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

D.J. Mausner on Promoting More Female Comics

Posted on by nwilson

In an interview for The Globe and Mail (8/1/2017), D.J. Mausner tells Giuseppe Valiante about how to helps out female comics.

Role models

She says that women don’t have enough role models, and they can’t look to men as,

[W]omen have different experiences and they share (jokes) in different ways.

This discrepancy has been widely noted [I’ll talk more about it in a later post]; if memory serves, women have been shown to appreciate a storytelling style more than a strict, script theory (setup, punchline) style.

But that sets the problem: less women are doing it because less women have done it. So this problem is a significant one, and it trickles down to others.

Expectations

Martha O’Neill founder of Toronto’s SheDot comedy festival says,

A man steps on stage and the audience waits to laugh. For women there is another layer. The audience says, ‘Prove to me you’re funny.’ People still come up to me after shows and say, ‘Normally I don’t find women funny but I think you’re hilarious’ – and I would argue it’s more women than men who say that.

Yes, expectations are key to creating the space in which comedy can happen, and that expectation is still not as easily granted to women as to men.  The problem is, there are less women doing it, and they’re just as likely to not be funny as the men are.  So when you watch a sea of male open-mic’ers flail about on-stage, and yet see a few good ones, you’re convinced men can be funny.  However, in that sea of men, if two women perform, and one is funny and one bombs, you question whether or not women are funny. Plus, they’re doing it differently than the men, so it’s not what we were expecting at all.

Equal booking and equal pay

Mausner talks about booking agents hiring more women, and men talking openly about pay to promote equality; however, that brings us back to the representation problem.  We had this question in our local comic’s Facebook forum.  We don’t have that many funny women in the scene, so people booking shows would quickly book them and then have nobody else to book for future shows.  Thus the question: Should you put a woman (or POC) on the show even if they’re not that funny, to promote diversity?  The risk is to degrade the quality of the show and lose audience. It’s not an easy answer.

Stereotyping and heckling

Valiante notes that woman and especially trans women have a harder time, as they are heckled more, and more hatefully.  Zack Freeman also mentions this problem in his article for the Chicago Tribune (8/3/2017). This is impossible to combat, save to have the hecklers removed, and that practice (or policy) would have a sort of chilling effect on the space of comedy – you mean this isn’t a space where we can talk about anything? *mock outrage*

What we can control are the jokes we tell, and this is a point I’ve made before in talking about marginalized personas: we have to be sure we’re empowering, not stereotyping. As Mausner says,

“I’m not saying I believe in censorship and people not being allowed to tell certain jokes,” she said. “But I think your responsibility when you say those jokes is to know how they are going to affect the audience.”

Society, she said, is already homophobic, racist and transphobic.

“So if you can make jokes about anything, why are you touching on tired stereotypes? By making jokes in that way you are just another drop in the bucket. It’s boring.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Sam Adams on Political Comedy and Making People Laugh

Posted on by nwilson

In an interview for the Littleton Independent (7/31/2017), Tom Skelley ask Sam Adams a couple of questions of relevance here: one on political comedy, and one on “the toughest part of the job.”

Political Comedy

Skelley asks,

What’s your take on doing political comedy these days?

It’s amazing how one election has changed everything.

I think about what makes people laugh, like, why are you going to a comedy club? Me, I don’t want a 15-minute speech about politics. You can’t please everybody, but you have to realize: “are people coming to get jokes about it or to get away from it?”

I want people to feel comfortable. I never have been a political comedian, so why start now? I still have my political views, I just don’t bring them to work.

Here we see a fairly common view: not wanting to get into it. The reason given is that “that’s not what the people want;” however, Caty Borum Chattoo and Young would have something to say about that: Young said that some people seek out such comedy, and do so because they want political information as well as humor.

I can empathize with never having been a political comedian, as I’m not.  The reason, for me is I haven’t yet figured out how to do it well – and it’s a bit daunting to try.  Also, I recognize that there’s a difference in the audience when you’re a headliner versus just another person on the bill (or worse yet, an open mic’er!).  If they came to see you and your brand of humor, great; if not, maybe steering clear isn’t a horrible idea.

However, Adams talks about “what makes people laugh,” thus characterizing the audience as objects he’s acting upon, and this carries on into the final question of the interview.

Tough job

What’s the toughest part of the job?

For me it’s about coming up with and sharpening my material so that it isn’t just making people laugh, it’s making them laugh hard. I’ll jab you like Muhammad Ali, but I want my punchline to knock you out like Mike Tyson.

Another thing is when people know you’re a comedian, they think you’re just “on” all the time. I always say “I am not funny in real life.”

But for some reason, when the lights go on, and the crowd is there, the fear of not being funny just carries me through.

The boxing metaphor is telling – it’s implicit in the punchline and jabline concepts generally, but Adams goes right after it.  This metaphor, however, runs into problems when used in conjunction with the “making laugh” phrase in that the boxing metaphor might imply an equal opponent, and exchange of blows, when we know that the ideal for most stand-ups is to be doing bag-work; bags (and audiences) shouldn’t punch back.

I can relate to Adam’s second point: Much like this blog, Adams isn’t funny in real life. However, also interesting to me is this “fear of not being funny,” that drives him onstage. He feels a pressure not just to act funny or to tell funny jokes and make them laugh, but to be funny, to embody funniness. And the idea of fear on top of it… it’s scary to me to wonder what we are willing to do in the name of being funny.

It’s just strange to me that, in a profession you choose, your performance is driven by a fear of not being something, instead of a happiness and confidence in being the thing.  Maybe it’s just me.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Jack Bernhardt on the Benefits of Stand-Up and Jokes Versus Threats

Posted on by nwilson

In The Guardian, comedy writer Jack Bernhardt writes a nice little column on “Why everyone should try standup comedy once” (7/31/2017). He says,

I am proposing compulsory standup lessons for every single person in the country – so that we can all think more like comedians and save our society.

At the very least, “people would learn the difference between a joke and a threat.”  However, before he gets there, he notes some other benefits that would accrue, including empowerment, and self-reflection.  I’d like to examine these benefits in a bit more detail.

Empowerment?

Bernhardt writes that doing stand-up comedy can be empowering.

If everyone was made to have a go at standup comedy … they would feel like their words mattered, if only for a moment. They deserve to have that confidence of a mediocre male politician flow through them, even if only once.

He states that stand-up comics have an “assumed arrogance,”

[A] standup is telling the audience that their point of view deserves your undivided attention for at least five minutes – their jokes, their observations about Donald Trump’s hair, and nothing else.

He talks about the power that comics wield, including to maintain the audience’s attention, and notes that he “once span around in a circle on stage for 40 seconds for a joke.” While it sounds powerful, I think 40 seconds might have been the limit of that gag.  Just because he didn’t get booed and people didn’t walk out, doesn’t mean he wouldn’t or they couldn’t.

