poliphilo | Thoughts On Comedy

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comedy

Thoughts On Comedy

Comedy is a young person's game.

Ok, there are some comical old people out there, but I can't think of many.

Most comics lose it as they get older. Steve Martin anyone? A lot of the smarter ones retire or find something else to do. Michael Palin, for example, has reinvented himself as an "explorer".

Comedy works by surprising us. The longer a comedian is in business the less likely it is that we'll find his/her schtick surprising.

All comedy is subversive. Even the gentlest. It challenges things as they are. The older, more comfortable, more embedded in the establishment a comedian becomes the less unsettled and unsettling s/he's likely to be, the less in touch with the zeitgeist and the less essentially funny. Witness the career of Bob Hope.

The more you have to lose, the less willing you are to issue the challenge.

The comedians who last the longest are those who are funny by nature. Those who can't help it. Frankie Howerd for example. Frankie's comic longevity had nothing to do with his material and everything to do with who he was- that shamble, that long rubbery face, that unique combination of campness and misanthropic gloom.

The comedian is always a misfit. Out of kilter. Peculiar. Shamanic even.

Comedins lose it because they get scared. They get scared of the weirdness. They get scared of themselves.

Every great comic is a Yorick- that is to say, a death's head.

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Fields is certainly one of the exceptions- a guy who never stopped being funny.

Carlin I don't know and Burns I only know by reputation.

It's odd how very little comedy crosses the Atlantic in either direction. This is especially true of stand-up.

Still excellent -

George Carlin (even more sharp and pointed than ever) - if you don't know of him, try to find out. He has always been really good at saying it how it is!
Robin Williams
Lily Tomlin
anyone who remains from Monty Python
You also have some extremely funny British comedy shows with older actors and actresses.
Steve Martin's books are VERY funny and pointed.
Richard Pryor (before he became so ill)
Rowan Atkins

a while back:

Shelly Berman
Dan Rowan and Dick Martin (Laugh-In) - they were older
Benny Hill
All of the Muppets people!

Robin Williams seems to be shifting from comedy into straight dramatic acting. He went through a soft and sentimental phase and then started playing psychopaths.

I'm not sure about Rowan Atkinson. I think his golden days (Blackadder and Bean) are behind him.

Most of the Pythons are doing things other than comedy. Palin does travel documentaries, Jones does historical documentaries, Gilliam directs films. Cleese (who was always the most charismatic of them) hasn't really turned in anything except guest appearances since the critical and box office failure of Fierce Creatures.

All these people are still on top of their game but it's not the game they were playing in their youth. They're slowing down and/or diversifying as they get older.

Comic actors are rather different from comedians- and yes, they can go on forever. Dame Judy Dench is a fine comic actor, but not a comedian. Occasionally you get someone who is both a great comedian AND a great comic actor, but they're rare. Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields and (above all) Peter Sellers come to mind...

We watched a bit of Louis Black (who is an older standup comic) last night. *Woofff*... he is extremely funny, yet his humor almost hurts.

We also watched a Robin Williams special rebroadcast a few weeks ago. His standup comedy is still really, really right on the money! (and might I add... I have never seen anyone sweat so much!)

I haven't seen Williams doing stand-up or improvisation for a while now. It's good to know he's still got what it takes.

This is so on the money! I have a friend who wanted quite desperately to be a stand-up comedian at one time, and I never understood why because she didn't have any edge at all. She could certainly be sharp and witty, but she wasn't ever saying something about society that could only be approached through the mask of comedy. But you can't tell someone that. She went on to become a psychologist, which seems to me a related field anyway.

That's an interesting perception- that psychology and comedy are related fields. I immediately think of Sigmund Freud- and what a mischief maker he was.

One of the things I have always remembered from my senior year seminar in theatre was the discussion of an essay by Freud on comedy, in which he argued that comedy was almost always about aggression, on some level. It's been years since I've read the article, but it's something that springs to mind when I watch or listen to comedy.

I can't put my hand on the article easily, but I just found this on the web:

"Freud, in 1905, stated that wit and humor are socially acceptable outlets for repressed sexual and aggressive desires. Freud also believed that making others comic through mimicry, disguise, unmasking, caricature, parody, and travesty is a highly aggressive act. According to Martin Grotjahn, in his book, Beyond Laughter, published in 1957, “Freud’s thesis is simple and straightforward: Laughter occurs when repressed energy is freed from its static function of keeping something forbidden under repression and away from consciousness. A witticism starts with an aggressive tendency or intent-an insult like, shocking thought. This has to be repressed and disappears into the unconscious like a train into a mountain tunnel….it later reappears and becomes acceptable, and the energy originally activated to keep the hostility under repression is freed into laughter.”

I think that's entirely right. The only thing I'd query is the emphasis on repression. I don't think John Stewart, making jokes about Bush, is repressing his hostility in the least.

