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

Alex Stypula on Pushing the Envelope

Posted on by nwilson

It’s a common theme in discussions of comedy, which I haven’t yet gotten around to addressing here: Is comedy all about pushing the envelope, and at what point does it just become obscene.  However, Brent Owen’s recent interview with Alex Stypula for Leo Weekly.com (9/6/2017) can get us started.

Pushing the envelope

Owens asks,

Does good stand-up comedy push people outside of their comfort zone?

Not necessarily. I think it’s more of a challenge to do that. I think the laughs are far more rewarding when you take people somewhere they don’t think they want to go — and then they find themselves laughing. That said, I definitely don’t do that on purpose, that’s just the kind of stuff that comes up in my mind to try and make funny.

There’s a lot to like in this answer.  First off, the recognition that stand-up is not just about creating shock.  A lot of comics, particularly young ones, think that gross-out humor and the shock it creates are the height of hilarity, when many audience members may laugh out of surprise or embarrassment, but maybe not enjoyment.

It is a challenge to have the finesse and tact to address a taboo topic and make it funny, and that’s another point: the material is made funny, the audience “find[s] themselves laughing.” Thus, Stypula avoids casting the audience as objects, while he implies that the material is funny when the audience laughs, which resonates with Limon’s theory of laughter. Here, the audience are perhaps not full agents, but still play an active roll.

Apologizing

Owens then asks,

Have you ever written a joke that you had to apologize for later?

No. I’ve definitely told jokes that weren’t very good, or were a bit too much, that went a little too far. But you know quickly by telling them once or twice, and then you get rid of it. But I’ve never had to apologize for any of that.

In my published work, I’ve expressed that perhaps the best thing a comic can do after a joke is poorly received is to shut up about it – remain silent.  That was what Stephen Colbert did after his speech at the 2007 White House Correspondent’s Dinner. The silence of the comic allows the joke to remain “in play,” an open text that is up for re-interpretation. So I would agree, they shouldn’t apologize, but yes, they should change.

That’s the problem with some shock comics, they don’t recognize when they’ve gone too far – or rather, they recognize they got a reaction, and sometimes they revel in it, and sometimes they berate the audience for being too sensitive and not having a sense of humor. Doing this only further alienates the audience.

On political humor

I commiserate with Stypula, who says,

I wish I could broach politics, but I can’t. It’s just not in my wheelhouse. I mean, I really don’t like Donald Trump… I mean I don’t like him a lot. My mind is fried even thinking about it. It’s such a bizarre weird joke for what he is and what he’s doing, it would be hard to make a joke out of it. It’s like this whole country is a joke at the moment.

So no politics.

Yeah, my jokes are getting more observational these days. Things that occur to me or something that happens to me, and I then extrapolate on that to the umpteenth degree. There’s a bit I do about pretzels that was something that really happened to me; it was a four-second interaction. Now, it’s a six-minute bit.

I feel that.  If humor is tragedy plus time, I find that not enough time has passed for me to construct a joke, and with political humor, it’s all about the contemporary moment.  I’m constantly thinking, “Damn, I wish I’d been quick enough to think of that,” but it’s too close.

Truth telling

But the other part of the above quote is that he acknowledges that although there might be a kernel of truth, it’s extended and extrapolated until it’s blown way out of proportion. That strikes me as a more self-aware response.

Summary

So, another brief interview, but dense in terms of the topics he touches on. Although Stypula is praised for his ability to push the envelope, he acknowledges that it can go to far, and you have to know when to pull back.  He recognizes that the jokes are funny when the audience finds themselves laughing, and if they don’t, you should not apologize, but consider losing the material. Like him, I wish I could do political jokes, but I’ll settle for adapting my life situations for the stage.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Making Stand-Up More Sensitive

Posted on by nwilson

Audrey Carleton writes in an Opinion piece for McGill Tribune.com (9/4/2017) that audiences and comics should be more sensitive, not less.  Carleton begins with a critique of stand-up comedy,

Comedy has a problem with sensitivity, and rather than admitting it, many comics shift the blame onto viewers for being too delicate or attempting to stifle free speech.

This approach is wrongheaded. By turning the audience into the enemy, comics gloss over the fact that there is a wide range of people who are, at best, underrepresented on the stage, and at worst, mocked in jokes by members of dominant groups.