Later in the article he talks about jokes bombing, wherein he admits as much:

[M]y jokes about squishy avocados from Waitrose are going to go down great at a corporate event for M&S, but they’d bomb in a working-class suburb of Detroit because no one would be able to recognise it, and even if they did, it wouldn’t be relevant. Moreover, if the audience is randomly selected and diverse, jokes that rely on sexist or racist tropes would bomb. It’s the same reason Roy Chubby Brown won’t ever do a show in Brick Lane, or why the men tweeting tedious jokes about Jodie Whittaker becoming the new Doctor Who will never, ever have sex with a woman, ever.

So he knows the comic does not wield unlimited power. We could also question how empowering it would be for those with severe stage-fright.  It takes me so long to get comfortable with a bit in front of an audience, I question the value of having someone get up in front of an audience just once.  To truly be empowered, they have to do it enough to do it well–and most comics argue that takes years.  YEARS!

Further, we could dicker about how much power and leeway is granted to marginalized comics versus white males, but I think we see the point: the idea of unobstructed power a comedian wields, like wise fools speaking truth to power, is easily debunked. However, there are other benefits that may accrue, for instance, in putting together a set, we might self-reflect, and in that process we may discover things.

Self-reflection versus self-expression

In keeping with his notions of power, Bernhardt notes that,

Comedy is as much about making a connection with an audience as it is about self-expression.

Given what he said above, of course he would say this. In Bernhardt’s view, the comedian wields all the power; they don’t have an equal relationship with the audience as they have power over them.

He talks about comics having different angles on topics because they are different people, and “Standup is intensely personal.” He says you have to find out what your “take on the world is,” before you can connect with an audience.

Not enough people stop and think about what their take on the world is. We just assume we’re all unremarkable – or worse, that we’re all the same. Identifying what makes us unique – not in a bad HSBC advert at an airport kind of way, but actually analysing who you are, and what our biases, privileges and limitations are, makes understanding and empathising with other people easier.

So he admits – here and above – that there is some connection to the audience, and it’s in this section that he gets into the quote above about jokes bombing – an immediate contradiction to comedy being about power and self-expression.

He makes a good point about knowing oneself as key to understanding others.  That’s why in every basic Communication textbook, chapter two is “The Self,” and chapter three is “The Other.” But are we really learning about ourselves, or ourselves in relation to the world?

The message he doesn’t say, but seems to mean is that comics have to conform to who the audience thinks they are, and tell those jokes in their range that are appropriate to the audience.  That’s not self-expression, that’s reading an audience, and while it may take some self-reflection, and as I’ve pointed out before, a lot of will power to stay true to yourself and not become something you don’t want to be in chasing the laughs, it still might not be as empowering as we’d like. Still, there’s his last benefit to stand-up, that we can learn the difference between jokes and threats.

Jokes versus threats

Bernhardt writes,

[T]he most compelling [reason everybody should do stand-up] is simple: a lesson in standup would let everyone know what a joke is and isn’t. Over the past few months, it has become increasingly hard in this country to tell…. After each scandal, each gaffe, someone inevitably offers up the defence that it was “just a joke”.

The problem is that more often than not it wasn’t originally presented as one – it’s a veiled threat that is retroactively bestowed with the status of a joke when someone challenges it. Its intent wasn’t to amuse or to satirise, but to intimidate and ultimately silence. Maybe, just maybe, if we’re all forced to craft our own comedy, we’ll be able to spot the difference between a joke and a threat masquerading as a joke.

So here are the two main takeaways from the above:

  1. It can’t just be labeled a joke after the fact, it must be “presented as one,” perhaps including a discernible setup and punchline (from a later example).
  2. It has to have the intent of amusement or satire, not intimidation and silencing.

However, as I’ve tried to show in this blog, there is a spectrum of clarity when it comes to signaling a joke.  Further, not all jokes have setups and punchlines.  Sometimes we merely have to infer from what we know of the speaker, that, “of course this person is joking.” Because inference (supplementation of the information provided with what we think we know) is required, we have the possibility of making something a joke, whether or not it was intended as one. And that is a powerful tool to use against those who make statements we don’t like.

Also, intentionality is a funny thing, especially when you try to set amusement and satire in opposition to intimidation and silencing.  While it is generally recognized that satire must be amusing to avoid being simple ridicule, there are what Max Eastman has called “degrees of biting,” with “satire proper” being on the “hot end.” But perhaps it begs the question of when and where we draw the lines–How deep did it cut? Funny to whom?

Also, satire always has as it’s intent ridicule and shaming, so how is that not “intimidation?” Satire is a joke that also has an implicit threat: Reform or else.  Or else you’ll be ridiculed further.  Or else you’ll be shunned.  Or else further action will be taken.

Summary

Here’s Bernhardt’s conclusion:

Yes, it may be arduous…. But for the good of society, we have to try to think more like comedians–to spot those bullying threats, to empathise with our fellow man, to give confidence to those who have none.

Now here’s mine: Yes, there’s a lot of good to be had by trying stand-up–from really trying it, not just being the drunk heckler who, when invited on stage, resorts to street jokes, and cheerleading, when not blatantly stealing the bits of others.

All public speech can be empowering, if you can put in the time it takes to get to the point where you’re comfortable, and my experience is that in stand-up it takes longer to get to that point.  And yes, in trying to figure out a persona that works for us onstage, we have to get in the heads of the audience and empathize.

However, I think Bernhardt’s got it a bit back-to-front.  It’s not that stand-up will teach us the differences between humor and bullying threats–I’m not certain there is one–but that developing a sense of humor, a sense of comedy, a tendency to make something humorous will teach us how to dispel the veiled threat; to laugh at the bully.  To turn our ridicule back on those who would threaten us and enlist the empathy of those who recognize what’s going on.  Yes, it’s difficult, and yes, it’s dangerous. But it might just be our only hope.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Aditi Mittal on Her Goals

Posted on by nwilson

Aushree Majumdar interviewed Aditi Mittal for The Indian express.com (7/30/2017), and along the way expressed some things that we should talk about here.

Double standards

In the article, Majumdar talks about the double standard for female comics, and yet I find Majumdar’s treatment of Mittal a bit uneven.  On the one hand, it’s high praise:

Stand-up is storytelling live, and on stage, Mittal is funny, charming, energetic and bold.

The other hand is what we would call “left-handed:”

She jumps from topic to topic, and is one of the few women to display a natural ability for physical comedy. Not all her jokes have a punchline — Mittal often uses her face to make a comical expression, signalling the end of a joke.

One of the few women who have the ability for physical comedy? Lucille Ball, Melissa McCarthy, Rebel Wilson, we could go on and on.  There’s just a smaller pool of women to draw from, but that’s true of every type of comedy. That aside, she does seem to believe that Mittal is doing some good things.

Rubber swords

Early on, Majumdar uses a metaphor from humorist Mary Hirsch, that “[H]umour is a rubber sword — it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.”  This is only true if the humor has no efficacy, no “bite” as it were, and yet, that’s clearly not what she believes.  She says,

A funny woman is a dangerous thing — more dangerous than a woman who speaks her mind — because laughing with her somehow makes one complicit in the wrongs she’s taking a jab at.

