Why Men Aren't Funny
Revisiting an Old Sexist Myth About Women in Comedy and Turning It On Its Head to Uncover the Platonic Ideal of Absolute Truth
Addressing the Hitch in the Room
Sixteen years ago, Christopher Hitchens penned possibly one of his most infamously controversial articles for Vanity Fair entitled “Why Women Aren’t Funny.” While outraging more than half the population was commonplace for Hitchens, his essay on the perceived humorlessness of the “fairer sex” struck a nerve that to this day still aches within the comedy industry, and is widely cited whenever the topic comes up. Young people nowadays are quite possibly more well acquainted with this article than of his views on religion.
While I believe there to be a number of legitimate criticisms to be made of the essay, it is my opinion that too many critics have focused too intently on the surface level. By now, more than enough has been said about the overtly sexist title and attitude, as well as Hitchens’ cantankerous tone. While that’s precisely the reason the article is so infamous, I believe it to be of vital importance to examine it a bit more thoroughly to understand why it has continued to resonate as a point of contention. Because this article could very well be an important gateway into understanding many backwards cultural beliefs as they relate to modern comedy.
I would like to begin my analysis by stating that the writing of the article is done rather sloppily. It’s written about as sloppily as Hitchens was likely sloppily drunk on Johnny Walker Black while writing it. That’s not necessarily a value judgment of its quality, the language just lacks precision. Listen to a speech given by Hitchens and tell me I’m wrong, that he’s not capable of more eloquent thought and writing. However, I don’t believe that it’s not without its purpose. In fact, with a little more clarity and a (big) stretch of the imagination, the article could nearly be construed through a feminist lens, albeit clumsily.
If you take Hitchens at face value, he’s absolutely right in his supposition that society does not value women’s humor to that of men’s; it’s just that the declarations he makes about women being definitively “not funny” are authoritative and incautious. But I suspect that to just be part of his provacateurship, because throughout the essay there’s a half-baked understanding of the concept of patriarchy as it relates to humor, and if further developed it could’ve easily written off any claims of overt sexism. However, I believe this level of careful consideration would’ve detracted from the essay’s potency and longevity, whether it was intentional or not.
Another interesting point he makes is that in examining the numerical disparity of good famous women comedians, he points out many of those who achieve a notable level of success have done so by assimilating a certain level of “acceptable” masculinity. Though he does so rather crudely, there’s an argument to be made about the machismo of the entertainment industry, particularly as it pertains to comedy. One must find a way to be aggressive and assertive in commanding a crowd’s attention, especially in such an abrasive environment where heckling is commonplace.
What’s missing from Hitchens’ line of thinking is how social constructionism might have molded this orthodoxy of cultural attitudes. That said, one of the more poignant sentiments that I believe he provides is that perhaps women aren’t perceived as being funny by our polite society because “it could be that in some way men do not want women to be funny. They want them as an audience, not as rivals.”
None of this is to say that critics of Hitchens are in any way invalid in their criticisms, in fact I’d say quite the opposite. He chose his position to defend, and didn’t need some troglodyte such as myself misappropriating his arguments sixteen years later. Regardless, he defended those positions when he was alive well enough himself anyway: once he started getting pushback, he neither apologized nor backtracked, but rather doubled down.
Not long after “Why Women Aren’t Funny” was published in Vanity Fair, journalist Alessandra Stanley wrote an opposition piece titled “Who Says Women Aren’t Funny?” wherein she rebutted Hitchens’ claim that “women aren’t funny” with examples of the funniest women comedians in America, featuring pictures of many of them sexily dressed and scantily clad.
Hitchens rebuked the rebuttal with another piece, “Why Women Still Don’t Get It,” where he argued that her article only proved his points further, and in a video regaling his perspective of the controversy Hitchens said “what has been the achievement of my essay, it's been to make sexier women try harder to amuse me. Well that was my whole plan to start off with.”
“Why Women Aren’t Funny” should be viewed neither as treatise nor manifesto; this was the work of a sharp-witted provocateur purposefully engaging with a controversial subject in order to make some sort of magniloquently esoteric statement about the human condition for some reason. He was playing on uneven ground, and to engage with him was to start off in a losing position.
And there were telltale signs peppered all throughout the article letting the reader know exactly how unseriously Hitchens took all this. It’s rife with lines such as “do not pretend not to know what I am talking about,” or “I shall not elaborate further,” or my personal favorite, “if I am correct about this, which I am.”
As you can by now imagine, it's not my intent to attempt to argue with Hitchens in any way beyond the minor gripes that I’ve aforementioned above. I have no desire to try my hand at outwitting a dead man, especially not one famous for his cunning intellect and his sharp tongue. In fact if I may be so bold, I wish to build off his assertions that women aren’t funny, and put forth the argument that men, also, are not funny. I would go so far as to say that nobody is funny, and comedy as an art form is one of the most overvalued and undeserving applications of creative endeavor to ever exist, and I’m not joking. But if comedy is said to truly be dead, it is men who have blood on their hands. For how can women be to blame when they’ve been so staunchly argued to have no comedic agency of their own?
