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

On Honest Personas, Signifieds, Truths and Spaces

Posted on by nwilson

Mo’Nique, in an interview with Blake Hannon of Kentucky.com (7/20/2017), had a few things to say about her past and present on-stage persona that are relevant to our discussions here.

Hannon notes,

Mo’Nique broke into comedy as a no-holds-barred, brutally honest champion of heavyset women when appearing on stage or on revered stand-up showcases like “Showtime at the Apollo,” HBO’s “Def Comedy Jam” or BET’s “Comic View.”

Late in the article, Hannon writes,

[A] stand-up comedy stage is the place you’ll most likely find her and find that even after all these years, she is evolving. She has learned to be more honest on stage, revealing both the sweet and the sour while spreading the laughs and the love in her own unique way.

Then we get a quote from Mo’Nique:

I think when I first started, it was I was a big, fat, black woman and that’s what I knew how to be funny with, and that was my honesty, but there was so much more to me than that. I tell people that, if you want to get to know me, come to a show. You truly walk away knowing exactly who I am, and you may find out who you are.

Honesty

In all three paragraphs, “honesty” is a key descriptor, she’s “a no-holds-barred, brutally honest champion of heavyset women,” which echoes Mo’Niques own statement that “I was a big, fat, black woman and that’s what I knew how to be funny with, and that was my honesty.” This seems straight-forward, a “heavyset,” black woman speaking her Truth.  However, there’s another part to this: that Mo’Nique is more than just a “heavyset,” black woman.

More honest

Hannon says, “She has learned to be more honest on stage,” which suggests that she wasn’t being completely honest before.  Yes, she has evolved into “more,” as we all do, but it’s also true that she was never just anything.

It’s that next part of Mo’Nique’s quote – that “but there was so much more to me than that,” the past tense – that should catch our attention. She always was more than that. The theory that I often think of here is Michel Foucault’s idea of the prediscursive. To get there, we have to backtrack a moment to a model of signs from Structural Linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, the basis of semiotics.

Signs

Saussure posited that any sign – any thing that is meaningful, a word, an emoji, a picture, etc. – can be broken into two parts: signifier and signified. The signifier is what we see or hear or experience.  The signified is what we think of, perceive or interpret. So when I see the letter “c” I think the sound I hear when someone says it, and visa versa; they come to signify each other.  Further, when I see a sequence, like “c-a-t,” I think – not just of the word “cat” – but about an idea of a cat, whatever that is in my mind: cats I’ve seen or encountered, purring, growling, biting, clawing, grumpy, etc.

Prediscursives and the discursive

Similarly, Foucault claims that there are things that exist in the world – IRL – there are objects, bodies, events, practices, institutions, etc. These are prediscursive, existing outside of and perhaps prior to our talking about them or even our knowledge of them.

However, there’s also the discursive, the way we talk about these things. We interpret the prediscursive through the way that it is caught up in the discursive, which represents a whole vast cloud of knowledge and assumptions about characteristics, connections, relationships, etc. that Foucault calls a discourse formation.

It’s not that the prediscursive doesn’t matter outside of the discursive – it really does – but its complicated.  First off, ‘this prediscursive is still discursive,” that is to say, it signifies.  While it doesn’t “specify” how the object should be taken up and interpreted, it does serve to limit, to “characterize” and “define rules” (76).  In this way, the prediscursive elements are kind of like signifiers: we see a body that is marked by physical attributes, we see that this body is a certain size, we see that it has a particular skin color. These are real characteristics of bodies.

When we add the discursive on top of it, we get a set of signifieds that together create a sign; we begin to assign things meanings: those physical attributes mark her as a “woman.” That size of a woman is “heavyset,” or “big, fat.” That skin color is “black.”  Each of those interpretations comes along with a whole gang of other attributions – and taken collectively, they create more – about her lifestyle, her habits, her character, and why and how she’s funny.

More

To really blow your mind, the prediscursive exceeds the interpretation it’s given in any set of discourse formations. They say, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” that’s what we’re going for here.

When I try to describe an older photograph to you, you might agree that I did a better or worse job, but I will never capture all of it. Further, someone with a background in art or composition will see more than me. Someone with a background in photography may see more and different things. A historian would see different things.  With a great photograph, we could all sit around and talk for days and never express everything that the photo means, what it evokes in us.

That’s a single picture; a snapshot of time. How much more complex is a person?

More human

In an interview with Tre’Vell Anderson of the Los Angeles Times (7/20/2017), Zainab Johnson expresses a more fleshed-out view on this topic.  Anderson notes that she “battles expectations of what she and her set … should be.”

I had a shaved head and I wore my hair in an afro a lot, so people expect the strong black woman thing. But I love to say some ratchet …, just so that you understand that nothing — not my hair, not my look, not one particular joke — defines me. I’m a person in the world, and so the way that I approach stand-up is I tell my story.

