’s intended purpose was to plug Dr. Dyson’s latest book, Tears We Cannot Stop. However, Dyson still managed to work in some concepts from the book, so perhaps it’s a relevant application of the book.

My problem was that the whole thing had the feel of a “Yes, but…”  While we expect Maher to mount some sort of defense, he should also seem sorry or contrite.  Instead, Maher was fighting not to interrupt, which makes him seem like he was just waiting to speak, and when he did begin, particularly late in the interview, he started his statements with “Well…”, “Yeah, but…”, “Ok, but…” and “Look…”.  These are not the opening statements of someone who agrees with the critique and is sorry.

And Dyson was trying to help him!  For instance, Dyson notes that it’s a systemic problem, that it “grows out of a culture” and is unconscious and therefore hard to fight.  Dyson then asks Maher, “So do you truly understand the need to name and to challenge that unconscious white privilege that exists and how it hurts black people, even if unintentionally?”

And Maher responds, “Yes, but…”!

C’mon Bill! Just say: “Yes, I think that’s fair,” pause for applause, and then calmly offer your point (without the “but”)!

A Mistake

Beginning his interview with Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, Bill Maher asks Dyson to “school me. I did a bad thing.”  Language is important when looking at apologies, because it frames the discussion by labeling what he did (the classical stasis of definition, or quid sit).  Maher starts by labeling it “a bad thing,” which becomes “a bad joke,” and later, multiple times, “a mistake.”

See, like any celebrity, Maher can’t just say, “My bad,” and call it a day – not if he wants to keep his show.  He’s got to hedge a bit; he’s got to defend himself and his actions, and by casting it as a mistake, he minimizes the damage he’s caused and also suggests how he should be treated: “to err is human,” and thus we should all be forgiven, himself included.

He also addresses some statements made by Kathy Griffin:

She said ‘Trump broke me’ – No he shouldn’t – and ‘My career is over’ – No, it’s not. You make a mistake, you don’t have to go away. Everyone makes mistakes.

He could have been speaking to himself, and responding to those who say his show should be cancelled.

Sinners?

Perhaps Maher was pandering to Dyson, who is religious, by referring to the idea that “we’re all sinners,” but – Really, Bill? Coming from the guy who made Religulous, this statement is jarring.

Words and culture

Beyond this problem, there were others.  Maher seems to know that characterizing the issue as “a mistake” isn’t enough, he needs to do more damage control.

In his apology, he further tried to limit his fault to the (n-)word use, despite Dyson calling him out on bigger issues (the historical context of slavery he referenced, the contemporary context created by racists [A.K.A. “alt-right groups”], cultural insensitivity, and expressions of unconscious white privilege). Maher keeps trying to return to the “n-word” as the source of his problems.

in defending himself against these larger issues, Maher frames them as unintentional, stating that there was no malice in the use of the word; that “I’m a product of my culture.”  If he had just said that when prompted by Dyson, or referenced back to what Dyson literally just said, it would look more like a conversation and less like an excuse.

An apology model

Maher is trying to explain himself (what Ware & Linkugel might best call an explanatory posture), so he’s trying to draw a distinction between what happened and where he’s at now, while reminding people of why they like him.

Building himself up

To remind people of why they like him, there are a number of tricks Maher uses, including apologizing, reminding us he’s a comic, and he gets an assist from Dyson on reminding us of the good work he’s done in the past.

Apologizing helps

Maher begins by apologizing for the word: the incident wasn’t frivolous, “Because for black folks – and I don’t care who you are – that word has caused pain, and I’m not here to do that.” Later he says, “Yes, it was wrong, and I own up to that.” This starts out on the right foot, as it builds up his likeability by showing he’s sensitive to the issue – he apologized, and he seems to get it.

He later takes another shot at sensitivity by stating,

But it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t said in malice – it wasn’t – if it brought back pain to people, and that’s why I apologized freely and I reiterate it tonight.  And that’s sincere.

Again, here he’s apologizing for using the word, and at the same time reinforcing that it wasn’t mean-spirited [more below].

Remind us he’s a popular comic

Early on, Maher notes that “the comic mind goes to a weird place sometimes.”  Here, he subtly reminds us that he’s a comic (that’s why we like him). He later returns to that point when he talks about What Comics Do [but to conserve ether here, I’ll let you follow the link].

Remind us of the good he’s done

Dyson helps Maher out considerably here, saying

The reason I’m here is because you have attacked that [the resurgence of racism].  You’re the one who said, “Denying racism is the new racism.”

