Making comedies, you end up knowing people that you would swear would be the funnest people ever in the whole world. And they’re not. They’re really mean and depressed and hideous people. But Jimmy sees life as an opportunity and happiness as a choice. He’s cheery in the morning. He wakes up happy. He gets the joke of life.
Brace yourself for a rant.
You know who are the funnest people ever in the whole world? It’s the people who are constantly giggling and busting out funny impressions followed by more giggling. They’re cheery about life so their humor takes a cheerier and more endearing form, like joking about the mayonnaise that slipped out of their sandwich and onto their face! Or repeating movie quotes! Har har!! Such bundles of unobnoxiousness, those people.
[End of rant.]
Okay, back to my usual abstract, logical self.
If my only two options are a tortured comedian or a happy-go-lucky comedian, I’m taking tortured every damn time.
I don’t actually want the person to be miserable (nor do I think they need to be, which I will get to in a moment), it’s just that, unlike the alternative, they actually have something (interesting) to say. If you’re a happy-go-lucky person who’s really pleased with the way things are going right now then, sorry, but you probably don’t have much of anything to say.
This comes back to the theory I refuted earlier saying that all communication is a sign of failure. I’m buying into it more now that I think about this. I’m not quite prepared to call it a foundational postulate of communication (or even comedy) but it seems close: If nothing’s bothering you then there’s really no good reason to make me listen to you. Maybe all that’s bothering you is that other people are bothered by Reality (I’m looking at you, Bob), but you’re still bothered, you still have something to say.
That’s obviously too extreme. There are worthwhile reasons for communicating that don’t involve being bothered by something. The point is that people who are bothered tend to have more interesting things to say. To put it more bluntly: People who are happy-go-lucky tend to be really annoying to be around.
But there’s no reason why we need to make this happy-go-lucky vs. tortured dichotomy. That’s far too simple. What I’m about to do is still far too simple, but it’s an improvement. I’m going to group popular comedians into slightly more refined categories.
The categories that scrunch my undies:
The happy-go-lucky types: These are the types for whom life is just swell and giggly. If they were struggling comedians they would probably have a second job going to children’s birthday parties as clowns or superheros. If they notice the uncomfortable facts of the universe, they don’t seem to care. Jimmy Fallon might or might not go here.
The nihilists: These are the types who just want to play with combinations of words or facial expressions until they find one that makes you laugh. This is not unlike the happy-go-lucky’s, with the only difference being that they may not necessarily be cheery—you can’t really tell how they feel because their intentions are veiled by an unrelenting attempt to be funny. Dave Barry seems to fit squarely in this category. Colbert at times comes uncomfortably close.
Categories that I think are fine:
The commercial comedians: What defines them is that their primary motivation is to give the audience what it wants, rendering all of their other goals secondary. Whatever jokes the audience does or does not want to hear, whatever amount of sincerity or insincerity, that’s what they want to provide. Letterman, Leno, Kimmel.
The irony-with-an-agenda types: These are the types who have some convictions about the universe (usually, politics or religion) and they want to use humor and mockery to make their points. Jon Stewart, Al Franken, Bill Maher.
Categories that I like:
The “tortured” types: These are the types who are outwardly angry or bitter with certain facts of the universe, and they fight back using the blunt instrument of irony. Examples might include Louis CK, Chris Rock, and Marc Maron.
The amused ironists: This is probably the most common category of comedians. They don’t necessarily feel deeply troubled by the uncomfortable facts of the universe, but they don’t feel cheery either. We perceive these to be average people, and so they are the ones we tend to like the best. Seinfeld, Demetri Martin, and John Hodgman are good examples.
The category I love:
The bothered but not bitter types: With these comedians you can kind of tell that they are deeply affected by certain facts of the universe, but they don’t seem bitter or angry about it as if the universe owed them something. Their humor seems to be the most interesting and the thickest on metaphor. It includes Zach Galifianakis, Sarah Silverman, Dan Harmon (and maybe Steve Martin).
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Okay, that was fun. Feel free to tear apart these categories all you want. That’s just my simplified and very biased take. The broader and more important point is that you don’t have to be “miserable” to have something interesting to say, but if you are the opposite of miserable, if you are just really cheery and peppy, then I probably want to smack you.
