is comedy inherently conservative?

obviously this is the kind of overbroad question that can't really be answered, and i'm sure the smart folks on ilx can come up with a lot of counter-examples. "conservative" is a slippery word, which is part of the problem.

in the past when i have thought this, it has been particularly in reference to humor i am drawn to about race and gender. these jokes derive the content of their humor from social inequality and also from types. do they, in recapitulating those types, fix them even more firmly in culture? our consciousness? some way i could put that that would be rigorous and not flaky.

this is basically coming from how sad comedy about race and gender sometimes makes me, a testament to how little seems to change. maybe a better way to put this would be, if the revolution ever came, these jokes wouldn't be funny anymore. maybe this is a really obvious thing to say. what do you think?

i guess if you wanted to broaden this question beyond my race and gender hobbyhorses, it would be more, is comedy about finding humor in things that never change and therefore asserting that things can never change?

i have a kinda traditional view that the best comedy is launched from from the powerless against the powerful. i also really love freud's explanation of gallows humor and camus' reading of it as sisyphean laughter

it's an interesting idea, especially in relation to all the ink spilled the last few years about how topical comedy is now ruled by liberals (cf. The Daily Show and the miserable failure of that Fox News "conservative Daily Show" thing). perhaps by going to that thought i'm kind of shooting past the point you're making, but i wonder if they're related at all.

so i guess i come down on comedy being essentially radical + not conservative

i'm not sure comedy is "essentially" anything

in the past when i have thought this, it has been particularly in reference to humor i am drawn to about race and gender. these jokes derive the content of their humor from social inequality and also from types. do they, in recapitulating those types, fix them even more firmly in culture? our consciousness? some way i could put that that would be rigorous and not flaky.

Kate Beaton put up this TCJ piece about comic humorist Betty Swords on her blog, which I found both sharp and inspiring.

All at once, her “rather Pollyana view of humor as a kindly contemplation of life’s incongruities” (quoting Stephen Leacock) changed: she saw humor’s tremendous power “to kill as well as to amuse. Humor commits countless little murders of its victims’ self esteem. I saw that too often men used humor as a weapon against the Others of society, and it was women who marched at the head of this Hit Parade. And since each of us marches to a different drummer, we all join the humor hit parade at some time.”

http://images.tcj.com/2011/12/Sword-2-650x761.jpg

i think i've talked in ilx threads before about being uncomfortable with humor about, oh, say indians (which indian comedians sometimes play up) that's just using the fact of being indian as though it's funny. (comedy indian accents, the fact that a bunch of college freshmen in my entering class cracked up at the sight of the sikh character in the english patient, as far as i could tell, because the sight of an indian man onscreen was inherently funny to them.) obviously a lot of race humor is a lot better than this (partially because it's funnier, which isn't hard) but sometimes i wonder if, as funny as it is, it doesn't participate a little bit in the thing it critiques inasmuch as it keeps certain stereotypes in circulation.

or, like, the best comedy can do (which is amazing) is lay bare some deep racist/sexist hypocrisy, like that line about nbc only ever having one black person on screen in the live 30 Rock. but it's not really built for imagining a world that operates differently, better? now of course there are probably millions of examples of comedy that do that that i'm just not thinking of.

i'm not sure comedy is "essentially" anything

― yorba linda carlisle (donna rouge), Monday, May 14, 2012 10:06 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, the level of abstraction/generality/pompousness of this thread title makes me cringe tbh.

At the end, excerpts from Swords' unpublished book on humor:

Excerpts from the precis for Betty Swords’ Humor Power

* The male images of women created by cartoonists were accepted as the truth about women. For example: The woman driver is the safest driver, according to the National Safety Council—but not to the National Cartoonists Society. To them, she’s the quintessential “dumb driver,” an idea so set in the concrete of comic tradition that it’s become a humor shorthand: when we see a cartoon of a woman driver, we know automatically that she’s a dumb driver. Just ask a man which he believes—the Cartoonists Society or the Safety Council?

* Humor’s Role in History. Man creates society in his own image. Our unique culture, and our early tall tale humor, grew from feelings of inferiority—to the British and to the awesome wilderness. The British called the colonists “uncouth savages.” America’s first settlers couldn’t claim culture, so they made fun of it. We still ridicule the “eggheads” and the “absent-minded professors” who, supposedly, lack the “gumption.” Glasses remain the humor symbol for a wimp: he reads! The arts remain suspect as a haven for wimps—or worse. Early Americans chose for the hero of their early tall tale humor that boozing, brawling, boasting, wenching, anti-book-larnin’ son-of-a-gun, the Frontiersman. He lives on in John Wayne and Rambo, and in a president who admires them both. In Funnyland, no Real Man attends a concert or ballet. And President Reagan felt it necessary to note that his ballet-dancing son was really “all man.”

* Humor helped establish stereotypes. Humor perpetuates these always derogatory images once they are set in the concrete of comic tradition. Even social scientists accepted the black stereotype of the lazy, thieving, stupid “coon” set by minstrel show jokes. Stereotypes are wonderfully useful in a pluralistic society: you don’t have to actually know a black or a Jew to know what they’re really like. What stereotypes are, of course, are lies, invented to keep certain people “in their place.” Ideas, as well as people, are the victims of stereotypes when their advocates are ridiculed as “kooks” or “crazies.” Stereotypical jokelore becomes folklore and affects our attitudes and even our laws.

* Our history helps explain why women are the chief target of American humor: women represented culture and civilization to our tall tale hero—the enemy of his freedom—while allowing every insecure male to feel superior to someone.

* Men are victims, too, of the stereotype they chose for themselves: that brawling, boozing, wenching, anti-intellectual frontiersman. … No other stereotype is so rigorously policed by jokes and ridicule–and it’s a killer, inflicting tremendous emotional and physical damage on the men who can’t live up to this rough-tough image, and on those who try to rise above it.

* It’s humor which perpetuates the myths that deny minorities dignity and self-respect. So it was vital that minorities develop a private coping humor to stand the pain, to put down their persecutors—and so to raise themselves.

* Feminist humor hopes to make changes by bonding with people, instead of laughing at them: the pick-up instead of the put-down.

* When you’re the victim of jokes, don’t just die there. Do something. Responses range from simple assertiveness to aikido, a kind of verbal karate which turns the thrust of the humor weapon back on the wielder.

* The larger the audience, the more conservative the humor, so newspaper funnies also reflect a static status quo made up of stereotypical humor myths—as does the press in general, newspapers and mass market magazines. Humorists are mostly merchandisers of the status quo; they must uphold the values of their audiences, especially if they’re large ones. (Political cartoonists and columnists are allowed more freedom). And yet, humorists are usually dissenters, who see the world slightly askew and ask us to share their laughter at its oddities.

* If humor has the power to help shape society—and given that our society is one of growing violence and alienation—can we not alter and improve society, at least our corner of it, by changing our humor? Only when we recognize humor’s power—for good as well as for evil—can we control that power for positive purposes in both our personal and professional lives.

I think her points about most humor – esp newspaper comic strips! – upholding the status quo is probably true.

I feel like this is something I could talk about a lot if I had some time to chew over the question. Too bad this thread is going to expire tonight or whatever...

Um, in a nutshell: no. It's not by any means inherently conservative. But is the bulk of comedy in the popular consciousness conservative in nature? Yeah, I think it is. And I think a lot of the reason for that is that, as with pretty much every other entertainment medium, breaking the mold isn't a thing that's rewarded much (either financially or in terms of popularity) so you don't see a lot of people within the popular consciousness breaking the mold. Which isn't to say those people aren't out there. They just aren't as visible.

One of my greatest concerns wrt comedy is to always always always try to override the impulse towards cruelty. It's such an easy, tried and tested way to go, but it just puts so much more shit out into the world. A lot of people put (potential) fame and riches before humanistic concerns, though, so I don't think that's an impulse that's overridden as much as it probably should be.

The best and most popular example of someone fighting the good fight in this regard is Louie CK. There are probably lots of moments that back this up, but I hone in on the season 2 episode of Louie when he has to trust his neighbors with his kids. This is a moment that could have been played for big, dumb, xenophobic laffs but was instead an honest moment which recognized how disconnected we often are from the world around us. It was pretty brave, and I think most instances when an overt comedic persona tries to embrace truth over laughs are equally brave but also just not a thing that appeals to many comedy performers or audiences.

when you remember this clusterfuck, remember me, please

jk I am going to read + think this

there's a whole argument about turn of century vaudeville humor that it used broad ethnic or racial humor bc the practitioners were looking to distinguish themselves from even more Other'd groups than themselves, to align themselves with the broader, whiter, popular culture. there's def conservative traditions of humor, but not ones i find particularly funny.

maybe stretching the definition of conservative beyond useful meaning here, but i have also wondered if the "moment of recognition" nature of what makes you laugh is part of the conservatism? like, comedy shoots for maximizing the widespread recognition of something familiar and wringing humor out of it--does that make it necessarily backward-looking or, as Abbott put it, overcommitted to the status quo?

i guess this question is kind of trolly or challopy or something. Abbott, i am going to read that article now! Betty Swords sounds cool.

yr leaving out the best part of that scene which was a monumental juicy hospital fart

xp to deric

(just to clarify, i like comedy! inasmuch as my humorless tendencies allow! i mean the term "conservative" half-descriptively, here. it's not my intention to be pejorative, exactly.)

Was this inspired by the 30 Rock discussion on the racism thread?

No I don't think comedy is necessarily conservative. I do think 30 Rock is a bit conservative. It also happens to be really, really good. But I don't think it even remotely approaches radical stances on pretty much anything.

isn't the way that humor allows us to discuss and laugh about things that generally aren't allowed as serious topics a kinda radical element? even if the thing it's letting you talk about is conservative in certain ways? like the fracture in society has an almost anarchic element.

I would argue if you're liberal-minded, you're not going to be seeking out inherently conservative humor. So if you're talking about Louie, you have to bear in mind how much more vastly popular and part of general popular consciousness someone like Jeff Dunham is. Lord knows I will get almost teary with love for the rabble-rousers and thorns in our side of the comedy world. But Vaughan Meader was outselling the Fugs by a fatty-ass margin! You know?

This is why I always half-sucked at improv: way too in my own head trying to avoid easy and regressive bullshit. While castmates minced merrily across the stage or did their best Breakfast At Tiffany's-era Rooney without giving a rip.

we should include friends, family + social circles too, and not just "professional comedy."

Something like 30 Rock is at least discussing third wave feminism, racial politics, etc, with some level of thought and even affection, which you won't find in hardly any modern comedy. Which is why it gets talked about to a degree that I find totally exhausting. There aren't dozens of other competing shows with similar ideologies to compete for attention from Slate & whatnot.

yr leaving out the best part of that scene which was a monumental juicy hospital fart

The fart was icing on the cake.

i would also point out that Louie has its "radical" tendencies and its conservative ones. louis ck's views, as expressed on the show, about wanting to have sex/masturbate being inherently disgusting and indicative about something animalistic about masculinity in particular are as old as the hills.

well, as old as the 19th century

in some sense even the most transgressive humor leeches the bile just a bit to allow the persistent context to continue. if you laugh then maybe you can deal with it today.

on the other side, lots of powerful ppl throughout history (on macro and micro levels) have been very concerned with the threat that laughter contains

i hate how defending my dumb thread idea is going to force me to criticize all these things i like, like Louie.

I'd say "no," to the thread title, but not to the concerns raised by it. It's a tricky thing. Picking up on what Mordy said about power, I think comedy can either laugh up or down. (And of course it can sometimes be hard to tell which is which -- just ask Dave Chappelle.) What's most transgressive about comedy -- like, say, the first Eminem album -- is often also what's most brutal about it, and that brutality is most effective when it's least conveniently or even consciously aimed. See also the entire run of South Park, obviously. Does South Park subvert anything, or does it just reify existing power structures? The problem is that that question is always going to miss something essential about what makes comedy work. Funny South Park episodes aren't really more politically or socially defensible than lousy South Park episodes, they're just funnier.