True, we can laugh with Mittal her own self-deprecation (which is basically laughing at her) and thereby be complicit in and enforce the system. However, the laughing with/laughing at possibilities are more complicated than that; we could also laugh with her, at the system, without internalizing it. I think the point here is that the laughter does have some efficacy.   But that depends on what Mittal is trying to do.

Mittal’s goals

“When I started doing comedy, I had elevated ideas about what it was all about — truth, and that comics must not misuse their power, be cruel and hurt those who are disenfranchised,” says Mittal, putting on a quasi-British accent for effect. She shakes her head and says, “But I see it happening in comedy all the time. So, I wanted to talk about things that are disturbing to me.”

Like Colin Quinn and Ann Nguyen, Mittal sees punching down as very much a possibility. However, she’s trying to do something positive. Majumdar notes,

The take-home [for Mittal’s humor] is almost always the subtext: in a man’s world, if a woman must work twice as hard for everything, the only way she can survive is by laughing twice as [loud].

This seems again a slide backward – talking about the things that disturb you could be punching up and speaking truth to power. Instead, Majumdar seems to make it just about a coping mechanism. For her part, Mittal seems to want to do more:

I’m not averse to criticism. I want to entertain people, but comedy has represented too many wonderful things to me for the criticism to constantly matter. I don’t care so much about having the last laugh, you know? I just want to start a conversation.

The gist here is that comedy isn’t just about poking fun, it’s about instigating conversations.  Then there’s how Mittal goes about that task.

Mittal’s methods

Majumdar notes, “Sometimes, Mittal uses comedy to highlight sombre issues as well.” She describes a set about bra shopping, then states,

Towards the end, she talks about breast cancer awareness — the transition is well-executed and effortless, and the original joke remains undiluted by the serious turn the conversation has taken.

This is a direct application of Caty Borum Chattoo’s advice on how to use humor to enact social change: she let the humor be the humor, then tied it to a social message.  However, I still wonder if we can’t do both.  Mittal’s sights are certainly set higher.

Somebody recently asked me why I’m talking about ‘bold’ things. Comedy is a potent weapon, so shouldn’t we be using it to talk about potent things as well?

So much for rubber swords – Mittal’s is a sharp, potent weapon.

Off-limit topics

When asked if there is any subject that is off limits for comics, Mittal responds, “I don’t think so.” Majumdar then asks about rape jokes, noting that “they are a known taboo in comedy.” Mittal responds,

You have to examine a joke in the context that it is cracked, because 90 per cent of the joke is context. When you talk about people who talk about what women should wear in order to avoid rape, or somebody saying that chowmein is an aphrodisiac, then you’re punching up. At the end of the day, it is still a rape joke, but who is the target now?

What Mittal alludes to here is again what we’ve called the difference between victims and butts, laughing with and laughing at.  When laughing at people who critique a woman’s clothing, making them the butts, that’s punching up.  However, people who think chowmein is an aphrodisiac, that could go many ways – or maybe that’s a local, specific issue, and I’m just unaware of her context. In any case, she disputes an easy assumption that all rape jokes blame the victims.

Summary

The more interviews I read with Aditi Mittal, the more impressed I am with her. She seems to have a nuanced understanding of humor, and very activist goals.  With the latter, most models predict her comedy career to sputter and fail – or be pushed into a niche, like Margaret Cho [for the most part; we can talk about it].  However, instead she’s thriving, overcoming the double standard, and wielding a tangible sword.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Sara Schaefer on Stand-up in the Age of Trump

Posted on by nwilson

Sara Schaefer wrote a poignant article for The Herald (7/29/2017) about telling Trump jokes in the current era.

Burnt out vs. ready for more

She notes that some people, even liberals, are just tired of hearing about him, some are just tired of all the yelling, but others want her to go after him.

It’s tempting to give in to these people – because they will respond very enthusiastically to anything I say about him. But I have to be careful, because I feel like if I pander to this faction too much, I’m at risk of falling into virtue-signalling in exchange for “clapter.” Clapter is when an audience claps for a plainly-made point, instead of laughing at a well-crafted joke. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m all for a strategic clapter moment. But this isn’t a Ted Talk. It’s a comedy show. Preach responsibly.

This is a slight deviation to the definition of clapter, which we previously defined as agreement, rather than humor. This would have it that they clap despite the form, the the point were less plainly-made, more couched in a well-crafted joke, the claps might signal humor support [I’ll get to this directly].

Nevertheless, the point is well made: comics on the left have a decision to make.  On the one hand, they can avoid the issue and just try to be innocuously funny; on the other, they can please part of the audience and potentially alienate the rest.  This latter route has many dangers.

The dangers

Social media

Social media has also ignited a tidal wave of stupidity never before seen in the United States. Intentional misunderstandings and bad-faith interpretations of art have led to all-out campaigns to shut down comedians’ entire careers. So nevermind the sensitivity of individual buttholes in my audience, I’m now worried if I’ll become the target of a harassment campaign by the alt-right. Will they come to my show? Will they heckle? Will they disrupt?

Yes, we’ve noted some of the effects here, like Kathy Griffin’s photo and other bad-faith interpretations of art. I side with those who note that despite their jibes, these facists and neo-nazis are some of the most sensitive snowflakes out there.  Nevertheless, their sensitivity bleeds over onto others.

Chilling effect

And it’s not just the comedians that feel this, it’s the audience too. When I open my show with a joke about Trump, you can tell that everyone in the room feels like a line is being drawn. They’re worried: “What if the comedian forces me to publicly identify which side I’m on?” Stand-up comedy, by nature, is awkward enough without having to worry about sparking a civil war. Of course, these things are subtle – and almost always amount to nothing more than tiny ripples in the atmosphere. But they’re always there, humming in the background.

Yes, people came to a comedy show to get away from their lives, and to experience pleasure in the presence of others.  When they’re asked to take sides in a political debate, that can decrease their pleasure. Such an effect has been called “chilling,” it makes everyone more self-aware and therefore careful, with broad consequences.

Her models

Schaefer tells us that the nation is tense in the Trump era: it’s “A nationwide epidemic of tight buttholes,” and her goal, therefore, is to,

[M]asterfully manipulate the buttholes of my audience. OK, that sounds really bad. (Or really good, depending on what you’re into.) What I’m trying to say is that I’ve found ways to release the tension with my audience, gradually build their trust, and then surprise them along the way. I’m interested in finding common ground, and I find that most of my audiences appreciate this.

So here we see a number of models for humor: relief/tension release and surprise (incongruity) – both after a sufficient buildup of trust. She also talks about humor “resonating” with the audience, which is more of a model of a loving relationship.

Caveats

Schaefer also realizes you can’t please everyone:

Of course, there is always that one guy who sits within plain view and refuses to laugh the entire show. Arms crossed, he sulks, openly hating me and every inch of my being. I try not to look at him, but it’s hard to ignore when one person is doing their damnedest to suck the oxygen out of the room solely using his rectum. I used to hate this guy. I would be in my head, screaming: “Why are you here? Did you not do one second of research? You could have easily figured out that you hated me via a simple Google search! Just leave! I Don’t care!”

