What comedy is and what it isn't

Comedy is powerful. Comedic films are a constant force in the box office, on-demand, through television, and with DVD/Blu-Ray sales. It seems that everyone knows of Whose Line is it Anyway?, Family Guy, Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, The Office, and South Park. Stand-up comedians such as Louis C.K. and Gabriel Iglesias have gained large fan bases via live performances, through online streaming, and by appearing on the likes of Comedy Central. All too often, it is easy to dismiss comedy as a lower form of entertainment that is supposed to draw the audience away from the burdens of reality. Of course, historically and even in contemporary times, comedic forms were targeted for the lower-class and still do provide relief to those who need a distraction from their everyday lives.

It is also too easy to believe that critical analyses and deep insights are reserved for serious films such as Pan's Labyrinth and heavy texts akin to the works of Plato. However, the superficial simplicity of comedy is what lends it to being a potentially great analytical breakdown of a subject at hand. For example, you can see South Park solely as a crude and dumb form of entertainment, or you can choose to see it as a satire where the jokes are used to subtly convey an alternative meaning - namely, the criticism of an event or social issue.

How many times have you heard people say or seen memes that read along the lines of, "I learn more from The Colbert Report than from watching actual news"? 

...And he knows it.

Julie Borowski, a policy analyst, has risen to celebritarianism because of her YouTube videos where she talks about political issues and libertarianism in a silly manner, which attracts and retains viewers.

Just as fiction as a genre can be separated into even further categories, so can comedy. I've already mentioned satire, but there is also slapstick, physical comedy, shock factor, and a bunch more. (Remembering the different types of comedy is not made easier from the fact that there are usually multiple names for each kind.)



Comedy can be made even more complex (and therefore, hopefully, more funny) by blending different types into a single joke or a series of jokes. In the above scene from Friends, Ross helps Rachel with putting on her eyeshadow. There is the physical comedy of him licking the first brush (and immediately reacting to the taste), poking Rachel's eyelid, and smearing too much shadow onto the lid. The awkward tension between the two characters could also be seen as comedic as is Ross' cover-up of putting on too much makeup (by saying she doesn't wear enough). However, it may be a bit of a stretch to say that this scene reflects the ignorance and inferiority females face by men in our society. You could argue that, but if that is a theme the writers of the show tried to convey, they did not do a good job of relaying the message. If too many people have to suspend certain lines of belief in order to support a possible conclusion, the writer/performer did a bad job.

The idea for this topic came from discussing reactions about The Interview. (As of writing this, I have not viewed the film). On the Students For Liberty Blog, Ty Hicks wrote, "I recognize that satire and humor can be positive forces for social change on important issues. Often times, such methods are the best ways to communicate messages that otherwise would be left on the fringe."

Whether or not the screenwriters for this particular movie succeeded in using comedy in order to analyze the situation in North Korea is up for debate. A downside to satire and some other forms of comedy is that it can pass over the heads of some, if not most, of the audience. The key is to make the message(s) subtle without making it too much so and being too difficult to comprehend. The audience should not have to stretch too far to be on par with the writers/performers.

A problem I have had with what people have said concerning this film is that, somehow, in general, every joke has a meaning and that all comedy is meant to share a deeper message. Sure, that may be the end goal of a lot of films, television shows, standup comedians, etc., but that is placing comedy on too high of a pedestal. This is coming from a person who believes that comedy is under-appreciated but meaningful. (My blog is called La Commedia Politica for crying out loud.) These people make comedy into a kind of utopian solution for the pursuit of knowledge, which it isn't. The least common denominator for all comedy, I think, is to make people laugh and/or ultimately feel better. (In the case of self-deprecating humor or being the target of a joke, the ratio of good feelings-to-bad [whether it be the person targeted or when compared to quantity] should be greater in order to be successful.)

To make a point, look at shock factor. Very rarely, on its own, can it be used to invoke insight. Shock factor is meant to degrade a group, a person, etc. for laughs. It is used for short-term reasons, and can range from sudden nudity to unexpected expletives to a racist joke. I would not be surprised if it was the most controversial kind of humor. If used to push a message, it appeals to the people who already agree with the message. It may have the unintended effect of swaying people away from the message it supports, no matter how sensible the actual message is.

Excusing comedy because "it's comedy" is a poor excuse when looking at it on a grand scale. Studies have shown that comedy can be used to uphold bigoted prejudices, whether a person tells a lot of racist jokes because he/she views people of color as inferior (knowingly or not) or attempts to disguise offensive content as "humor." 

Blackface in minstrelsy portrayed black people as a kind of stock character - lazy and dim-witted. While there are certainly other stock characters throughout history that have existed with these same traits, it should be a no-brainer to point out that this stock character was meant to represent the black person. Academically speaking, minstrelsy was a kind of performance that required an enormous amount of talent and has influenced a variety of theatrical forms. However, that does not excuse it from the impact it had on shaping how black people were viewed. I'm not saying that blackface was the cause of racism, but it perpetuated it by reinforcing racist notions.

All in all, comedy is a complicated matter that should not be dealt with in black-and-white - it is not all good, neither is it all bad. By writing this, I am not advocating for political correctness. For the most part, I believe that political correctness, especially in comedy, is unnecessary. I am not known for having an all-encompassing sense of humor. Whether I make a snarky video of myself making fun of principled nonvoters or pretend to believe that ageism is a bigger issue than misogyny, I am bound to offend someone. Nevertheless, I choose to stick to most of my jokes because they are a form of self-expression and I believe that the positive feelings from the recipients are greater than the negative ones. Even if I or someone else chooses to tell an "offensive" joke or if you choose to watch a comedic film where racial stereotypes are played upon, while we don't necessarily need refrain from doing so, we should at least be aware of the impact that our actions may have. 

