Everything Happens So Much (or: But is it Comedy?)

I hadn’t heard of Horse_ebooks until reading a NewYorker article about it, which tells you something about my own internet browsing habits.[i]  For the uninitiated, Horse_ebooks [ii] is a Twitter account which posted a series of apparently unconnected messages, usually grammatically half-formed and reading like they had been taken at random from advertising copy (‘I have personally used this technique to break many memory’; ‘and more! Start raising your self-esteem today!’), but with occasional undertones of pathos or even humanity. It had the feel of a bot gone slightly wrong, or perhaps doctored in a bid to disguise its spamming.

Originally, this is exactly what it was – an automated programme pasting text culled more or less at random from books on e-library.net, the site for which it was advertising. But for the last two years of its life (the account became dormant last September), it had actually been run by Jacob Bakkila, who chose the text from publications across the internet. The feed created its own ecological niche, inspiring comics, merchandise and excited commentary on its significance.

In the New Yorker article, Susan Orlean places Horse e_books in the context of ‘net art’, artworks made specifically for (and often about) the internet.  Whatever about art, is it comedy? There’s a sly humour on passing the feed off as a benignly malfunctioning bot has a sly humour, nicely inverting our traditional preoccupations with machines passing as humans or possessing subjective qualities. And some of the individual tweets are undoubtedly funny. My favourite, and the most retweeted, is the title of this article; it has some of the gnomic quality of a Steven Wright one-liner.

That said, I’m not sure I’d call it comedy. Bakkila’s own description, ‘performance mischief’, seems more accurate: it’s playful, teasing expectations rather than subverting them, drawing attention to its own form. But its principle aim isn’t humour, and the tweets themselves are more often bizarre than amusing. The randomness of the tweets and the almost total lack of context for what they say gives them their somewhat unworldly charm, but also means that they rarely have anything recognisable as a set-up-reveal structure. And while the conceit of a fake bot is lovely, the result wasn’t a humorous narrative or an elaborate practical joke, but a constant is-it-or-isn’t-it, an uncertainty as to whether the author was human or not. One contributor to Orlean’s article was quoted describing Horse_ebooks as a ‘long con’, but this suggests a sustained attempt to fool people, which isn’t really what the feed was trying to do. It was playing with what they believed rather than firmly pointing them in a particular direction. This sort of deliberately ambiguity is much more characteristic of contemporary art than anything I would call comedy. The contrast with an earlier project of Bakkila’s is illuminating:

‘This Is My Milwaukee’ is more straightforwardly comic. It’s also less a lot less interesting (and rather dated – six years is an eternity on the internet).

Despite my luddite tendencies,  I have a passing familiarity with the different forms of comedy which have blossomed on Twitter: stand-ups and writers dashing off one-liners, fake Twitter accounts for celebrities, or just riffs on the practice of tweeting itself. There’s scope for something a little stranger there, more oblique and not afraid to risk being unfunny on occasion Even if Horse_ebooks isn’t itself comedy, it may yet prove of great importance for the genre.

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[i] As does this blog, which I started around five years after the vogue for them had peaked. I anticipate launching a Twitter account sometime in 2018.

[ii] Apparently it’s pronounced ‘Horse Ebooks’, not (sadly) ‘horsey-books’.

Top 10 comedy films – an alternative list

No. 9 – The Apartment

Only a few of the films on this list have the sole purpose of making audiences laugh. Most have some other aim, be it social, political or artistic (in the sense of stretching the boundaries of what comedies are capable).  Of those with a social message of some kind, The Apartment is arguably the best thought out and most perfectly pitched.

The main plot is the love story between office drone C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) and Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), an elevator girl at the building where he works. Baxter’s rival is Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray),  an overbearing personnel manager with the power to transform Baxter into an executive or dispatch him back to the drudgery from whence he came. This fact indicates the social critique the film develops, as does the use of Baxter’s eponymous dwelling by Sheldrake and other senior members of staff. This critique isn’t politically sophisticated, but few other films have so acutely tuned the epic themes of self-knowledge and rebellion against the social order to the minutiae of modern life. Any of us who have ever worked in an office (or lived in an apartment) can identify with Baxter as he juggles romance and his career and more generally tries to find some nobility in his subservient place in society. There’s no overt comment on the distorting effects of this society, but it’s hard not to read it between the lines as Baxter bends his life to accommodate those more powerful than him.