Eventually, I came to accept the presence of this breed of man at my shows. He can try to Trump my comedy (pun intended), but I will not be deterred, and maybe one day I’ll figure out a way to loosen even his butthole. One can only hope.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Ann Nguyen on Punching Down

Posted on by nwilson

Blame Ann Nguyen of Elle.com (7/24/2017) for introducing me to Caty Borum Chattoo’s The Laughter Effect. In her article, she says a few things about this new(-sh), progressive stand-up.

Punching up?

Nguyen recognizes that comedy is dangerous.  She’s not one of those that Colin Quinn mocks in The New York Story,

[C]omedy never punches down, it only punches up. I read that from fifty people that never did comedy, they all said… what? What?

I’ve sort of put Chattoo – who Nguyen interviewed for this article – into this boat, with her discussion of stand-up’s “less-told” historical roots in African-American and Jewish-American humor, which was used as both a way to challenge power dynamics – to punch up – and to cope with their circumstances. Chattoo says,

Comedy serves as a way for oppressed groups to make it through their existence. Comedy works as a coping mechanism, a resilient strategy.

Rather than just telling their stories, which can dwell on complex and dark social issues, comedy can raise those issues and despite them, evoke feelings of optimism and joy.

Counters

While this may have been the way that it worked, others might argue that this comedy was an ineffectual distraction – humor didn’t free the slaves or protect the Jewish people from oppression. Further, it was just one type of humor, and some of the others weren’t so nice. Nguyen notes,

Anjelah Johnson

Historically, stand-up has always pushed the boundaries of good taste, making the medium susceptible to offensive jokes that can reinforce power dynamics and perpetuate oppressive ideas. Because nothing is off-limits, the utilization of bigoted racial tropes, misogyny, and inaccurate depictions of minorities runs rampant. See Anjelah Johnson’s stereotypic portrayal of Asian women who work in nail salons for just one famed example.

So Nguyen recognizes that perhaps historically stand-up has always pushed boundaries, but not always in a good and progressive way.  However, rather than focus on the past, let’s look at the present.

Currently

When using humor as activism, Chattoo notes,

There is a high level of sophistication that goes into making truly funny jokes that also bring light to activism. The jokes are only funny when they are poking fun of the power dynamics, not the poor people themselves.

Yes, there is a level of sophistication required, and yes, if we are to be activist, we should try to punch up; but jokes that punch down are not funny? Funny to whom? If people didn’t laugh at Anjelah Johnson’s jokes, she would stop doing them or risk losing gigs.

Changing audiences

To be fair, if we believe Chattoo’s sources, audience expectations are changing.  They seek out humor containing messages, and they look for those messages.

Caty Borum Chattoo

Audiences who seek out smart, civically-focused comedy and entertainment may do so for more than one reason—to be entertained and to make sense of serious information…. And when audiences seek and use entertainment with active “truth-seeking motivations,” they process the civic information in such a way that sparks “reflective thoughts…issue interest, and information seeking.” (Chattoo citing Young)

Perhaps now it is more necessary to punch up, rather than down, given what these active audiences want.  Perhaps now, as Nguyen says, “to bring attention to social issues and care for the community through comedy means that there is no room for jokes that make fun of the powerless.” While perhaps not unique to the current moment, this effect seems to have increased in recent years.  And comedians are responding.

Examples

Nguyen notes the sharing and coping functions of comedy in Margaret Cho talking about her miscarriage and in the phenomenon of Black Twitter. She also notes it in the stand-up of Phoebe Robinson, who says,

Phoebe Robinson

The world that we live in does not like women, does not like women of color, and does not like queer women…. I think every comedian at heart is saying, “I have all these things that I want to say, and I want to connect with people, but I’m not quite sure how to do that in real life.”  So I do it through comedy. Then people will hear me and it will make sense to them.

Nguyen also notes Robinson’s progressive attempts to push boundaries, to create new types of comedy and set different goals.

I think the best thing for me was that I freed myself from the rules and parameters on how you can do [comedy].

Nguyen’s take on this?

Instead, … she’s used humor to inform, resist, or comment on the oppression that shapes her experiences…. [These women of color] reject the paths that typically white and typically male comedians have charted. Instead, the gags and punch lines shared by these women of color have contributed to a comedy that cares for and recognizes their authentic selves.

Summary

Comedy doesn’t always punch up, then or now.  However, if stand-ups wish to be activists (and if audiences will let us be), perhaps we should try to do better. This involves not just punching up, but changing the way we conceptualiize stand-up itself. I’m in support, and appreciate Nguyen’s more nuanced view of the issue. We need more comics like Robinson, and I hope she finds an audience.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Humor Theories/Stand Up Comedy/Theories About Funny

Chattoo, The Laughter Effect V. Comedy Highlights and Strategies (part 2)

Posted on by nwilson

In May (2017), Caty Borum Chattoo, co-director of the Center for Media and Social Impact at American University and a comedy fan, released “The Laughter Effect: The [Serious] Role of Comedy in Social Change“, in which she summarizes the research and gives advice on how to use humor to further social issues.

Skipping ahead again, I want to discuss her Highlights and Strategic Recommendations in two parts. Some of these I agree with, some I question, mostly because I think we could do more, if we try.  Here’s a quick overview of her points (paraphrasing):

  1. “Let the comedy be comedy.”
  2. Don’t shoot for behavior change
  3. Timing is key
  4. Amplify the message
  5. Satire mobilizes, but doesn’t convert
  6. Use consistent portrayals to normalize people and ideas
  7. Have a consistent, trusted messenger
  8. Representation matters
  9. Be self-deprecating, not mean
  10. Work with news sources

I’ll hit the second five here; I agree with a couple of these!

  1. Use consistent portrayals to normalize people and ideas

“Want to build empathy and connection to people? Consistent entertainment portrayals of characters can normalize people and ideas over time.”

Chattoo’s sources show that para social relationships create emotional effects in entertainment storytelling that accrue over time.

Seeing unfamiliar characters or divisive issues portrayed regularly builds a level of identification, even in a comedy format. Normalizing the existence of people and ideas happens best through consistent portrayals, not necessarily one episode of a fuller series.

However, I again question the limits of this theory. Can a comic play a role, then return to the stage and tell a consistent story to further normalize and identify? Can we watch their role, then encounter an older stand-up bit where they tell a consistent story and further normalize and identify?

Hasan Minhaj

What about consistent depictions by different comics? If all Muslim comics – Aasif Mandvi, Ahmed Ahmed, Dave Chappelle, Maz Jobrani, Dean Obeidallah, Hasan Minhaj, Maysoon Zayid,  – all seem like normal, down-to-earth people – if a little odd, as all comics are, but not in any ways that support any harmful stereotypes – doesn’t that serve to normalize and identify? Isn’t this consistent over time?

  1. Have a consistent, trusted messenger

“A consistent trusted messenger may be the most powerful mouthpiece.”