“Comedy is dead! And we have killed it. How shall we comfort ourselves?”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Why Men Aren’t Funny
I intend to build my thesis upon the impenetrability of Christopher Hitchens’ arguments in “Why Women Aren’t Funny.” And like that of the impenetrability of Achilles, there is a weak heel to Hitchens’ article that not many have dared look at. I believe that heel to be its elevation of the male sense of humor within the constructed gendered dichotomy. In his observation that men have a deterministic inclination toward superior comedic intuition, he set up a row of dominoes that was begging to get kicked over.
The crux of the argument, and exactly where I intend to turn the whole thing inside out, is here: “If I am correct about this, which I am, then the explanation for the superior funniness of men is much the same as for the inferior funniness of women. Men have to pretend, to themselves as well as to women, that they are not the servants and supplicants. Women, cunning minxes that they are, have to affect not to be the potentates.”
Men therefore must be funny, according to Hitchens, because otherwise they provide no intrinsic value, especially to women. Women already have intrinsic value through their childbearing ability, and while they can indeed be “humorous,” they can never attain “funny,” because it’s not necessary for them to be. This points to an uneven power relationship between men and women, in which it’s argued women hold all the power, and men’s only hope to overcome the dialectical struggle is to obtain the coveted skill of “funny.” A woman’s ability to tell a proper joke, therefore, can be viewed as “punching down,” which is definitionally unfunny.
This defense of male-oriented comedy is inadvertently self-defeating. Consider the logic: men are funny because they need to be. Women do not need to be funny, so they are not. Therefore, by normative default, men are funny and women are not funny. In the mind of someone who believes this to be true, men have no need to be funny, because they already are. Therefore, they are not. Between all the glass houses and glass ceilings everywhere, sticks and stones are best assumed to be lethal.
While Hitchens points out that there are definitely terrible male comedians out there (less than there are terrible female comedians, mind you), I’d like to remind the reader that at no point in the article does he ever call a woman “funny,” but rather says they can be “humorous,” and make “great comedians” but are never funny. Within man resides the capability, and the expectation of funny. And while you can say of comedy that certain funny tendencies may be discerned, things such as expectations, formulas, and rules are inherently anti-comedic. That’s not to say that they don’t work, but that over time they stop working.
There’s a reason comedy in comparison to other art forms ages more rapidly. While a painting or a piece of music from any era may continue to move someone in perpetuity, comedy becomes withered in the throes of time. That’s not to say that it can’t still be appreciated, but after a while it stops being funny.
To bring up a crude example of what I’m talking about, here’s a link to a video of someone playing the oldest instrument known to man, a neolithic bone flute. Listening to its music is both haunting and enchanting; a reminder of a primeval world in a time long passed. That it uses notes in a scale we still use today gives us a commonality that links us to these prehistoric people, and inspires a sense of wonder of what it might have been like back then. By comparison, here’s the oldest joke ever recorded, circa 4500-1900 BCE in Sumeria: “A dog walked into a tavern and said, ‘I can't see a thing. I'll open this one.’” No offense to the ancient Sumerians, but that joke sucks. It doesn’t make any sense.
The “magic” of comedy is not unlike that which you might find at a magic show: once you know the trick, it’s no longer “magic.” Once you’ve heard a joke, you know the joke. It can still be funny, but with each retelling, it becomes less funny. A lot of comedy therefore relies upon the subversion of expectation. Mediocre humor will on occasion elicit chuckles and snickers, but true, real, gut-splitting laughter is something mysterious and ethereal. Expectations, formulas, rules, as important as those are for joke crafting, they’re all meant to be broken, because breaking a rule gives you something new to play with.
Even still do I feel as though my explanation is too reductive. Subversion in and of itself can be played out, because when it’s expected, sometimes the funniest thing to do is the exact opposite: be predictable. Predictability can be a form of subversion when subversion becomes predictable. Such is the paradox I’ve found with “anti-humor” and a frustration I’ve long had with the genre: when you purposefully engage with too many non-comedic ideas in an effort to be funny, your intentionality toward purposeful humor becomes insurmountable, and audiences will eventually become defiant. Good comedy should come off as effortless, like a well rehearsed magic trick.
And yet, in order to appear effortless, jokes must be practiced countless times, in front of different audiences, until they’ve been “perfected.” To be a comedian is to be like Dorian Gray with his decaying portrait. You sell your soul to the devil in order to pursue this otherworldly ability, yet as you go through life, the thing you’ve spent years attempting to cultivate becomes deformed and disfigured beyond recognition.
Because what the comedian finds funny isn't always going to match up with what their audience does. Not only that, but humor is a lot more of a one-dimensional pursuit compared to other artforms. Not every painting must be beautiful in order to be appreciated, but a joke necessitates the minimum criteria of needing to be funny, no matter what.
In this way, comedy is unique to other forms of art; no other disciplines struggle with this level of artistic detachment. Many artists have the luxury of writing, painting, or playing music for nothing more than their own self-satisfaction, and are free to boast about not caring what others think of their creation. Comedy, on the other hand, is always at the mercy of its audience. Because of this it’s inherently more collaborative than other arts, but at the cost of an inability to be uncompromising in its perspective, even if sagely comedians claim otherwise.
