The Engaged Intellect

In voicing the suspicion that stand-up is an anti-intellectual artform, Brian Logan seems to have overlooked some larger and more interesting themes. In particular, he is working with a severely constrained notion of how intellectual themes might feature in comedy. The ‘intellectual’ aspects of comedy which he considers are confined to highbrow references, e.g., lines adapted from Philip Larkin or musings on Walt Whitman. Witness Liam Williams, musing “I do enjoy having a magpie approach to high literature, [to splicing] high culture into standup. I like the effect that creates, having something very poetic next to a joke about wanking.”

Logan has a point in criticising the cultural cringe whereby some comedians feel the need to apologise, even half in jest, for dropping erudite names or using even vaguely highfalutin’ terms. But there is a reverse side to this, one with which any observer of recent comedy will be familiar: comedians using unexpected (often highbrow) references to get a laugh. Sometimes such a reference can be deployed in a genuinely amusing manner,[i] but often it is used as flattery: the audience understand the reference and by laughing are, in effect, applauding their own knowledge. Indeed, the fact that references sometimes get a reaction of this sort itself indicates a different kind of cultural cringe: stand-up audiences by and large don’t expect to hear Sophocles or Degas or de Beauvoir mentioned at a stand-up gig, and are pathetically grateful when it occurs. There is a difference between clever comedy and comedy which merely sounds clever, and highbrow references frequently blur this distinction, either wittingly on the part of the comedian or not.[ii]

The other point is that the intellectual element in comedy should not be confined to, or even particularly concerned with, erudite references. In any other kind of art or entertainment, the intellectual aspect of a work concerns either the form itself (e.g., challenging conventions and expectations concerning works of that kind) or the content of the work (expressing or engaging with complex ideas). For instance, in the theatre intellectual concerns might find expression in a political or social themes, or in experiments with theatrical form. A playwright who drops impressive-sounding names or ideas into the dialogue if anything risks reducing the nuance and complexity of genuine intellectual engagement to something little more than dinner-party badinage. And what goes for the playwright goes double for the benighted stand-up. This challenge – to give ideas and theories their due while also being funny – is the real issue facing the comedian who would be an intellectual.

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[i] The godfather of this comic trope is probably Woody Allen, and when his references work they are either witty in addition to the reference (as in the famous joke about cheating in a philosophy exam), or they work as a kind of shorthand to illustrate a cultural outlook at which Allen is poking fun.

[ii] To illustrate this difference, think of a comedian such as Demetri Martin whose jokes are as cleverly constructed as anyone’s, but who rarely hangs a joke on a recherché reference.

Top 10 comedy films – an alternative list

No. 8 – Fargo

After a brief two-year interlude, the alternative list of comedy film classics resumes.[i]

Number 8 is not a straight comedy, and not one of the Coen Brothers films routinely celebrated as their best comic work, but as someone who’s never been convinced by either The Big Lebowski or Raising Arizona I’m plumping for Fargo, a film which I enjoyed more than either of those and which does more interesting things with comedy.

One reason to nominate Fargo is its influence on subsequent films and in particular television series (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, the Fargo series). It pioneered a mix of comedy and often violent drama, where the tone of the comic scenes differs only minimally from the more serious and sometime shocking moments.

The other striking feature is the range of comic devices it uses. Chief among these are the Minnesota nice accent 

and the increasingly brutal range of misfortunes which befall Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi, in the quintessential Steve Buscemi role), from dealing with an uncommunicative partner in crime and an overly-officious car park attendant to beatings, being shot  and worse.

The most interesting comic feature of the film is Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand). She is the hero and clearly the smartest person on show, but at same time she’s an innocent, a hick and in some respects a comic figure. It wouldn’t be quite fair to say that the film makes fun of her, but it has fun with her good-naturedness, and with the fact that she outwits every other character, no matter how cynical they may be. This is most clearly demonstrated in the lecture she delivers to Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare):

  

There are no funny lines in this scene, and Marge’s homily does not come across as ridiculous: everything she says is correct, and true to her vision of the world. It just sounds funny when delivered to a man she had a short while ago found stuffing his former accomplice into a wood chipper. By placing her homespun wisdom in that context, but in no other way undermining it, the Coen Brothers manage to have their cake and eat it too.

