Ralphie

I am still turning over the Ralphie May performance from last week in my head. He touched on so many subjects, employed so many techniques, and made so many controversial remarks that it seems that performance is an absolute gold mine for the theoretical study of comedy.

So let's start at the beginning. Ralphie has the "gift" that many other comedians have made excellent use of. That is, of course, his look. By being obese with a bad haircut and wearing a leather jacket and silver chain, Ralphie is already garnering laughs. This is before he even opens his mouth, so points there. And then he does open his mouth, and we hear some strange, off-putting hybrid of country and urban slang. Certainly points for this. And then he begins his show. And in this we get jokes on "black" movie theaters, the recently deceased Pope, and the tsunami in Southeast Asia in 2004.

What I found to be truly amazing is how Ralphie does not tread lightly (no pun intended, well, maybe a little) on these very fragile subjects. He goes for the whole shebang. He leaves no stone unturned. And somehow, somehow, he manages to keep the audience mostly with him.

It's this last part that I really find remarkable. Where many comedians might be booed off a stage or given the silent treatment, Ralphie keeps the majority of the crowd laughing, or at least chuckling. It takes some amazing skill to pull this feat off, and I think he was greatly aided by prefacing these as "jokes you're not gonna wanna laugh at." In doing that, he in a way made himself invincible to any problems the audience may have with him or his jokes. He showed them that he himself knew the jokes were offensive, putting himself on the same level as the audience. It has boggled my mind how well he did this.

And no matter what you think or believe, you have to admit that the Pope-Weekend at Bernie's bit was pretty damn funny.

Excessive Stooges

Wednesday was the first time I've watched the Three Stooges in a number of years. Many, many years, I mean. Like, a whole lot. Naturally, they weren't quite as funny as I remember them being, however, I still thoroughly enjoyed them. But as we were watching, I noticed the strangest thing. Instead of the jokes becoming duller, more expected, repetitive, I found that everything became that much funnier. Towards the end of the second segment I found myself laughing harder than at any other point during the half hour.

This seems very strange to me. When things happen over and over again, when actions are oft-repeated and terribly similar to the ones before it, the punch-line usually loses its luster. But not here. Not for me. The absurdity became that much greater, and as a result, the comedy became that much funnier. I guess I hit the point where I was thinking to myself, "This is actually happening. This is still happening. And it's going to happen again in just a few seconds."

So I was wondering if anyone else found that this happened to them as well. It seems so illogical and unordered that I won't be surprised at all if I'm the only one. But in thinking about it today, it called back to Eddie Izzard's "yes" - "no" segment about the death of Mr. Humperdink (or whatever his spectacular name was). The more he nodded and shook his head, the longer he did it, the more the class (and audience) seemed to laugh. So, was this the same effect used in the Stooges?

Humor and Death

I have been reading Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions as of late, and the book has really got me thinking. First off, let me say that Vonnegut is probably my favorite all-time writer and I constantly find myself cracking up at his work. However, I found myself crying and thinking about the nature of life as often as I laugh in his works. Few authors have been able to pull off this particular trick, and it has left me wondering: Is something still comedy even if it is sad?

Vonnegut, who saw much, much death in his life, makes mortality a (if not, the) central theme in all his works. So let's start there. Is death funny? I would say yes and no. It is not funny when someone close to me dies. It is not funny when a young Vonnegut watches a friend die during the war. But on the other hand, I find the Darwin Awards to be hilarious. So, is there even a middle ground?

Vonnegut is the master of making us feel two things at once. He subtly slips in humor to dire situations, making the scene lighter. One reason for this is most likely that this is his way of dealing with terrifying things. It's much easier to laugh something off than to dwell on it. And I believe it was Kurt himself who said that we can laugh about death, we cry about it, or we can choose to just let it go. So, in Slaughterhouse-Five, when the narrator (not Billy Pilgrim) tells us over and over again - "So it goes," we are left to think that he has chosen the third option in dealing with death. Yet, the imminent laughter in the imminent danger makes us think differently. Perhaps Vonnegut himself wasn't even totally sure how to deal with it.