None of this is to say that the comedian doesn’t understand the value of the joke, or recognize it as “funny,” but to them it no longer retains the ability to produce a laugh. You couldn’t repeat their joke back to them and expect a laugh, because they’ve already heard it. Yet I can go right now to Youtube and find a video of the band Heart performing the song Stairway to Heaven in front of the members of Led Zeppelin, who are all ineffective at holding back tears at the song’s majesty. The song was over 40 years old at that point, and must’ve been played hundreds (if not, thousands) of times by Zeppelin themselves. Try asking Jerry Seinfeld what the deal with airplane food is, see what kind of reaction you get.
The thing is, a joke isn’t intended to be funny to the teller, it’s only meant to be funny to the listener. The teller is instead rewarded with a sense of satisfaction, similar to that of scoring a goal in a sport. If appropriate, the teller can join in on the laughter, but only so long as the laughter is within the spirit of collective communion, because laughing at one’s own joke is otherwise viewed as gauche.
And to say that this rehearsed, “perfected” magic trick doesn’t affect the comedy as a polished, marketable commodity is incorrect. We just don’t think about it enough to question it. Whereas music learned to separate the live experience from the refinement of studio recording, and other visual arts such as painting or cinema is all about the finished product, comedy exists somewhere in the middle. Because the assumed audience can not be separated from it. For the sake of analysis I’m focusing primarily on stand-up here, because it is in a sense the most simplified form of joke telling. But an audience is sort of a built-in, agreed upon, assumed entity. A comedy special can't be recorded in an empty room (exceptions have been made), it has to be recorded in front of an audience, so the viewer at home knows when to laugh. The magic needs to occur in that room at that time, and that needs to be cut up, edited, and bottled into something that no longer resembles its true form.
This also extends to things such as television. When they started putting comedies on television they would do it in front of a live studio audience, because certain jokes and sayings would sound aberrant against a wall of silence. Before the invention of the “boob tube,” these sorts of ongoings would occur only on a stage, so recording the reactions of the audience came natural. So the performers played to an audience, recorded the audience's energy, and included that as an integral part of the performance. When the magic of sound manipulation proved to be cheaper and simpler than capturing the energy of a live audience, laugh tracks were utilized. This began as an unnoticeable phenomenon, but over time writing quality for certain shows began declining and laugh tracks were noticeably overused. Canned laughter, as they call it, went from enhancing a show by giving us the familiar feeling of being an integral part of the show, to artificially inflating bad jokes. If you’ve not been acquainted, look up videos of people editing the laugh track out of a show like The Big Bang Theory, and tell me how a show like that could possibly stand on its own legs without goading the viewers into understanding “this is the part that’s supposed to be funny.”
There was inevitably an industry pushback to canned laughter as people began catching on to its siren song. Shows like The Office were one of the more mainstream examples in modern culture of leaving behind the laugh track and replacing it with better writing and authentic character dynamics. At first this was admittedly disorienting to the audience to not know when to laugh, but the show made the viewer “an integral part of the performance” by acknowledging the camera with winks, nods, and deadpan “Jim” looks.
This was different and it worked, but unfortunately many copycat shows attempted to mimic the magic of The Office by simply regurgitating the formula. Laugh tracks were out, and awkward silence was in, but as more and more clones were printed off it became clear that it wasn’t the elimination of the laugh track that made The Office funny, it was the authentic, reinvigorated experience it gave the audience that the silence provided. Comedy must always be innovating, always evolving, always looking to subvert expectations, and the point of all of that is to understand and connect to the part of people that necessitates a mental break from reality. Because to engage with comedy is to criticize reality’s absurd nature, and to laugh is to gain parasympathetic relief from mentally grappling with the absurd. Therefore, the act of “being funny” is the ability to bend reality, but not necessarily to shape it.
Deconstructing the Binary
Though earlier in this essay I said that comedy is an overvalued and undeserving art form (and I stand behind that), everything I’ve said thus far isn’t to add insult to injury. I’m just trying to provide a broader context as to how and why comedy uniquely operates compared to other types of artistic expression.
A good comedian understands these dynamics and constraints and seeks to thrive within them. A great comedian is capable of transcending these constraints of being merely “funny” and creating something that stands the test of time. This is a truly rare thing to see, which is why there are so few truly “great” comedians.
But I feel as though I’m getting ahead of myself. Before going further in my deconstruction of comedy, I would like to refocus on the arguments made by Hitchens in “Why Women Aren’t Funny.”
Hitchens and those who agree with him tend to base their arguments on the comedic disparity inherent in the gender binary [sic] on things such as biological determinism and evolutionary psychology, which distills any critical thinking on the subject into reductivist drivel.
Let’s take into consideration the primary argument that forms the basis of the article: the role in comedy as it pertains to attracting a sexual mate. It’s certainly an important facet to take into consideration, but to say that funniness principally originates from reproductive instincts neglects many other fundamental aspects that comedy offers to interpersonal social cohesion.
