From Chris Rock to Hannah Gadsby: the new book treating standup as fine art
When Chris Rock wants to figure out if a new idea is funny, he performs without the aspects of his persona that make him distinct: he doesn’t repeat the premise several times throughout a joke, or pace the stage, or make certain words two syllables as opposed to one. He delivers the joke flatly.
Rock feels that’s the only way he can take the temperature of what is actually funny, since the popularity of his standup over the last 33 years has made him so famous, audiences give him the benefit of the doubt when he walks on stage. It’s a process of bombing as a means to combat fame.
In his book Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture – and the Magic That Makes It Work, Jesse David Fox, a comedy journalist at Vulture and host of the Good One podcast, tries to show how contemporary standup, its processes and complexities, can be studied like fine art. What Rock is doing has methodology, rhythm, tone, content. “There’s a willingness to discuss the things comedians say, and less interest in discussing how they say it. And because of that, a lot of confusion happens,” Fox says.
Fox argues that comedy should be taken seriously, and make use of metrics beyond good or bad. Instead, audiences should judge standup on qualities that help it succeed as an art form, such as vulnerability, openness and the ability to connect with an audience beyond just being funny.
Fox references the controversy surrounding Dave Chappelle’s recent standup specials, including The Closer, whose jokes about the transgender community were condemned. “I did feel like there was almost a layer of confusion on why a person would even do this,” says Fox of the public outcry, which he agreed with. But, he says: “This is the reason comedians do this. They think it’s a carnival. They think we are more equal if we all make fun of each other. And they’ve experienced where that is the case.”
This value system is complicated by the fact that Chappelle, like many comedians, occupies a cultural space previously held by public intellectuals. As shown in recent Saturday Night Live hosting stints and Chapelle’s special 8:46, released after the killings of Trayvon Martin and Breonna Taylor, Chappelle is often looked to as a leader and moral lodestone for the country. ““Chappelle, at the turn of the millennium, taught people that a joke might be socially irresponsible. He taught people not only to care about the intentions of a comedian but how they’re received,” Fox says.
An explosion of access to comedy has changed our relationship to it, Fox says. Toward the end of the 1980s, clubs that treated standup as base restaurant entertainment began to close. In the 1990s, with the rise of Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and Comedy Central’s standup sets, comedy increasingly became a venue for sociopolitical discussion. While Lenny Bruce and George Carlin
may have been seen as the voices of their generations, Fox credits Jon Stewart’s Daily Show with providing comics power and gravitas. “Stewart’s humanity and righteous anger allowed him to occupy a place in news media that gained power,” Fox says.
Fox is hopeful about the future – he says similar power born of righteous frustration can be seen in the rise of standups like Mitra Jouhari, Brittany Carney, Zach Zimmerman and
Jay Jurden, who discuss their complex identities and serve as a pushback against the dominant form of standup, which minimizes a comic’s story in favor of a wall of jokes. Fox feels the existence of this alternative group is essential to the health of the medium, and hails work like Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette, which is painfully human and earnest – in contrast to what we’ve been taught makes comedy successful.
“I think comedy benefits from a continual pushback against how it’s done,” Fox says. “I always want there to be an alternative group, because the truth is mainstream comedy tends to be a manifestation of what was happening previously.”