"Just because humor exists about a subject does not mean that it is inherently good for change on the real issue." ~Ty Hicks

Women in comedy

Because I believe feminism and other issues dealing with gender roles to play an integral part of politics, I have decided to write on women in comedy.

I discovered this article. Way before reading it I have noticed that there are a lack of funny women - as the author states, "Please do not pretend not to know what I am talking about."

I think I may have noticed this a few years back when I saw friends of mine posting on Facebook about how funny Chelsea Handler is. I don't think she is funny. Well, I just checked out some videos, and I admit that she can be quick and a bit witty, but not enough for me to want to go out of my way to watch her show.

It got me thinking, "Why can't I find as many funny women as men?"

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Look at improv. "Whose Line is it Anyway?" is made up of almost completely men. Check out your school's or local community troupe. How many females are there? An even better question: how many of these women are actually funny?

At my school, there are more males than females in the troupe, and I do think they're funny, but not as much as the men.

The main problem is that I think women try too hard. I mean, men do too, but in my experience, women tend to do it more noticeably.

Most important rule of when trying to be funny: don't try to be funny.

I'm not sure if that rule is universally-accepted as being the most important rule of when trying to be funny, but it should be. 

I especially hate it when people actually do or say something legitimately funny, but backfire it by saying, "Nevermind, that wasn't funny." It's just like improv - make a choice and stick with it (in this case, it's whether or not you're trying to make something funny).

I believe women in the entertainment industry have a long ways to go - there are not many funny women, few female directors, and scripts are written with usually more men than women characters, and then those women characters tend to lack substance. 

That is one reason why I am interested in writing.

In theater, I have noticed that there are usually more female than male actors. However, there are more male characters. For one acting class, I was paired with another girl and we had to find a scene to perform, preferably with the characters being around our age. It took us days to find a decently long scene with two women with no other characters, and it was a mother-daughter scene, so not really around our real ages.

I can go on talking about women characters, and how a lot of them lack that substance I have previously mentioned...but that will be saved for another post.

I wonder what led women to be less funny than men. I would think that it has to do with to do with societal pressures and norms rather than biological differences (not ruling that out though). It may be similar to how repressed females are to their own sexuality (which, of course, I will cover in the near future).

In the article I mentioned at the beginning, the author's partner told him, "Women get funnier as they get older."

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Comedy: A Critical Introduction This book is an original approach to the study of comedy. While assimilating theoretical insights from Aristotle to the present day, the book contests, inter alia, the theory of comedy's ritual origin. It challenges the age-old and continuing attempts to determine the structure of action that characterizes comedy, suggesting instead that structures of action are shared by all genres, and that it is the specific mood that accounts for their differences. Mood is a prism through which a playwright wishes the spectator to perceive a fictional world. Comedy is characterized by its lighthearted mood, which generates a specific kind of laughter. If mood determines the genre of a fictional world - in contrast to current theory - comedy, satiric drama, and grotesque drama are different genres promoting different moods and aiming at different effects. Each genre should thus be read and experienced according to its inherent rules and not in terms of a theory that lumps these genres together. Comedy: A Critical Introduction discusses the pivotal role of commedia dell'arte in both reflecting comedy's classical tradition and influencing subsequent developments, especially in comedy's style of acting. It explores the relations between comedy and carnival and between comedy and joke-telling. It also probes the view that comedy is characterized by a unique vision and examines comedy in different media, such as cinema, comics, puppet theatre, radio drama, and TV drama. The book questions the traditional semiotic view that all meaning is in the text and suggests that, in generating comedic meaning, the spectator's contribution/reaction is no less vital than that of the text itself. Major contributions to a general theory of comedy - and to a sound methodology for the analysis of comedies - are presented. Ample references to comedies and/or pertinent analyses of such comedies - written over the course of 2,500 years of theatre recorded history - are provided, enabling readers to grasp ideas in their original terminology and logic. Each presentation is accompanied by critical comments which both introduce the problems involved and suggest possible solutions.

I have kind of noticed that. Not only do they seem to get funnier, but a bit more perverted too, especially if they've been married. I will definitely talk more about this when it comes to my female sexuality post.

People have asked me why I have decided to make this blog. These are the reasons I cite:

1) I want to educate people about politics, expand their minds, and get them to think outside the box.

2) Where I am currently living (Bellingham), conservatives and libertarians don't seem to have much of a voice. I had been trying to find a conservative or libertarian who would keep up a blog. Finally, I was like, "Fine, I'll do it." Oh yeah, that reminds me, I also need to keep up with local politics...

3) I need to practice my writing.

For the third reason, you may think, "Oh, she needs to practice writing for professional magazines, books, and other professional-y stuff." Actually, I am mainly practicing my comedy. Maybe you have noticed the title of my blog.

I am going talk about why exactly a comedy on a later date.

Look at how funny I am with the rest of the WWU Glee Club

People react to my humor in two ways: either A) "You're so hilarious!" and I'm like, "Oh, I never realized I was funny," (and it's sincere) or more commonly B) "Why are you being so serious?" and I reply, "Dude. I'm kidding." Oops, I guess I can be a little too dry.

In what ways do you think we can get more women to jump onto the comedic bandwagon, and most importantly, actually succeed in that area?

I am simultaneously funny and not funny - give me money.

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