He then points out Maher’s history of calling people out on this issue. Dyson’s other statements help Maher as well.  He says, “If even Bill Maher can at some level capitulate to a level of unconscious privilege, then the rest of us are in a serious spot.” This elevates Maher to the status of “one of the best.”

Dyson further gives Maher credit for his knowledge when he says,

But look, there are trigger points that even in comedy, lines that you should not cross, … and when it comes to race, you know that.  It’s not that I’m introducing a new concept to you, you understand that.

Maher works for himself here too, pointing out that he is “willing to spend political capital for a cause, or a view that I think needs to be out there.  This wasn’t that.  This was just a mistake.  This was just a dumb interception.  But again, you know, I’ve been on 24 years.”  So he’s working for things he thinks are important, and he’s been doing it for 24 years; good points to inject into the conversation to remind us why we like you.

Separating himself out

To give us other reasons why we should still like him, Maher has to make a distinction between what happened and where he is now.  He uses a couple of tricks here as well, including making it about the situation, that it was unconscious and not malicious, that he’s evolving, and that he’s a comic.

The situation

Early on, Maher tells a story of the event to put it into context, beginning with the idea that the Senator “said a weird thing,” and Maher noted that “the comic mind goes to a weird place sometimes.”  While this is prefaced with the statement, “It’s not his fault, it’s all on me,” the contextualizing detracts from that.  It frames it as a one-time reaction to the content of the Senator’s statement. It becomes a “It’s not his fault, but here’s how and why what he said led to this.” It’s certainly not something Maher would do again.

He later reiterates,

By the way, this happened once, a guy said a weird thing, I made a bad joke. Yes, it was wrong, and I own up to that.  But it’s not as if I’ve made a career of this.  You know. It’s not like I went out there last Friday and said, “Ooh, I’m going to break some new ground tonight.” You know, it happened, and it was wrong, and people make mistakes, we’re all sinners, and we’ve gotta, yeah.  But you know, I totally get that.

Unconscious/Non-malicious

Maher initially claims that he was in the moment, and didn’t think.  Later in the show, Ice Cube responded to Maher’s incident, and the Dyson interview. Ice Cube asks “What made you think that it was cool to say that?”  Maher responds, “There was no thought put into it… comedians, they react, and it was wrong, and I apologized.”

Maher further argues that he cannot be called out for other things that his words implied, because it was not a conscious decision. Dyson brings up the point discussed in other critiques about the content of the joke: that the problem was that Maher referred to himself as a house slave, as if house slaves had it any better than those in the field – which is insensitive.  I’ve gone further, saying that Maher calling himself a slave at all (of any type) is beyond hyperbole, it’s completely unjustifiable and therefore insensitive.

Maher’s response is that, “Well, of course, you must know that all of that was not going on in my mind. Right?” The implication here is that because it wasn’t conscious, it wasn’t malicious, and therefore he wasn’t responsible.

To his credit, Dyson doesn’t let him off the hook here, saying, “People believe that one of the things you did last week was an unconscious reflex, nobody would ascribe to you any malicious intent, but that’s the point, right?” and he goes on to talk about the harms of unconscious white privilege.

As I mentioned, Maher doesn’t immediately accept this point, but he does circle back to it.  After another argument and response and yet another “Ok, but…” Maher says,

I’m not here to make excuses [and yet, he keeps making them!], but first of all, the word is omnipresent in the culture, so the fact that it was in my mind is, you know.  Also, is there part of what you’re saying true? Absolutely. I’m just a product of the country like everybody else.

He’s evolving

Maher says, “I mean, we’re all evolving. We’re all who we are…. But look, we are all evolving at the pace of day-by-day.” Maher then sketches another story for us: his childhood in New Jersey and how far he’s come.  This idea, that we’re all (Maher included) constantly changing and hopefully improving allows us to perceive Maher as already a different person than the one who gave that interview and used that word.

He’s a comic

As I mention in the previous post on this interview, Maher tries to separate out his thinking as a comic from the thinking of normal people; “the comic mind goes to a weird place sometimes.” Later:

Comedians are a special kind of monkey…. We are a trained thing that tries to get a laugh. That’s what we do. That’s all we are always thinking.

Basically, he’s arguing that it was Comic Bill Maher, in the moment, trying to get a laugh that said the thing, and Advocate Bill Maher, the thinker, knows better.

I find it fascinating that Maher uses his status as a comic both to bolster his popularity and to justify his transgression.  It’s a fairly common tactic, and it seems to work.  This is what we think good comics do, and this is why we like them.