Do teenage girls at slumber parties not spend all night giggling? Whatsoever could they be laughing at if not a single one of them is funny? None of them are even professional comedians! They didn’t hustle and grind to deserve that laughter. You’re supposed to earn laughs by cutting your teeth on the open mic circuit.
Context in comedy matters. Aside from the qualitative value judgment of whether or not someone is capable of being funny, there are obviously many different types of humor, and many different ways for humor to be used. Why then should Freudian psychology be remotely considered the basis of funniness?
Even if we were to presuppose that it is, what of people that identify with alternative sexualities and gender expressions? What’s their comedic motivation for wanting to laugh, or make others laugh? Could it be that this is just an innate human desire, equally ingrained in us as that of the sexual reproductive urge?
There is no one singular objective point of view of what is and isn’t funny when it comes to comedy, although many have attempted to formulate one. It’s easy to defer to simple explanations such as “are people laughing” but this leaves a lot of unexplained gaps in forming a comprehensive understanding. The closest anyone can come to objectivity is the axiomatic authority of capitalistic success; the so-called “invisible hand of the market.” If something is to be valued in a capitalist society, it must be profitable. But therein lies another paradox: the corporations that commodify comedy into media are dictated by the demands of the market, yet they themselves are the gatekeepers of art and the arbiters of taste.
We defer to the market’s authority to make value judgments of comedians, yet when a highly regarded comedian isn’t as popular or successful as we collectively wish for them to be, they get the consolation prize of “underrated.” With any luck they become what’s known as a “comedian’s comedian.” The system of course as a whole unquestionably works, but it’s just that sometimes there are exceptions. At what point do the exceptions add up to the entire system’s efficacy being called into question? At what point can we say the whole system fails to function properly?
How are we to understand the male vs. female humor disparity in this corrupted system where male humor is obviously more monetarily valued simply by virtue of the fact that we believe it to be? This goes beyond calling into question the “objectivity” of the free market, but this perceived objectivity of the market taints any level of scrutiny outside of itself. It’s a form of self-sabotage that allows for the point to resonate true, even if it isn’t, because the alternative is too complex to ruminate on. It’s much simpler to resign oneself to orthodoxy than to constantly exercise one’s mind in such a manner over such a stupid subject matter. Whosoever spends this much time contemplating jokes must be real fun at parties.
There’s a point to which Hitchens explains that maybe men understand humor better because they’re just dumb. What makes people laugh is definitionally not meant to be taken so seriously. What is funny is often the opposite of what is intellectual. Not that humor and intellect can’t coincide, but there’s an involuntary ease of accessibility with comedy that becomes much less accessible when cognition is involved. However, both instant gratification and overintellectualization are capable of running into problems that potentially make either application of comedy unfunny. To continue this discussion further, we must bookmark these thoughts and lay out a working hypothesis of the theorized types of comedy.
The Triad Theory of Comedy
In order to effectively analyze exactly how someone can be “funny,” I’ve theorized a set of three different archetypal categories of humor. Though there are an infinite amount of ways to be funny and numerous different genres and subcategories, I wanted to set a groundwork from which all those divisions fall into.
I would also like to clarify that my focus here is on purposeful attempts at being funny, not just accidental happenstance that people might find funny. You may laugh at a silly cat video, but the cat isn’t a willing participant in your laughter. I also considered grouping verbal and non-verbal humor separately, but even non-verbal humor assumes an agreed upon understanding of human language.
Anyway, the archetypal categories I would like to argue that all comedy fits into are dumb humor, intelligent humor, and random humor. These naming conventions have little to do with the intellect of the comedian nor the audience (though in some ways they may incidentally coincide), but rather they reflect specific attempts at the contextualization of reality.
This work is partially based on Aristotle’s virtue of Eutrapelia, which is the golden mean between boorishness and buffoonery. While I admire Aristotle’s attempt to simplify wittiness into one measurable variable, I believe we can expand upon his ideas while still maintaining a relatively simple composition. And like everything good in comedy, this theory comes in three.
Dumb Humor
Dumb humor is funny because the person telling a joke is keen enough to understand the ridiculousness of reality, and can break apart our preconceived notions of it via reductio ad absurdum. The risk of engaging with dumb humor is appearing to the audience to be a genuine idiot. However, what’s great about dumb humor is that it appeals to a wider audience, because the jokes are a quicker hit of dopamine. Like any good drug though, the high eventually wears off and over time a tolerance builds. Which is why so many “dumb comedians” skyrocket to prominence so quickly, then precipitously fall off the map.
This isn’t to say that comedians that deal in dumb humor can’t have long, successful careers, but the secret is that you have to be smart in order to pull off dumb humor well. And not necessarily IQ smart, but introspective, and thoughtful. Like humor, there is no objective form of intelligence (IQ being a poor attempt at that), and rather, intelligence conforms to specifically imposed demands. So the intelligence of cultivating a good dumb sense of humor must be exercised, like a muscle.