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[i] An alternative to the Guardian’s list from a few years back.

Peep Thought

As Peep Show concludes its final (and somewhat disappointing) season,[i] it is worth reflecting on one of the many sources of its greatness. One of Peep Show’s main weapons is the comedy of awkwardness, but the way its cringe-worthy moments are achieved is different to some other noted examples of this art. The most obvious contrast is with Curb Your Enthusiasm. Simplifying a little, the plot of most Curb episodes involves constructing a climactic scene where Larry David is placed in an embarrassing situation in part because of something he did (or said, or didn’t do, or didn’t say) previously. Frequently this scene will bring together two hitherto separate plot lines, the combining of which generates the awkwardness. To take just one example, in the final episode in Season 8 Larry accuses Michael J. Fox of harassing him and using his Parkinson’s Disease as an excuse, while also trying to buy a suitable present for his girlfriend’s son. Hence the climactic scene, where Larry’s demonstration through mime of what present he bought is mis-interpreted by Fox and everyone else:

In Peep Show, this kind of plot is used, as when the untimely death of a family pet is clearly a set-up for the following scene:

However, awkwardness is frequently established in less circuitous ways, e.g., Jeremy’s unprompted musical advice:

Or Mark trying to guess the names of indie bands:

That Peep Show can develop the comedy of awkwardness with so little plot machinery is suggestive of how the show as a whole works. These scenes rely on an unusual degree of realism, both with regard to the central characters and to the reactions of the rest of the cast. Mark and Jeremy are sufficiently well-developed characters that their behaviour, though typical for each of them (one of the hallmarks of the classic sitcom) is not entirely predictable. Add to that the tone of the show, where characters rarely break into complete hysterics when something goes wrong, and ­­the superb grasp of the details of everyday social interactions, and you have a show sufficiently nuanced and rooted in reality to be able to generate awkward moments in a single scene.

Larry David is less of a dramatic character, more of a machine for creating awkward situations. He is not stupid (Curb wouldn’t be nearly as funny if he was), just bloody-minded, completely unwilling to accept or even consider the possibility that he might be in the wrong, and unlucky - the best Curb episodes tend to be those where Larry is has done little wrong, but faces calamity anyway.

That said, sometimes he just gets what he deserves:

There is less detail or subtly to him than either Jeremy or Mark. It doesn’t follow that Larry is less funny, but it indicates one of the ways in which Peep Show was such a successful and unique creation.

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[i] It had its moments – Super Hans’s wedding vows were a thing of beauty – but overall it didn’t reach the admittedly stratospheric level of previous years. Maybe it’s true what they say – you should never go back to make a ninth season. 

Comédie sans frontieres?

The national sense of humour, much like national characteristics more generally, is hard to define though often recognisable. This is particularly true of Finland, where the distinctive sense of humour is often one of the first things mentioned about the locals. Having recently moved to Helsinki, I was curious to see what evidence of this dry and self-depreacting wit I could uncover. Obviously this is the work of a lifetime, or at least more than one blog post, but in the interests of making a start I went along to a local alternative comedy night.[i] What was most interesting about the experience was how little I learned about the Finnish sense of humour, and what it suggested about stand-up as a form of entertainment.

The night I attended, Comedy Idiot, had seven Finnish performers out of nine, and what was striking was how like any multi-stand-up night in the UK it was. There were different accents and local references (the politician most sneered at was Alexander Stubb rather that David Cameron), but in terms of themes and the attitudes displayed by the acts and clearly expected of the audience, it could have been Headingley or Hackney rather than Helsinki. Topics touched on included ex-girlfriends, hipsters, Ikea, parenting, growing up in a strict ethnic-minority household, the perils of drinking too much (it may lead to involuntary euthanasia, apparently), plus the regulation edgy material; any of these would have been familiar to UK audiences, and would have been received in much the same way.