Sense of humor (soh)

This resonates with some theory I haven’t gotten to yet [it’s coming]. Daniel Wickberg, in his book, The Sense of Humor, talks about the importance of having one – it is considered the height of virtue, and if one doesn’t have one, it suggests that one is “literally an incomplete person” (85). Further, the call to have a sense of humor becomes codified in the command to “Laugh at thyself.”

Moira Smith, in her essay on “Humor, Unlaughter and Boundary Maintenance,” argues that although Americans regularly test each other’s sense of humor by making our friends the butts of our pranks and jokes, people we dislike and marginalized people are more frequently tested, and often by jokes that aren’t even meant to be funny, but to provoke the targets to dare to “not laugh,” and thus confirm our feelings that they are bad people, who can be further ostracized. I have often felt myself to be the victim of such attempts, even by “friends,” and family. Such pranks and jokes should probably be labeled harassment or bullying, rather than humor, but to do so would be to wrongly constrain the latter term.

So perhaps I’m off on a tangent, but these calls to “check any and all political correctness at the door!” or not to be “over-sensitive” or “thin-skinned,” and to “learn to take a joke,” seem to be calls to have a sense of humor in the face of any and all potential affronts.

Shock comedy

Carleton states that it’s a question of whom stand-up comedy serves, “the audience or the comic”?

One clear reason that some stand-up comedians regularly use material that is offensive or off-colour is its shock value. While many comics pat themselves on the back for having the guts to blurt out what they perceive everyone to already be thinking, getting laughs at the expense of minority groups is a low stoop…. Ignoring political correctness or basic sensitivity when writing and telling jokes perpetuates a vicious cycle that keeps marginalized folks excluded from the world of stand-up—both as audience members and performers.

I’ve spoken out against so-called “shock comics,” who think they’re pushing the envelope, when they’re not “speaking truth to power” and saying what everybody is secretly thinking.  They’re like horror movies that employ jump-scares – just because we made a noise, doesn’t mean you were funny.

Carleton notes that the problem is complex. It’s a question of free speech, and also of approach – some performers use their act to defuse the tensions of their own experiences.

In some circumstances—if one has experienced trauma or injustice, for example—joking about the experience can provide a sense of release.

So here we see relief theory raising it’s obsolete head again. But here it’s a matter where the victims of the joke (those who are harmed in the course of the action) are separate from the butts (those who are responsible and worthy of our ridicule [in a superiority theory frame]) – the butts are the oppressors or the oppressive system, not the marginalized.  Then again, you never can tell what will trigger some people – and some just can’t tell the difference between a dick joke and a joke about sex.

Solutions

While comics have a lot of choice in the material they cover and the way they do it, Carleton’s solutions are in the hands of the audience:

Audiences have tremendous power to challenge this by choosing wisely which comics and material they support.

The best of her solutions is to boycott artists you know make alienating jokes.

Her other solutions involve mindfully and selectively laughing. The problem with that is that many of the theories I discuss on here wonder if that is even possible.  All the theories that suggest a humorous or comic mode, which is invoked within a play space, have some sense that we’ve checked our rational mind at the door and allowed our emotions free rein in the pursuit of the pleasures of laughter. The gist is that even if we can, it would make comedy a whole lot less fun. True, I don’t believe it for an instant, but I’m in the minority, it seems.

Further, there are many reasons we laugh – sometimes it’s merely because we recognize the form of a joke, and that it calls for a response. If we’re not paying close attention, this can happen.  Then there’s that pesky pressure to have a sense of humor, to be seen by our friends as a fun person, to laugh with them, at whatever they laugh at – it creates a sense of group membership, unity, togetherness, the illusion that we are all laughing at the same things for the same reasons.  That is the most difficult to fight.

Summary

However, that’s what we have to do when our friends make racist and sexist comments.  We have to stand up to them and say something, not just let it go.  Essentially, Carleton is suggesting we do for comics what we do for our friends, call them out when it needs doing.

It’s also what we should do to “friends” who repeatedly tease, prank, insult, harass or bully us.  We might need to let these “friends” go.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Humor Theories/Stand-Up Comedy/Theories About Audiences

Sense of Humor (soh) and Insult Comedy

Posted on by nwilson

Daniel Wickberg, in his book, The Sense of Humor, talks about the importance of having one. In Western culture, it has only been since the mid-eighteen hundreds that having a sense of humor has been considered the height of virtue.  However, now if people think you don’t have one, it suggests that you are “literally an incomplete person” (85). Humorlessness has been linked to:

egotism, fanaticism, superstition, mental inflexibility, and even mental illness (Smith, 158).