Which doesn't answer the question, obviously.

what is more conservative dreams or comedy

i guess jonathan swift would make swift work of this thread question

xp whoa

btw every time I see live comedy I basically feel like I am watching someone have a nervous breakdown on stage, I can't really do it anymore

i hate how defending my dumb thread idea is going to force me to criticize all these things i like, like Louie.

No, but you're right. And that's the thing: there really isn't any comedy I can think of in the popular consciousness that isn't at least a little conservative. It's just a matter of degrees, and all of the degrees are worthy of criticism.

funny dreams for sure the most radical. unfunny reality sometimes the most conservative but also funny.

Humor has and always will be a reactionary force.

isn't the way that humor allows us to discuss and laugh about things that generally aren't allowed as serious topics a kinda radical element?

No. Humor acts as a mechanism of release and pacification. Energy that is potentially directed towards dismantling the existing power structure is used up in counterproductive emotions such as "laughter".

To be humorless is a necessary precondition for creating a better world.

I recently reread a bio of Will Gaines, which I had read in my teens and it lead me to idolize the dude and early MAD as the unparalleled liberal iconoclasts. Which, of course they weren't. They basically wouldn't hire female humorists, wouldn't allow wives on the legendary and exorbitant annual staff international vacations, used racial slurs, made horrible (and unfunny) jokes at the expense of Prohias and Aragones for their ethnicity, etc. All a reminder that one must not have too much love for heroes, who are fallible, including my favorites such as Tina Fey.

omg am i banaka?

xp

hey banaka, knock knock

banaka, i am sorry but you are wrong. laughter will be the song we sing as our consciousnesses are uploaded to the singularity. u didn't get the memo?

for real i think this used to bother me more when i was a self-styled revolutionary. it's probably a naive way to think about social change.

satire can be sort of conservative i guess. if everything is worthy of ridicule and scorn then why do anything differently than we do now? feel like this is often the case with british satirical humour. if you skewer everything then the subtext is to just keep going with the status quo. though you could probably get into a whole class thing about the kind of people who make comedy in britain, which is just boring imo.

the joke that the universe is cold + empty + meaningless > the revolutionary joke so i guess the question is whether the void is conservative or not

see my thing about "humorless" is that it's often slung at people who actually understand the machinations of humor (usually better than the people lobbing the accusation in the first place)

doctors who understand farts better than I do can be humorless ime

targeted satire isn't, though, is it? i am just thinking of "a modest proposal" here. it's some next-level imagining a worse world to invoke a better one.

xxxp

i think humorless tends to apply to ppl who take themselves seriously

I fart a lot tho, like all the time, people tell me about it all the time, like I fart more than most people

I think a more interesting model than swift for this convo would be rabelais but then again idk

yeah but not always xp

in day to day life isn't the funniest person often the most irreverent one?

i am often called humorless when i bring this up in real life tbh. but that's p accurate.

in day to day life isn't the funniest person often the most irreverent one?

I know from personal experience that there is a big diff between being actually funny as a craft and getting lols because you are in a serious situation and willing to say the most dumbshit thing available.

targeted satire isn't, though, is it? i am just thinking of "a modest proposal" here. it's some next-level imagining a worse world to invoke a better one.

xxxp

― horseshoe

yes, well this is the other side of the coin obv. satire can be qutie deliberately aimed at something and may be the opposite of conservative in any cases.

maybe 'comedy' is the art and 'humor' is the discourse? xp

didn't gabbneb have a *point of view* on comedy v. humor?

it wasn't what you just said, at any rate, Mordy; i am just free associatin

making jokes at a funeral is kinda sublime, esp if you are humiliated and frightened as you speak

tbh i think the world we live in pushing people to situate every fucking thing and idea and joke and object in the world on a left/right political spectrum is in and of itself kind of horrible and destructive, which is either why i should leave this thread alone or post more, i don't know

Some of the recent revisiting of the Beastie Boys got at this -- we were all really happy that they turned out to be such enlightened dudes, but otoh it wasn't being enlightened dudes that made them fun -- and funny -- in the first place.

I think a more interesting model than swift for this convo would be rabelais but then again idk

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Monday, May 14, 2012 10:35 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ooh la la!

j/k tell me about french humor!

can we talk about this guy?

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/authphoto_330/14934_kafka_franz.jpg

tbh i think the world we live in pushing people to situate every fucking thing and idea and joke and object in the world on a left/right political spectrum is in and of itself kind of horrible and destructive, which is either why i should leave this thread alone or post more, i don't know

― kitty shayme (some dude), Monday, May 14, 2012 10:39 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't really mean "conservative" like Fox News, fwiw, al. then again, i don't really know what i do mean.

i guess i mean "deeply rooted in/committed to the world as it is"

conservative: the dark impulse in humanity to call forth totalitarianism? that's a kinda of death drive.

reactionary?

which, when it comes to race and gender can be troubling

xp yeah and reactionary might have been better

banaka, i am sorry but you are wrong. laughter will be the song we sing as our consciousnesses are uploaded to the singularity. u didn't get the memo?

― Mordy, Tuesday, May 15, 2012 3:31 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The "singularity" as popularly depicted is a technolibertarian fantasy. We are cyber-collectivists.

As we said, "humor" acts a release/pacification tool, a much more insidious opiate than even "religion".

When our goals are achieved, there will be no need for either.

if i can't laugh i want no part of your cyber-collectivist revolution

yeah and reactionary might have been better

Was just going to say that! Because in some literal sense comedy is reactionary, it's built around reactions to disruption.

I know from personal experience that there is a big diff between being actually funny as a craft and getting lols because you are in a serious situation and willing to say the most dumbshit thing available.

So OTM it should be printed on a tshirt and distributed to every practitioner of comedy, professional or otherwise.

comedy is ENTIRELY reactionary i think.

at least if we're talking performative comedy

But I think what you do with the reactions, how you channel them, makes a big difference in what kind of comedy it is.

bullshit. xxp

Of course if "comedy" is confined to either live mainstream stand-up or sitcoms, that might be true.

if i can't laugh i want no part of your cyber-collectivist revolution

― Mordy, Tuesday, May 15, 2012 3:43 AM (41 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Then the "joke" is on you. There are more "fulfilling" (for lack of a better word) states of being than "joy" "humor" "fun" etc. etc.

Why must humanity be reduced to such a limited emotional palette? Can we not better than we are?

btw being funny in a real-life situation IS NOT comedy

yay! dr. morbs! tell me what comedy is!

If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and th sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy rises in man's heart: this is the rock's victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Oedipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same time, blind and desperate, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well." Sophocles' Oedipus, like Dostoevsky's Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.

morbz, i don't really feel like u and i have much to discuss re comedy

This discussion reminds me of one of the more ridiculous criticisms of Girls, namely that, OMG, all of the girls are white (because that's literally the first time there's ever been an all-white cast on a tv show)! There's almost an expectation that you discuss/confront issues of race/sexuality/class in comedy because to not do so is considered somehow racist/sexist/classist. Although an all-white cast is, in its own way, a comment on race. Basically, you can't win with this stuff if your material exists within the pop crit sphere, so you might as well go "edgy" and get some laffs.

"Girls" is a part of the Apatow comedy industrial complex, so it is inherently reactionary.

which is interesting because i felt like in the other thread that 30 Rock was being held under suspicion of being racist/sexist/classist really just for discussing/confronting issues of race/sexuality/class in comedy

xpost

making jokes at a funeral is kinda sublime, esp if you are humiliated and frightened as you speak

cf. like every wake i have ever been to!

early today I loled conservatively @ a sissymanwhore post

Yeah, sd, that's what I mean about how you can't win for losing. Discussing it or avoiding it, you're taking a risk.

? that's not really what i was saying about comedy that deals with race and gender. first of all, i like comedy about those things because they are things i care about, and i am a narcissist. it's also not my intention to be saying Chapelle's Show is secretly equivalent to the KKK--i love Chapelle's Show and think Dave Chapelle is a thoughtful person, not particularly reactionary at all. i guess i have some misgivings about comedy as form? i don't know how to be more specific. but i am not suggesting comedy should be abolished because it's counter to the revolution or something, as if such a thing were even possible.

xxxp to Deric

for god's sake, i don't think acknowledging that race affects people's experiences and choosing to represent that in whatever cultural work is "losing"--i'm just speculating about genre limitations, maybe? should probably shut up.

the revolution is counter to the revolution too. there's always elements of society that you're trying to rehabilitate or keep, even as you're demolishing everything else. for everything that comes down something stays up and the revolution is responsible for perpetuating that. this is hegelian, i think - the dialectic is never resolved, it's just reintroduced in new terms

i think there is something at the psychological root of a lot of comedy that might lend itself to reinforcing the status quo -- like a lot of time a joke has to function by playing off of some widely understood truth or idea or social norm. if an idea or norm is inherently racist or misogynist etc., then yeah, a lot of the jokes constructed around will probably essential saying "check out this ridiculous situation in which our accepted ideas of this minority are defied." which by the way would be a horrible way to tell that kind of joke, usually it's done much more smoothly, but i'm not a comedy professional.

it probably IS counter to the revolution but fuck it because the alternative is stalinist sellf-crit sessions

also dying at dr. morbius taking offense at the idea of reactionary comedy

Oh no no no, horseshoe, my post about Girls wasn't meant to be at all accusatory. This discussion reminds me of those criticisms but it doesn't reflect those criticisms, if you get me. I was just pointing out an example that indicates what a tricky minefield it is to even go, like, post-racial in comedy (which I don't think is the intention behind the Girls casting, ftr).

lol sorry for being defensive; it's hard to come to terms with having started a thread

hahaha

I like this thread.

wow you really do almost never start threads (xpost)

also dying at dr. morbius taking offense at the idea of reactionary comedy

― jesus christ (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Monday, May 14, 2012 11:07 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that was delightful! (love you forever, dr. morbs!)

xp i like to piggyback on the insights of others

it probably IS counter to the revolution but fuck it because the alternative is stalinist sellf-crit sessions

― jesus christ (strongo hulkington's ghost dad), Tuesday, May 15, 2012 4:06 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the alternative is necessary.

There's obviously been "radical" humor in one sense or another for like forever. Most notably, various elements of absurdism, surrealism (though clearly not all surrealism), dada, etc. Street theatre too. Satire has historically been part of the arsenal of all sorts of social movements, both left and right. The idea that every instance of this has been secretly "conservative" is pretty far-fetched. I can think of some very funny radical poetry as well (and some very funny conservative poetry, for that matter...)

lol horseshoe i've started even less threads than you have i bet. and unlike mine this one is actually interesting

horseshoe you make me laff but strike me as essentially right-on. perhaps you are your own one-woman corrective.

I really like this thread, too, but I think I'm likely to mostly hang back and watch people hash this out. It's in the realm of stuff I think about a lot, but my thoughts are probably more conducive to a long essay than message board posts.

while conservative humor (ideological + political) can be funny, i'd like to see a funny thing written/said/created by the 'American right wing' in the last 4 years

this is kinda the perfect place to discuss something like 'is comedy inherently conservative?' imho. an essay would just get dreary and tedious

I mean "inherently conservative": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dario_Fo ?

You probably have seen right-wing comedy, Mordy, that your brain was unable to process as comedy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Firesign_Theatre ?

I'm picking really obvious examples, but that's sort of the point...

i guess 30 rock

left-wing humor is some of the MOST reactionary!