Chattoo’s research documents that having a “consistent messenger or host” who is “trustworthy and liked” helps an audience form “a close parasocial relationship,” which creates effects over time.

Amanda Seales

Liking is easy to come by for comics, because of the perceived rewards laughter provides.  However, consistent and trustworthy? A bit more rare, at present, though things seem to be changing. As we get more examples like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Bill Maher, Zainab Johnson, Amanda Seales, Aditi Mittal, etc., we may come to expect their messages, and indeed, seek them out.

This may be preaching to the choir, but as I said before, we’re just proving what’s possible.  Persuasion is always possible under certain conditions, that doesn’t mean it always happens under those conditions, why should humorous persuasion be any different?

  1. Representation matters

“Comedy is culturally specific. Issues of representation matter in comedy’s effectiveness for social issues.”

Chattoo says it succinctly,

Humor is culturally dependent on the ability of the audience to understand and identify. When using comedy or humor for public engagement around locally-specific issues, it won’t work to create the humor without local voices and perspectives. Be very sure about your audience—local, national, international? It matters in the talent who creates the comedy and the messages it promotes.

This just makes sense.

  1. Be self-deprecating, not mean

“Self-deprecating humor is more powerful than mean-spirited humor in the context of social issues.”

If the goal is to attract attention and help raise awareness about a new issue, self-deprecating humor [horatian satire] is more powerful than mean-spirited or sharp-tongued humor [juvenalian satire]. Be careful about the target of the humor—it should never be the oppressed or powerless, even in pursuit of the laugh. Doing so risks back ring.

There are some mixed messages in this statement.  On the one hand, self-deprecating is better; on the other, you can’t target the oppressed or powerless. But what if you, the comic are oppressed and powerless? How do you call attention to your oppression in a self-deprecating way, without triggering mockery and ridicule?

I’ve talked about the victims of a joke, versus the butt of the joke, how the former is harmed and we laugh with her, at the latter, which is at fault. Surely, casting oneself as a victim and making the system the butt is not mean-spirited, though neither is it quite self-deprecating. Moving into self-deprecation would seem to make you, the victim, at least a bit “at fault,” and that’s dangerous territory. A distinction between victims and butts seems like a better way to go.

  1. Work with news sources

“Comedy and news sources can be powerful allies, working together to fuel social change.”

As research documents, comedy does not have to compete with news—instead, it complements news coverage about social issues. In fact, comedy can open the cognitive doors for people to make sense of complex social issues, thus helping them to understand more serious news and information about them in the future. With careful partnerships between comedy game-changers and sources of serious news and information, this powerful connector role can be optimally synergistic in pursuit of social change.

I support these endeavors wholeheartedly, and it again returns to what comedy can easily do, which it should do.

Conclusions

Chattoo says a few important, new things in the conclusion I’d like to take a moment to address.

Humor is not a tactical tool

She says,

Most importantly, comedy shouldn’t be imagined as a simple tactical tool, as that thinking reduces it—falsely—to a lab-created mechanism able to create predictable effects.

I couldn’t agree more. The idea of just couching a social message in humor is ridiculous. First off, because as she notes humor isn’t that simply done or predictable, but secondly, and more importantly, because you have to find the funny.

It’s not a matter of “making it funny,” or “adding humor” to the serious message.  Yes, this can be done, but it’s not optimal and unlikely to be successful.  Instead we have to find in the situation something that is quirky, amusing, humorous when put in the right light – and not all issues immediately lend themselves to that. It takes finesse, timing, and a lot of work. This is why not everyone can do stand-up: it’s hard!

Directions for the future

She further notes,

[D]espite many notable case studies of comedy appeals or stunts attempted in social change, most do not include evaluations of social impact beyond reach.

Moving forward, expanding these lines of work—and creating intentional conversations between researchers, social-change strategists and thinkers, and comic talents—would inform and shape our public engagement solutions to issues that matter the most. Considering the challenges we face as global citizens, it may be well worth the risk.

Well, in trying to have an intentional conversation regarding her work, I’m furthering the latter.  In order to do the former, I’ve made some suggestions for finding a greater persuasive impact of comedy:

  1. Can we find instances where comics state outright that they have a message, and are they still generally regarded as funny (not polarizing or niche)?
    • I have argued that many currently state their political intentions, but I know that many partisan comics, like Bill Maher, are considered polarizing. What about younger, hipper comics addressing social, non-partisan issues?
  2. Can we find evidence of comics who are also actors, who tell stories that cast them as similar to the characters they’ve played?
    • Is there evidence of empathy and connection being created?
  3. Can we find evidence to break down the central and peripheral processing dichotomy?
    • Can we show that people can do them in one or the other sequence?
      • If this study has been done, I’ve never heard it cited.
    • Can we find evidence of them happening simultaneously?
      • Can we identify moments where someone recognizes that they agree with the message, and yet honestly laughs simultaneously (or close enough; and it’s not clapter)?
      • Can we identify moments when an audience member both laughs at something in the joke, and yet disagrees with the message (and it’s not a fake laugh or a guffaw)?

I probably made some other statements, but these would be a good place to start.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Humor Theories/Stand Up Comedy/Theories About Funny

Chattoo, The Laughter Effect V. Comedy Highlights and Strategies (part 1)

Posted on by nwilson

In May (2017), Caty Borum Chattoo, co-director of the Center for Media and Social Impact at American University and a comedy fan, released “The Laughter Effect: The [Serious] Role of Comedy in Social Change“, in which she summarizes the research and gives advice on how to use humor to further social issues.

Skipping ahead again, I want to discuss her Highlights and Strategic Recommendations in two parts. Some of these I agree with, some I question, mostly because I think we could do more, if we try.  Here’s a quick overview of her points (paraphrasing):

  1. “Let the comedy be comedy.”
  2. Don’t shoot for behavior change
  3. Timing is key
  4. Amplify the message
  5. Satire mobilizes, but doesn’t convert
  6. Use consistent portrayals to normalize people and ideas
  7. Have a consistent, trusted messenger
  8. Representation matters
  9. Be self-deprecating, not mean
  10. Work with news sources

I’ll hit the first five here, the next five will follow.

  1. “Let the comedy be comedy.”

“Don’t make it do a heavier lift.”

I’m reminded of a Gin Blossoms lyric: “”and if you don’t expect too much from me, you might not be let down….” It’s a sad note to end on, and it comes entirely from Chattoo’s assumptions. She assumes that Petty and Cacioppo are correct, and that we must either process information consciously through the central route, or respond only to peripheral, heuristic cues. This leads her to say:

The precise way in which comedy works as persuasion means its power is diluted if audiences are aware they are being “messaged to” or persuaded…. Leave the comedy alone, and let it be optimally hilarious, without diluting it with overly massaged, safe constraints. This is hard to achieve in practice, but comedy may be useless otherwise.