We regularly cast our opponents as humorless to demonize them.  The Germans are still considered humorless, and Hitler was thought to be a case in point. Nowadays, Moira Smith, in her essay on “Humor, Unlaughter and Boundary Maintenance,” points to the reaction to Muhammad cartoons as a means to display that Muslims have no sense of humor, and we could say the same about Kim Jong Un.

Pervasive

The concept of sense of humor is everywhere.  It tops the list of things people seek in a mate. If we speak out against a joke, we have to assure people that we definitely have a sense of humor – it’s not us, it’s the joke.  It even shows up when people who speak or write about humor have to apologize if their work is not funny [sorry about this, BTW].

Laugh at thyself

Further, the call to have a sense of humor has become codified in the command to “Laugh at thyself,” and thus we seek to test those around us.  It can be a sign of inclusion – the common thought is that if your sense of humor is tested with pranks and jokes, it’s because you are either already a member or are being considered for membership.

Moira Smith argues,

In these situations, the humor response of salient audience members [the targets] becomes the focus of special attention–reversing the usual state of affairs in performance, where it is the activities of the performer that are scrutinized. Instead, the person who initiates the joke and the joke itself becomes secondary to the targets’ responses, as these are read to gauge suitability for full membership in the group.

This is the basis of roasts, including the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. People in powerful positions have to be able to show that they can take jokes at their expense.  They must at least guffaw. It plays a role in those recirculating “roast me” memes.  It is also the basis for insult comedy.

Insult comedy

This is also the basis for comics like Don Rickles, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Lisa Lampanelli, etc., who claim that they “hit all sides,” and “take no prisoners.” Audience members pay to be insulted, and may feel slighted if they’re passed over. It’s similar to the effect John Limon talks about in the case of Lenny Bruce: people pay to be outraged, but paradoxically, because they asked for it, they cannot truly be outraged.

In the case of roasts, it is punching up, and usually the jokes don’t cut too deep.  In the case of insult comedy, it may punch down, but again, not too hard. However, we can also viciously punch down.

Punching down

Testing people’s sense of humor can have a dark side. Wickberg points out that humor was not associated with sympathy until the nineteenth century.  Smith argues that while good humor is sympathetic now, “sympathy is not a defining characteristic of humor” (162).

She points out that although Americans regularly test each other’s sense of humor by making our friends the butts of our pranks and jokes, people we dislike and marginalized people are more frequently tested, and often by jokes that aren’t even meant to be funny, but to provoke the targets to dare to “not laugh,” and thus confirm our feelings that they are bad people, who can be further ostracized.

Aside from a couple of case studies, Smith cites a 1977 study, in which Rosabeth Kanter found that in predominantly male work groups, men told sexist and sexual jokes more frequently in the presence of women than when they were absent. She also cites numerous studies on teenager’s engaging in “adult-baiting,” or trying to get a rise.

However, more than this, it just rings true.  Maybe I’m falling prey to a salient exemplar; however, I have often felt myself to be the victim of such attempts, even by “friends,” and family.

Such pranks and jokes should probably be labeled harassment or bullying, rather than humor, but to do so would be to wrongly constrain the latter term, and Smith recommends putting such acts in both categories (humor and harassment).

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Leighann Lord on Relief and Laughter

Posted on by nwilson

It’s sad when I picture it.  As some describe it, there are vast masses of people living in a state of constant psychological and emotional pressure, on the verge of exploding.  These people want help, but they can’t do it on their own – therefore they actively seek out the sweet, sweet release offered by the skilled comedian who can make them laugh. Apparently, stand-ups are like prostitutes for people with no hands.

I know, I sound like a broken record.  However, that’s how I feel reading article after article; they say the same things, over and over again.  Leighann Lord’s interview with Michele “Wojo” Wojciechowski, for Parade.com (8/30/2017) is just another case in point. But she does make some at least one other point too, so let’s dispense with that first.

Marginal personas

Lord begins talking about how she got into stand-up:

It was an experiment in self-protection. I got picked on a lot because I wore glasses, had braces, was smart and did my homework. These were egregious childhood offenses. Coming from a West Indian household, not doing well in school was not a viable option. I thought if I could make fun of myself before the bullies could—if I could make them laugh—I’d distract them from my climb to grammar school educational dominance.

I’ve weighed in before now about the idea of comic personas, and of making fun of oneself, and whether it allows you to dominate a situation, taking control and allowing them to laugh with you, or whether people are still just laughing at you.

