I have a theory that a college education is not an asset to a comedian. The comedian-- in today's comedy-- thrives on the "arrested thought" (my term).
If you make a joke that is subtle or complex, you risk a dud in front of a live audience which may not ever get it.
George Carlin, bless his soul, regularly does take this chance. But he is exceptional. And I am disturbed by the fact that he is now widely honored revered. I'll bet he worries about it too.
For example, it's funnier to mock abstract art if you don't quite process the real thing. If you don't get into the question of shape or color or visualization or composition, or how hard it is to actually create an abstract painting (try it, if you don't believe me). If you process it that far, it's not funny anymore. It's plausible that there might be something to abstract art--and that the criteria for judging it might be different than, say, for a photograph-- and that is the joke's death. It's funnier to describe a painting as a bunch of splatters and lines and say, "I'm supposed to be amazed by this?" The young high-school educated working class males in the audience respond enthusiastically because they don't get it either and they hate feeling stupid.
Louis C. K., a comedian I like very much, recently appeared on David Letterman to mock the Common Core. I'm not sure about Common Core. I haven't studied it carefully. It may well be a very significant, important, and effective reform. But Louis C. K., with his high school diploma gets to describe Common Core math as "Bill has three goldfish. He buys two more. How many dogs live in London." London, of course. There is something, to the working-class male, foreign about this Common Core. Elitist. Fucking Common Core. Hilarious. Drink up.
Where is the joke? The joke is half of fourth graders in the U.S. can't read a thermometer accurately. The joke is that American adults rank in the bottom 20% in math skills among 20 developed nations. The joke is that A&W's 1/3 pound burger bombed in the U.S. because most customers thought it was smaller than the quarter-pounder at McDonald's. The joke is that Americans are the worst at math in the entire world and Louis C. K. yuks it up because any attempt to improve math scores involves challenging, intellectually demanding effort, and you can't seriously expect an American man to give a shit about anything other than beer, football, and large breasts.
The joke should have been, Louis C. K. makes an appointment to see the teacher but can't find the room for the meeting because it has more than two digits in the number.
Mitch Hedberg died on April Fools Day, 2005. That's why it took so long for people to realize he was really dead. That's no joke.
Bob Hope was actually pretty witty and funny and charming. I never liked him because for me, growing up in the 1960's, he was the quintessential establishment comedian: he used writers and cue cards instead of creating and memorizing his own material; and he was white, safe, homogenized, and a classic Republican Chicken Hawk: a passionate supporter of the Viet Nam War who-- of course!-- never got within a hundred miles of actually serving in a war, though I'm sure he felt very brave doing comedy at a military base somewhere near the location of actual warfare.
Also like a classic Republican, Hope carried on several affairs while married, including a long-term one with actress Marilyn Maxwell. Why is this so inevitable?
When Hope was honoured by Queen Elizabeth with an honorary knighthood, he quipped, "I'm speechless. 70 years of ad lib material and I'm speechless". Well, no. Seventy years of cue cards, Mr. Hope. But an interesting line. I'm quite sure he doesn't mind most of fans believing that he writes his own quips or thinks of them on the fly.
Great comedy really is a mark of genius, and the best comedians around today like Louis C. K., Stephen Wright, Doug Stanhope and others might be among the smartest people in the entertainment business.
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One of the things that depressed Kurt Colbain was the realization that many if not most of the people in his audiences were very like the people he despised in his songs. Braying, angry, violent, and easily led. Here we are now: entertain us!
It was a realization that came to Dylan early on in his career as well and contributed to his evolution as an artist, and into songs about personal reflection, social hypocrisy, and absurdity that dominated his career in the mid 60's. From a militant "The Times They are A'Changin'" to the ridiculous (and ridiculously brilliant) "Visions of Johanna":
See the primitive wallflowers freeze
as the jelly-faced women all sneeze
see the one with the moustache say
'geez, I can't find my knees'.
How dark a moment is it when you realize that the essence of your persona as an artist is a paradox: to lead people to not trust leaders, to think for themselves, when all they want to do is worship you. When they call you prophetic for telling them about false prophets.
Or, you cater to them.
Doug Stanhope surely must find himself in Bob Dylan's predicament often. While he ridicules drug treatment programs, pious commemorations, and, gently, affably, Mitch Hedberg's family (for using donations to set up a drug treatment program which, considering Hedberg's passion for drugs, is like holding a commemorative barbeque for a deceased vegetarian), he can't not be aware of that large segment of the crowd that is rooting for him to use the word "fuck" and roars with delight every time he does. And when he seems to imply that only representational paintings qualify as art and should be rated by how much they duplicate the function of a photograph, and that modern art is a fraud, he's got this crowd on his side. He can't be that stupid.
Doug Stanhope is a very good, astute stand-up comedian. Every comedian will sound uneven over an hour but Stanhope does better than most ("Before Turning the Gun on Himself").
Good (or bad) stand-up comedians often provoke this response in me: if I criticize the part of his routine that makes fun of things I admire, am I being a hypocrite when I enjoy him making fun of things I hold in contempt, like the religious zealotry surrounding commemorations of 9/11 (when the attackers were themselves driven by similar values), or the drug war, or grief counselors?
He ridicules the idea of effecting social change through comedy or art, yet he insists the world would be better if we legalized drugs. Yet he hectors us with contempt for comedy that hectors us. That is a social change. That's a policy, it's politics. I get the feeling that-- back to my high school/college paradox (left column: comedians are funnier if they don't allow themselves to be too smart)-- he embraced some social movements and then was deeply shocked and disappointed and personally wounded when he discovered it would take more than one or two rallies and a year of advocacy to make decisive change in the world.
The style of comedy itself is ripe for parody: imagine a stream of satirical elements mocking the way these comedians strive to continuously find something that will continue to shock after every other comedian has ratcheted up the standard. Stanhope talks at length and in detail about his lack of constipation, his use of porn sites and booze and drugs. He has to go further than anyone else to maintain that transgressive vibe, risking what eventually looks like a cheap laugh.