Sometimes my story involves the fact that I’m a woman and sometimes it involves the fact that I’m a black woman. Sometimes it involves the fact that I’m from a big family and sometimes it involves the fact that I have body issues. It encompasses so many things that it’s just the human that I am, and I hate to say this in interviews… but it is what it is. You either … with me or you don’t.

I like this quote in comparison to Mo’Niques because it clearly displays a realization that she’s telling many parts to a larger story, and that the story has so many facets that she may never adequately cover it, they’re all just “selections.”

Reflections – Selections – Deflections

As I said in a previous post, we have to realize, along with Kenneth Burke, that any discourse, any story, description or set of terms (“woman,” “heavyset,” “black,” etc.) must act as what Kenneth Burke calls a “terministic screen” – that it frames an issue. The issue so framed is inevitably changed:

Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function as a deflection of reality. (45)

This deflection is important to note, because while we think we’re being shown all there is, it distracts us from the rest.  When comics play on their marginal personas and identities for a laugh, it further entrenches the expectations we have for all comics of that type.  These expectations, in turn may limit what we allow those comics to do.  This comes from another selection and deflection, brought about by under-representation.

There aren’t as many women – and especially black women – in comedy as there are men, so the few there are stand out more.  Johnson makes this point as well, stating that while male comics talk about their bodies or complain about the opposite sex,

But the thing about it is you get to see 100 of those, and so they don’t stand out to you. You don’t see very many women. So, if I tell you I saw three women and 100 men [when I booked shows], I’m gonna remember the three women, because they came few and far between, so they stood out to me. And if those women weren’t good to me, I’m gonna remember that and I’m gonna assign that to the entire gender — which is ridiculous.

In an interview with The New York Times (7/12/2017), Jenny Slate expresses a similar problem when asked by Ana Marie Cox:

AMC: You’re often grouped with actresses like Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer of Broad City, and Lena Dunham. Does that feel accurate?

JS: It’s lovely to be put into that group with these women. I also don’t think that we’re very similar other than that we’re women and we all have vaginas and we don’t seem to be very scared of that. It’s annoying to be oversimplified.

The selection of women we’re presented with is deflected to stand in for all women. So, similarly, fat comics stand in for all fat people, black comics for all black people, etc. These expectations create implicit rules for how we approach the space of stand-up.

More spaces

In that same article by Tre’Vell Anderson of the Los Angeles Times (7/20/2017), Amanda Seales talks about how she feels limited by race, sex and gender expectations, and how she’s trying to expand the space:

AS: My whole intention is to break down these limitations of what a black comedian is supposed to be and to open up a space. For a lot of comics who aren’t as silly or physical, but more intellectual, we get looked at as ‘alt comics. No, I’m still a black comic and there are black people who want to hear my type of black comedy, but that space hasn’t been built out for us.

AS: In the white comedy world, there are all different kinds. With us, you’re either ‘Def Comedy’ or [nothing].

TA: And Seales’ “head-y” style of comedy is making room for different types of funny black women.

AS: I think [my peers and I] are ushering in a type of comedy that’s not just [about] sex and relationships but also sinking our teeth into political and social issues in a way that black women haven’t really been lauded for in the past.

TA: Most of the time, black female comedians are expected to talk about their vaginas, she adds, using a word other than vaginas.

AS: My comedy is different in that it’s rooted in social commentary.

I don’t know which is worse, the idea of “black comedy” as a particular type (silly, physical) or set of topics (genitalia, sex and relationships), or the idea that it’s the only type of comedy that “black comics” can do. Certainly complicated human beings should have a bit more leeway to comment on their human experience.

Summary

So no, Mo’Nique wasn’t telling us her Truth, and now she’s evolved.  She knows she was always more, as does Johnson.

Before, Mo’Nique was merely telling us a part of her truth, a few of her many truths (in the postmodern sense I’ve discussed previously) because “that’s what [she] knew how to be funny with.” She created a persona, one based on a marginalized identity that was only one part of her complex life and personality.

Now she knows how to make more of her life funny, so like Johnson she’s telling more, but they’re both still using “slippery personas.” Their new personas may be more like their real life self (whatever that is), but it’s still a selection, still a deflection.

So no, we’re not going to “truly walk away knowing exactly who [Mo’Nique is],” and we probably won’t “find out who [we] are,” just parts and pieces.  I’d like to think we’re all more. For that reason, we may never be fully “with” Johnson, though we can laugh and enjoy the parts we get.

And perhaps by comics like Seales choosing to do more, we can open the door for other, different personas to emerge, expanding the pie (range of pies?) for comics and audiences alike. That sounds worthwhile. Who doesn’t want more pie?