But what if that’s not true? What if we can process consciously and peripherally at the same time? Maybe we can’t right now. Maybe we’re not trained to. Maybe we don’t expect to. Maybe we don’t want to yet.  But if Young is correct, audiences are beginning to seek out “smart civically-focused comedy and entertainment,” like The Daily Show, and that,

[They] may do so for more than one reason—to be entertained and to make sense of serious information…. And when audiences seek and use entertainment with active “truth-seeking motivations,” they process the civic information in such a way that sparks “reflective thoughts…issue interest, and information seeking.”

If this is true, and if comics are responding with more social commentary and more addressing of social issues, then perhaps we are being trained. Cordoning off comedy from serious discourse is a step backward. Doing comedy that is both hilarious and has a message is, admittedly, harder to do, and I have yet to see one sustained special where it’s done, or even a chunk of one, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen, and perhaps it will soon.

Some would argue that, at best, this happens when the comic is “preaching to the choir,” that we can laugh because we didn’t have to scrutinize the message much to know that we agree with it. However, I don’t need to argue that everyone will do it all the time, I only need to prove that it’s theoretically possible.

In the meantime, we should definitely use “comedy’s ability to amplify a message.” Yes, we should also,

Send users and audience members to a website for more information, direct them to a separate serious place, and consider pairing the comedy appeals with other more serious information…. In other words, pair the comedy with the serious information and even a call to action.

However, the statements that “At almost all costs, the serious information should be separate from the comedy” or that we shouldn’t “embed the serious information within the comedy itself” are bunk. Why can’t we try both?  Just because Chattoo hasn’t noticed it yet, doesn’t mean it can’t be done, isn’t already being done, won’t be done better in the future.

  1. Don’t shoot for behavior change

“Behavior change might not be the right objective for comedy in the context of social change.”

True, behavior change is a lot to expect from any message, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Still, we might be better served not focusing on it, and there might be other, sneakier things we could do. Chattoo reiterates her five forms of influence:

  • Attracting attention & facilitating memory
  • Feeling: comedy’s route to persuasion
  • Entering complex social issues
  • Breaking down social barriers
  • Sharing with others

These are all worthwhile pursuits.

In this way, comedy can serve a reinforcing, amplifying role alongside serious news and information about social issues. And attention leads to sharing, fueling a multiplier effect of the original message.

However, while she’s got the Sleeper effect and Multiplier effects down, what she forgets is the more subtle aspects of the Priming effect. Properly composed, the comedy can introduce a particular frame – a terministic screen – that will stay with viewers.  Beyond just setting the agenda and telling audiences what to think about and look more into, comics can set up the issue in particular ways that shape how the audience looks at and interprets the issue.

  1. Timing is key

“Comedy alone is not a magic formula. Leverage comedy’s attention-getting power with strategic timing.”

Comedy’s attention-getting power is most effective when paired with key advocacy moments or milestones—a call to action that makes sense and is optimally timed…. Simply producing and distributing a comedy piece— without the infrastructure for change (specific call to action) or the appropriate urgent moment— likely won’t lead to influence that can make a difference.

Anyone who knows anything about comedy knows that timing is key. Anyone who knows anything about persuasion knows that this is true there as well.  We must take into account Kairos, the appropriate moment. Also true, there must be an infrastructure to support specific change.

However, students of the Rhetorical Situation will note that Lloyd Bitzer’s idea of an exigence, “an imperfection marked by urgency,” is somewhat flawed. Vatz points out that perhaps the speaker determines when the moment is right in some instances, and others have gone further off the deep end, suggesting the whole thing is a result of the audience, or the message itself.

The upshot of this line of theory is this: Perhaps sometimes we can be just as effective at creating a moment as we can be responding to one. The key is to try, and we won’t if we listen to Chattoo and think that this effort constitutes “a heavier lift.”

  1. Amplify the message

“Comedy is a powerful media tool. The audience is not just the public, but media.”

This seems, on face, to be just a restatement of her Multiplier effect – we aim to magnify the impact of the message through sharing, which captures further attention, and sets the agenda for larger media attention.  This allows it the largest potential to reach “an activated, motivated audience—a group we want to learn, feel or do something…. [B]oth target audiences and decision-makers who are able to directly impact the issue.”

This echoes another part of Bitzer’s Rhetorical Situation: that for persuasion to happen, we must have an audience that is motivated to and capable of acting. The issue I take here is, who says anyone we reach is not, at least potentially, an “activated, motivated audience”? Especially if they’ve sought out social and political comedy, they certainly may be. The idea is just to reach as many people as possible, and let the message do the work.

  1. Satire mobilizes, but doesn’t convert

“Use satire to mobilize a base of supporters, but don’t count on it to change minds around deeply polarizing issues.”

To add to this, it’s not just that satire frequently uses irony and parody, which can be gotten or missed and thus leave different audiences with differing understandings of the message, though that’s true enough.

If I mock a flat-earther on Facebook or in a bit, some might “get it,” and laugh at flat-earthers. Some might not think that it’s strong enough criticism and laugh at me, or others might think it’s just a ridiculous critique, and both might laugh because they think I don’t know how the world works. Some might “get” something else (cats push things off tables), and laugh in agreement with what I’m saying, but remain flat-earthers.

However, Chattoo’s point is that when the critique is too sharp, deep, cutting, it will polarize your audience. “Research supports the idea that people with deeply-held partisan or ideological beliefs will retain them in the face of satire.”

On the other hand,

Mobilizing a base of supporters is also a valuable way to use satire, particularly when the timing is strategic to coincide with a meaningful call to action.

I might add that, if the bit is well constructed, the opposing audience will still find reasons to laugh – in fact, to be recognized as satire and not just ridicule it must be funny, at least to some – but they won’t be persuaded by the underlying message, as Chattoo says, “it won’t work to turn naysayers into the choir.”

However, the idea that someone can laugh at something peripheral in a joke and yet recognize that they fundamentally disagree with the message would adequately display that we can process both paths, simultaneously. Nevertheless, satire probably won’t even re-frame the issue for that audience member in a meaningful way – unless you land it within an audience’s latitude of acceptance.

Briefly, Sherif, Sherif and Nebergall’s Social Judgment Theory suggests that around a person’s position on an issue are a cluster of other positions they find viable, acceptable – though not as good as their own. The idea is to hit the edge of this latitude of acceptance, and by doing so, make these positions seem better, causing the audience to reevaluate their position and perhaps shift slightly your way. This is persuasion 101, and would suggest that we could change minds using satire, at least slightly, if we’re sensitive enough to the audience.

Certainly, however, Chattoo is right that,

Satire’s role is to serve as a gateway to more complicated information…. For issues that are new or nascent—or for which ideological or partisan camps have not already divided the culture—satire can be a good tool.

This is again a restatement of a couple of her forms of influence. I just wish we could try to do more.  The rest of her recommendations are up next!

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

Lloyd Bitzer, “The Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy & Rhetoric, 1(1) (January 1968):

Sherif, M. and Sherif, C. W. (1967). Attitudes as the individual’s own categories: The social-judgment approach to attitude and attitude change. In C. W. Sherif and M. Sherif (eds.), Attitude, ego-involvement and change (pp. 105-139). New York: Wiley.

