Topic: I am writing about stand-up comedy because I want to find out how comedians are able to discuss controversial subjects to help my reader understand how entertainers can influence the social consciousness of the mainstream.
Description:
I saw a stand-up show last Tuesday. The headliner
Tommy Sinbazo shot off (no pun intended) with jokes about masturbating with his fiancé’s fancy beauty lotion, dressing up as Santa Claus and pretending to rape his future son as a punishment for bad behavior, and digging up a corpse to use a sex toy; to provide a little topical commentary on the economy. If these topics were discussed anywhere else save for in your weed dealer’s basement, you’d probably end up fired, defriended, and maybe in handcuffs. Yet Sinbazo yielded no more resistance but a couple groans, which he replied “I’ll fucking take that, a groan is just a laugh you won’t own up to.” Ten more jokes about human genitalia and several laughs’ not “owned up to” later and I’m talking to the performers after the show. The first thing I noticed was that these performers had ceased to be the loud, profane, and obnoxious characters they were on stage and were now polite, gracious, and friendly. I told them about my research proposal and they agreed that’s it’s interesting to study how comedians are able to get away with such racy content today. Not only is it tolerated at most clubs but expected. Sinbazo gave me an example to illustrate how the craft of comedy has been able to change and adopt a more vulgar form of speech: “Before if you did bad[poorly on stage] you said you ‘bombed’, now people say they ‘ate a dick’ like, ‘aw man I sucked so hard today, I ate like six dicks’” We all laughed and I said that was my point exactly. I want to find answers to questions like “Why has discourse of this manner been an effective form of social commentary since the latter half of the 20
th century?” but to do that I must first find the answer to “How did we get from ‘bombing’ to ‘eating six dicks’?” Asking monumental questions like this makes me feel as though I’m following the footsteps of other great Anthropologists like Gilbert H. Herdt or Margaret Mead, but I’m stepping of flaming bags of dog poo in size 18 clown shoes along the way. Which isn’t as weird as the Sambian Flute Ceremony if you ask me.
Ok enough, with the anecdotal bullcrap. That was just to illustrate how I’ve been a big fan of comedy, I love to make jokes, and hope to one day be able to write/perform jokes for an audience rather than my friends or classmates forced to read my writing; to explain why this topic is personal to me.
On a more scholarly level, the aim of this project is to research how the comedian is a public figure different from the leaders of American government, businesses, news media and universities. Politicians, news anchors, and mainstream celebrities are heavily censored and pressured to structure there language so they appeal to a mass audience. Some comedians have done the absolute opposite and try to offend and provoke their audience which has ironically resulted in mass appeal proven by sold out shows, HBO specials, and multiple Grammy awards. The comedian is able to transcend both the public and private spheres of conversation and speak about personal and intimate issues that people keep to themselves, even though so many share the same concern. In this way, the comedian is given a certain authority, they become “a minor mystic” (Douglas 306) Analyzing the role and the impact of the stand-up comedian requires a combination of literal analysis of the performer’s material and a historical analysis of the performer’s reception by society. American Studies is a discipline that's terms and theories serve me well in trying to interpret the effect of stand-up in American culture.
Preliminary context description:
I have classified these comedians as “outsider” comics, social commentators outside looking in. I do not use the term outsider in the sense of a simple dichotomy because these comics on the individual level do not approach everything in a radical fashion. They instead only hold this outsider appeal mainly from their stage persona, which may be influenced and borrow from their life experience but exaggerate to make contrast to what an acceptable public figure looks like. The stand-up comedian is a social agent to mock and critique authority and by doing so provides relief to the stressed out workers of the formal economy. As researcher Mary Douglas puts it “Jokes expose the inadequacy of realist structuring…and so release the pent-up power of imagination.” The comedian is able to provide new thought and ways of seeing because the comedian is actually encouraged to pursue outlandish thoughts and concepts that others block out in order to stay focused on their work and duties. This what I mean by an “outsider comic” a person who is not held down by scrutiny of cable news conglomerates or voters, but by being provocative, offensive, and informal.
I have also narrowed down a time frame and specific comics to reference and analyze. These comics were chosen because of their controversy, popularity, and prolific careers. These comedians also were able to get their start because they emerge from the more radical and free thinking neighborhoods created by the cultural shift of the 1960’s. Neighborhoods like Greenwich Village in New York City or Haight and Ashbury of San Francisco provided fertile locations for outsider comedy to emerge. The comic most cited for a shift in vulgarity, frankness, and social criticism of stand up is Lenny Bruce who went through multiple arrests and a bankrupt inducing legal battle with authorities to defend this new form of entertainment. Other countercultural figures would emerge challenging taboo subjects such as race, drugs, abortion, and patriotism. The two most prominent figures would be George Carlin and Richard Pryor. Andy Kaufman and Robin Williams would also emerge coincidentally and change the straight-laced “one-liner” type delivery styles to more absurd, physical, and manic styles of performance. All of these new voices sprang up after the Lenny Bruce opened the door to shock comedy in the 1960’s to 1980’s. The last and most recent comic I would reference would Bill Hicks of the 1980’s who sparked a second wave of counter-culture comedy, and was reaching global fame right before meeting an untimely death. In Richard Zoglin’s book “Comedy at the Edge” he sums up the shift of comedic style in the 1970’s as “old comics made jokes about real life. The new comics turned real life into the joke.” (Zoglin 5)
Sources:
Mukerji, Chandra handra, and Michael Michael Schudson. Rethinking Popular Culture, Contemporary Perspectives In Cultural Studies. Univ of California Pr, 1991. <http://books.google.com/books/feeds/volumes?q=0520068920>.
Zoglin, Richard ichard. Comedy At The Edge, How Stand-up In The 1970s Changed America. Bloomsbury USA, 2008. <http://books.google.com/books/feeds/volumes?q=9781582346243 >.
The correlation of the "outsider" image of popular American Comedians is the theme of my research proposal. My goal is to find which historical, behavioral, or cultural factors play into American's tastes in comedy. The evidence produced from this study could aid in future studies about other mediums such as punk rock or street art that start from counter/sub culture roots to becoming popular icons of American Culture. So my research question is:
My methodology would be literary and historical analysis of controversial comedians who have pushed the boundaries of obscenity as an act of dissidence. Since my argument is that Stand Up comedy is a powerful form of dissidence because the performers are not only allowed but expected to be uncensored, outrageous, and shameless, so virtually any comedian's work could be examined. But the comedians I've selected to examine lean towards certain anti-authoritative stances: religion, corporate marketing, and government, are males, have an extensive amount of material, and their careers occurred somewhere between the period of the 1960's - 1990's, since standup comedy today is saturated with shock comics. The comics I would like to analyze would be George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce, and Richard Pryor. The problem would be that I am a fan of these performers and may hold a bias that would affect my objectivity. So I could also examine comedians that I don't like or were not successful- e.g. Michael "Kramer" Richards and the "N word" fiasco to counter it, but that's really trading one bias for another. To avoid making the study too broad, I will not go in depth about intersectionality or other social factors (gender, ethnicity, or class) to which would require me to address too many comedians. Books, course readings and journal articles I have attained will be used to define the general theory and structure of comedy and forming humor.