Intelligent Humor
As you might imagine, intelligent humor is in many ways the opposite of dumb humor. And whereas “dumb humor” may not always mean “unintelligent,” “intelligent humor” does not necessarily mean “brainy,” but rather well thought out. As dumb humor deconstructs reality in a way that simplifies the complexities of reality, intelligent humor seeks to elevate those complexities, beyond that of the conceptualizations others might have of it.
The ostensible risk of intelligent humor lies in talking down to the audience, and coming across as smug, pretentious, and arrogant. On the other hand, good intelligent humor understands the Einstein quote “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.” In this way, dumb humor and intelligent humor aren’t polar opposites, but rather two sides of the same coin. Both must somehow figure out a way to appeal to their intended target.
Though whereas dumb humor gives the audience a quicker more potent dopamine hit, intelligent humor gives the audience something to chew on for a while. This doesn’t mean it can’t be as funny, in fact, none of these categories are inherently “funnier” than the others, they just have to work within a given set of constraints.
Random Humor
The last category which is fundamentally different from the other two is “random humor,” and it’s one of the most difficult to pull off successfully. Whereas intelligent humor expounds upon reality and dumb humor blunts it, random humor reflects a clean break from any conceptualizations of reality. Intelligence and dumbness are rooted in order, but random humor originates in disorder, or chaos. Which means one risk of random humor is complete alienation from the audience. The “random” humor comedian swims in the same waters in which the psychotic drowns.
Additionally, random humor risks cringe, which is the worst of all comedic crimes, as it suffocates the audience after sucking all the air out of the room. Sure, being pompous or reducing oneself to a buffoon can be cringeworthy, but not as much as the air that hangs over a non-sequitur.
The risks with random humor therefore are much larger, but the payoff can be all the bigger as a result. Many are willing to risk pomposity if the result is being the smartest in the room. Many are willing to risk looking like an idiot if the result is a couple laughs. But few are willing to risk looking cringeworthy, infantile, or insane. Yet when done right, random humor can out-dumb dumb humor by coming up with something so unintelligible that nobody could’ve possibly expected it, or it can outsmart intelligent humor by coming up with something so unexpected that it’s genius. It’s the purest form of subverted expectations, but in order for expectations to be subverted they must be understood in the first place. Like the other two categories, a lot of introspection must go into understanding reality in order to be able to bend it.
It should go without saying that all these categories work within a spectrum; they are not absolute, they work within varying degrees. They can also coincide with each other, overlap with each other, or interact for varying levels of affect. Certain comedians may prefer a specific type of humor, but are obviously free to draw from whichever best suits them at any given time.
You might ask, what about other types of humor: stoner humor, anti-humor, meta-humor, irony, parody, satire, edgy humor, surreal humor? Those should all fall within the three archetypal categories, though not necessarily neatly.
Beyond Male and Female
I feel as though the points I’ve made regarding male vs. female comedy have been addressed thoroughly enough for the purposes of this essay. While there’s always more that can be explored, my point in this is to prove that men aren’t funny, and that in fact no one is, and that comedy sucks, and I feel as though I haven’t quite gotten there yet. So I would like to spend more time going beyond the bimodal distribution.
Currently, comedy as an art form and a legitimate genre is undergoing a period of cultural reexamination. This isn’t anything new, art needs regular sorting out every new era. What’s acceptable to joke about? What’s actually funny? What’s profitable? What isn’t? These are all very important discussions we should spend a considerable amount of time thinking about.
I began this essay by bringing up “Why Women Aren’t Funny” because I sincerely believe it holds the key to understanding why no one is funny and why comedy sucks. I believe within this truism, that “women aren’t funny,” begets an ingress for the examination of the totality of what causes one to laugh. And now that the wormhole has opened, there’s nowhere to go but through.
Whether true or not, this authoritative perspective on comedy is responsible for its inevitable collapse, of which we are currently in the midst. And the laughpocalpyse unfortunately happened while men were the only funny gender there was. Woe unto them!
Instead of taking the end of comedy seriously and evolving the pursuit of laughter to something transcendental, they’ve dug their heads in the sand and stomped their feet. Some of the best comedians to ever grace the stage have been reduced to that of virginal open mic’ers, throwing tantrums that the people are no longer laughing as they once were. “You can’t say anything anymore,” they say in unison, like a Greek chorus. Murderers of murderers, what have they done? Who will console them for turning comedy into tragedy?
As the culture wars rage on and make collateral damage of humor, it’s not as though no one is without the right to gripe. There are of course many legitimate criticisms to be made of the knee-jerk reactions of so-called “cancel culture,” so long as those complaints don’t amount to some imperceptibly pervasive boogeyman. To lend an olive branch to those in disbelief of my sincerity, I’m partial to the viewpoints put forth in Mark Fisher’s essay “Exiting the Vampire Castle.” But regardless of these or any critiques, “cancel culture” is a mere red herring for the dying art form, because the inability to wrestle with shifting cultural attitudes manifest the death throes of any increasingly irrelevant art form: stagnation. Art must continually undergo cycles of death and rebirth, and we grow closer to the end of the current lifecycle.
Do other art forms not deal with criticism? Do other art forms not dabble in controversy? You think of yourselves as being unique?