Summary

Maher’s strategy was fairly good – he had good arguments, but he didn’t execute well. He kept interrupting, and this prevented him from seeing the lobs thrown at him that would make some of his arguments easier. Finally, he creates his own problems and confuses people when he argues that he’s both a comic, so he shouldn’t be judged when he crosses lines, and a person spending political capital, so he’s trying to do the right thing.

References:

Aristotle, The Rhetoric

Fisher, W. Narration as human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument. Communication Monographs 51 (1984): 1-23.

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

A Note About Dyson’s Interview with Maher

Posted on by nwilson

Dyson’s points

I want to give some ink to Michael Eric Dyson, who did a fairly good job of holding Maher’s feet to the fire in their interview, despite Maher’s attempts to pull away.  These points do bear on what we should be trying to do when making jokes about race. I’ll try to lay out Dyson’s points without repeating myself.

Late in the interview, Dyson points out,

Black people ourselves are at war with each other about whether we use the N-word or not, some people think we should, some people think we shouldn’t.

Indeed, Dyson seems at war with himself, as he seems to be arguing against it’s use, but then he uses it twice (once in telling a story about the first time he heard it, he makes air quotes as he says it; the second time quoting a character from Curb Your Enthusiasm, who used the n—a form).  I don’t question Dyson’s right to use the term for any reason; just note his performative contradiction. As an academic and student of word use, I find both of his uses to refer to the term in a way that doesn’t seem to replicate the hurt the word can cause.  However, Dyson might have convinced me otherwise.

False allies

Dyson talks about “people who are consciously the allies of black people but who may also, inadvertently, unintentionally but nonetheless lethally participate in a culture that ends up hurting… black people in a way that has to be grappled with.”

One of the first rules of being an ally is to help – not hinder – the movement, and we need to avoid doing anything that will cause problems.

Crashing consciousness

Dyson tells a story from his book, about when I he first heard the word said to him.

And it’s real because that kind of crashing consciousness, that I am different, that I am forever consigned to a different box, relegated to a different reality.

This “crashing consciousness” the word might evoke – whether or not we were “using it properly” – might give us pause.

The timing

Dyson points out that Maher’s – or anyone else’s – intent doesn’t enter into it, and that it’s partially a problem with the context – this particular moment in history, the age of the 45th president and his administration, with its resultant resurgence of racism. At the end of the interview, he expands on this, noting,

[S]o many people speak about race and they have racial amnesia, they’re caught in a fog of dis-memory, they want to see the world the way they want to see it… and what they fail to understand is that this new age in which we live has certified and legitimated the resurgence of some of the most heinous expressions of anti-blackness that we’ve seen.

So perhaps now is not the time to align yourself with these groups inadvertently through language use.

Unconscious white privilege

Dyson’s notes that it’s Maher’s (and others’) unconscious white privilege that allows him to unproblematically and casually use the word.

But the reality is that there are so many people who are vulnerable out here, who are black people, brown people, red and yellow people who are vulnerable who don’t have the protection of a culture, so that their comedians might make jokes. Think about it…

I am thinking about it. Some would argue that white comics can’t joke about race – that Bill Maher is just the most recent example of a comic who tried to go there and had his hand smacked.  They would further argue that COC (comics of color) can joke about anything, but in my experience we have to question that. My comic interests are diverse, so I can think of a lot of COC’s, and Kevin Hart is the reigning champion right now, but we can’t let that token example overshadow the struggles of coming up through the ranks.  It’s already hard. We know it’s harder for women. Is it harder for COC’s?

Better off not

Quoting a text from his son, Dyson says, that some white people can use the n-word, but are better people for not using it “[B]ecause they understand the history, pain and insensitivity behind the use of the n-word.” He then gives the aforementioned example from Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm, talking about lines that shouldn’t be crossed.  I don’t think there should be many, but maybe for right now, this might be one of them.

Ramblings

Relief Theory update

Posted on by nwilson

I’ll post updates as I encounter new comedy, theories or writing/blogs about either.  So here’s one:

Sarah Silverman references relief/release theory explicitly in her 2017 Netflix special, A Speck of Dust. She builds a scene in which a girl is puking so hard she can’t stop and then she thinks she is about to get raped, but it turns out, she was just also crapping her pants. There’s a lot of silence as the story builds, but when the trick is revealed, the audience laughs, and Silverman acknowledges that this is exactly what she was trying to do.