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

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

de Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics, Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1977.

Foucault, Michel.  The Archaeology of Knowledge.  New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.

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

Sigmund Freud’s Jokes part A. II. b. 1. The Techniques of Conceptual Jokes – Displacement

Posted on by nwilson

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

In this installment, I’m still addressing his second chapter, and his laundry list of joke techniques, which he is trying to narrow down to a few meta-types. We’ve already addressed all of his “Techniques of verbal jokes,” so now I move on to the “Techniques of conceptual jokes,” which he says rely more on the situation.

Techniques of conceptual jokes

Freud says, “But there really are jokes whose technique resists almost any attempt to connect it with the groups that have so far been considered” (i.e. verbal jokes; 33). He later characterizes these conceptual jokes as “mak[ing] use of deviations from normal thinking,” (42) and gives us three categories:

“Faulty reasoning,” “Unification,” “Indirect Representation” – these, then, are the headings under which we can classify those techniques of conceptual jokes” (59).

However, later he seems to remember that he had five:

This is equally true, however, of the techniques of conceptual jokes – displacement, faulty reasoning, absurdity, indirect representation, representation by the opposite – which re-appear one and all in the technique of the dream-work. (65)

Where did unification go? Representation by the opposite was just a subset of unification.  Nevertheless, over the next several days I will address each of the five in the order that Freud covers them, breaking them up with some larger points he makes along the way: displacement, absurdity, faulty reasoning, unification, and indirect representation.  First up is displacement.

Displacement

Freud returns to a joke he mentioned previously.

Two Jews met in the neighborhood of the bath-house. “Have you taken a bath?” asked one of them. “What?” asked the other in return, “Is there one missing?” (34)

In the bath house joke (and others) Freud finds that the technique being used is to “divert” or “displace” the emphasis or “accent” of the question (“bathed”) to a different one (“taken/stolen a bath”).

I propose to describe it as ‘displacement,’ since its essence lies in the diversion of the train of thought, the displacement of the psychological emphasis on to a topic other than the opening one” (36).

It is in this technique the Freud’s theory most overlaps with Incongruity Theory, as we’ve described it previously. It’s classic misdirection, creating surprise.

Displacement habitually takes place between a remark and a reply which pursues the train of thought in a direction other than that in which it was started by the original remark. (38)

Summary

So displacement is the first of several techniques by which the joker makes use of deviations from normal thinking within the situation to achieve humor.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

Ramblings

Update to Persona

Posted on by nwilson

Added the following bit from an interview with John Sheehan.

John Sheehan expresses the idea that who he is onstage is a heightened or more extreme version of himself in an interview with Heather Barrett of CBCnews.com (7/23/2017):

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

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

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

Rory Scovel on Connecting to Smart Audiences

Posted on by nwilson

In an interview with Oxford American’s Jacob Rosenberg (7/18/2017), Rory Scovel talks a bit about his relation to the audience in some ways that are important, casting them as participants in his act, as smart, thinking people, with whom he has to connect.

On audience roles

Scovel does a lot of spontaneous stuff, sometimes performing a character, like the “Southern Bro” he trots out in what I’ve called his “Lenny Bruce Opening” to his Netflix special, Rory Scovel Tries Stand-Up for the First Time. He is asked by Rosenberg,

Sometimes you’re in the middle of your set in that character, but it seems like you’re still listening and judging what you are saying. Then you pop out some perfect line that coalesces the whole joke, makes fun of what you said before even. Are you doing a lot of listening to yourself ramble?

It’s a weird balance of listening to yourself, so you can kind of be driving the car, but also listening to the audience so you can also see the road. Whenever I have a bad set it’s usually because I’m not doing one of those things at all. I’m either not paying attention to the crowd or I was over-confident with what I was going to do. Whenever there’s a night where I’m dialed in and I have the most fun, it’s usually because I’m right fifty-fifty on listening to the crowd and myself.

What I find interesting in this driving metaphor, first off, because how frequently are any of us active and self-conscious when driving? My ideal driving is kind of a zen zone-out where everything just comes together because of years of driving that car, on that road, in similar conditions.

Nevertheless, the idea that he’s actively listening to the audience as much as he’s thinking about what he’s saying is admirable.  It indicates that Scovel might view his audience – in terms of the popular ideas about audiences I’ve talked about before – at least as directors, in that he responds to them, so in a sense, they direct him, or maybe as lovers, equal partners in the creation of the comedy event.

Smart audiences

Scovel further expresses the uncommon idea about audiences that they are (or can be) thinking human beings:

Do you ever struggle to find that connection with a crowd?