To further explore what I’m talking about, let’s take into consideration the trailer for Tucker Carlson’s “The Death of Comedy.” Some of the most highly regarded and successful comedians in the game such as Adam Carolla, Jim Norton, Ari Schaffer, Luis J Gomez, and James Dore are all eyes bulging, mouth-foamingly yelling at you about what you should think is funny. Why? Because they’re the best to ever do it. They know what’s funny and what’s not, and it’s about time you shut up and listened. And it’s all channeled through the conduit mouthpiece of amusement aficionado, comedy connoisseur, and funnyman fanatic Tucker Carlson.
For those who don’t recall, Carlson cut his teeth in the comedy world when he bumped elbows with famous comedian Jon Stewart back in 2004 on CNN’s Crossfire. Whatever your personal opinions on The Daily Show and Jon Stewart aside, the fact of the matter is professional comedian Jon Stewart went on Crossfire and was deliberately unfunny. He didn’t need to be; it served no purpose for him there. He hung up his clown nose and went 100% straight man and tore into the hosts for a brutal 15 minutes. Carlson, who didn’t know how to handle the Joker coming into his studio with a loaded gun, scrambled for a trump card he thought would work: “Wait, I thought you were going to be funny. Come on, be funny,” Jon snapped back with “No, no I’m not gonna be your monkey.” After that, Carlson struggled to regain control of the room by making impotent jabs at Jon about how he wouldn’t make a good dinner guest, or about how he was funnier on his own show.
Not long after Stewart’s “humorless” appearance, Crossfire was abruptly canceled and Tucker Carlson stopped wearing a bowtie, which was ironically one of the funniest things Jon Stewart has ever done. It was so funny that even 20 years after the fact, Tucker Carlson can’t stop lobbing comebacks at Stewart such as “he looks too short to date.” What is this, amateur hour? Get off the stage!
All this plus the fact that no one has ever seen Carlson genuinely laugh at anything in his entire life, and we’re to believe that he’s some sort of authority on comedy. It’s like getting pickup artistry advice from Charlie Brown.
Taxes and Comedy
Tucker Carlson is more a pesky symptom of the problem modern comedy has than the harbinger of its downfall. So I would like to momentarily shift focus from him to his comedic adversary, Jon Stewart. Because in dissecting the space the Daily Show occupied in early aughts American culture, we can develop a deeper understanding of the argument I’m trying to make.
The Daily Show inhabited a unique space in the early 2000’s as a comedy institution that shifted from the realm of toothless parody into a scathing satire of Bush-era 24 hour cable news cycle. More and more young people throughout this time admitted to getting their news from The Daily Show instead of traditional news sources. To an extent, Stewart rose to the occasion and became somewhat of a comedic force of nature.
When Carlson and many others called out Jon Stewart for not doing enough journalistic due diligence on his show, Jon did have a point that The Daily Show was definitely not a mainstream media outlet, and didn’t pretend to be. Comparing shows on Fox, MSNBC, or CNN to a satirical news show on Comedy Central was embarrassingly off-base.
However, I don’t know if Stewart did enough to grapple with this criticism. Because The Daily Show was taken seriously, and it did mean something to people, to brush away “you could be doing more with your institution” with “we go on after puppets making prank phone calls,” felt like comedy was more of a shield from criticism than an effective rhetorical tool being used for good.
While not a crime of the highest degree, it certainly set a precedent that allowed for comedians navigating similar topics to follow the same playbook when joking about important matters. Because The Daily Show blurred the lines between politics and humor so well, others that followed in suit started trying their best to emulate this style. If you can remember, for a long time there was a lot of discourse about “what’s the conservative version of The Daily Show,” or, “why is there no conservative version of Jon Stewart?” When Jon retired, it became “who’s going to be the next Jon Stewart.” It’s not the first time bad joke making had a shield to hide behind, but The Daily Show lent that shield an air of institutional legitimacy that everyone wanted to emulate.
Pointing out a “conservative equivalent” of The Daily Show isn’t to rag on conservative comedy, because liberals were equally guilty, if not more guilty, of misunderstanding the magic of that show. Instead of trying to overcome The Daily Show, just people copied and pasted the formula, and expected that to work. Jon Stewart himself walked away from the show because according to what he told his successor Trevor Noah, he was tired, was tired of being angry all the time, and didn’t think it was funny anymore, and didn’t know how to make it funny anymore.
If I can be as bold as to make an assumption, the thing people liked most about Jon Stewart’s tenure at The Daily Show was his authenticity. He may not have been the funniest person on tv, he may not have always had the best politics, but he was a genuine man who many people felt they could relate to, and he had the chops to back it up. That’s where the magic came from. He was the right guy at the right time in the right place, and that elevated his platform. That’s what people should’ve taken away from all of this.
Instead, now every hack comedian thinks they can stand behind one of Jon’s biggest flaws: “it’s just a comedy show.” It’s not as though this is an excuse that everyone is always using, as much as it’s a mindset that both comedians and audiences have effortlessly assimilated. The Daily Show didn’t create this problem, but it’s a good example to explain how this problem came to be in recent memory.