In re: writing an essay, I just mean in terms of getting my thoughts in order, not in terms of generating anything publishable or that other people would actually want to read.

strongo i have no idea what you mean by reactionary.

positioning itself in reaction to something else

i'm not going for some inscrutable high-minded definition here

i mean i don't want to say that harpo marx running around disrupting a cruise ship is in any way left-wing or "radical" but i have a hard time branding it as meaningfully "conservative" (which i do know what that means) or "reactionary" (which apparently is being used in a way i fail to understand entirely except maybe "at the expense of somebody" which doesn't mean comedy is conservative, but does mean that comedy is often *mean*)

i mean everything is "in reaction to something else"

unless what you mean is that comedy is somehow not as creative a force as other sorts of artistic or cultural production, or is more directly or obviously parasitic, which i also think isn't true.

http://blogs.amctv.com/movie-blog/steve%20martin%20comedy%20not%20pretty%20better.jpg

just saying that (most performative) (and most written) comedy generally is not concerned with nuance, self-skepticism beyond the most surface sort, empathy with the other (whether that other is heathen liberals or consumerist god-squadders or non-white people or whatever)

note that i dont generally see this as a failing on the form's part

also i just double checked to make sure i wasn't nuts and "in reaction to something else" is pretty much not the definition of "reactionary" anywhere.

but does mean that comedy is often *mean*

It very often exists at one end or the other of the "mean/toothless" continuum, with lots of grey (like, at least 40 of them) generally ignored.

yeah, you're probably right. obvs my question is facile, but i feel like some of the ways people have taken it up itt are interesting.

xxxp to sterling

I think comedians would be the first to admit (or brag) that comedy is a pretty lacerating form of expression. It almost by necessity plays on the scapegoat dynamic, even if the scapegoat is the comedian him/herself.

i feel like there are probably several actually specific enough to be useful questions being asked itt; one of them has to do with the potential gulf between the comic's intentions and how her comedy is received (the chapelle dilemma)

My joke got sonned in a Droid phone beef.

one of them is Abbott's angle, where there's been kind of a preservation of the status quo in humor, especially because jokes are told about a group of people who are not telling the jokes themselves.

xpost

strongo: i sort of agree with you that almost by definition the best comedy lacks a certain nuance (even if it has other sorts of nuance). but i don't agree that comedy isn't concerned with self-skepticism because that's an entire genre, among which woody allen films form a sub-genre all their own, or a sub-sub genre even. and if you don't have empathy with the other explicitly, there's certainly a great deal of fun to be had with lack thereof (sienfeld, larry david, etc) and more importantly i don't think that any of these traits are particularly conservative or anti-conservative or whatever.

but doesn't a lot of humor come from ppl telling jokes about themselves? xp

fine but that doesn't negate abbott's point, which was abuot the reification of what women are arising out of "women be shopping" type jokes.

most comedians aren't self-lacerating enough ime

nb: i've had about half a bottle of whiskey tonight so i'm cogitating behind a handicap here

strongo: as far as self-lacerating comedy goes you set a pretty high bar, so i get that..

i mean obvs i'm totally imprecise about what i mean by conservative itt. my most specific referent is the knots i see female comics and comics of color sometimes tie themselves in trying to make comedy out of the experience of being marginalized without 1)being dogmatic 2)falling prey to the long history of stereotype

i feel like there are probably several actually specific enough to be useful questions being asked itt; one of them has to do with the potential gulf between the comic's intentions and how her comedy is received (the chapelle dilemma)

― horseshoe, Monday, May 14, 2012 8:29 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

one of them is Abbott's angle, where there's been kind of a preservation of the status quo in humor, especially because jokes are told about a group of people who are not telling the jokes themselves.

― horseshoe, Monday, May 14, 2012 8:32 PM (1 minute ago)

I think the combination of these two things was what lead to the Chapelle dilemma. A large & ugly portion of the audience (eg the UC student who had a "ghetto party" where the invite referenced his "grape drink" bit) maybe didn't know how to consider his humor, which is powerful with him as a teller of jokes from within an outside group, as not upholding the status quo (their reactionary views on black culture). This is worded stupidly but maybe you see what I'm getting at.

i see this in a much more blunt way with twittersnark which ta-nehisi complained about the other day. like you make a satirical tweet in the voice of somebody totally nuts (usually following a link to their totally nuts statement that sort of makes it absolutely clear you disagree) and then that joke tweet gets retweeted and then two days later you get people asking how you could possibly support doing something terrible to palestinians or whatever.

the potential gulf between the comic's intentions and how her comedy is received

This is a central dilemma with art in general, that whole thing where you have no more control over your baby once you've sent it out into the world. The key difference wrt comedy is that the artist is (usually) aiming for a very specific type of reaction from the audience: the laff. Anything outside of that particular intention is usually viewed as peripheral by the audience/critical establishment unless you really telegraph the intelligence and wit of your own comedy. I don't think he public at large seeks out layered comedy or assume the presence layers in the comedy they consume. Chapelle is actually a really good example of the pitfalls a smart comedian faces in getting huge. As little control as you have over that baby in the wild under the best of circumstances, it can take on a life of its own wholly outside of your initial intentions once it becomes a cultural phenomenon.

xpost

which these days i guess is known as poe's law.

oh man i think about this all the time

a bunch of college freshmen in my entering class cracked up at the sight of the sikh character in the english patient, as far as i could tell, because the sight of an indian man onscreen was inherently funny to them.

this is sick!

and not in the snowboard way

i am so mad at those idiots, over a decade later

Ugh, I have to stop posting on a phone.

so i guess if you actually care how you're understood and what impact you have, then your hands are tied a bit. and hence some of the best comedy comes from people who don't care how they're received or what "message" they present.

like gallagher.

i think about the 'name of the rose' thing where we don't have the part of aristotle on comedy. to my knowledge nobody has tried to come up with an all-encompassing theory of it, until pretty recently? idk correct if wrong here

i think there's plenty about comedy that is 'conservative' or things that comedy can act on that align with contemporary right-wing sentiment, but i like the post up there that comedy isn't 'essentially' anything, that's part of why a thing is comic.

this question is tough to answer given the slipperiness of the word 'conservative,' but assuming we just take it to mean 'more or less in favor of preserving the status quo' you could split up the ranks this way:

against status quo: jonathan swift, mark twain, chaplin, w.c. fields, marx bros, lenny bruce, harvey kurtzman (tho it could be argued that for working for a basically pro-establishment, sexist institution like playboy kurtzman became effectively pro-status quo after his e.c. days), r. crumb, 'the honeymooners,' 'dr strangelove'

for status quo: evelyn waugh, p.g. wodehouse, h.l. mencken (arguably -- his political views basically translated into 'leave everything the fuck alone'), bob hope, post-1980 SNL, 'the simpsons,' 'south park'

neither for nor against: 'bringing up baby,' thurber, charles schulz, 'seinfeld'

I feel like esp nowadays that a lot of progressive liberal lines of thought requires a willingness to be open-minded, to recognize and embrace difference, whereas comedy & laughter are essentially defensive, a retreat, rigidly demarcating the boundaries between self and other

I kind of rushed to the end so sorry if I'm being redundant

actually, w/r/t gallagher, http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/gallagher-is-a-paranoid-right-wing-watermelon-smashing-maniac/Content?oid=4357855

lol strongo

aw cmon if bringing up baby and seinfeld get an apolitical pass let's not consign wodehouse to conservatism just because his entirely constructed fantasy universe has butlers in it (although he's admittedly super mean to bingo's communist girlfriend, CHARLOTTE CORDAY ROWBOTHAM). i even think that in stuff like "bertie changes his mind" he's deliberately clear about jeeves' fascist tendencies. or maybe it's not deliberate. maybe he doesn't realize.

Yeah, I mean, lol Gallagher, but dude has been pretty outspokenly right wing for a long time.

yeah i was going to say, bringing up baby is reactionary imo. nb i hate that movie.

but so is philadelphia story and that one i love

teaching mark s a *LESSON* response four: LOUIS PRIMA

^op might have some relevance to discussion at hand

i mean there are probably literally a thousand pages of bourgeois-idyll-at-blandings to be dumped on me but i dunno. galahad threepwood is a disruptive force! excuse me while i comically try and reconcile my wodehouse stanning with my politics even tho they don't need to be reconciled

wait his name isn't threepwood is it. that's the name of the guy from monkey island.

'comedy' is impossible to pin down exactly, any definition has to contain all these opposites.

i never liked the line that satire is the weak making fun of the strong, but the opposite is bullying. bullshit, plenty of funny in jokes about the weak. comedy really doesn't care, the joke just has to work -- i guess that's 'conservative'. comedy is mercenary.

comedy doesn't last very long; referents change, styles change, the culture moves on. jokes wear out and you have to drum up new ones, even if certain underlying human themes about pain and sex and body embarrassment or w/e don't alter much. so there's a 'planned obsolescence' capital depreciation aspect to comedy. sort of 'market conservative' vs. the cultural conservatism of tragedy? idk, 'pity, fear and awe' might have a very long shelf life but jokes generally don't.

omg that's a much better rumination than i ever came up with

aristotle was what i was missing

i was thinking along the lines of orwell's remark that wodehouse's worst sin was making the british upper classes seem like much nicer ppl than they actually were. don't get me wrong i LOVE ol' pelham as much as the next guy (i actually only listed ppl i dig, except for bob hope).

'philadelphia story' has all that sexist dialogue about how 'selfish' kate hepburn's character is which annoys me, but i can't find any political message (or any kind of message) in 'bringing up baby' at all.

i just think philadelphia story and bringing up baby are both romantic comedies that are about shaming the woman until she's been knocked down enough to finally earn her man (you're right, philadelphia story is a lot more explicit about its ideology) and bringing up baby makes katharine hepburn look so pathetic it's unacceptable! that might be less about conservatism and more about my hepburn stannery

bringing up baby makes katharine hepburn look downright schizophrenic honestly (i have never finished bringing up baby, i should try it on acid or something)

One quick generalization I'd probably be willing to defend: anyone who can't stomach conservativism in comedy probably just doesn't like comedy, full stop. Except maybe, like, something like an anarchist tweak on "The Deficit Rag" with all actual humor sucked out of it. It might be that the existence of conservativism in comedy, however problematic and occasionally objectionable, is part of what creates the tension that makes it tick.

i only saw bringing up baby the one time. it was torture, apart from how pretty hepburn and grant were.

the classics prof i had in college had a pretty sly point about Lysistrata -- we read it now through the lens of feminism, but it's original intent wasn't satirical or anti-war at all. women refusing sex to stop a war! that's a good one, haha. it was meant to be as hilarious and unbelievable as a guy building a city in the clouds and becoming a god of the birds.

i forget what point i was trying to get to there

i guess that point of his wasn't especially 'sly' either

a friend's professor insisted on a similar thing about merchant of venice -- that it's supposed to be self-evidently hilarious that a jew would bleed when pricked etc -- but i'm really skeptical of that.

yeah me too!

morbz, i don't really feel like u and i have much to discuss re comedy

Fine, Mordy, bcz I wasn't remotely trying to do that.

left-wing humor is some of the MOST reactionary!

OK, strongo, I have no idea WTF you're talking about and neither do you.

If you're using "reactionary" in the political sense, comedy generally doesn't follow a party agenda, bcz "humans are ridiculous" is the thesis statement.

re the old-school MAD guys -- yeah, same as the old SNL guys, the Yippies, the Black Panthers -- sexist pigs all. Welcome to American manhood in the first 4/5 of the 20th century. (and beyond)

this thread arose out of conversation about the show 30 rock in the 'is this racist?' thread. i brought up the idea that comedy might be inherently conservative there, in response to this article. this is basically what i was getting at:

"perhaps this kind of conservatism, the kind that patrols the boundary between "normalcy" and "weirdness" (and which should not be confused with political conservatism, though the two can definitely overlap), is an essential component of all comedy.

in retrospect, i'd modify that to "an essential component of certain comic approaches." not all comedy is conservative in the sense that i meant. comedy doesn't always depend on drawing a line between ordinary behavior and weirdness, and it certainly doesn't always stand on the side of the ordinary, gawking at lurid buffoonery of weird grotesques. i would say that this is what 30 rock does though, at least to some degree, and in that, it's not out of step with much contemporary american comedy.