Billy Wilder is one of two directors whose work is more or less mandatory in a list like this.[i] There is no doubt that Some Like it Hot is a funnier all-out comedy than The Apartment, but arguably the latter has been more influential. This is partly because of its subject-matter, and partly because Wilder succeeded in coaxing dramatic themes into lightly played comedy. This bittersweet tone has been the template for any number of modern blends of comedy and drama.

That’s a beautifully chosen (and delivered) ‘fruitcake’. What might have been a corny, overplayed joke (‘She sends me a cake every Christmas’ ‘What kind?’ ‘A fruitcake’) is undercut, a word slipped into the middle of a line thrown away at the end of Lemmon’s monologue. It's poignant, and funny because of what Baxter's infatuation has become, and because he realises it. That mixture of something genuinely touching with a character's awareness of its absurdity is the gift The Apartment has given subsequent comedies.

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[i] No prize for guessing who the other one is. (There’s a good case to be made for Alexander Mackendrick, but – spoiler alert – I have decided not to include any of his films.)

Top 10 comedy films – an alternative list

Looking for inspiration for something to watch on New Year’s Eve, I tried the Guardian website for their inevitable Top 10 Films of 2013 list. While there, I perused their more extensive list of genre all-time Top 10s.[i] I found the comedy list a little disappointing. This is not to suggest that the films picked were not worthy of their place (with one exception, I greatly enjoyed them all), just that the list was a little predictable and, dare I say it, safe. Some Like It Hot, Annie Hall, The Life of Brian - these are the Citizen Kane, Godfather Part II and Rashomon of the comedy canon. You can see why they have to be there, but you can’t help but feel that their presence makes the list less interesting.

So I’ve decided to kick off the New Year with an alternative Top 10 Comedy Films. A few preliminary points are worth noting. First, these are not necessarily what I regard as the funniest ten films (the Guardian list has taken a good five or six of those). Nor are these the films I laugh the most at – some of them I included because they do something very different with the comic form, while remaining funny (in my opinion). I’ve tried to avoid consciously responding to the films in the Guardian’s list, but in a couple of cases I’ve more or less had to opt for an alternative effort from a particular director and a particular studio (there are probably other equivalences between the two lists if you care to look). And for the most part I’ve eschewed overly controversial choices – chances are you’ll have seen or at least heard of all of these films. No doubt there are people better qualified than I to come up with far more ‘alternative’ suggestions – if you are one of those persons, feel free to pass your suggestions on.

So (in no particular order) at no. 10 we have Groundhog Day.

Plenty of films have used the device of a character thrown by plot magic into an inexplicable scenario (Big, Midnight in Paris, The Exterminating Angel), and a few have had a romantic lead spying on their loved one to glean the knowledge with which to woo them (Everyone Says I Love You). Groundhog Day works these ideas together wonderfully, with Bill Murray (never better) chasing Andie MacDowell (very good in a less promising role) over the course of several year’s worth of the one day. It’s hard to think of a comedy which has better developed its humour from its basic premise. There are relatively few zingers – the funniest scenes rely on the combination of Phil Connors’s being trapped in Punxsutawney and exercising a petty dominance over the situation:

Apart from Murray’s list of deaths he has survived, he has no funny lines in this scene. The interactions with Doris and the other diners aren’t individually funny, but the culminative effect of the mini-scenes is beautifully judged (and a microcosm of the film as a whole).

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[i] We ended up watching their number-one crime film, Chinatown – a perfect New Year’s movie, which I should have thought of myself.

The Sky is the Limit

Rob Auton’s victory in Dave’s annual Funniest Joke Competition has drawn if anything more than the usual complaints. Without wishing to defend the joke in question (though it’s by no means the worst on the list), at least this time round the award has been given to a relatively obscure comedian who will benefit from the publicity. Auton’s hour, The Sky Show, is quintessentially Fringe, in the slightly old-fashioned sense of being determinedly peculiar and staged without a great deal of polish. Auton sets up his backdrop (several pieces of cloth across which is written ‘The Sky Show’) as the audience enter. The theme, such as it is, is the sky, encompassing surreal stories about a factory where the weather is made and a tatty rival to The Sun which mostly consists of photographs of the sky stuck onto pieces of paper. It’s the kind of humour that’s best thought of as a tightrope act – there is little by way of snappy material, slick stagecraft, audience interaction or big set pieces. Nor is it a piece of deliberately bad or obscure anti-comedy; there was never any sense that the show was a comment on stand-up. Rather, Auton has put the standard tropes of comedy aside in order to do something as much on his own terms as possible. It’s not always successful, but it is far more interesting than his winning joke might suggest.