Because now there’s a growing trend spreading like wildfire in the world of comedy, which is by its very definition the antithesis of “humor.” This trend to which I refer is the intersection of comedians who were "just joking" when faced with criticism, juxtaposed with the sentiment that "he has a good point though." It’s the metempsychosis of an idea that hasn't ever fully gone away: that comedians are "modern philosophers." As the late Norm McDonald pointed out, "modern philosophers still exist." Perhaps “philosopher” can at times be too lofty of a comparison, and where that doesn't fit a better metaphor could be that of the Shakespearean Fool. The Shakespearean Fool, for those unacquainted, is a character who, by virtue of the fact that no one took them seriously, was allowed to speak their minds and say what other characters in higher social standings were incapable of admitting aloud.
Dave Chappelle is just a comedian. He’s a joker, a jester, a fool. So by virtue of his standing, he can say what we’re all thinking. Now if we were to scrutinize some of the logic in a Chappelle standup special, and analyze it with academic rigor, we might find that not every argument he makes in his routine holds up. But it’s not a formal argument, it’s comedy! They’re just jokes! He does make some good points though, and he’s the only one allowed to say what he’s saying, because nobody takes him seriously. And yet, if we take him seriously, we might as well be wearing white makeup and a red nose, because it turns out that we’re the fools! Don’t we know, he’s just a comedian? He’s just kidding. Also, he’s right about everything. And when he’s not, it’s because he’s joking. But he’s not wrong. But he’s allowed to be, because he’s just joking. How convenient! Are you laughing yet? Are we all having fun?
This isn’t to say that the taboo isn’t to be joked about, and that so-called “offensive” humor isn’t valid. That you may only punch up, never down. Some may argue along these lines, but I do not. What I argue is that this paradox inherently degrades the entire art form, and deflates any semblance of comedy that might’ve once existed, whether or not anyone found it there to begin with.
Comedic Essentialism
An erroneous conclusion a good many people typically jump to when faced with this conundrum is one of “comedic essentialism.” Do you know what simple explanation cuts through the noise and clarifies all arguments about the current state of comedy? “What’s funny is funny.” None of what we’re talking about here ends up mattering at all, because at the end of the day, the comedian has exactly one job: be funny. Socrates once said the unexamined life was not worth living, but it too can be said that the examined joke is not worth telling.
When a sexual assault joke goes wrong for instance, many of the most brilliant minds the comedy world has to offer are quick to point out that the lesser crime of the comedian was in jesting about a serious subject matter that may do mental harm a potential listener; the greater crime was that the joke wasn’t funny. Not that it wasn’t funny because of the harm done, because in their minds those two reasons are extricable.
One such comedy essentialist is a Mr. Jerry Seinfeld, of the 90’s television sitcom Seinfeld. A number of years ago, Jerry was criticized by a small segment of the population that pointed out that a good majority of the guests he had on his show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee were of a particular skin color and/or gender; namely white, and male. Now, Seinfeld could’ve brushed this off easily and stated something basically everyone knew to be true about Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee: he had on people he was friends with or looked up to, and they drove around all day and just sort of hung out. That would’ve solved the problem with little to no backlash. However, being the ever-irritable person that he is, Seinfeld became indignant at the critique and set forth one of the most concrete examples of comedic essentialism anyone who studies comedy could ever hope to witness.
Here’s the quote from his Buzzfeed interview about it: “People think it's the census or something. This has gotta represent the actual pie chart of America? Who cares? Funny is the world that I live in. You're funny, I'm interested. You're not funny, I'm not interested. I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that.” He goes on to say that viewing comedy through the lens of race, gender, sexuality, etc is inherently “anti-comedy,” and that “it's more about PC nonsense than ‘are you making us laugh or not?’”
In a certain context he’s right, but the problem with essentialism is in its inherent reductionism. The way Seinfeld and the comedy essentialists tackle the subject of “what is funny” is this lofty, platonic ideal whose true form we can only grasp at with our unworthy ears.
Always the shameless relativist, my rebuke of comedic essentialism is that comedy is socially created and contextualized. If it weren’t, there would be a roadmap for how to craft the perfect joke. Things such as inside jokes wouldn’t make any sense. Different social groups wouldn’t develop their own senses of humor unique to their groupings. Instead, there’s this perception of a “universal comedy,” free from the constraints of outside context. And what Seinfeld fails to understand is how that perceived universality seems to accidentally align with his social identity.
While Seinfeld may be a comedy essentialist, he’s also a scholar of comedy, and understands the nuances of the philosophy. In an interview he did with Ricky Gervais, while addressing the falsehood that he didn’t play colleges because they were “too PC,” Seinfeld stated “Comedians need to stop complaining that they can’t do certain jokes because it might offend people. That’s right. You can’t. So do another joke. Find another way around it. Use a different word. It’s like slalom skiing. You have to make the gates.” While it’s a solid defense of his ideology, it still delineates a distinction between comedic essentialism and comedic determinism. Which is to say that while “funny” is the ultimate goal, if “funny” isn’t “funny,” then it isn’t “funny.” There are still constraints. He goes on: “comics always had to be careful about what they said going all the way back to the time of the court jester.” When making fun of the king, for instance, care needed to be taken in order to ensure one’s head stayed atop one’s shoulders. Also, let the “court jester” line further solidify my arguments above.