I feel like esp nowadays that a lot of progressive liberal lines of thought requires a willingness to be open-minded, to recognize and embrace difference, whereas comedy & laughter are essentially defensive, a retreat, rigidly demarcating the boundaries between self and other

― cinco de extra mayo (loves laboured breathing), Monday, May 14, 2012 8:51 PM (48 minutes ago)

yeah, that's exactly what i was getting at. a lot of comedy constructs a position of "rightness" and "us-ness" from which other aspects of the world are mocked. it's inclusive in that it asks you to join the group, to become one of the right-thinking usses who laughs at these things and sees the world in this way. but it's also exclusionary, in that there's usually a butt to the joke. i suppose the best comedy of this sort is that which attacks inward as often as it does outward, mocking itself at least as cruelly as the deficiencies of others. both seinfeld and 30 rock at least try to do this, which tempers the conservatism of their basic approach.

it occurs to me (and perhaps just because i got zinged good) that even if comedy isn't always reactionary at it's core, strongo's comedy certainly is.

i don't find humans ridiculous, i find them untenable.

We find them incomplete

i guess i could see an argument for '30 rock' as conservative similar to the one orwell made for wodehouse: it makes wealthy celebrities and right-wing TV executives look like lovable, essentially decent ppl.

Ha, do progressives think that wealthy celebrities and right-wing TV executives are child-eating monsters?

no, speaking for all liberals, we just feel that they should be stripped of their holdings and put in labor camps

I feel like Morbs posting here appropriately reminds me of the Marx Bros. who by sheer wit and likeability manage to calibrate the us/them polarity of comedy along class lines.* They're hardly the first to do this, but (here's where I start flubbing my main points) with the whole rags-to-riches/American Dream rhetoric p much in place by then, it does seem like its usually easier to represent 'the rich' in America as more complete versions of ourselves as opposed to un-fun, fat cat oppressors

*idk enough about Chaplin to be able to group him in with the Marxes. Seems to me that however that both could be considered as spectacularly successful instances of progressive comedy. But those were different times, etc.

Answer is no. As many, many folks have said(check the vid of Colbert being interviewed & doing a q&a in front of Harvard students a few years back), comedy is about power reversal. You punch upward to mock those in power for doing stupid shit, for example.

Attempts at comedy punching downward, like Limbaugh or Nelson Muntz, against the powerless ain't comedy; it's bullying.

if people laugh, it's funny

racist jokes, dumb woman jokes, jokes about the disabled, those are still jokes, they're still 'comedy'. what else is it?

How much of laughter at bullying humor is "I'm glad I'm not the target" relief?

depends on how funny the bully is

On Mother's Day a friend of my cousin's, chuckling to himself the whole time, passed around an image on his cellphone: a little girl holding a piece of fried chicken while a black man chased after her. "That's pretty fucking stupid," I said and walked away. I'd like to say other people walked away but all he got were polite rictus grins.

Attempts at comedy punching downward, like Limbaugh or Nelson Muntz, against the powerless ain't comedy; it's bullying is really featherweight, shooting fish in a barrel comedy.

Fixed. But, yes, it's also bullying.

if we're trying to theorize the comic in toto then we can't section off the stuff that assholes like

Yeah, sadly enough, bully comedy makes up a huge swath of the most popular comedy. Which is, I'm sure, partially informs and answers the question asked by this thread.

this is an interesting thread!

i think i'm like horseshoe about this. comedy gives me a certain kind of anxiety -- there's something that feels scarily uncontrollable about it. i guess this is about laughter being a kind of instinctive or gut response? i don't know that i can quite articulate what this has to do with comedy's possible conservatism but it feels like its related.

"rigidly demarcating the boundaries between self and other"

This is never found among "progressive liberal" humans? Hilarious.

I rewatched Cosby standup a couple months ago: hysterical shit. I'd say his humor relies on stereotypes the audience holds about mothers in law, dentists, children, etc.

I think we've largely agreed that we're using 'conservative' in a generally apolitical sense here, Morbs.

Cosby is a master of being hilarious while avoiding cruelty. So many comedians seem to idolize him while not really taking his example to heart.

i think i'm like horseshoe about this. comedy gives me a certain kind of anxiety -- there's something that feels scarily uncontrollable about it. i guess this is about laughter being a kind of instinctive or gut response? i don't know that i can quite articulate what this has to do with comedy's possible conservatism but it feels like its related.

― max, Tuesday, May 15, 2012 10:37 AM (56 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes! last night when i kept trying to figure out how to say this sensibly it occurred to me that maybe i was just uncomfortable with the impulse to laugh itself and what that's about, anyway. i keep circling around this thing; i don't know. what goole has said itt about how comedy is insufficiently theorized helps me feel better about that, though.

a lot of the "right-on" comics of the past and near past also had targets where it degenerated into bullying but they were still telling jokes, getting laffs from an audience also laughing at the jokes aimed at more deserving targets.

i also dont think it's exactly counter to horseshoe's thesis that most of them were white men and all of them were men, period.

When is a wealth-worshipping, reactionary old crone named Joan Rivers going to enter this discussion, I wonder.

I only saw Cosby do his standup at Radio City Music Hall circa '84/85, and by then he was quite cruel, esp about children ("brain-damaged idiots"). It was brilliant.

(he was also very acidic whenever he guest hosted the Tonight Show in that era)

add to the moment i was watching english patient to the moment i saw gone with the wind in a lavish showing at the providence performing arts center (in the year 2000), and the mostly white audience cracked up like crazy every time hattie mcdaniel appeared onscreen. maybe that was more laughing from discomfort, but it's enough to make you suspicious of the whole enterprise of making people laugh.

i guess this is about laughter being a kind of instinctive or gut response?

yeah, there's a connection between the immediate and the empirical here. a good laugh is something that (as an audience) you don't will on your own, but is brought out of you. and so comedy doesn't really have an "is it good or bad" question to answer, but "does it work". not that audiences don't enjoy (being made to emit) cheap and easy laughs...

think of pratfall humor, or "i couldn't help but laugh", or the exchange: "that's not funny" "then why am i laughing?" things can be funny even if we don't want them to be, which suggests that something is happening that is idk, pre-moral

i had some kind of half-formed thought last night about how comedy is compassionless, and compassion is the foundational value of liberalism, or something. i dont know if i buy that either.

you guys are the best; the next time i bother people irl with my worries about this i'm going to have so many better things to say.

I have those half-formed thoughts all the time, max. Trying to figure out how comedy can be humanistic and still, y'know, actually funny. It's a lot of why this thread is so up my alley.

And Morbs, I absolutely agree that Cosby could be acidic. It's just that he also knew how not to be, and he did it brilliantly.

i had some kind of half-formed thought last night about how comedy is compassionless, and compassion is the foundational value of liberalism, or something. i dont know if i buy that either.

I could argue that compassion requires curiosity: the act of noticing behavior. The oafish comedy I cited in the black-guy-and-chicken-wing example doesn't rely on observation at all, just outdated stereotypes.

And Morbs, I absolutely agree that Cosby could be acidic. It's just that he also knew how not to be, and he did it brilliantly.

"The United States of America is a wonderful place but there's nowhere you can get rid of your children."

i think alfred is otm here and is clarifying something i was trying to say in mybhalf-in-the-bag stupor last night: comedy is often funniest to me when it's picking on nuances of a particular personality (esp. the cimedian's) that can also point toward universals. which is a lot harder to do, well or otherwise, than women be shoppin.

I could argue that compassion requires curiosity: the act of noticing behavior.

Uncritical compassion isn't very progressive imo

Compassion is also a directed act, and liberalism only requires it to be directed in one direction. And rightly so, I would say, if there was only one direction.

Uncritical compassion isn't very progressive imo

Reagan agreed!

i'm no bill hicks stan (or even much of a fan at this point) but i think the reason he keeps popping into my mind is because he always kinda tried to a.) poke holes in the established power structures and b.) poke fun at his own weaknesses as he stood up there ranting but often c.) belly-flopped into total bullying when the targets of all that extreme invective seemed so out of proportion. (gun to a knife fight, etc etc.) like the rush limbaugh rants were sometimes funny and generally right-on as an idea. but the stuff where he laments that his video store bill is nothing but porn and sonic the hedgehog games is a lot funnier because there's a specificity (lampooning his own sad lonely living in motel rooms lifestyle) that has an uncomfortable resonance for anyone else who also thinks their lives haven't exactly panned out as planned. and it's a damn sight funnier than misogynistic ranting at scream-level for minutes on end about how 14 year old girls are idiots because they prefer debbie gibson to hendrix. the joke still gets a laugh from the audience, even if only because of how o.t.t. the performance is, which points toward goole's pre-moral thing up there as being maybe otm for me, but there's a kind of hollowness that follows, which i kinda feel after all reactionary/conservative/bullying/mean-with-no-sense-of-proportion comedy, especially from smart people who should know better (comedy is rife with the smartest dude at the frat house misanthropy of people who think eviscerating themselves means they then get a free pass eviscerating everyone else), which is pretty much akin to the feeling i get when any privileged person, in any context, lords it over someone with no ability to answer back.

(no contendo)

goole otm imo.

a joke is either well written, or badly written- that is all, (to paraphrase). have never understood the preference for art, music, comedy (or any creative endeavour, really) agree with their political/moral worldview before deciding whether or not they like it. seems to be a strange and unnecessary filter through which to view something that stands first as an executed work of skill/ability/deftness (or not).

A comedian doesn't need to convince me they're right to make me laugh.

yeah, that seems otm, and also what goole said about comedy being pre-moral. i've been re-watching a lot of louis ck stand-up specials and it's funny how they oscillate between being specific about lampooning his own lifestyle in the way you describe, strongo, which are my favorite moments because they feel sort of generous and he's inviting everyone in to relate to his food shame or whatever, and moments that seem kind of reactionary to me, where he's complaining about how dumb fat, white americans are.

xp

jokes are conservative by nature fairly often, comedy is built to appeal to shared knowledge, not forge new ground.

doesn't mean it's always the case but eg stand-up comedy is a conservative medium, half of it is built around making a room full of people feel compelled to laugh, it's never going to be anything else.

i think comedy can be compassionate, i think the comedy that best gets at things that are true definitely is. as Alfred said, "I could argue that compassion requires curiosity: the act of noticing behavior" -- there's a line that runs through observation, curiosity, understanding, to compassion. how could you have any feel for the "human geography" around you, if you didn't care about it, at least a little.

but on the other hand, comedy has no problem being parasitic, and it thrives on pre-existing conflicts. basically if anybody cares about something, then someone else is gonna make fun of it.

and it's interesting because i think for louis the impulse behind those reactionary moments is to sort of illustrate to white Americans how well-off they are in the grand scheme of things, but in a weird way it's also reifying, like the lives of non-white Americans and non-Americans seem fixed in a kind of eternal misery by comparison. (he has a joke in Hilarious about the Pakistani woman at the customer service call center not caring about his problems because she can't get clean water and two of her kids died that morning and louis, by contrast, is fat. the delivery is funny but something about that joke annoys me, like how many Pakistani women do you know, anyway?)

basically if anybody cares about something, then someone else is gonna make fun of it.

human condition

xpost

Yeah, most of the Pakistanis (and Iranians, come to think of it) I've known came from money I can barely even wrap my head around.

right, but i was trying to get at the line of anti-compassion that humor can run on. kinda like a 'memento mori' except it's more like 'haha god are you kidding'

i think we might be specifically looking at the types & forms of comedy that might be considered the most conservative in order to describe their conservatism as something that bothers us? i think this narrow discussion is useful, but i think we can contrast humor that relies & resolves into the status quo from other types of humor -- stuff that's maybe more adventurous, silly, zany, absurdist, imaginative, subversive, or transgressive. different mechanics, different types of laughter? (this has probably been touched on before but i haven't absorbed the whole thread yet.)

i don't think 'shaggy dog' jokes are conservative, but they are jokes nonetheless.

pls tell me that the head/wrap things wasn't....

well that's because some of the pakistanis that can afford to emigrate are crazy wealthy because it's a kleptocracy with, like, 5 really rich people who have stolen from the rest of the desperately poor. so yes, a woman in Pakistan is likely to be less well-off than Louis. it's just that comedy can be so flattening or something.