If you came and saw me live tomorrow, 100% of people definitely aren’t laughing 100% of the time. Sometimes it’s these twenty people, then it’s fifty, then it’s eighty; then it’s only five. I think a smart audience is an audience that realizes they shouldn’t laugh at everything. It’s kind of absurd to think, when you go to a concert, you have to leave going: “I loved every moment. I loved everything.” It’s kind of ridiculous that everything has to be perfect and cater to what I enjoy.

A common interpretation of laughter is that it’s an unconscious, emotional reaction to something that stands in for any other type of action – once we laugh, we’ve unconsciously agreed to take no further action, we’ve agreed that this is play and the topic or joke was trivial.

While we could read this as Scovel doing a little C.Y.A. as to why people don’t laugh at his jokes – “I swear, it’s not that the jokes are bad, it’s that audiences are so smart.” Instead, Scovel seems to join those who argue that humor is (or can be) a more active, conscious, rational process – this is why it’s possible to feign laughter to fit in.  Scovel’s audience seems to engage with his material and decide to laugh – or not – which is why he must listen to them.

On connecting

In his next answer, Scovel leans more toward viewing his audience as lovers, and also says something about the authenticity of his persona.

How do you try to stay in the moment—and stay silly—while you’re actually doing comedy?

I think just reminding myself to quit thinking that there’s some kind of perfect show to capture; to remind myself constantly that it is comedy and mistakes are funny. Anything that is too perfect—it kind of becomes too sterile and then it does not feel genuine. If it doesn’t feel genuine then there’s no possible way people are going to feel they saw you.

This idea of the audience “feel[ing] they saw you” strikes me as reminiscent of James Cameron’s Avatar, where the “I see you” greeting is parallel to the Sanskrit Namaste, and implies that they see deeply, they see the real, True you – or at least, they feel that way.  Scovel implies that the audience has to be convinced that this is happening.  This really only fits into a relational, lover model of audiences (under my current working hypothesis); in terms of the model, they have to be wooed. However, this wooing does not have to be authentic, Scovel still leaves some wiggle room for a persona.

Scovel is trying to create an imperfect show, because he wants it to “feel genuine.” He seems to agree with David Misch that jokes don’t have to be truthful, but truth-adjacent; they have to be believable. This means that he doesn’t have to speak 100% truth, but just enough that it “feels” right.  In Misch’s terms, Scovel (when not doing a character), is using a “slippery persona” that seems very much like himself IRL, or at least, so far as we know.

Summary

Yes, I read between the lines and infer a lot – it’s kind of my thing.  Scovel says he listens to them, which means for him they’re active participants.  He says smart audiences don’t laugh at everything, which I interpret as saying he thinks they are thinking during his show. He talks about making a show “feel genuine” so the audience “feel they saw [him],” which I read as saying that he’s trying to create a relationship with the audience, though he realizes it can be based on a “slippery” version of him. Taken this way, Scovel’s view of the audience and his relation to them is somewhat more evolved than most that I’ve seen.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

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

Posted on by nwilson

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

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

Techniques of verbal jokes

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

Final Thoughts

Condensation rules

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

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

Beyond sound jokes

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Jim Breuer and Ali Lerman are Insensitive

Posted on by nwilson
This asshole…

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

Insensitivity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The power of words

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

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

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

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

Phobic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dueling offenses

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

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

Breuer’s sensitive side

Later in the interview, Lerman asks,

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

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

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

Summary

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

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

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

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

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

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

Posted on by nwilson

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

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

Techniques of verbal jokes

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

  1. “Double meaning” (28).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary

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

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

Kishori Sud on Free Speech in Indian Stand-Up

Posted on by nwilson

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

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

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

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

Truth to power

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

Neeti Palta, says that

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

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

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

Reflection versus revelation

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

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

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

We have to realize, along with Kenneth Burke, that humor must act as what he calls a “terministic screen,” that it frames an issue. The issue so framed is inevitably changed:

Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very nature it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it must function as a deflection of reality. (45)

This deflection of reality can present us with something new, revelatory; it can reveal new insights about the world.

Political humor in practice

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

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

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

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

Moral policing

Sud asks the question:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Comedy is not judgment free

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

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

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

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

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

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

Posted on by nwilson

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

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

Techniques of verbal jokes

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

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

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

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

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

Ant S.: “What’s her name?”

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

    1. “In a different order” (28).

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

    1. “With slight modification” (28).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary

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

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

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

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

Posted on by nwilson

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

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

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

On the post-modern

Mittal notes,

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

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

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

And later,

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

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

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

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

On the return of modernity

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

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

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

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

Haan!

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

She later returns to this point:

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the power of stand-up

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

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

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

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

On freedom of speech in stand-up

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

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

Yeah…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On personal material

Early in the interview, Mittal begins with an epiphany:

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

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

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

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

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

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

About improving as a comic

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

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

Summary

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

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

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?

References:

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

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

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