Yes, it seems to have worked quite well for the token few who survive school unscathed and become successful stand-up comics, but I’d imagine the host of those who fail at it is much larger, perhaps by a couple of orders of magnitude, than those who fail at stand-up comedy. The point is that it’s a double-edged sword, and we shouldn’t play with it lightly.

Making laugh

Yes, I often harp on how the popular idea that comics “make people laugh” casts the audience as objects that comics act upon, and Lord expresses this above, she makes bullies laugh, friends laugh, strangers laugh… She describes it as “intoxicating”: “That power, that relationship, that responsibility…”

I don’t want to rush to conclusions, because Lord does talk about meeting people, having experiences, etc., which could indicate that she’s talking about interpersonal relationships with her fans; however, the phrasing above is suggestive that the relationship is one with her in a place of dominant power, and “with great power, comes great responsibility” – thanks Uncle Ben. The responsibility comes in giving people release. Perhaps Lord’s theory of the audience is not as objects, but as customers – they seek her out, but she decides how to help them.

Relief Theory

Lord says,

One of the biggest rewards I get from stand-up is when someone comes up to me after a show and says, “I really needed that.” They share a bit of their lives with me–anything from a job loss, to a death in the family or just a plain old bad day, and they say I made them laugh and feel better. That’s great stuff. It’s humbling and mutually uplifting. More of that, please.

Again, though the Stanford Encyclopedia of Psychology says no scholar uses the Relief theory, it’s clear that word hasn’t trickled down to the masses.  In this quote, Lord describes how the audience also feels that it is soliciting her help in seeking release.

Summary

I’m uncomfortable with the idea that comics deliver pleasurable release, as it reduces us to prostitutes.  Yes, all performers prostitute themselves, and perhaps comics more than most, as we offer up our most fragile, uncomfortable moments – when we are the weakest or most vulnerable, in short, *ugh* human –  to the possibility of ridicule. Perhaps my hang-up is the idea that we might get so caught up in reaching the laugh, that we stretch too far, bare too much, and become crushed by the laughter.  The Culture of Masculinity says to have a sense of humor, laugh it off, guffaw, and move on.  However, some can’t.

There’s also this idea of what the audience is reduced to: a bunch no-handed Johns, not capable of helping themselves, or worse, a bunch of junkies, jonesing for the sweet release of the drug we’re peddling.  These are not images of healthy, empowered people, and so I’ll look for something better.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Tig Notaro on Comedy and Release

Posted on by nwilson

Though she gives a brilliant interview to Ashley Hoffman of Time (8/25/2017), Tig Notaro only briefly mentions something that touches on my theme here: the idea of comedy as a release. It’s just a short blurb, but the first question of the interview is:

How do you see the relationship between personal tragedy and humor?

They go hand and hand. It’s hard for me to imagine digesting everything without a comedic release. That’s what I use to cope. It’s crucial for my peace of mind.

So here again we see the popular notion that people are pressure cookers of pain and grief and angst, and it’s up to humor to let off some steam before we explode in a cloud of gunfire.  Yes, I’m trying to be more funny on here.

I only bring this up, because the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes,

Having sketched several versions of the Relief Theory, we can note that today almost no scholar in philosophy or psychology explains laughter or humor as a process of releasing pent-up nervous energy…. [F]ew contemporary scholars defend the claims of Spencer and Freud that the energy expended in laughter is the energy of feeling emotions, the energy of repressing emotions, or the energy of thinking, which have built up and require venting.

Despite the fact that scholar’s don’t use it, I follow Michel Foucault in arguing that if the idea is still part of the popular discourse formation of humor, still part of the way people understand humor’s effect on their lives, then it’s worth discussing in more detail. And here is more evidence that it’s still around.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Reggie Watts, Stand-Up Comedian?

Posted on by nwilson

Same ol’, same ol’

I watch stand-up sporadically, sometimes going on binges where everything I watch is stand-up, sometimes taking a long hiatus.  Sometimes, I’m just not in the mood.  Therefore, I agree with Jake Larsen of The Daily Nebraskan (8/25/2017) that stand-up can seem repetitive. As he has it,

Each stand-up special is the same one-hour show filmed in some upscale theater, telling written jokes with a little bit of interaction and physical humor, if you’re lucky.  The only one that broke this endless loop was Reggie Watts’ “Spatial.”

