The difference between bad comedy and atrocious comedy

Analogies make me nervous, but when I’m trying to understand – and express – how I feel about abstract things like “comedy” then I’m almost left with no choice.

There is a lot of bad comedy out there. When I say bad comedy you probably think I mean stuff that tries to be funny but isn’t. OK, fine, we can call that bad comedy, but then we need another term for a much worse kind of comedy—the kind that actually is funny but in a terribly unsatisfying way because it only makes you laugh and that’s it. Let’s call it “Damn atrocious very evil – Bad – also really, really yucky Comedy,” or Dave Barry Comedy for short.

I’m going to suggest that the difference between regular, non-terrible comedy and Dave Barry Comedy is rather like the difference between a deep-tissue massage and someone tickling your feet with a feather.

I hope I don’t need to explain that much, but I will a little.

The good (or at least non-terrible) comedians have basically two things to master. First and most difficultly, they’ve got to understand you, your nerve endings, what feels good and what doesn’t, what your body responds to. And then, secondly and much more easily, they’ve got to master the technique of physically working your body to elicit the desired response. The ultimate goal, the contract you implicitly enter into with a comedian, is that you are going to feel a little relief, a little lighter on your feet when you leave the room.

That’s not to say that the goal of comedy is to make you giggly. That’s the mistake that Dave Barry Comedy makes, which I will get to in a second. Sometimes you go to see a comedian just because you are tense and need a professional to mock the world and point out some absurdities so that you feel a little better – but not necessarily giggly – about the situation. A laugh is to a (non-terrible) comedian as a groan is to massage therapist: A mere signal that you are doing something right, that you are working out the incongruities in someone’s muscles—or experiences, as it were.

Dave Barry Comedy thinks that the goal is to stimulate you as much as possible. Dave Barry Comedy thinks that all laughs are created equal. And so the solution, in the mind of Dave Barry Comedy, is to pull out a feather and go to work on your footsies. This would be like a massage therapist using knives because he’s found they elicit more groans. When Dave Barry Comedy is forced upon me, instead of leaving the room feeling lighter, I feel like I want to punch Dave Barry in the nuts.

One place where I think the analogy works well is that it seems that we all have weak or sensitive spots where a skilled comedian can really do some pleasant damage. There are certain things about the world that make us tense and uneasy, and we may or may not even be aware that we are tense and uneasy until a comedian comes and gives us sweet relief.

However, this relates to one area where the analogy makes me uncomfortable.

Comedy, like a deep-tissue massage, doesn’t need to and it won’t succeed in achieving serious relief or poignancy all or even most of the time, but for certain people at certain times in a certain environment, a deep-tissue comedic massage is exactly what they need. And this is not, as the analogy sort of implies, a moment that should be trivialized as a pleasant feeling or a temporary relief. When the stars align, comedy borders on magical. Good comedy, at the right time and place, is as close as it gets to sacred (for me).

There’s at least one other area where the analogy makes me uncomfortable. Everyone’s body has the same network of muscles in pretty much the exact same places, so if a massage therapist learns one body he’s pretty much learned them all. With comedy it seems likely that if bodies are not completely different then there are at least a few basic body types that respond to certain kinds of comedy differently.

On the whole, though, I think the analogy works pretty well. What I’m trying to express (and maybe this is my pretentiousness coming out) is that I feel pretty strongly that comedy should at least be attempting a metaphorical deep-tissue massage.

And I feel even more strongly that comedy should NOT be an attempt to merely stimulate.

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By the way, reading this post again, there’s not necessarily anything special or unique to comedy here. I think the analogy holds equally as well if you replace “comedy” with “art.” (But I strongly dislike the word “art,” so I refuse to do that.)

Take music, for example: There is “bad” music that tries but falls short of pleasing the brain, and then there is really, really yucky music that has a catchy, brain-pleasing rhythm but delivers no deeper reward.

Actually, I think there is at least one thing that is special or unique to comedy: More than any other type of “art,” it has the potential to change behavior. As Scott Adams has said, people rarely change behavior in response to new information or the power of a better argument, but they regularly change behavior to avoid being mocked.

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I think there is a lot more to be said about comedy vs. music.

In one sense, comedy and music relate quite smashingly. Improv comedy I imagine to be a lot like jazz, where your primary task as an improviser or jazz musician is to listen to what the other peeps are doing so that you can add something or else challenge them to do something different. I’d guess that jazz and improv are up there with dance as the most intimate things we can do with our clothes on. It’s probably a magical thing to be a part of… but compared to a stand-up comedian or, say, a Jackson Browne concert, it’s much less magical (for me) to watch.

Stand-up comedy is probably my most cherished form of art. In part, that’s because of the deep-tissue massage-like relief, but it’s also because I have an armchair appreciation of what it takes to be a stand-up comic. To be a stand-up comedian (a good one, at least) must be incredibly hard to do. You’ve first got to be able to observe things about the world that other people aren’t noticing. Then you’ve got to be able to have enough mastery over language to communicate that to people without sounding like a dick. Then you’ve got to understand people well enough to know what they’ll find funny. Then you’ve got to possess enough perfectionism and conscientiousness and neuroticism to spend an absurd amount of time to shape the words and the delivery into a meaningful presentation. And finally you’ve got to go out there and deliver it under the most difficult of circumstances where you, as a human, are pretty much at your most vulnerable, knowing that it may end up falling completely flat, and that you’ve got no place to hide.

I don’t think it’s generally accurate to compare music to comedy. I see comedy as being more akin to writing and music as being more akin to sports. I think musicians, like athletes, generally get into it because they see someone else doing it and think, Woah, that’s cool. Whereas I think comedians, like writers, generally get into it not out of coolness but poignancy, where they felt what it’s like when a comedian pounds some sweet relief into the sensitive areas of their experience.

More evidence: Music is full of clichés. A big part of comedy is mocking clichés.