When Comics Don't Make Noise

While watching Eddie Izzard's full performance last week, there were several parts that stood up. Among them are the Steve McQueen-Great Escape bits, the skiing bit, and the Englebert Humperdink bit. What was most fascinating about the EH (for simplicity's sake) part was the way he completely took control of the audience. He set them up with a scenario, got every little bit he could out of it (and I mean every little bit, he left no stone or name unturned), and then managed to drag (no pun intended) the joke out for another minute WITHOUT SAYING ANOTHER WORD. This is truly the work of a virtuoso.

Izzard does this by telling the audience that Mr. EH has recently died. Just that day, in fact. At first, the audience meets the comment with silence and the random "Awww." But then Izzard claims, "No, he didn't," and the audience begins to laugh. He then nods his head as if, "Yes, the poor old man really did kick it today." More laughs. Then, a shake of the head, "No, I'm just screwing around with you silly, ignorant people." Laughs even further.

Izzard does this back-and-forth joke for well over a minute, and never do the laughs begin to cease. In fact, they seem to grow and grow. (In our classroom, this is actually when the laughs seemed to be at their highest.)

Now, were we laughing at the fact that EH had possibly died? No, I don't think so. The fact that a man with a name that great was still living? Not really. We were laughing at the way Izzard put us in place. He was acting like our older brother (or sister, because of the makeup and heels), making us feel silly in our ignorance but at the same time laughing at his delivery. Only a master could have pulled this off and with such panache as Izzard did.

Considering Modest Proposal, it is astounding how deftly Swift deals with two terrible subjects. Few writers would ever dare taking on the topics of famine and infanticide. Cannibalistic infanticide, no less. I mean, eating babies. Babies!
And Swift doesn’t harp on these subjects with a pound of the fist. He does so with a wink and a nod. His touch is so light that he reveals to us the ridiculousness of one subject by giving away the inherent ridiculousness of another. By using his signature satire, he shows to us how absolutely, devastatingly horrible something was, and he even allows us a little laugh about it. Few writers can do these two things at the same time. But this is what Swift made his living doing. To make us think while laughing is what all great comedians do – just think of Carlin – and Swift may have done it better than anyone else in history.

All things considered, Mark Twain must be the quintessential American humorist. His work still holds up, a hundred and fifty years after its initial publication. While we still read many, many authors from this era, few of them have remained as effective as Twain. And it’s one thing for a writer, an author of literature, to still be seen as currently important, because those general themes of life that we see in nearly every novel still pertain. They remain unchanging. But for a comedian to still be seen as significant, well, that’s just unheard of. Humor is a constantly changing thing. What was funny even five years ago may not even be funny today. So for someone remain funny after 150 years, well, that person’s material must really be funny.

Twain is rare and amazing in the way that he incorporates both slapstick and intelligent humor into his works. In nearly everything he does, he manages to describe funny things, such as a bull climbing a tree, and work humor into the way he writes, local flavor being a great example of this. The television show “Arrested Development” is the only modern example I can think of that manages to balance the two so well. And while it was just a cult phenomenon when it was still playing, it has since amassed a massive following. And it is easy to imagine that will grow over the years. It is truly rare to find anything that so well uses both highbrow and lowbrow comedy at the same time, and Twain was the king of this. So it is no wonder why his work remains relevant today.

It’s pretty interesting to think about Eddie Izzard’s performance that we watched last week. Here he was, an English man dressed as a woman poking fun at the American national anthem. It’s the type of thing that would seemingly tick off many, many Americans, yet Izzard pulls the trick off without ever sounding cruel, or even nasty. I think this is because he only jabs at the superficial elements of the song, making sure never to cross the line of decency. He makes us realize how ridiculous it is, how ridiculous we look, while managing to never seem completely out of line. This takes a deft touch from the comedian, something that few can ever really pull off.

Another reason why Izzard gets away with it so easily is how he prefaces the joke by first making fun of his own national anthem. This tactic essentially makes him invincible to any complaint, because he is making fun of himself first. And this is the thing that all great comedians are able to do – make fun of themselves. Look at how Mel Brooks makes fun of Jewish people, how Dennis Leary jabs at Catholics, and how Chris Rock ridicules black people. Doing this first allows the comedian to then step outside his own sphere and into others. By making himself vulnerable he makes himself able to attack, without fear of repercussion. It is why Eddie Izzard can make fun of transvestites and not sound mean in doing so. When the comedian presents himself, “Hey, I’m just like you,” he permits himself to say pretty much whatever he likes. And in doing so, he arms himself with his most effective weapon – criticism of hypocrisy.