Sherif, C. W., Sherif, M. and Nebergall, R. E. (1965). Attitude and attitude change: The social judgment-involvement approach. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.

Richard E Vatz, “The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation,” Philosophy & Rhetoric, 6(3) (Summer 1973)

Young, D. G. (2013). Laughter, learning, or enlightenment? Viewing and avoidance motivations behind The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 57(2), 153-169.

Humor Theories/Stand Up Comedy/Theories About Funny

Chattoo, The Laughter Effect III. D. 3. Comedy Formats: Stand-Up Impacts

Posted on by nwilson

In May (2017), Caty Borum Chattoo, co-director of the Center for Media and Social Impact at American University and a comedy fan, released “The Laughter Effect: The [Serious] Role of Comedy in Social Change“, in which she summarizes the research and gives advice on how to use humor to further social issues. As previously described, Chattoo creates list of comedy formats that work for social change:

  • Satire/Satirical News
  • Scripted entertainment storytelling
  • Marketing and advertising
  • Stand-up and sketch comedy

I”m currently addressing her views on stand-up. In this installment (the eleventh), we’ll discuss the impacts of stand-up comedy.

Stand-up’s characteristics

Chattoo finds four characteristics that affect its impact (though she begins with another precursor):

  • Safe place
  1. Social commentary on social issues and power dynamics
  2. Breaking down cultural barriers
  3. Reducing stigma for marginalized people and ideas, and
  4. Its use by racial minority groups to normalize and express their experiences.

Safe place/space

Chattoo states, with Quirk,

Indeed, stand-up comedy is able to occupy a “marginal safe place” in which normally “subversive ideas” are granted license to be openly heard and discussed.

I’ve talked about humorous space here, both in its basic play and carnivalesque forms (though there are others I’ve yet to get to), with some of its offshoots: that comics’ only intention is to entertain or create humor, thus they are non bona fide, unreliable and discordant narrators, they don’t mean what they say; that jokes are porous, open texts that require supplementation, and so we can find meaning and humor as we like it; that humor is only processed peripherally or in a comic mode, thus audiences don’t treat it seriously in any event, and thus are unlikely to act – and our laughter supposedly signals that we won’t. These notions form our understanding of the space, but these notions might be wrong.  Thus I’ve disputed that these places are “safe.” Nevertheless, the license is still granted.

Because of her understanding of the space and history of stand-up, Chattoo argues,

Consequently, stand-up comedy and its evolution into other comedy forms (scripted, sketch) is naturally positioned, in other words, to spotlight pressing social issues and offer audiences a way to commiserate, laugh and re-frame.

I couldn’t agree more, but we still haven’t seen direct impact; though it seems like it’s forthcoming. So we turn to her first impact, the social commentary.

  1. Social commentary on social issues and power dynamics

From her discussion of the history of stand-up, Chattoo argues,

From inception to the present day, stand-up comedy finds its humor in observational commentary and social critique.

Directly addressing and poking fun at power positions and inequity—inherent in many deeply entrenched social challenges—are the mainstays of stand-up comedy.

However, I’ve argued that these observations need not be (and frequently aren’t) socially or politically meaningful, and when they are, they aren’t always socially beneficial – stand-up doesn’t always punch up, sometimes it punches down.

Nevertheless, the times might be a’changin’. Chattoo offers numerous examples from Africa and the Asia as evidence that other countries are taking up stand-up to challenge their social structures.

Amanda Seales

Here in the U.S., I’ve found a few examples of comics openly talking about their activism; from black female comics Zainab Johnson and Amanda Seales, to Indian female comics like Aditi Mittal, these comics are offering up social commentary.

  1. Breaking down cultural barriers

For marginalized or minority groups, breaking down the cultural barriers of stereotype and difference is a valuable element of social impact on the road to understanding. Following the 9/11 events in the United States, with heightened incidents of misunderstanding and condemnation of Muslims and Muslim-Americans, Muslim comics in the U.S. took on the issues directly.

Both Amarasingam and Michael note the number of studies showing that “Muslim stand-up comedy skewered stereotypes, attempting to influence perceptions about Muslims and Muslim-Americans.” Chattoo cites Amarasingam, who argues that,

Muslim stand-up comedians helped to break down “cultural barriers, promoting inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue, as well as tackling the misperceptions about Muslim and Arab Americans in the United States,” taking on a role of public intellectual to correct misinformation.

Once again, I’ll cite the examples above, but I’ll save my comments for the end.

  1. Reducing stigma for marginalized people and ideas

Reducing stigma around sensitive topics is yet another potential impact of stand-up comedy in social change.

To display this, Chattoo cites Jones and his colleague’s study, they examined how audience members’ felt (short-term) about the stigma surrounding mental health topics after viewing a stand-up show with mental health information versus without. Those who saw the informative one reported less stigma, but that’s just one study, and long-term effects were not measured.

  1. Its use by racial minority groups to normalize and express their experiences.

Beyond its appeal to audiences, stand-up comedy’s social change potential is illustrated also in a different way—by the impact on the comedians’ representative groups. Members of underrepresented or marginalized societal groups—particularly vulnerable racial groups—use stand-up to help to normalize and express their experiences to audiences outside their racial groups—a process leading to tolerance and acceptance.

Cohen and Richards talk about Dave Chappelle’s, blind white supremacist, who appeared in the first sketch of the first episode of his eponymously named show.  Chattoo notes that for these authors, Chappelle “was able to comically unleash the worst, most sensitive stereotypes of African Americans in a way that re-framed the issue for audiences:”

Beneath the humor lies a rich layer of social commentary about race relations in the United States. While comedians will make everyone uncomfortable at some point, good comics are playing an important function in society by holding up a mirror and forcing us to confront realities that we would often prefer to ignore. For minority groups, humor also serves as a tool to neutralize the power of stereotypes that obstruct their path to equal participation in society. Stand-up comedy can give social critique and instigate transformation in a way that leaves many audience members wanting more.

Problems

Zainab Johnson

There’s a lot of overlap here, obviously.  As with my examples above, when minority groups normalize their experiences, they break down cultural barriers and reduce stigma – in fact, breaking down cultural barriers itself reduces stigma. In expressing their experiences, minority groups cannot help but provide social commentary on social issues and power dynamics.  It’s kind of all of a piece. Perhaps the first (social commentary) can be done without the others, but it seems like if you’ve done any of the last three, you’ve implicitly done all four.

The previous quote expresses this well by reiterating several of the previous points, while still making the latest as well: by neutralizing the power of stereotypes, they normalize their groups, perform social critique.

Cautionary notes

Uptake

Chattoo backs away from saying stand-up will solve all our problems.  First off, because it can “push the boundaries of decency and taste,” but also be taken different ways by different people, it may backfire: “what’s funny to one may be offensive to another.”

Also because of its ability to be taken up in different ways Chattoo note with Cohen and Richards that when it comes to power dynamics, social issues, and so forth, “stand-up comedy may inadvertently reinforce power dynamics instead of effectively skewering them—including perpetuating racial stereotypes.”