It’s true, if we limit our idea of stand-up, as most comics seem to, to Caty Borum Chattoo’s definition:

A comic stands on stage and entertains a live audience with jokes and social commentary, with minimal or no props.

If we embrace this definition, it doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room for variations.  In that framework (and having watched “Spatial” myself), we can understand why Larsen calls Watts’ act a “bizarre style of comedy,” filled with “uncommon occurrence[s].”

What is stand-up?

Larsen doesn’t recommend Watts for everyone:

[I]t can just be too off-the-wall for a lot of people. The stand-up could be equated to a Jackson Pollock painting. Some people may find a strange beauty in “Spatial,” while others will wonder how this was ever given the green light.

There is this implicit feeling one gets in stand-up, that those who do anything different from telling jokes are “less than.” I’ve seen people get up at open mics and try to do slapstick, stories or skits, and they are not well-received – even when the material is good.

The format for open mics doesn’t lend itself even to story forms. Try to develop a humorous plot and characters inside five minutes (or three). It can be done, but it’s harder than telling 10 dick jokes.

The guy who runs the mic at the local comedy club has said it flat out, “We want standard jokes: set-up, punchline, with a laugh every 20-30 seconds.” So you can tell your humorous anecdote, keep the audience smiling for the whole five, with a big laugh at the climax, but you won’t get invited to perform as the opener for any named comic.

So I understand the resistance to Watts’ off-beat act. However, I stop short of agreeing with Larsen that, “it is something completely different from any stand-up I have ever seen,” or that he’s “the most bizarre.” Emo Philips is bizarre, and he tells straight jokes.

Nor do I agree that,

I think performance artist is a more appropriate title for Watts…

I’ve been around a while, and I also know (and have written on this blog) that Lawrence E. Mintz expands his definition of stand-up to include,

[A]n encounter between a single, standing performer behaving comically and/or saying funny things directly to an audience (71).

That switch from “jokes and social commentary,” to “behaving comically and/or saying funny things” is huge, as it includes slapstick, humorous stories (when they don’t have social commentary), puppets, prop comedy, etc. Under this definition, Watts is not a “performance artist,” but securely within the fold of stand-up.

Larsen also says,

Watts’s style of humor makes me laugh at just how ridiculous it is, not necessarily because of a premise or a joke.

But why we laugh isn’t as important as that we laugh. That then begs the question: how important is that laugh?

Are laughs necessary?

Perhaps most damning is Larsen’s assertion that,

[M]ost things [Watts] does generates more of a “wow” or “what did I just see?” reaction than a laugh.

This idea is problematic, as I myself have followed John Limon in defining stand-up as a form that primarily seeks laughter.  However, just failing to get a laugh every time is not disqualifying – and Larsen states that he did laugh, at times.

If we define the “wow” or “what?” reaction as an enjoyable shock – as opposed to one that is not enjoyable, as we experience with “gross out” humor – we could note that such shock can be a precursor to humor; people often laugh when they experience a shock that they enjoy. That they sometimes don’t doesn’t make the act any less enjoyable.

Summary

My reasoning runs thus: If storytellers can be stand-up comics (and they can), and if stories can inspire other emotions than humor – as long as they inspire humor too – (and they’d better, or risk being one-note), then any performer who frequently inspires humor is a stand-up comic. Yes, the form is primarily verbal and needs an audience, but it doesn’t require strict jokes or social commentary.  It just needs to be funny sometimes and enjoyable most times.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Daniel Fernandes on Comedy as Art

Posted on by nwilson

A lot of comics express (perhaps unknowingly) the idea that audiences are passive objects that they “make laugh,” and Daniel Fernandes is another one – and his goal is every 30 seconds.  In his interview with Punita Maheshwari of edexlive.com (8/28/2017), Fernandes has some brief answer about stand-up.

Truth telling

When asked about threats in response to his political remarks, Fernandes responds,

Not really. My writing is very layered. There is some truth to it. A lot of people are doing this.

So, Fernandes is not one of those who argues that he’s telling the complete truth, though there may be some.

Comic intent

Continuing, Fernandes says,

Plus, to attack my jokes, they need to understand them first. Moreover, comedians are the only people without any agenda. Our only job is to call out bullshit.

The ordering of this seems to say that his layering displays that he doesn’t have an agenda, but we could note that perhaps his execution of the humor obscures his agenda and thus prevents blow-back. Because comics aren’t supposed to have an agenda, other than to produce laughter, they frequently get away with it when they have one.  After all, isn’t “calling out bullshit” an act with potential political and social consequences?

