is comedy inherently conservative?

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