My friends and I were talking about this. What is it? What is it that makes us laugh? What is funny? What makes things funny?
Some say it's the unexpected; if you can see a punchline coming, it often makes it unfunny. So therefore, it must be surprise that makes something funny. Here's an example of a very funny film from 1933 (I love the highly politically incorrect line "'anytime Annie!' She only said 'no' once, and then she didn't hear the question!"). But why, then, are some routines that we've seen a million times, in films, for example, still funny?
Some say it's incongruity; irony, a disconnect between the purported or intended meaning of something, and the alternate meaning the audience sees, works this way. The Onion's Point/Counterpoint offers both incongruity and the unexpected: the Point offers something you've seen a million times, and the Counterpoint something you weren't expecting, that is also incongruous.
But when the Firesign Theatre makes this faux "army training" video, saying "how to inform your wife, and others under your command," why is that line funny? It's unexpected, sure, considering the way I hope everyone views their spousal relationships. But the humour seems to derive, really, from something else: the fact that they're simply poking fun at those who hold views we all know that some hold, but we don't share. It's having fun as much with those who hold more progressive views, as with those of outmoded views they're comparing them to. It's saying that "it's as funny that someone's out there to catch this ball, as that there are those who wouldn't catch it."
Danny DeVito seems to find people doing violence to one another to be intrinsically funny, cf. "Throw Momma from the Train." He was very funny in Taxi, but his film Death to Smoochy is roundly considered one of the worst comedy films ever. Simply portraying people wanting to kill one another does not seem to be a guarantee of laughter. I hope Danny DeVito forgives me for that, but damn it... it's not always funny!
Nor is self-deprecating humour always funny. Often, it's in the delivery. But here is a brilliant comedian, Brian Regan, the best of our time (IMHO), who DOES do self-deprecating humour, better than anybody. Much of his humour is predicated on the idea of his supposed, self-reportedly mediocre intelligence, which in lesser hands would be a one-note joke; but, somehow... he kills us, for as many minutes as he cares to lay it on us, here. Why is that?
Bill Cosby did some self-deprecating humour. One of my favorite albums, when I was 7 years old (in addition to the Firesign Theatre "Don't Crush That Dwarf" Porgy Tirebiter single we had), was his "Revenge" album. I LOVED that album. I didn't understand a single thing he was talking about. I still don't, as an adult, of course, because half of it was just nonsense, as Eddie Murphy and Don Pardo reminded us. But a lot of what he did was to create fictional characters, like Fat Albert and the cop who busts him, to deprecate. Bill sort of made his own niche, I think.
Richie Pryor, of course, broke boundaries by taking something EXTREMELY sensitive, race relations, and blasting through our personal boundaries, and what was considered polite. When Richard Pryor began pushing the envelope, the Watts Riots of 1968, the Black Panther movement, and the tragedy of the King and Malcolm X assassinations, were all part of our everyday life, and people were wondering what to think about it. It was in 1968 that Richard began using the "N" word onstage. People seemed to laugh at that because they were laughing at themselves, for being so nervous, for not knowing how to act. Into this walked Richard Pryor, absolutely certain of himself. He broke our tension, somehow, while increasing it at the same time. When he died, I went to his website, and they hadn't updated it; the site still bore the message "I ain't dead yet, motherf^&*er!" I thought that was so beautiful, and that he would have loved it.
Comedy goddess Janeane Garofalo is good at casting herself as the person who is uncertain, and then skewering herself. This may be because she (correctly) idolized comedian Albert Brooks, who was always well able to do the same thing. So was Woody Allen, living in a perpetual state of fear from the menace of the world.
In 1974, somehow, I discovered Cheech and Chong. Again somehow, my parents allowed me, as an 11 year old, to receive their Los Cochinos %$%&$& and Big Bambu albums for my birthday. The drug humour was funny, since you weren't supposed to talk about these things, in the same way that Richie Pryor's "N" word was funny. But why was it funny that Cheech and Chong's Sister Mary Elephant kept shutting the class up with "class... class... class... SHUT UP!!!"? Yet it was.
