Why are some jokes universally funny to large swaths of people?
For my husband’s birthday, I took him and our two adult kids to a comedy show last weekend. There were around 30 people in the club that easily held 100 or more. The headliner was a Black guy, and I’m identifying his race with purpose. He’d won the distinction of ‘Winner of the Seattle International Comedy Competition,’ or so the stamp on his sales page said. Yet the club was two thirds empty, and after the show I could see why.
Standup comedy is likely one of the hardest forms of entertainment, so I give the comedian a lot of grace when they aren’t funny, often chuckling, along with equally gracious attendees, to help support the performer. The lineup at this club last weekend made it particularly hard to laugh at their routines.
The three warm up acts, in order, were a Black trans woman, a White man with cerebral palsy, and a gay Black woman who was so stoned, by her admission on stage, she kept laughing at her own ‘jokes.’ All three barely got even polite chuckles from the small crowd, including me. They bombed. Hard. And here’s why…
The first Black comedian up there started out by grabbing her crotch and telling the audience of mostly upwardly mobile White and Black couples that her “Big titties, and THIS,” meaning her pussy, were what made her special, valuable as a Black woman in America. Then she goes on to slam anyone who isn’t woke enough to not only respect, but vocally support the trans community. “Ya all so racist you won’t stand up for these Black titties?” She didn’t seem to understand that being at least 300 pounds, with her pants falling below the crack in her ass, and crass in the extreme—meaning to be offensive—wasn’t funny. It’s also likely why she seemed to feel her value was in her choice to become transgender, and not what she contributes to humanity. Instead of humor—delivering a moment of lightness to people’s lives—she radiated resentment, hate.
The White comic with cerebral palsy was hard to understand with his speech impediment, but what I did get was all his ‘jokes’ were about his disability. “Everyone thinks I’m drunk,” was his opening line. “But I’m not.” (It would have been funnier if he’d said he was.) He went on to tell the audience he’d had cerebral palsy since infancy, and how people in public avoid him because he walks funny and holds his body weird. It wasn’t physical comedy. He was clearly disabled. He described how people look away, like the reality of him will infect them. It was supposed to land funny, but really, it was just tragic.
The last comedian was stoned out of her mind, and beyond her: “everyone disses me because I’m a gay Black woman,” started laughing before finishing most of her ‘jokes.’
The headliner was considerably better than the warm up acts. His funniest bit was noting how tall he was, and how annoyed he gets with everyone always asking him to get stuff off top shelves in markets, and he’d like to turn that around and ask shorter people to please get him that item off the bottom shelf. But even he used racism way too often as his ‘jokes’ that came off more as bitter, angry commentary than something funny.
What is a joke?
My daughter says I suck at sarcasm, and it’s true. I think it’s fundamentally mean-spirited.
My father-in-law used to spout cruel ‘jokes’ about his wife constantly, little jabs of a knife—‘Oh, she hates to cook, which is good for all of us,’—death of intimacy by a thousand cuts.
There are private jokes—humorous shared experiences that are periodically recalled together.
But what is universally funny? Why did the tall and short joke land so well that the entire audience burst into laughter for the first time that evening?
Tall or short, we can all relate. Race doesn’t matter. Gender doesn’t either. Sexual preference isn’t part of the joke. The things that generally divide us didn’t exist in his story. It was just funny. Now every time I see a tall guy in the market I’ll smile with the memory of that joke. So will a lot of the audience. The comic spread a moment of lightness with that joke. You can call him out for being ‘tallest,’ or making fun of short people (which he didn’t, just people shorter than his 6’5”). But really? That’s a bit too woke, don’t ya think.
It is the comedian’s job on stage to get their audience to laugh—gift them that moment of lightness. Sometimes humor can be controversial, challenge us to view things differently, but only if we’re not offended, or bored. And attacking the audience for being racist, sexist, transphobic, isn’t funny. Especially to an audience of mostly young professionals in tech, medicine, or management, regardless of their race or sexual orientation.
If the cerebral palsy guy had tapped into the universal feeling of being ignored—on the outside looking in, which most of us have felt (and many frequently); or the trans woman had surfaced what it feels like to be judged by our gender—male or female—those types of jokes would likely have landed a laugh. There’s lightness in laughing at ourselves. Not so much when we’re called out for “All White people” think this or that about Blacks, and “all straight people are overtly or secretly homophobic.”
While I’ll agree we are all born sexist, racist—fundamentally afraid of ‘the other’—I didn’t spend $50 a ticket to be berated that humans (with the exception of the ‘comedians’) are flawed.
Black, White, Asian, Latino, gay, trans, straight, young and old, we all share FEELINGS in common, as being alive means FEELING. Good, bad, happy, sad…etc., humans all feel the SAME THINGS to varying degrees, our feelings evoked by stimuli/input. Universal humor taps into our sameness, feelings we all share, even when pointing out our differences. Social awkwardness, handling rejection, tripping over our own feet are embarrassing moments we’ve all experience, and can easily be woven with commentary on racism:
Saw this stunner coming out of Starbucks yesterday so I put on my cool, ya know, casually glancing her way, then when she noticed me I flashed her my signature grin (and he does, comically). And I’m thinking I’m all hot shit cuz I got her attention, and that’s when I tripped on a cracked sidewalk and almost face-wiped.
I popped back up feeling like a fuckin idiot and catch her smiling before she turned away. Then this old guy sitting on the bench in front of Starbucks says outta nowhere, “Tragic, really. Another clear case of systemic bias.”
“What’d you say man?!” I’m like seriously pissed assuming he meant because I’m Black and she was White.
He looked at me deadpan. “Sidewalks have a long history of discrimination against dudes flagrantly struttin their stuff.”
😉
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