LocalGarda, I kinda disagree with a lot of your post inasmuch as it is an accurate description of most stand-up/comedy, but I also don't think insecure grasping for laughs or the avoidance of groundbreaking material is at all inherent in the form. They're just super common.

pls tell me that the head/wrap things wasn't....

It really, really wasn't.

That's a pretty instructive response wrt this discussion, though. Some people have their racism/xenophobia radar cranked so high that the mere mention of a different race or culture can make an innocuous comment seem loaded.

I'd like to point out that 'conservative' isn't necessarily always a bad thing and that comedy may be conservative but when it punctures pompousness, skewers piousness and points out the emperor's new clothes, it's not a bad thing at all.

compassion is The Only Value as far as i'm concerned and like alfred/others said is evident in comedy all the time; even when you're "lampooning" someone you have to have at least some kind of idea of what's going on with them or it's not that funny. to me. (it is not a necessary value for something to be defined as "comedy" but it's def necessary for quality imo.) strongo otm about bill hicks whom i can't really stand because though he is sometimes (often!) really funny/poignant/whatever it's just not worth having to sit there for like ten fucking minutes being yelled at about how new kids on the block suck. maybe it's a lenny bruce thing and audiences in 1991 were shocked into hysterics by the taboo suggestion that new kids on the block sucked. maybe not.

It's an antidote to 'enthusiasm' that keeps us from straying too far

i don't like bill hicks either

Michael, I think there's been at least some general agreement itt that 'conservative' is kinda value-neutral in this context (i.e. not inherently despicable).

I don't particularly care for Hicks or that style of confrontational, "tellin' the truth, maaaan" style of comedy more generally. It has its place, I guess, but it just really isn't my thing.

horseshoe, louis ck is someone i often think about irt to these issues as well

re "conservative" yeah it is presumably not being used here in its modern american sense where it is code for "revolutionary psychopathy".

I think there's definitely a strain of contemporary comedy, maybe the dominant strain of comedy, that's extremely coarse, and in that sense is not really very "compassionate." This sort of relates to some of what was said in that Tyranny of Humor thread -- a kind of vaguely oppressive non-seriousness and mockery of everything that's a bit numbing and doesn't really lend itself to compassion because you can't be compassionate to an object of mockery.

I don't know if that makes it "conservative" except inasmuch as it indirectly promotes the status quo and complacency

the dominant strain of American life is extremely coarse

it's hard for me to think of any popular comedy that's terribly compassionate in its humor. the jokes may occur within a broader narrative that displays compassion, but the jokes themselves, the funny bits, are never the product of compassion. agree that comedy, the funny in comedy, is fundamentally heartless, even when it's simple pratfalls. we laugh because we do not empathize. we may understand the pain or shame that's driving the joke, but we're only able to laugh because we're not actually feeling it.

strongo otm about bill hicks whom i can't really stand because though he is sometimes (often!) really funny/poignant/whatever it's just not worth having to sit there for like ten fucking minutes being yelled at about how new kids on the block suck. maybe it's a lenny bruce thing and audiences in 1991 were shocked into hysterics by the taboo suggestion that new kids on the block sucked. maybe not.

yeah, this is the conservatism i was thinking of when i brought this up. yelling to a crowded room that some hated thing is actually worth hating, developing conformist collective identity through ostracism of the different. this remains conservative in a certain sense even when it's "punching up", in that it's all about oppositions and exclusions, defining and defending a single correct way to think and be.

maybe "conservative" is the wrong word here, though. maybe centrist is a better way to think about it. comedy establishes a center point of correctness and/or normalcy from which it punches out at extremity, however that's defined. even when the comedian is his own punchline, that's what's going on. inspector clouseau's pratfalls and idiocy are funny because peter sellars has created such a perfect portrait of comically unacceptable behavior.

i don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with this, but it does make me stop and think about how the center point of right and normal thinking is defined in comedy.

Does it make you more fond of wacky comedy?

it's hard for me to think of any popular comedy that's terribly compassionate in its humor.

parks and rec?

dunno if you'd call it popular.

The humor in a Sturges comedy isn't cruel. Shakespeare either.

Shakespeare can be very cruel!

only on those who deserve to be the butt of a joke (e.g. Malvolio)

I think there's definitely a strain of contemporary comedy, maybe the dominant strain of comedy, that's extremely coarse, and in that sense is not really very "compassionate." This sort of relates to some of what was said in that Tyranny of Humor thread -- a kind of vaguely oppressive non-seriousness and mockery of everything that's a bit numbing and doesn't really lend itself to compassion because you can't be compassionate to an object of mockery.

― this guy's a gangsta? his real name's mittens. (Hurting 2), Tuesday, May 15, 2012 12:27 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh wait sorry, that's ILX, not comedy.

that's a good question. i love absurd, unpredictable comedy, the sort that changes directions and levels of reference constantly, borderline nonsense. like zucker-abrahams-zucker stuff, the better adult swim shows, repo man, etc. maybe i like it because that sort of comedy because the chaotic absurdity makes it hard to say where it's coming from, exactly, or what the boundaries are. and maybe i just did too many drugs when i was young, i dunno.

i also like pratfalls (the pink panther), wordplay (rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead), "conservative" comedy of misbehavior (seinfeld), observational humor (70s & 80s woody allen), recent/contemporary stuff like arrested development and 30 rock. not sure to what extent my ideas about comedy affect my taste in humor, if at all.

it's hard for me to think of any popular comedy that's terribly compassionate in its humor.

parks and rec?

again, the show has compassion towards its characters, overall but the comedy - the jokes themselves - aren't compassionate. they're barbs puncturing the characters image of themselves, jabs at one another.

i think we're just laughing at different jokes.

The humor in a Sturges comedy isn't cruel. Shakespeare either.

that's a very good point. light silliness and wordplay are forms of comedy that can exist absent cruelty. now that you mention it, i'm sure there are others. shakespeare does also traffic in the comedy of buffoonishness, error and cruelty though.

I think you're only seeing part of the picture, contenderizer. That strain is definitely prevalent, and I agree that it exists to a degree even in stuff like P&R, but humor that's about tearing others down is just one facet in the Jewel of Guffaws.

xposts, obvs

Is there any identity w/o exclusion and if not, is it not at some level cruel or the beigining of cruelty?

Mitch Hedberg is not cruel.

But tbf that's largely because he's dead.

there is this tiny horse and some people think it is the best thing ever and one person doesn't understand why everyone else loves this tiny horse.

i don't think this is a barb puncturing a character, but then what do i know.

Is russell simmons def comedy jam inherently conservative

yeah it's from wikipedia, but seems to make some sense...

Benign Violation Theory

The benign violation theory (BVT) is developed by researchers A. Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren.[35] The BVT integrates seemingly disparate theories of humor to predict that humor occurs when three conditions are satisfied: 1) something threatens one’s sense of how the world “ought to be,” 2) the threatening situation seems benign, and 3) a person sees both interpretations at the same time.

From an evolutionary perspective, humorous violations likely originated as apparent physical threats, like those present in play fighting and tickling. As humans evolved, the situations that elicit humor likely expanded from physical threats to other violations, including violations of personal dignity (e.g., slapstick, teasing), linguistic norms (e.g., puns, malapropisms), social norms (e.g., strange behaviors, risqué jokes), and even moral norms (e.g., disrespectful behaviors). The BVT suggests that anything that threatens one’s sense of how the world “ought to be” will be humorous, so long as the threatening situation also seems benign.

There is also more than one way a violation can seem benign. McGraw and Warren tested three contexts in the domain of moral violations. A violation can seem benign if one norm suggests something is wrong but another salient norm suggests it is acceptable. A violation can also seem benign when one is psychologically distant from the violation or is only weakly committed to the violated norm.

For example, McGraw and Warren find that most consumers were disgusted when they read about a church raffling off a Hummer SUV to recruit new members. However, many consumers were simultaneously amused. Consistent with the BVT, people who attended church were less likely to be amused than people who did not. Churchgoers are more committed to the belief that churches are sacred and, consequently, were less likely to consider the church’s behavior benign.

also I want to quip after reading the conservapedia thread that conservatism is inherently comedic ...

Steven Wright is not cruel.

Conservatism is ideal fuel for a type of comedy I really appreciate (i.e. laughing at the fucked up things in the world in order to stave off abject despair).

want to clarify something here. i still think humor is rarely compassionate (by "humor" i mean jokes, not the larger narratives in which they might occur). this dearth of compassion needn't be cruel though. while wordplay and absurd silliness can be funny without being cruel, they're not typically compassionate.

i'm not saying that truly compassionate jokes categorically can't exist, just that they're rather rare. to the extent that they seem to exist, it usually isn't really the compassion itself that's funny, but rather some behavior or turn of phrase that's used in the communication.

i suppose that there is a strain of compassionate humor that results from the combination of cuteness and oddity. it's rarely laugh out loud funny, imo, in that it depends too much on real sympathy to permit laughter. the response is more an appreciative "awwww".

it's hard for me to think of any popular comedy that's terribly compassionate in its humor.

You could probably make a case for the Rosanne show and Strangers With Candy.

Adventure Time!

i think there is something at the psychological root of a lot of comedy that might lend itself to reinforcing the status quo

Dilbert to thread.

This thread is doing a lot to firm up my already semi-solid belief that I need to work on humorous projects aimed at kids. A lot of what I think about wrt comedy relates to its often needless cruelty or the extent that it establishes unnecessary oppositions. And I don't think there's a lot of room for transformative, humanistic comedy for jaded adults.

think there is some confusion here between compassion and being nice

think there is some confusion here between compassion and being nice

I'm interested to hear more about this confusion you speak of.

well, the presence of compassion in the overall tone isn't at all what i'm talking about. i'm talking more about the direct expression of compassion as a joke. directly expressions of cruelty can be jokes, with little else added. a pratfall, a pie in the face, an embarrassing blunder, an unfortunately nude person, etc. this isn't really true of direct expressions of compassion, which are hard to distinguish from "being nice": a hug, a pat on the head, medical aid, etc.

is it the act of cruelty that's funny or the contect in which it happens?

well i think it's possible to feel compassion for someone -- to recognize their humanity and project yourself into them and feel their fears -- and then make harsh jokes about them. the same way you can make harsh jokes about yourself. in fact it's necessary if the jokes are gonna be more than like "lol you talk funny". i haven't watched parks and rec specifically but:

again, the show has compassion towards its characters, overall but the comedy - the jokes themselves - aren't compassionate. they're barbs puncturing the characters image of themselves, jabs at one another.

how could you make jokes about the characters' image of themselves if you didn't understand those images and their frailty at a level only attainable via compassion? and how could you separate the jokes themselves from the compassion that enables those jokes to exist? making fun of people in this way is not the same as cruelty, which requires the reduction of another creature to an object to be toyed with, with no interest in or sympathy for how that person feels. people often describe comedies that rely on bad shit continually happening to someone, or on someone's foibles being revealed and exploited, as "cruel", but the feeling of laughing at these is not the same as the feeling of laughing at, like, the way a dog with a broken leg walks. i think this is why nabokov was always annoyed at people calling his stuff cruel.

a pie in the face is i guess cruelty but i mean most of why people laugh at pies in the face (if they indeed do) is surprise.

yeah, i think you're using a much more extreme definition of comic "cruelty" than i am. a pie in the face is funny because it's unexpected, sure, but it wouldn't be anywhere near so comical if it was an unexpected hug, or an unxepected gift of flowers. it's the violence that makes the surprise funny. we're shocked, but we immediately realize that there's no real threat or harm, so we laugh to relieve tension.

and i agree that a lot of character based comedy depends on our compassion towards the characters involved, but on a certain level, that framing compassion is merely the device that allows us to accept and understand the small cruelties that provide the laughs. i don't think that cruelty requires complete othering and objectification. even if we're only fondly cruel to our loved ones, there's still a little barb in there.