Comedy is a young person's game.

Funny you should say that because there's an article in the Radio Time about Ricky Gervais in which he says the exact opposite. *g*

I think you're probably right about standup comedians, but I would dispute it in the field of comic actors and writers, many of whom get better with age. There are a lot of older people on radio who are very very funny, e.g. the whole I'm sorry I haven't a clue team who are no spring chickens.

At least I sincerely hope it doesn't apply to writers because at the age of 53 I've just finished a comic novel!

I don't think I need fall out with Gervais over this. He says a comedian matures at 30- which, from where I'm standing- is young.

Writing comedy is a different game altogether. P.G Wodehouse was still producing novels in his 90s. :)

He says a comedian matures at 30- which, from where I'm standing- is young.

Very true!

And of course the advantage of writing over performing live is that you can take days or weeks to think up the witty line and no one can tell just from reading the final draft. *g*

I think energy levels come into it.

Watching recent appearances by Norman Wisdom I've been astonished by how much energy he still seems to have. I guess I'd have to add him to my list of rare comics who keep going into old age. Actually, I think he's a lot funnier now than he was in the '50s.

funny you should say that about steve martin. he's turned to writing of late, and surprisingly enough his writing is rather good... much better than anything he did as a comic, i'd say.

I'd heard that Martin is a fine writer. Perhaps that's what energises him these days- and he just appears in things like Cheaper By The Dozen to keep himself in chardonnay.

Steve Martin--and Bill Murray, who is now playing very serious roles (but his face is still the same as he once was when pretending to be serious, so sometimes I can't decide if he is really serious...)

I wish you and Ailz a very Happy New Year! (I may have already said so, but it's New Year's Eve, and so I'm saying it again.)

I love Bill Murray. I think he's the greatest American comic actor- ooh, lets make a really sweeping claim- of the past 50 years.

And a Happy New Year to you and Kate!

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I think there's a difference between being a comic actor and being a comedian. It's something like this- that a comedian creates a persona and is then stuck with it, whereas an actor moves from part to part. Also the comedian is a lone wolf, creating comedy by him/herself or with a stooge whereas the actor creates it in co-operation with other actors as part of an ensemble. OK, there's no hard and fast boundary and some performers move to and fro accross the line, but I think we usually know what it is we're watching. Cary Grant was one of the funniest performers of the 20th century, but he was an actor not a comedian.

Being a comedian, I would suggest, takes a lot more out of a person, which is why many comedians move into acting as they grow older. Bill Murray and Robin Williams are prime examples of this. Comic actors (like Pat Routledge and the cast of Keeping Up Appearances) can go on and on and on.

Comedy mostly is a young man's game. Some of the vaudeville comedians broke into movies only in middle-age, so we can't quite say if they'd have been much funnier when younger: W.C. Fields was in his 50s and 60s when he put out his classics, and the Marx Brothers were in their 40s when they broke into movies.
I've lately been watching episodes from the later seasons of Spike Milligan's "Q," when Spike and the cast are running around with grey hair and beards, and to me seeing all these older gentlemen running around acting silly is rather endearing. I have to admit that I enjoy Q more than The Goon Show.

Milligan was a comedy genius. Most of the things the Python team got credit for pioneering- like dispensing with punchlines and letting one sketch bleed into the next- had already been done by Milligan in Q.

I agree entirely, and Terry Jones has admitted that on multiple occasions. If Python is more poular, I think it's because it's smoother and more accessible than Q. The impression I get from Milligan's show is one of great impatience with any form and with any prolonged suspension of disbelief. I can watch the Flying Circus and see well-crafted sketches strung together (especially in the first season), but Q is a blizzard of thoughts seemingly emanating from one consciousness.

I'm old enough to remember the first airing of the first episode of Monty Python.

And I thought, yeah, these guys are Milligan wannabees.

The BBC has never repeated Q. I think they're afraid of it.

2006, 2007, 2005 and now I'm off to 2004...I'll get to 2008 soon, and I've dipped my toes into the waters of Purchas as well.

I've written fanfiction for two years, have maybe 200,000 words of it to my "credit", and I don't really get it anymore. Someone just emailed me complaining because someone else "stole" some quotes they wanted to use in a comment. yawn.

Fanfic is like glorified kindergarten. And you are right, it is "safe".

I am someone who suddenly deletes journals, hence me being anonymous. I do it because always at some point there comes a time when I stop writing for myself and write guarded words, fearful of others.

I hope to be as interesting as yourself when I'm 56. Alas, I am barely nibbling at 40's cardboard fortress...

(These are all subjects you talked about in 2005...I'm not a total nutcase, honest. :) )

Thank you for your kind words. You're working through my journal backwards? I'm honoured. It's nice to know this old stuff is being read.

So you don't have an on-line home at present?

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Thoughts On Comedy

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