However, not everyone who is a comedic essentialist agrees with this grounded perspective. Unfortunately, not many are as well read and well versed as Jerry Seinfeld, flawed as he might be. There’s a lack of understanding among the comedic essentialists when it comes to these types of controversies and whether or not they are capable of being “funny” or not. Some may genuinely find humor in laughing at the misfortunes of others, and they’re not invalidated in doing so; they’re just assholes. Why then is there a need to hide behind the phalanx of “comedy” in order to justify assholishness?
What’s more confusing though is the mental gymnastics one must do who doesn’t want to admit that, in fear of being labeled an asshole by one's peers, or worse: strangers online. Instead they would rather push these gymnastics onto the public at large, and make others jump through hoops to understand their severely flawed logic. After some time this becomes collectivized psychosis. In order to understand comedy along these lines, we all end up developing what’s known in gymnastics as “the twisties.”
Because let’s be honest: there’s nothing funny about comedians complaining that nobody’s laughing at their jokes. There’s nothing funny about having the same arguments about comedy over and over again, getting nowhere. You know why comedians in their infinite wisdom don’t just become philosophers? Because in order to be a philosopher you have to know how to read, and none of them know how to read. They’re literally all too stupid to know how to read. I’m anticipating a bunch of well thought out responses in the comments to this from those that definitely know how to read.
Learning things is difficult. Knowing things is difficult. Communicating things you think you know is difficult. The idea that the keepers of the shortcut to the wealth of human knowledge and experience are socially maladjusted dudes that sit in dingy bars every night and tell dick jokes to strangers is beyond preposterous. And yet to ignore this discourse in its entirety, to never engage with any of it is somehow more unhinged. Comedy is dying and yet there are people fiddling on the roof doing “weird Tinder date” material.
The problem is, any way you look at it, there’s no way out of it. The only reasonable thing for anyone to do is wait for the collectivized sickness to pass, because there isn’t going to be an antidote. And maybe there’s some validity in letting the thing die, so that it can be reborn. The idea that “comedy” is the cornerstone of a free society has overextended itself. Comedy, as we’re reminded by the court jester example, exists in times of tyrants. Arguably it flourishes, as we can see by the fact that the most paradigmatic group of comedians are all 14th century clowns.
Do we also believe that other art forms are incapable of “telling the truth?” Do movies, books, music, all not grapple with the same things comedy as an “art form” does? Can these disciplines themselves also not be humorous?
The Ultimate Comeback
Many reading this essay may not completely buy into my criticisms of comedy, proclaiming that “I must be joking.” Let me assure you, none of this has been a joke. If it were, it would have been too long to have been considered funny. Brevity, we’re reminded, is the soul of wit. The only thing I would consider humorous is how much time I’ve wasted of yours if you’ve gotten nothing out of this, but I can assure you I’ve wasted much more of my own time in putting this together. Maybe the joke is on me.
But I stand firm in my resolve that comedy is no longer funny. Perhaps it once was, but no longer.
Comedy needs to surpass itself. It needs to evolve. For too long have we been reinventing the wheel, when we could’ve been building spacecraft. To do so is not to shun our human nature, but to embrace it fully. Has it not always been human nature to explore, to create, to grow? As Bakunin points out, even the destructive urge is in and of itself a creative passion. And when we as a culture cling onto orthodoxy in a discipline that’s predicated on expecting the unexpected, the passion completely dies.
Thus, we need to purge comedy from our society. It should be outright condemned, in all forms. Telling jokes should be frowned upon in polite company. Laughing aloud in public should be treated as flatulence is: something that can and should be consciously controlled. In the audience of every comedy show should be a theater of people sitting silently in their chairs, contemplating the nature of the joke, what it means to joke, and what it means to be. How can we wrap our heads around what it means to laugh when we have yet to fully understand what it means to exist?
I would like to conclude our thoughts here with a quote from one of the greatest comedy bands of all time, The Barenaked Ladies, whose funniest joke was being named that while being a group of dweeby-looking white guys. In their smash hit song One Week, the singer admits that “he’s the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral,” but that if we can’t understand what he means, we “soon will.”
Laughter arises naturally from conditions in which it’s most inappropriate to do so; when you can no longer control it. How fitting then is it to be stifling laughs at the funeral of comedy. After so long it will be impossible not to laugh, and the laughter will be purified and meaningful. However, it’s important that until that point we hold firm in our resolve to not give in. Then, much like in the end of Brave New World (spoilers for those who haven’t read the 90 year old novel) the self-flagellation will give way to a communal union of orgasmic gratification that not even the most austere of us will be able to repress. But until then, we need not to laugh, but to think.
If still you disagree with the thesis of this essay, that men aren’t funny, allow me to remind you that the author is a man. No woman would have ever penned an essay this stupid and unfunny.