I'm interested to hear more about this confusion you speak of.

tbh i thought this thread was much more interesting before half the participants sounded like this guy:

http://theinfosphere.org/images/d/dc/Billionare_bot.jpg

that is: making fun of people is is always cruel, but it's not always so cruel as to be hurtful or otherwise objectionable. calibrating the degree of cruelty one can get away with while still earning audience sympathy is the key to a lot of comedy.

guess i shd read this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_humor

surprise seems like a key element, or the unexpected or unplanned.

a joke in a pure form is about setting an expectation or creating a structure (setup) and then not meeting that expectation or wrecking it in some way (the punchline)

tbh i thought this thread was much more interesting before half the participants sounded like this guy:

^ the comedy of cruelty

don't puss out, which half?

xps well sure, i can be less categorical about "cruelty", and you're right about the pies. but main point is still that without compassion you just can't be that funny about people because you can't get inside them, and the compassion you use to get inside them is not a totally separate thing from the jokes or just there to leaven the cruelty. i mean it can't "just" be a device that allows us to understand the jokes because if we didn't understand the jokes there wouldn't be any jokes.

ALTHOUGH THE QUESTION IS what does it mean when an intelligent psychopath to whom people's motives and fears are unusually transparent but who is incapable of actually empathizing with them makes jokes about them? how deep can the jokes go? are they doomed to a kind of glibness? frustratingly none of the psychopaths i undoubtedly know will own up to me about it so i can't investigate this personally.

i'm talking more about the direct expression of compassion as a joke. directly expressions of cruelty can be jokes, with little else added. a pratfall, a pie in the face, an embarrassing blunder, an unfortunately nude person, etc. this isn't really true of direct expressions of compassion, which are hard to distinguish from "being nice": a hug, a pat on the head, medical aid, etc.

(x-post)
Is that even possible without some sort of implied guilt, condescension, or distancing though? I'm thinking of Laura and Sarah's relationship on the Sarah Silverman Program - there's compassion (albeit one-sided), but it originates out of this horrible co-dependency.

I should clarify that I have differing and occasionally clashing concerns wrt this stuff. On the one hand, I enjoy a broad range of comedy, including some stuff that's pretty wantonly cruel. But that's within, like, the privacy of my own home, where I know what my values are and am secure that transgressive-to-offensive comedy isn't going to turn me into a slavering psychopath. On the other hand, I think a lot about the effect that comedy has on other people (as hashed out to an extent in that "Tyranny of humor" thread) and I have some concern about the extent to which humor coarsens or desensitizes people or encourages cruelty but not quite "won't somebody please think of the children?!"-level concern. Where that concern becomes most acute is when I think about any work that have done or will do in the public sphere and the extent to which I don't personally wish to contribute to a tendency towards humor-induced coarsening. When I think about issues like this, and consider questions like "is comedy inherently conservative?", it leads me to realize that the issue is less that comedy is inherently any one thing than it is that comedy is a huge ocean liner traveling full steam ahead in a particular direction and that it's going to be difficult to get most people on board with going in any other direction. Which, personally, is not a fight that I'm sure I'd wanna put much energy into with people whose senses of humor are probably already primed for a certain approach to comedy.

Is that even possible without some sort of implied guilt, condescension, or distancing though? I'm thinking of Laura and Sarah's relationship on the Sarah Silverman Program - there's compassion (albeit one-sided), but it originates out of this horrible co-dependency.

well exactly. comedy depends on shared point-of-view for one thing. we have to be "with" the comic voice, on its side. if we hate the comic voice, we won't think they stuff it says is funny. the jokes will just make us hate the implied joke-teller all the more.

this is even true of characters who we're supposed to hate, because the actual comic voice in play isn't precisely theirs. the comic voice is the sensibility that has constructed the hateable character as someone for us to laugh at. andrew dice clay is a great example of this. he was initially funny, in an odd way, because he seemed like a perfect cartoon of loathsomeness and stupidity. that novelty wore off quickly, however, and much of the humor drained away when it started to seem that there wasn't any difference between the comic sensibilities of "the diceman" and his creator, andrew clay silverstein. at that point, audience sympathy evaporated.

compassion is important in comedy because of the need to maintain audience sympathy even while the comic voice is engaged in potentially cruel mockery.

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/i-can-has-cheezburger.jpg

arguably the most widespread form of humor on the internet.

i guess it's cruel because the cat can't really have the cheezburger? haha, stupid cat. cheezburgers are for people.

or maybe it's compassionate because we really wish the cat could have the cheezburger.

comedy man, it makes you think.

it's ok tho, because that cat probably became an asshole over people making fun of him for looking retarded, so fuck him anyway

lolcats work in two ways:

1) they're cute. people like cute things.
2) they're dumb. it's funny to laugh at the dumb things people (uh, cats) say.

seems like one of the best end-runs around the cruelty of humor that anyone's come up with. shift the laughable stupidity onto animals that we don't expect to be smart, whose dumbness we find endearing. that way we can just enjoy the risible foolishness without putting anybody down.

parks and rec works on basically the same principal, but instead of cats it's hoosiers

THAT'S HOW CATS TALK

― nabisco, Monday, December 10, 2007 5:08 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ilx: explaining lolcats since 1999.

cats who lol. cats who make YOU lol. lolcats.

Is Bill Hicks the transitional figure between L Bruce's transgressive/progressive vanguard and the stereotype-ridden, anti-PC shock humor employed by Howard Stern, Seth Macfarlane, and Ric Delgado?

a joke in a pure form is about setting an expectation or creating a structure (setup) and then not meeting that expectation or wrecking it in some way (the punchline)

yeah if comedy works by subverting our expectations, and those expectations come from assumptions we have about the target of the joke, then those assumptions would tend to be stereotypes in most cases, right? and any joke that targets a broad category of person (or targets a specific person who can be shoehorned into a category) would almost by necessity be playing with stereotypes. so is it possible to skewer a stereotype without in some way also reinforcing it?

the chicken and guys walking into bars lobbies have so much work to do

you know what's conservative, that recent run of Mark Twain Prize winners. God Almighty.

Is Bill Hicks the transitional figure between L Bruce's transgressive/progressive vanguard and the stereotype-ridden, anti-PC shock humor employed by Howard Stern, Seth Macfarlane, and Ric Delgado?

Married With Children imo

the cheezburger represents God, Who does not exist. No one can have cheezburger, there isn't one. The cat is not yet smart enough to realize this. Lol @ you you dumb cat there's no God, pwn3d

incidentally have you heard the new Eyehazgod album

haaaa

Is Bill Hicks the transitional figure between L Bruce's transgressive/progressive vanguard and the stereotype-ridden, anti-PC shock humor employed by Howard Stern, Seth Macfarlane, and Ric Delgado?

i don't think hicks has been all that influential on mainstream humor in the u.s. -- he was barely ever on TV and was virtually unknown here till he died. he got a posthumous cult following but i see him as more a one-off guy than any kind of transitional figure. his style of humor is also completely different from those guys imo -- i can't see any hicks influence in macfarlane, for sure.

arguably hicks was one of the major touchstones for "alternative comedy" (lol remember when that was a thing) which after a brief detour thru the truth about cats and dogs gave us endless ben stiller flicks gave us "meet the parents" gave us i dunno. but rewind and "alternative comedy" also birthed a whole generation of sketch shows birthed a school of rapid-fire shockimprov and dead end reference and repetition for the sake of it arguably playing a role in the humor of family guy. i mean from the right angle, you really can see it as the slow stepbrother of wonder showzen or whatever.

I remember when that was a thing, it was the 80s in the UK - I suspect that from a US perspective alternative comedy probably seemed like hearing a musical genre but not listening to the bands the artists were listening to.

i have been attempting to keep up w/this v interesting thread since horseshoe started it but i keep being busy and not having time and falling behind. soz if these points have been done already, i skimmed a couple of times

- i broadly agree w/horseshoe's argument. one of the most negative things about comedy (nb: i think everything about comedy is negative and abhorrent) is the way it tries to bully you towards consensus, to assume consensus into existence, and a lot of the time it's not even via what the joke is "about" but the language and the details used in telling it, and that shit is insidious

- the laughing upwards vs laughing downwards binary is dumb. very often comedy thinks it's laughing upwards but actually is so tone-deaf and unaware of its own privilege/power that it can't see how it's also bullying. misogynist jokes at the expense of women like louise mensch or paris hilton or, for that matter, every woman in the public eye ever, are an obvious example

- "laughing at oneself" comedy trades on self-loathing but still requires that assumption of consensus; fundamentally it seeks to drag its audience down to the base level of its creator, and often the implication is that anyone who refuses to degrade themselves in that way is pompous or up themselves or humourless. it really is the very worst human activity imo.

- <3 banaka

don't you think that pretty much all art is trying to 'force' you to feel something, in very much the same way? do you never feel as if music, film, literature is trying to manipulate you emotionally as part of the experience? why judge all of comedy so negatively based on phenomena that are hardly unique to it?

oh good, we finally got some genuinely humorless people itt to talk about comedy

'finally'

haha oh lex! i don't know if my initial post rises to the level of an argument. i love that you hate comedy, though.

I find it weird when ppl see heirs of Lenny Bruce in people who never address politics, or if they do they're reactionary or bigots (Sam Kinison, Stern in the '80s).

Morbs just made one of the points I was about to mention!

I think at a certain level the news-parody shows like The Daily Show and Colbert are less subversive than confirmations of where the mainstream actually is. It's pretty uncommon that the deconstruction of the news actually pulls something out far enough to make the opposing political point; it's only illuminating how ridiculous exaggerations of viewpoints that differ from the norms really sound.

My UK humor knowledge is kind of shallow but some of the past Chris Morris or Charlie Brooker projects are ones that I would say were more acerbic but also aimed at bringing things back to a healthy norm.

Colbert comes much closer to Bruce than Stewart ever does, at least on TV, since playing his Fox-y character is not unrelated to LB "relaxing his colored friend" at a party by saying, "Let's face it, you wouldn't want some Jew doin' it to your sister" in 1958...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oWk4ZiuSHE

you know what's conservative, that recent run of Mark Twain Prize winners. God Almighty.

I'm less bothered by the "conservatism" of the picks as much as the fact that the last three have been relatively young. Mort Sahl's not going to be around forever.

They want to make their picks "relevant," ie translate into a TV special. And Sahl would rant against Obama, we can't have that.

can't believe I missed the part where contenderizer explains lolcats

the best thing about the internet is that i'm still doing it and will be forever, you only have to scroll back a little...

http://www.suck.com/daily/97/11/07/index.html

friend who is starting a feminist comedy troupe yelled at me for this kind of thinking btw so i retract it

huh, what was her line?

the psychological/physical rupture of a joke or gag, the very impulse to laugh, can be seen a model of the incompleteness or rupture of any system. not utopian but a spasm of happiness in a hard world etc maybe?