The way Dustin Hoffman's expression changes from an uncomprehending smile to a look of alarm here in The Graduate is funny. Anne Bancroft's laughing at him is funny. Like the Firesign Theatre bit, half of the laughter comes of knowing that there's a comprehending audience, along with the uncomprehending innocent in Dustin's Benjamin. Same with Flirting with Disaster's two mothers, one brassily, unblinkingly showing her be-bra'd breasts to people who may or may not be comfortable seeing them, and the other being what she thinks is a good mother by reassuring her overgrown spoiled brat of a son that "even if you were Jeffrey Dahmer, we would love you." Peter Sellers' ridiculous Inspector Clouseau, with his tortured pronunciation of common words, and his physical bumbling, fits into this mold. The fantastic Tina Fey gets a lot of mileage on 30 Rock out of having her character Liz Lemon both understanding things that her dim co-workers don't, and being so much of a loser herself that she's pretty much a sitting duck for them. You're meant to identify with her Liz Lemon, the intelligent dork. Coach, from the great TV show Cheers, was far stupider than any of Liz's employees. But W.C. Fields had a lot of fun being someone of whom an audience could make fun, but for whom they had no sympathy.
We can identify the self-deprecating humour in Buster Keaton's hapless character/victim. But what is it about Sharlo's silly walk that is intrinsically funny?
Comedians often enjoy poking fun at rules, as Monty Python does here. Perhaps it's for the same reason that Richard Pryor did: because people are so tense when they're given a whole list of rules they must follow, that it's the job of the humourist to say, enough. Nonsense.
And speaking of nonsense, what about the sort of looning that's just so chaotic that you can hardly catch enough breath to analyze it?
The wordplay: the policeman making ridiculous gestures with his leg, and then saying: (well, I'll leave the corny punchline for you). The double-entendre is a staple of humour. The old Charles Trenet song (here done by Georges Brassens) contains a wonderful line. The French like their wordplay. The French word that stands in for our term, "what a bitch" (not only referring to a human being, but also, as here, an unpleasant situation) is "salaud," "bastard." So in this song, you get: "l'eau etait sal'/oh! quel sal'eau!", a homonym for "salaud"; thus, "the water was salty/oh! what salt water!" is in French a homonym for "the water was salty/oh! what a bitch!" :) Good old Charles Trenet.
My friends and I got into discussing the genius of Andy Kaufman. I remember watching this exchange, and Andy's other episodes of late-night "conflict," at the time they aired. How do we characterize his comedy? He was, I think, playing with the audience's uncertainty, as Richie Pryor was doing. Yet Richard Pryor burst through the audience's preconceptions or uncertainties about what polite society felt about race relations, and took them to a place where they weren't sure they should be comfortable, but he was leading them somewhere they understood; they knew where they were supposed to be, when they followed him there. But I feel that Andy Kaufman's genius was that he never, ever wanted to leave the audience comfortable. He was continually having fun with the fact that the audience never felt sure, and he wasn't going to let them. And, presuming that Jerry Lawler's admission, that it was all staged, was correct, I agree with the film version of Andy: "you don't have anything to apologize for, Jerry. I think you're the greatest." He was absolutely wonderful in this practical joke. What is this comedy?
Amplificatio ad Absurdum is wonderfully in evidence here, in the great Larry Miller's greatest bit, about the Five Stages of Drinking.
Jon Stewart, of course, has much fun with our "leaders," and often what he's having fun with is the fact that, well--we don't understand why the fuck they're doing what they're doing.
Of all the Saturday Night Live performers, Gilda Radner, here spoofing Patti Smith's far too New York New York musician, was the best. I couldn't find my favorite bits with her, though--those were the bits where she'd show up with a big, wide grin on her face, but a grin that said her character was absolutely excited and delighted about anything, absolutely anything, other than what the audience thought was funny. I just loved that about her. Thanks, Gilda.
And, not that this makes for a comprehensive list or anything, but while we're on the subject of wonderful comedians who were beloved of the great Gene Wilder, we have to end with one of the greatest, Marty Feldman. We loved it in Young Frankenstein, when Gene, outraged, spat out after taking the cup from Marty, "YOU CALL THIS TEA!!??", and Marty, smiling his chipper, cheerful smile, said "no, I call it hot water, I was rinsing out the cup!" But here, we get a combination of many of the aspects of comedy we've investigated here, as he discomfits John Cleese, who wants him to obey the rules, and personifies the character we can all laugh at, and with. Thanks, Marty.