On “censorship”

Although Maheswari moves on to another point, Fernandes seems stuck on the previous, he says,

When you look at it in terms of an art form, there is no censorship and no restrictions.

We should note that there are many countries where there is censorship and restrictions on free speech, in any form including art.  Further, we’re coming off a discussion about how he layers his jokes, perhaps to prevent such attacks. So no, comics and comedy don’t operate in a play space without rules that allows them to speak truth to power – unless they meet certain criteria that we grant them, and those criteria are always being reassessed and readjusted.

Summary

Yes, this is a short piece and perhaps I’m nitpicking. However, I do so here because my goal in this blog is to display how widespread these notions are.  They crop up in far more articles than I have time and space to address. The “make people laugh” metaphor is so pervasive and insidious that I couldn’t possible document them all.  I note it in pieces like this, but if it’s the only thing in an article, I pass it by.  Much more exciting is when people say something different, and I try to get at those as well, but it didn’t happen here.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Michelle Wolf Isn’t Trying to Change the World

Posted on by nwilson

But perhaps she should be.  I talk a lot on this blog about what comedy can do, and my main soapbox is that it can do whatever we let it do.  If comics tried to do more, and audiences expected more, more could be done.

Comic intent

Counter to this, Mae Yen Yap of the Post, Athens (8/26/2017) quotes Michelle Wolf as saying,

My first priority is to make people laugh. If they get something out of it, great. But I’m not trying to change the world.

So we can put Wolf in that category of comic intent where laughter is the first and most important goal.  However, is that what the audience wants?

Expectations of the comic

On the other hand, a student, Edwin Quarcoo, “appreciated how Wolf’s style of comedy tackled serious social problems while presenting the topic in a way that is entertaining but accurate.”

That’s why I watch The Daily Show — because the news is too serious for me. I like to hear things from many perspectives, and it’s great to hear (about social issues) because the truth is in there, but it still makes you laugh.

If we listen to audience members like this, who Young argued are a growing demographic, then we see that people can and do expect multiple things from stand-up. Perhaps they go to different shows for different reasons, but they do go to shows like Wolf’s, and that should tell the comics that there’s more that can be done.

Yes, keep it funny, but don’t hesitate to make some points along the way.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

 

 

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

Marlon Wayans on Truth in Stand-Up

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I’ve talked a lot on this blog about whether stand-ups tell the truth about their lives.  Of course some do, but most fudge a bit.  Even among those who give us the straight story, they frequently don’t tell all of it.  However, the myth of stand-up as a space where one speaks one’s truth, especially to power, persists. In an interview with Kevin C. Johnson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (8/23/2017), Marlon Wayans feeds this myth.

I’m a free spirit. And when you’re doing comedy, you’re supposed to be naked — not care. And that’s an example where I didn’t care. I just want to make people laugh.

Marlon’ is a project I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I have to figure out how to take comedy and my life and bring it to the screen. Comedians successfully do their lives and personalities, but I wanted to make sure it’s about me. That’s what was most important to me.

Of course we shouldn’t miss his model of audiences as objects that he can “make laugh.” However, what’s with this idea that he’s “making sure it’s about me”?

The funny thing is, Johnson calls him out on his creative license, noting that “the show” is only “loosely based on his own life,” as it “is about a divorced couple co-parenting their children. (In real life, Wayans wasn’t married to the mother of his children.)”

So despite Marlon wanting this to be a truth telling act, it’s still served with a layer of fudge.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Jeff Foxworthy and Tension Release

Posted on by nwilson

In an interview with Edward Pevos of MLive (8/22/2017), Jeff Foxworthy describes his theory of humor in a way that resonates with the Relief theory of humor:

I always said with comedy that it’s the release valve that keeps the boiler from exploding. When I stand on stage, I can look at the audience. From time to time I have the thought that everybody here is going through some kind of struggle. Whether it’s financial or health issues… being able to laugh a little bit almost lets you recharge the batteries and go deal with it again. Music is kind of the same way. It’s a little bit of that escape.

Of course, like most comics, he’s mixing his metaphors. Apparently, his model is more like a steam engine, powering a device that recharges our batteries.

Another noteworthy point is that while Foxworthy does use the “make them laugh” phrase – which maps to a popular idea of the audience as objects acted upon – once in the interview, he more frequently talks about “learn[ing] what people are going to laugh at,” the new joke “got a great laugh,” displaying the audience as active participants.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?