(not speaking for this person, just thinking about this again)

ergh i'm trying to think of a word that's on the tip of my tongue... social/lit theory about 'irruption' or a holiday, but it can't last. dammit my brain is fried right now. jubilee? that's not it

she was basically like, that is just the argument *entrenched comedy interests* make to excuse their sexist/racist/conservative jokes, and there's a way to be funny that could be loosely characterized as progressive. and then she used a joke a female comedian told in her presence about relief that a random street harasser called her fat and didn't rape her as evidence. (obvs not funny the way i've related it, but presumably funny in the actual delivery.) i don't know; i didn't argue further about whether that kind of joke still has a reactionary/conservative/whatever the fuck i think i'm talking about vibe, because i felt like a jerk doing it when she was so excited about the feminist potential of comedy. also i feel like i can't possibly be right; it's just too sweeping of a thing to think.

xxp actually i bet she would agree with that!

carnivalesque?

jouissance?

like in barthes?

CARNIVALESQUE!

yeah. shit.

bakhtin is all right as fucking assholes i had to read in graduate school go

oh i know all this stuff second- or thirdhand at best

it is a rule of thumb of mine not to trust people or institutions that don't get a joke (that doesn't make the opposite rule true tho)

we need to draw a line between "doesn't get a joke" and, "'can't take a joke?'"

i h8 people who try to make jokes

A lot of conventional humor is based upon staid, conservative social stereotypes, such as the cartoons about women posted near the top of the thread by Abbott, but it is important to note that such 'establishment' humor rarely, if ever, provokes open laughter. Such jokes are similar to the plastic models of food that are sometimes displayed in the front windows of restaurants to give prospective patrons a more visceral idea of what is on the menu. They provoke recognition, as in "I can see this is a joke, because it is formed like one", but nothing more.

Real laugh-until-you're-crying-and-weak humor is never conservative.

i love you lex

xp

i am also pro people who can't take a joke because to me they are standing up for their DIGNITY and that is one of the most valuable things that a human possesses

conversely making a joke at someone's expense is an attempt to take away that dignity and is inherently cruel

which is fine when you WANT to be cruel obv but you really can't take offence at someone not wanting to take it

"take a joke" and "get a joke" are absolutely different qualities

the lex walks into a bar

i think goole was talking about when assholes say, "can't you take a joke?" after they've said something cruel/gross/horrible?

"what's this music that's playing?" he asks the bartender

"bob dylan," the bartender replies

"IS THIS SOME SORT OF JOKE," shouts the lex

precisely!

lol xp to hs

would lol @ a book of "a lex walks into a bar" joeks

i was thinking about this thread during the whole tosh rape-joke thing

yeah my friend basically started her troupe because of the tosh "joke"

i thought a lot of the response that was kind of stupid. i dunno, all the liberal writers trying to like set up rules about "here's how to make a funny rape joke" and analyzing why tosh's joke was "bad" and this other rape joke is "good"... it was so

ime ostensibly "progressive" or lefty comedy is maybe even more repulsively conservative than the dad jokes and stereotype-reinforcing unhumour that's the obvious subject of this thread

the defenses of tosh were even stupider, obviously

i had to drop out of the internet temporarily when the tosh joke happened...i can't really talk about it rationally tbh

no, progressive comedy was the subject of this thread! or comedy that's created with an anti-racist/anti-sexist intention but somehow seems to reify racist/sexist stereotypes unintentionally. or whatever.

"ostensibly 'progressive' or lefty comedy" isn't really what i'm talking about

what i really wanted to read was a kind of *historical* account of comedy & its relationship to transgression, like a "genealogy of comedy." a lot of the discussion was weirdly ahistorical, like this sense that stand-up is the purest form of comedy and not form that has its own culture and rules and history (culture and rules and history that lean really heavily on the bill hicks-doug stanhope-sam kinison damaged-man resentful misogynist archetype)

haha i mean i guess what i wanted was someone to write the "Standup Comedy Sucks" article but no one did. i shouldve

u should write a genealogy of comedy nietzsche style

xp

bob hope invented standup. it's not that old.

i was thinking about how most of the latest wave of successful women comedians have come out of the improv world. & the structural differences between improv and standup that might lead to cultural/political differences

write it max!!!!

bob hope invented standup. it's not that old.

― goole, Friday, August 17, 2012 1:14 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, yeah, this is what i mean? the whole tosh discussion seemed to be identifying "standup" as this pure form of Comedy, like the Form of Comedy whose rules had been handed down by the ancients. instead of as a 50 yr old "art form" that has its own insular and generally p shitty culture

A lot of conventional humor is based upon staid, conservative social stereotypes, such as the cartoons about women posted near the top of the thread by Abbott, but it is important to note that such 'establishment' humor rarely, if ever, provokes open laughter. Such jokes are similar to the plastic models of food that are sometimes displayed in the front windows of restaurants to give prospective patrons a more visceral idea of what is on the menu. They provoke recognition, as in "I can see this is a joke, because it is formed like one", but nothing more.

Real laugh-until-you're-crying-and-weak humor is never conservative.

― Aimless, Friday, August 17, 2012 9:55 AM (18 minutes ago)

wish this were true, but it just isn't. lots of people laugh their asses off at the most conservative comedy imaginable.

http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/08/22/

"The Road to Vietnam" ranks with Bob's funniest work, if only for its sheer Brechtian blast of unreality in the midst of nightmare. You can almost hear Brando's Col. Kurtz whispering under the laughs, "The humor ... the humor ..."

lollll

i can't stop laughing at that

i keep thinking about writing about Why Comedy Sucks but then i think about the amount of comedy i'd have to endure as "research" and i die inside

why trouble yourself with shitty comedy

i still don't get why the whole human category of "things that are funny" reduces to, idk, simon amstell or some shit, for you

lex, you yourself are very funny so i find your railing against comedy hard to take seriously, though it is also very in character and funny so i welcome it.

i apologize if calling you funny is like accusing you of murder or something :/

i'm not funny at all!

my most ill-tempered communications with editors have been when they have asked me to make a piece funnier. i literally cannot do funny writing.

megalol at lex joek upthread

i'm not funny at all!

^^^this is precisely why you are funny bro

every time i try to make a joke in writing i can feel the semi-colons just...bubbling under the surface of the sentence

bubbling colons? now that's funny!

>:(

ftr i didn't laugh at that either

what i really wanted to read was a kind of *historical* account of comedy & its relationship to transgression, like a "genealogy of comedy."

yeah but max people spend their entire careers trying to say something definitive about this and failing. it's one of the biggest subjects and one where you're never going to get resolution. you can take an ancient comic tradition course and get a little more clarity (it's these classes that tend to lead toward the "comedy is inherently* conservative" idea) but for the most part you disappear into prehistory before you're satisfied. plus "western" vs. other models which are even less rigorously documented.

*"inherently" is a poor word here - what it means is "originally," I think, and that some of those origins are present in all comedy

the semi-colons...the semi-colons

aero otm

lex yer great btw, your opinions on comedy are ridiculous but I p much agree in my heart of hearts I think

saying comedy is inherently anything seems like a really bizarre, unfounded contention imho

it's one of the biggest subjects and one where you're never going to get resolution.

both "not admitting of resolution" and "trying and failing" are comic qualities, so, i say go for it.

there probably are ways to document certain aspects of things, though. like i'd be interested in hear from, like, guys from the Don Rickles generation about whether they think standup has actually gotten meaner or dirtier over the last few decades, or whether they can get away with blue material in bigger rooms or on TV whereas that stuff might've been limited to small clubs back in the day. (xpost to aero)

maybe "originally" is what i meant, but i don't even know anything about the origins of comedy tbrr. this was a thread started in ignorance, for sure.

im not looking for a "theory of comedy" or a "definition of comedy"! i think the search for universal answers to those things ends up sidetrack the more interesting question of "what role does [this kind of] comedy play in this specific time/place"

some dude otm. interested in both micro and macro histories of comedy

i don't think i 'get' don rickles

i always assumed that irl he was totally gross and vicious but if it was just like his 'you hockey puck!' business you see on TV then i'm really mystified.

rickles talked about some of this in the joan rivers doc I think I don't really remember tho, but I think so

i mean it's interesting to me that up until a certain point in time, it seemed like the only comics really known for pushing the envelope for language/content on large stages were the really respected and clever guys like carlin, bruce, pryor -- then at some point after andrew dice clay (or maybe eddie murphy's needlessly nasty stuff) it became the province of the hack, that you could go on hbo and say awful shit and not have to justify it with major creativity or wit.

have you seen that mr. warmth documentary from a few years back, goole? helped me get the rickles.

swear to god i read something a while ago that dealt pretty deftly with the whole compassion thing in humor. something like comedy must, at some break point or w/e, when the clown slips on the banana peel, be dispassionate.

also where's the weird dissertation about humor that Tracer (?) posted lo those many years ago, about humor being the moss growing on rust or some old bullshit

rickles is awesome fuiud

The audience for those guys were the middle class, no? I've only heard a couple Rickles routines. Is the class itself a target?

there probably are ways to document certain aspects of things, though. like i'd be interested in hear from, like, guys from the Don Rickles generation about whether they think standup has actually gotten meaner or dirtier over the last few decades, or whether they can get away with blue material in bigger rooms or on TV whereas that stuff might've been limited to small clubs back in the day.

oh, no doubt. but if somebody's shooting for a unified theory of how comedy works (the premise of the thread) then you're going to get to about Aristophanes and then hit a brick wall. Early Roman comedy is also pure supposition, there's just fragments. As far as we know it was basically a guy standing in front of an audience and falling down over and over, really broad physical comedy. Whether a form's original tropes inform it forever is a question you could really chew on for a long time, though it'd be hard to argue that an original formal impulse didn't remain present without a documentable "here's where the shift occurred" moment.

it is interesting stuff, because it necessarily turns on the question "why is (x) funny," and that's a question that ends up facing a brick wall very quickly. "The ball...his groin...it works on so many levels" is kind of what you end up saying in less funny terms.

yeah that was a cool flick -- saw the joan doc too, although it's been a while so i'm not really sure if either got into what i was talking about. (xpost)

no, progressive comedy was the subject of this thread! or comedy that's created with an anti-racist/anti-sexist intention but somehow seems to reify racist/sexist stereotypes unintentionally. or whatever.

― horseshoe, Friday, August 17, 2012 6:12 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Like, comedy that fails on it's own terms, or comedy that succeeds, but is embedded in and reinforces other oppressions?

My first thought on reading the thread title was Monty Python, which is explicitly leftie political comedy without getting preachy, but also five white straight public-school boys (with occasional appearances by a lady with very large breasts).

i'll have to check those docs out.

w/o much familiarity i have a certain respect for old showbiz hoofers/lifers omg is that conservative

but I will say, from what we know about early western comedy, it seems to have been mainly about laughing at the misfortune of others? and sometimes about upending the privileged, but there are plenty of laughs had at the expense of eg slaves, too - and I think "finding amusement in the misfortune of others" is maybe inherently conservative?

i think American comedy would be a good-sized topic to tackle, since it still exists kind of a distinct flavor from other English-speaking countries and you'd only have to go back a couple hundred years, although it's probably most oral tradition that's hard to document, no idea how much non-literary comedy/humor made it to print before a certain point. (xpost)

i think more the latter, comedy that is embedded in and reinforces other oppressions. that's better-put than my original post, for sure. i think i was talking about a really specific and historically contingent thing and pretending it was general, for one thing. so yeah, i am interested in max's history of comedy, too.

xxp to Andrew

i think there is something at the psychological root of a lot of comedy that might lend itself to reinforcing the status quo -- like a lot of time a joke has to function by playing off of some widely understood truth or idea or social norm. if an idea or norm is inherently racist or misogynist etc., then yeah, a lot of the jokes constructed around will probably essential saying "check out this ridiculous situation in which our accepted ideas of this minority are defied." which by the way would be a horrible way to tell that kind of joke, usually it's done much more smoothly, but i'm not a comedy professional.