The biggest difference was the style of the performances. As might have been expected, few of the performers could have been classed as high-energy. In general they were more understated, and in a couple of cases very dry indeed. But this difference should not be overstated - that style is currently quite popular in the UK, albeit often with a Stewart Lee-esque running commentary on the comedian’s own performance which none of the performers at Comedy Idiot undertook. One other difference, related to the lack of energy, was how few of the performers spoke in any voice but their own; there was very little imitating other people or enacting dialogues. This might suggest something about the Finnish sense of humour, but more likely it suggests that most of the performers did not come to stand-up through university drama or comedy improv.

I can think of two possible reasons for this similarity with stand-up in the UK, apart from the fact that the performances were in English. The first is that the performers might, consciously or not, have been modelling their acts on British or American prototypes. After all, this is often the case with stand-up in the UK or the US, and one of the main reasons for the fact that many newer acts there feel familiar, if not downright derivative. The second reason is a tentative thesis to do with the nature of stand-up itself. As a practice and set of conventions imported wholesale, it may tend to smooth out local idiosyncrasies. The beauty of the format, it has often been remarked, is its simplicity – the performer can in principle say or do whatever they want. But that very lack of technical or co-operative demands arguably tends to make performers, isolated on stage and wholly responsible for their own success or failure, cling to what they know works; and what works is usually fairly familiar and restricted in terms of range and style. None of the performers at Comedy Idiot presented anything avant-garde, let alone a local subversion of the genre, but this arguably tells us less about the peculiarities of the Finns and more about stand-up as a global entertainment form. When you think of the sheer number of active comedians, the percentage who are doing anything particularly inventive or parochial will be very small indeed. Therefore, if I wanted to discover something about the peculiarities of the Finnish sense of humour, a comedy club was the last place to which I should have ventured.

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[i] In English. The English-language comedy scene is thriving in Finland – Helsinki is hosting the upcoming Arctic Laughs festival, with a mixture of local acts and UK-based performers. Finland also has a native language comedy scene, which to the uninitiated seems mildly terrifying, like listening to theoretical physicists, or Harry Potter devotees discussing the rules of quidditch.

Tommy: What’s Comedy Got To Do With It?

 “I’ve been doing this for eighteen years. I could be doing it for another twenty. I’m tired of it, like. What interests me is just getting up now and talking, and seeing if that encounter between a person and a crowd where it’s totally spontaneous, if that can bring the adventure back into it”

“It feels like being wilfully shit. It makes you feel like you’re an artist taking chances but you’re not. It’s indulgent.”

– Tommy Tiernan, Tommy: To Tell You The Truth

There is something very attractive, in prospect at least, about an artist rebelling against convention and pursuing their own vision even at the expense of popularity. In comedy, the artistic risks come with an extra edge, since an alienated audience will make clear what they think in such a stark manner. Perhaps because of this, pretty much any comic who is seen to break new ground has been praised for, among other things, ignoring or at least downplaying the wishes of audience members.

Tommy Tiernan’s all-improvised tour of Europe last year, documented in Tommy: To Tell You The Truth, outwardly fits the above description. In fact, it is very different. On what is shown there, his performances consisted of him alternately rambling and ranting, with a sprinkling of genuine wit (as when in Zurich he discusses Marx’s quixotic attempt to incite socialist revolution in the most bourgeois city in the world). Early in the film he presents himself as taking artistic risks, but by the middle of the tour, in the face of bemused audiences and car-crash gigs, he expresses doubts about the merits of his new approach.