As for the also-rans, one that stood out for me was Liam Williams’s, which he’s been using for a while to open his set:

It’s a fine joke, but much like the winner it’s a variant on an idea that’s been around for a while. Apparently this was a popular Victorian quip to sum up the difference between the mind and the physical universe: ‘What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind’.[i] Maybe someone should use that at the Fringe next year – there might be a prize in it…

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[i] A very quick search reveals a website attributing it to Berkeley, which would obviously place it earlier still. It sounds suspiciously witty to be by of the good bishop, but I’m no expert on his work, philosophical or comic.

Dissecting the Fringe: Edinburgh Diary

Thursday 15^th

Yesterday I touched on a genre, or perhaps a sub-genre, that has become prominent on the Fringe in recent years: narratives delivered using many of the tropes of stand-up. A somewhat different genre, though again one that has flourished recently, is a particular take on character comedy which might be termed the one-man sketch show: one performer presenting a rapid-fire succession of different characters in different situations.[i]

Of the examples of this genre which I have seen, Charles Booth’s is the closest to an acting showcase. His characterisation is very precise, the scenes are clearly demarcated (perhaps too clearly – the transitions took some of the energy out of the show), and the writing is aimed squarely at the character in each case. He is careful to vary the style of the comedy: apart from the straightforward monologues, we also have a character delivering a string of one-liners and a scene involving dance and a recorded voice. However, the show lacked variety in a different way, in what might be termed the tone. Booth is a naturally measured performer, and every scene felt controlled, even calm. There was never any sense of threat or even uncertainty as to what would happen next, and over the course of an hour the scenes started to sag slightly. The show could have done with a sharp increase in energy, or perhaps a sudden change in the style of writing, to provide the contrast required.

Joseph Morpurgo’s Truthmouth feels in some ways like a sharper version of Booth’s show: its pace is higher and the feel of scenes differs wildly, but with the same clear characterisation and writing. The gimmick used to sell the show is inspired (it is presented as a piece of verbatim theatre based on the real-life testimony of the characters portrayed), but this is not important as regards the content of the piece. What matters is Morpurgo’s incredible inventiveness is taking a familiar type (a doddering ex-military man, a lonely schoolboy, a researcher conducting an inane interview) and adding enough of a twist to make them fresh in each case. In addition to this, there are three sketches that are completely different again: suffice to say that they involve respectively the show’s technician, the star of a mobile phone game, and a being from the lower depths of hell. Without these scenes, Truthmouth would be a very accomplished offering; with them, it is a delight.

While Morpurgo offers a number of innovative ideas, his approach is in the tradition of creating recognisable characters in recognisable situations. Jamie Demetriou strays as far from this path as I have seen. Unlike Booth or Morpurgo, he presents four extended scenes. Each character has some familiar traits, but in each case the humour comes from elsewhere, though identifying exactly where is (interestingly) different. There are few jokes, little by way of physical comedy, and not much that would qualify as outright silliness, though there is quite a lot here that makes little sense. Saying that he does it by way of facial expressions, body language and the precise wording of the monologues is true, but not very helpful. Perhaps the key to his characters is the voice he gives to each. To take the example of the bullied schoolboy, much of the humour comes from his unusual sentence construction and lexicon; the latter is old-fashioned, the former baroque, and the effect is very precisely that of a child who has grown up largely in isolation from the real world. The final character, Michael, is a smooth-talking longue act, but Demetriou is careful to have him cling to his patter and rhythm even as his plight becomes more evident.

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[i] I say ‘one-man’, but some of its most successful exponents have been women.

Dissecting the Fringe

Wednesday 14^th

Watching She Was Probably Not A Robot, Stuart Bowden’s charming one-man show about the apocalypse and a friendly (or at least helpful) robot, I wondered why more shows like this don’t appear on the Free Fringe or Free Festival. The free show revolution which has occurred at the Fringe in the last decade or so has been strikingly dominated by comedy. There are obvious limitations to the kind of theatre that could be staged at free venues, most of which are little more than airless cupboards above dodgy drinking holes. But parallel to the increasing prominence of free shows has been a burgeoning genre, shows which straddle theatre and stand-up and which on the face of it would seem suitable (or at least more suitable) for free venues.

This isn’t entirely true of She Was Probably... It has no set and minimal tech requirements, and while Bowden does use a backstage area for costume changes, these are so simple that it is easy to imagine them working in a more basic space. He does, however, use the full extent of the wide Iron Belly stage, and such space is at a premium in the free venues. Perhaps the most significant demand his show would make, in order to achieve its naïve and slightly haunting atmosphere, is to be insulated from outside noise and latecomers, problems which are particularly acute at free shows.

