is comedy inherently conservative?

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'