― kitty shayme (some dude), Monday, May 14, 2012 11:04 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark

i was about to try to write a post but i think i was just going to kind of reword this old post

Is the class itself a target?

I'd say in Rickles comedy everyone is the target. it's very meanspirited but in an oddly magnanimous "hey EVERYBODY is a joke" way. not defending all of his material cuz he definitely worked racist/sexist, but I do think there was something genuinely appealing in his "I am an equal opportunity offender" schtick.

xp

american standup comedy was invented by airplanes btw

airplanes and spendthrift women iirc

but I will say, from what we know about early western comedy, it seems to have been mainly about laughing at the misfortune of others?

seem to recall taking some shit somewhere (probably some other thread) where I made the broadly reductive assertion that all comedy was based on either the suffering of other people or nonsense/non-seuquiturs

but I will say, from what we know about early western comedy, it seems to have been mainly about laughing at the misfortune of others? and sometimes about upending the privileged, but there are plenty of laughs had at the expense of eg slaves, too - and I think "finding amusement in the misfortune of others" is maybe inherently conservative?

― steven fucking tyler (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, August 17, 2012 12:40 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cutting against this is that the "lol slaves" bits of these pieces were the only points where non-aristo, non-heroic life was even depicted?

an airplane walks into a bar

why the long wings asks the bartender

Haha also if comedy is essentially conservative then why are conservatives SO TERRIBLE at telling jokes?

good question, they're long, but, you know, they sure are tired, replies the airplane

this is my favorite dylan song, says the airplane

mine too, says the bartender, mine too

then in Shakespeare you get a panoply of fools and low lifes who on the page delight in words but on stage also indulge in an awful lot of the slapstick and pratfalls of Roman comedy.

http://archive.org/details/laughteranessay00berggoog

here it is

Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
Henri Bergson

the comic consists in there being "something mechanical encrusted on the living"

gbx your post just reminded me that if anyone is interested in this subject and hasn't read hugh kenner's book The Counterfeiter's they should, it doesn't function as an all around deal, but it gets at a lot of what max wanted out of a piece or w/e

the whole buster keaton part is great, the rest is too, it is very dry and wonderful

the comic consists in there being "something mechanical encrusted on the living"

whoah, gross, get it off

^^^lolz

there's a spark in yr hair!!

cutting against this is that the "lol slaves" bits of these pieces were the only points where non-aristo, non-heroic life was even depicted?

I don't think that's the case - cf Horace especially re: his dad but maybe that's what you mean. Horace's satires are so gentle that to call them "comedy" is stretching a little imo

i think about this thread often, i think the answer is p much yeah

but I will say, from what we know about early western comedy, it seems to have been mainly about laughing at the misfortune of others? and sometimes about upending the privileged, but there are plenty of laughs had at the expense of eg slaves, too - and I think "finding amusement in the misfortune of others" is maybe inherently conservative?

I'd say it's pointed, but whether the arrow is pointing up-class or down-class makes a difference.

the comedy i find funny points at some unjust flaw in society and calls out hypocrisy with an eye towards creating equality. pointing up class, basically.

i was watching footage of this 'conservative comedian' at CPAC (i like to self-punish) and i feel like his conservativism made him inherently unfunny. same with the short-lived 'half hour news hour' on FOX, it was just painfully bad. but that is explicitly conservative comedy, i.e. it operates openly under the conceit that it is 'conservative' which might hamper its ability to talk about anything else. but i dare anyone to find some comedy that openly declares itself 'conservative' that ANYBODY finds funny. FOX viewers did not like the 1/2 hr news hour and the audience did not seem to be particularly in to that 'conservative' comedians routine. i feel like this has something to say about the nature of comedy, or perhaps it just says more about the nature of comedy as *I* perceieve it.

i think this thread is pointing towards comedy that may harbor a different 'banner' than being openly conservative but in subtle ways reinforces the status quo, making them more dangerous? i have mostly skimmed this thread and will have to re-evaluate my stance on the comedy I find funny, to see if it is actually subversive and progressive. i also think people in this thread are all operating within different definitions of what defines 'conservative' but then you have people saying the counterbalance to conservative could be anything from liberal to lefty, so. i don't even know what i'm talking about anymore

i also don't particularly find the daily show very funny, maybe I am just quite tired of Jon Stewart mugging it up and thinking that's a good joke.

i don't find it funny at all, just kind of annoying and full of super obvious jokes that don't provide much insight into anything other than making the audience feel like they 'got' the joke and feeling smug

i find someone like anthony weiner deeply tragic and think an argument could be made that using him as the butt of jokes is very cruel- he is obviously a deeply damaged and broken person, as easy as it can be to mock him. does it make it okay because it is pointing 'up' the class/power structure? love your enemies, etc

Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (420 of them)

lol now that's some subversive shit

is it conservative when i make 420 jokes to my baby

answer to op is probably it depends. If yr a wasp- yes.

american conservaives are authoritarian at heart, and there's nothing funny about that shit. you're either contemptuously spitting on those below you (which is disgusting) or kissing the ass of the people above you. i don't think it has the right palette to make good comedy.

answer to op is probably it depends. If yr a wasp- yes.

― Mordy , Wednesday, July 31, 2013 1:07 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

?

here he is, 'bringing down the house':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUdco-_bBeI

I'd say it's pointed, but whether the arrow is pointing up-class or down-class makes a difference.

the problem is usually when people who think their arrow is pointing up-class still end up - necessarily, because comedy is inherently conservative - pointing it down-class at another group of people

I have no trouble believing that lex has only been exposed to reactionary humor.

Brit-specific, but Jonathan Coe on Boris Johnson is very good on this:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n14/jonathan-coe/sinking-giggling-into-the-sea

(I feel kind of sorry for Harry Mount, the writer of the book that's notionally the subject of the review)

Read this @Merrillmarkoe piece on why comedy is truly a woman’s arthttps://t.co/IfmqFiDXCf

— Yael Kohen (@YaelKohen) November 21, 2017

Andrew that was a great read and definitely can be extrapolated on to the Daily Show etc

where's the weird dissertation about humor that Tracer (?) posted lo those many years ago, about humor being the moss growing on rust or some old bullshit

― catbus otm (gbx), Friday, August 17, 2012 6:38 PM (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"moss growing on rust" = it me

that essay is by bergson, a hero to deleuze - it's called "laughter: an essay on the meaning of the comic"

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4352/4352-h/4352-h.htm

it is one of the greatest things i've ever read, about anything. in it you could see an argument for an inherent liberality of comedy, in that it punishes unthinking conformity or rigidity of habit:

A man, running along the street, stumbles and falls; the passers-by burst out laughing. They would not laugh at him, I imagine, could they suppose that the whim had suddenly seized him to sit down on the ground. They laugh because his sitting down is involuntary.

Consequently, it is not his sudden change of attitude that raises a laugh, but rather the involuntary element in this change,—his clumsiness, in fact. Perhaps there was a stone on the road. He should have altered his pace or avoided the obstacle. Instead of that, through lack of elasticity, through absentmindedness and a kind of physical obstinacy, AS A RESULT, IN FACT, OF RIGIDITY OR OF MOMENTUM, the muscles continued to perform the same movement when the circumstances of the case called for something else. That is the reason of the man's fall, and also of the people's laughter.

Now, take the case of a person who attends to the petty occupations of his everyday life with mathematical precision. The objects around him, however, have all been tampered with by a mischievous wag, the result being that when he dips his pen into the inkstand he draws it out all covered with mud, when he fancies he is sitting down on a solid chair he finds himself sprawling on the floor, in a word his actions are all topsy-turvy or mere beating the air, while in every case the effect is invariably one of momentum. Habit has given the impulse: what was wanted was to check the movement or deflect it. He did nothing of the sort, but continued like a machine in the same straight line. The victim, then, of a practical joke is in a position similar to that of a runner who falls,—he is comic for the same reason. The laughable element in both cases consists of a certain MECHANICAL INELASTICITY, just where one would expect to find the wide-awake adaptability and the living pliableness of a human being.

but you could also read in it an argument for conservatism, as sympathy must be put aside for a moment in order for laughter to function:

Here I would point out, as a symptom equally worthy of notice, the ABSENCE OF FEELING which usually accompanies laughter. It seems as though the comic could not produce its disturbing effect unless it fell, so to say, on the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm and unruffled. Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe than emotion. I do not mean that we could not laugh at a person who inspires us with pity, for instance, or even with affection, but in such a case we must, for the moment, put our affection out of court and impose silence upon our pity. In a society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter; whereas highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every event would be sentimentally prolonged and re-echoed, would neither know nor understand laughter. Try, for a moment, to become interested in everything that is being said and done; act, in imagination, with those who act, and feel with those who feel; in a word, give your sympathy its widest expansion: as though at the touch of a fairy wand you will see the flimsiest of objects assume importance, and a gloomy hue spread over everything. Now step aside, look upon life as a disinterested spectator: many a drama will turn into a comedy. It is enough for us to stop our ears to the sound of music, in a room where dancing is going on, for the dancers at once to appear ridiculous. How many human actions would stand a similar test?

and what's more it follows a herd instinct:

Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo, Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by reverberating from one to another, something beginning with a crash, to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain. Still, this reverberation cannot go on for ever. It can travel within as wide a circle as you please: the circle remains, none the less, a closed one. Our laughter is always the laughter of a group. It may, perchance, have happened to you, when seated in a railway carriage or at table d'hote, to hear travellers relating to one another stories which must have been comic to them, for they laughed heartily. Had you been one of their company, you would have laughed like them; but, as you were not, you had no desire whatever to do so. A man who was once asked why he did not weep at a sermon, when everybody else was shedding tears, replied: "I don't belong to the parish!" What that man thought of tears would be still more true of laughter. However spontaneous it seems, laughter always implies a kind of secret freemasonry, or even complicity, with other laughers, real or imaginary. How often has it been said that the fuller the theatre, the more uncontrolled the laughter of the audience!

and reinforces the unspoken codes of society:

Society will therefore be suspicious of all INELASTICITY of character, of mind and even of body, because it is the possible sign of a slumbering activity as well as of an activity with separatist tendencies, that inclines to swerve from the common centre round which society gravitates: in short, because it is the sign of an eccentricity. And yet, society cannot intervene at this stage by material repression, since it is not affected in a material fashion. It is confronted with something that makes it uneasy, but only as a symptom—scarcely a threat, at the very most a gesture. A gesture, therefore, will be its reply. Laughter must be something of this kind, a sort of SOCIAL GESTURE. By the fear which it inspires, it restrains eccentricity, keeps constantly awake and in mutual contact certain activities of a secondary order which might retire into their shell and go to sleep, and, in short, softens down whatever the surface of the social body may retain of mechanical inelasticity. Laughter, then, does not belong to the province of esthetics alone, since unconsciously (and even immorally in many particular instances) it pursues a utilitarian aim of general improvement. And yet there is something esthetic about it, since the comic comes into being just when society and the individual, freed from the worry of self-preservation, begin to regard themselves as works of art. In a word, if a circle be drawn round those actions and dispositions—implied in individual or social life—to which their natural consequences bring their own penalties, there remains outside this sphere of emotion and struggle—and within a neutral zone in which man simply exposes himself to man's curiosity—a certain rigidity of body, mind and character, that society would still like to get rid of in order to obtain from its members the greatest possible degree of elasticity and sociability. This rigidity is the comic, and laughter is its corrective.

but it really is worth instapapering and reading from the beginning

lol 'the weird dissertation about humor'

ty!

Before 1960 or so, few comics eyeing mainstream audiences broached politics in any way. (Will Rogers was a different cat, but very savvy; he needled his own inclinations, as in the Democrat "no organized party" joke.)