Comic intent

She also notes as she did with satirical news that we have to let comedians be comedians

But to be overly sensitive and safe is to muzzle the power of stand-up comedy in the first place—its role is to be funny first, so attempts to water down jokes or material in order to deliver perspectives that are safe to a broad audience will likely not be effective.

Indeed, it’s only because of the understanding that comics are trying to be funny first that the space of humor can be maintained.

Culturally bound

Chattoo notes that stand-up is culturally specific. Political and social commentary in particular requires so much localized knowledge and information that it may just not translate across regional or social barriers, let alone broader national or racial/ethnic groups.

Hope

Nevertheless, Chattoo ends with a message of hope:

[S]tand-up and sketch comedy in the contemporary era is more widely available through digital platforms, sought by audiences, and attention-getting—an important potential vehicle for messages.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

Amarasingam, A. (2010). Laughter the best medicine: Muslim comedians and social criticism in post-9/11 America. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 30(4), 463-477.

Cohen, R. & Richards, R. When the truth hurts, tell a joke: Why America needs its comedians.

Jones, N., Twardzicki, M., Ryan, J., Jackson, T., Fertout, M., Henderson, C., & Greenberg, N. (2014). Modifying attitudes to mental health using comedy as a delivery medium. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 49(10), 1667-76.

Michael, J. (2013). American Muslims stand up and speak out: Trajectories of humor in Muslim American stand-up comedy. Contemporary Islam, 7(2), 129-153.

Humor Theories/Stand Up Comedy

Stand-Up: Brief History (A.K.A. Chattoo T.L.E. III. D. 2.)

Posted on by nwilson

When Caty Borum Chattoo, co-director of the Center for Media and Social Impact at American University turns to stand-up, she begins by defining it and giving some history of the form.  I’ve written a similar document using some of the same sources (it was part of chapter one of my dissertation), so I’ll take some partial credit for this expanded version.

History of Stand-up

Origins

Still, in terms of its history, stand-up comedy is distinctly American, stemming partly, as Chattoo and Montagne note, from vaudeville:

The roots of stand-up comedy are found in American vaudeville of the early 1900s, when a comic named Frank Fay first took to the vaudeville stage without props or a costume and told jokes, influencing other comics who would follow from stand-up into radio and TV, including Milton Berle and George Burns.

However, others, like Stebbins, point to the monologues of Mark Twain who started giving humorous lectures back in 1856. But certainly others before Twain had used humor in their speeches.  Some go further back to the medieval court jester or wise fool, or even back to the Greek monologues given before plays to warm up the audience, some of which were humorous (Stebbins). Nevertheless, these early forms may not be recognized by most people as what we would call stand-up today.

Truth to power

As far as stand-up’s history of addressing power, yes, early speakers did occasionally try to speak truth to power. Speaking of both monologuists and wise fools, Stebbins notes,

All these entertainers spoke to and for the common people.  They presented familiar ideas, situations, and stories in language the people could understand and from points of view with which they could identify.  In taking the people’s view, entertainers sometimes challenged established society and sometimes got in trouble for doing so (6-7).

Further, Mintz argues,

Stand-up comedy is arguably the oldest, most universal, basic, and deeply significant form of humorous expression (excluding perhaps truly spontaneous, informal social joking and teasing). It is the purest public comic communication, performing essentially the same social and cultural roles in practically every known society, past and present.

I used both these quotes in the dissertation, and I’m still unconvinced of their universality, as the role of stand-up seems to have changed over time, and to still be changing today – as Chattoo herself has already argued.

Stand-up in America

In it’s American incarnations, stand-up hasn’t always tried to speak truth to power. Though Twain gave good satire, the variations on vaudeville, burlesque, chautauqua, variety shows and night-club and resort entertainment usually came with the conception that good stand-up meant short jokes (not developed stories), wisecracks and one-liners – and therefore no “messages” (political or social) or personality (Nachman).

While some of these forms of humor, such as wisecracks and insult comedy (think Don Rickles), might appear to be attacks that would seem to return us to a critique of power, the general view Gerald Nachman expresses is that there was nothing overtly political about such attacks; they were often pat comments about being tall or short, fat or thin, well-dressed or underdressed, only as “political” as they were personal, which is to say, not very.  When these jokes cut, usually they did not cut very deep.

However, this characterization came before feminism insisted that “the personal is political.” Insofar as insult comedy is a critique of tall/short, fat/thin, it is a critique of body image; when it discusses clothing style it is a critique of class differences, etc. In these forms, it can be defined as “political” in the era of identity politics.  Insult comedy also requires a particular set of expectations and finesse in order to avoid offense, another word for judgment that signals the imposition of the political and the limit of humor. However, insult comedy and similar forms were more the exception than the rule. Further, they’re not exactly the type of humor we would like to promote: they represent ridicule, punching down, enforcing social norms, not challenging them.

Yes, there’s strong documentation of a tradition of humor in the U.S. from Jewish-Americans and African-Americans, but just as much from mainstream White figures like the rube or hayseed (Nesteroff; Rourke).  While race, class, and rural/urban power dynamics are well-represented in early stand-up, as with the body image stuff represented above, we should not think that all of these representations were progressive. Vaudeville was known for its racism; though not as bad perhaps as the minstrel shows that preceded it, it still frequently had acts with blackface and other worse stereotypical racial depiction.  The tendency to ridicule, punch down and enforce the status quo didn’t just magically go away.

It’s useful to know that the first use of the word “stand-up” to describe the form was in 1966 (O.E.D.), but stand-up comedy didn’t move out of the Catskills and began to take off in the 1970s, and it really didn’t explode until the 1980s with the birth of the circuit club (think The Improv).  Yes, some of the comics in the 1970s were, as Chattoo and Zoglin note, “social commentators, including George Carlin and Lenny Bruce, known for taking on taboo topics directly and challenging the status quo perspective on social issues.”

However, Bruce predates the 1970s, and if we look back at who was on-stage in his day, they’re not all political or social. For every Mort Sahl or Dick Gregory, many more were sheer entertainers, think Milton Berle, Bob Hope, etc. The point is, many were still just trying to entertain, not make a statement.

Nevertheless, Nachman charts a change in the 1950s and 1960s toward more personal disclosure, more of a storytelling style, and yes, more radical politics. Today, as Chattoo argues, there is a growing trend toward political action via stand-up. People expect more social and political commentary, comics are providing it, and it might be enacting serious change, which classical models said was impossible. I guess the classical models shall have to change.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

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

Montagne, R. (2015, December 21). ‘The Comedians’ stand-up history and some laughs [Radio Interview].

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

Nesteroff, K. (2015). The comedians: Drunks, thieves, scoundrels and the history of American comedy. New York, NY: Grove Press.

Rourke, Constance. (1931). American Humor: A Study of the National Character. New York, NY: New York Review.

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

Strinati, Dominic.  An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture, 2nd Edition.  New York: Routledge (2004).

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.

Zoglin, R. (2008). Comedy at the edge: How stand-up in the 1970s changed America. New York, NY: Bloomsbury USA.