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.
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.