Bowden’s show is towards the theatrical end of this genre: it is a monologue with the characters acted out, with frequent comedy and some audience interaction. The plays written and performed by Daniel Kitson are closer to stand-up, unsurprisingly given his background. The theatrical elements they use are more to do with the design of the set, lighting and music, and in principle the script and performance itself would work reasonably well (though not as well) without them. A number of performers have staged shows in a manner clearly influenced by Kitson’s, from Stefan Golaszewski’s more straightforwardly dramatic monologues to Terry Saunders’s indie musings. As basically straightforward monologues, any of these could transfer relatively easily to a free venue.

The real reason why theatre has made such little use of the free spaces may be more cultural; the feeling, rightly or wrongly, that free theatre will not be of a high standard, and will not get the press or industry attention focused elsewhere. The sheer volume of free comedy shows has meant that some of these acts have become successful (witness, for instance, Cariad Lloyd who was nominated for a Best Newcomer Award in 2011 on the basis of a free show), and this in turn has made going free a more acceptable option for established comedians. In addition, the financial pressures on comedians incline them towards non-paying venues, whereas this is something from which theatre groups, with more funding available from universities, arts grants and so on, are to some extent insulated. It will probably take one or two successful shows combining theatre and stand-up to lead the way and make at least this form of theatre a respectable presence on the free fringe.

Dissecting the Fringe: Edinburgh Diary

Tuesday 13^th

At the Fringe, I make an effort to find shows that are something other than the one-man-and-a-microphone stand-up norm. Apart from the pleasure of seeing an unusual idea succeeding, it can be just as interesting to see how such shows fail to fully realise the ideas they set out with or perhaps should have taken up. I should point out that I enjoyed each of these shows, and they were by no means failures – it’s just that in each case, it was possible to see what (I think) was being aimed at, and how the show fell short of achieving it.

David Trent’s selling point is his heavy interaction with video and music recordings. Save for a couple of stand-out sections where the footage speaks for itself (notably his ruthlessly edited version of John Bishop’s set) this technology is used to illustrate Trent’s riffs on the inanity of popular culture. Advertising, certain popular bands and a well-known internet search engine each receive a kicking. The mode of attack is broadly similar in each case – describe some irritating feature of the target, exaggerate or parody it, and point out its stupidity. This has the odd effect of making Trent’s show feel much more like a traditional stand-up railing at tiny problems in modern life. There’s nothing wrong with this per se – indeed, one of the best sections of the show was his sustained assault on a brand of energy drink called Pussy – but it did feel more like a straightforward stand-up set with a technological gloss than a new vehicle for telling jokes.

Thrice sees Sarah and Lizzie Daykin from Toby, Fringe stand-outs from a couple of years ago, teaming up with Nathan Dean Williams, who wrote the show and acts alongside them. It is pitched as dark and twisted, and at times it was (particularly the final sketch, which saw Santa Claus having to choose between a mother and her daughter). However, the dominant tone was better described as grotesque. This marked an important different from Toby, where the plot and characters were much more carefully worked out, giving the comedy a real darkness that comes from pathos. Here, wigs and broad accents dominated, and the characterisation was played for laughs rather than used to bring out what is funny in a situation. This was true even of the scenes which did involve pathos, such as the pair of lonely strangers telling each other what they didn’t like; the characters were so thin that pathos was all they had. Some of the ideas, such as the monstrous ‘baby’ foisted upon a lesbian couple, were wonderfully bizarre but produced less emotional impact than more carefully crafted situations might have.

Nadia Kamil has frequently collaborated with John-LukeRoberts, and their writing shares a love of organised silliness and an unusual precision in their jokes (Kamil has a lovely line about the best and worst forms of cleansing which is very similar in its construction to certain jokes by Roberts). This show is loosely themed around feminism, which means that quite a few of the set-pieces come with a heavily-signposted political point. I found these pieces less convincing than the free-floating absurdity on display elsewhere. Partly this is because fitting discussions of feminism into a comedy routine runs the risk of sloganeering, a trap into which some of Kamil’s pieces fall. More specifically, I felt that in only one of these set-pieces, a feminist burlesque dance, was the political point successfully underlined by the self-consciously absurd humour. Elsewhere, as in the reworking of ‘212’ into a rap promoting smear testing, the effect was strained, closer to the kind of generic ‘crazy juxtaposition’ comedy which is generic on the Fringe. There is obviously a market for feminist comedy, in particular mixed with a style of comedy that might vaguely be called surreal, but making a feminist point (or any political point worth making) in the context of this kind of comedy remains elusive.