It is interesting to consider the difference between what Tiernan does on this tour and the kind of artistic risk-taking that seems worthwhile. One tempting response is to say that it’s a question of what you like: something is ‘risk-taking’ or ‘adventurous’ if you enjoy it, ‘self-indulgent’ if you do not. But I don’t think this is quite right. After all, it is possible to admire an artist for striking out on their own path, even if you find what results boring. For instance, I admire Paul Foot for his wilful eccentricity, even though I personally don’t enjoy the results:

What seems lacking in Tiernan is a sense of the possibilities and the value of what he has been doing, i.e., comedy in general and his comedy in particular. On stage he seems rudderless (which is very different to an improviser who is control of what they are doing, even if they don’t know exactly where they are headed). It is worth contrasting his approach with anti-comedians like Ed Aczel and Neil Hamburger. They create comedy by subverting and mocking the conventions of stand-up and the expectations of the audience, but they do so in effect by establishing and exploiting new conventions based on rejecting the standard approaches. What Tiernan is doing is, in a sense, a purer form of anti-comedy, one which undermines much more basic conventions of stand-up (that the comedian is funny in a way which the audience can be expected to appreciate) but not for any discernibly comic end. His tour manager describes the show as ‘Like punk rock improv… there are no rules’. But apart from the fact that the majority of improvisers do use rules, improvised comedy only works if it is directed to a certain purpose, i.e., being funny.

Tiernan himself worries that what he is doing is self-indulgent, which usually has connotations of arrogance and self-importance, but arguably he is also suffering from a loss of faith in the value of making people laugh unless it is accompanied by some philosophical insight or catharsis. This view might be understandable, though still curious, in someone who did not tour European cities playing what were presumably billed as comedy shows. Furthermore, the exercise is not only unfair on the audience members; Tiernan is selling himself short as well. Comedy which forsakes the search for laughter in favour of higher concerns will not only be poor comedy, but will sabotage its chance of achieving anything else. 

Freely Speaking

The right to offend, and the corresponding right of audiences to bellyache about it, is an ongoing topic in the comedy world and elsewhere. Spiked, the online home of contrarian libertarianism, hosted a debate on the subject at the Stand in Edinburgh earlier today, and assistant editor Tom Slater has published articles here and here. My response, which tries to tease out the differences between the rights of the interested parties and broader threats to freedom of speech, is here.   

Dissecting the Fringe: Edinburgh Diary

Tuesday 11^th

Matilda Wnek & Rosa Robson, the duo who make up Beard, describe The Grin of Love, as mixing ‘sketch, clown, theatre and nightmare’. For some of us, the term ‘clown’ will always have nightmarish connotations, but Beard carefully disarm any such link. Their pocket description is in fact as accurate and succinct as one could hope for. Not hoping to match it for brevity, I can nevertheless fill in some of the details.

The Grin of Love is one sense an abstract work. Instead of sketches with discernible plots or scenarios, Wnek and Robson present a series of set-pieces, most of which bear a delightfully tangential relation with reality. But in another sense their work is rooted in the concrete. Rather than beginning with characters or situations, each set-piece is anchored in a particular prop or props (e.g., a glass of wine, a veil and some disturbing make-up, an orange and a banana) deployed in a particular way (to indicate, respectively, a bored person of substantial means, a twisted gentleman’s club, and the miracle of reproduction). Some of the props look ridiculous and are played for laughs, but more often they are entry points to an otherwise hermetic world, and vehicles for the performers to playfully explore their own presence on stage.

Almost every sketch features audience interaction, but in keeping with a recent trend (for instance, Ben Target) it is neither threatening nor humiliating. The first audience member brought up on stage is asked to participate in a weird rite where the humour lies in the strangeness of what happens rather than what is happening to the victim. Later on, the entire audience is invited to wear blindfolds, to throw beans through two hula-hoops in answer to survey questions, and to collaborate in the supposed magic powers of each performer.

This way of approaching sketch comedy is the polar opposite of such troupes as The Pin or Minor Delays, who use few if any props and tend to provide variations on a more orthodox characters-in-a-recognisable-situation formula. But for sheer inventiveness and the detail with which they have worked out their ideas, Beard are a match for any of these groups. The Grin of Love may look ramshackle and deliberately odd, but it shows all the signs of having been thought through in some detail.