The Comedy Credibility Problem
Guest Post by writer & producer Aaron Garrett.
This is Aaron. Who wouldn’t trust this guy?
In the summer of 2013 an entertainer briefly met Bryan Cranston, who was finishing up his acclaimed role in Breaking Bad and fielding more offers than he could handle: Godzilla, All the Way, and of course, the crown jewel in anyone’s filmography, Power Rangers.
Cranston mentioned, off-hand, that it was exhausting, and that he had never had so many offers, so many things to consider.
The entertainer, confused, remarked that Cranston had been decently well known since the 90’s with a notable recurring role in Seinfeld, and a starring role in Malcolm in the Middle which was hugely influential on American sitcoms in the 2000’s, and paved the way for Big Fat Liar 2: Lie Fatter.
Surely Cranston, even if he had a resurgence due to Breaking Bad, never lacked for attention or work?
He also made Spanglish which is not as zeitgeisty right now, but I’m not here to write about Adam Sandler’s career, even though I keep pitching ideas on that to Riley. Give the people what they want!
“They don’t give a shit until you do drama,” Cranston replied simply, and that, essentially, is why Adam Sandler made Spaceman.
A few weeks ago I was not using my time on this earth well and scrolling Google News, and came across a perfectly reasonable blog from a perfectly reasonable man who is also a pretentious hack so devoid of imagination that I had to be hyperbolic about him (I’m told strong negative emotions are the way to maintain interest, so, uh, hope I’m doing it right).
Salem!, a new musical about the Salem Witch Trials was recently announced for development. Details are scarce, but the article describes it as a “dark musical comedy,” and there is a certain flippancy in the way it suggests it will draw a direct parallel between historical accusers, the church and modern conservative news media.
At least one person, Chris Peterson of the venerable OnstageBlog.com, took objection to the concept of this show, to the mere gall of applying something as frivolous as comedy to the important historical event of the Salem Witch Trials. He’d have been fine, by his own account, if this were a serious musical, a dramatic musical, but a musical comedy? That is not meant for something so important.
This opinion lays bare an idea which for the purposes of catchy titles I’m going to call the Comedy Credibility Problem.
Or the Komedy Kredibility Problem, if you really want to drive the point home.
This is the idea that to find comedy in something is to degrade it, that to laugh is to rob of value, that comedy is by its very nature something for the unimportant.
To those who know me I am always seeking a positive interpretation of people’s words and deeds, even if I disagree with them; I’m not the kinda guy who’s gonna bring a pitchfork, but it’s hard to interpret comedy’s place in critical circles as anything but a dismissal.
Comedy is frequently left out of awards categories consideration, and when it’s not it rarely wins: the last person to win an Oscar for a comedic performance was Melissa McCarthy in 2011’s Bridesmaids. Other movies which are labeled as “comedies” usually aren’t, they’re just not overtly sad.
In TV discussion they judge “comedies” and “dramas” by length (which is a different, dumb conversation), which leads to “comedies” like Nurse Jackie, Transparent, and The Bear which are not the best representatives of the genre. I don’t want to derail the main points, so I’ll say: none of those three are comedies, even if they star comedians and even if they generate laughter. I find The Bear often very funny, but it is not a comedy (which relies on the overt exaggeration of reality in order to make its points, but I’m not going any deeper on that right now).
Of course Mr. Peterson has already told us some topics are off limits for comedies, whereas everything is fair game for drama, but don’t take it from me, take it from John C. Reilly fifteen years ago.
Unfortunately there isn’t a study I can link to about the lack of funding for comedies, so it’s entirely anecdotal, but the panels I’ve served on, and what gets funded, points to a general dismissal of comedy on the recently in-vogue metrics of “social change.”
When we allow the culture to tell us these things don’t matter it has real effects: improv theaters have trouble convincing people the product is worth paying for, and comedies are less likely to be funded for state-run grants .
When super-hero movies gobbled up all our cinematic space, adult dramas didn’t go extinct because they’re still valuable from an awards perspective, but you know what has died off? Mid-budget comedies. If we don’t make more what will air at midnight on TBS?!?!?!
At the risk of pulling off a twist so shocking it’ll make your hearts explode, I disagree. I believe comedy is the best way to build empathy. I believe that there is nothing more human than laughter. And I believe that contrary to Peterson’s assertion that “[campy musicals] may undermine the seriousness of the historical events being portrayed”, the exaggeration of comedy attunes us to patterns that we can then better spot in our everyday life.
I’m referring to Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and Frogs. Before you go rushing out to giggle your pants off, let me tell you that something does get lost in 3000 years of translation.
The very first comedies we have (apart from a Sumerian farting joke, which is timeless), critiqued and lampooned war and the denial of truth. Comedies such as Chaplin’s Great Dictator demonstrate how mockery can be wielded as a tool to change minds.
When testing astronauts for the space program psychologists used laughter as a means to separate the truly sane from the practiced maniacs who want to be strapped to a tube floating through nothing. Why? Because when we laugh we “connect with another person’s emotional state.” In non-academic speak, we laugh when we recognize ourselves and our struggles in another and connect to them.
Comedy puts us in each other’s shoes not through becoming an avatar of pity, hope, or impressiveness, but by becoming a representative of yourself; you laugh when you see that someone else is like you, and that creates the opportunity to change minds and raise awareness at an astounding rate.
Does anyone really think that Barbie would have been better last year if they took out the comedy and just left the pondering nature of gender relations? I doubt it, and now it’s spurring a greater conversation in China about women’s rights.
Comedy breaks open our minds and sticks with us in ways that drama doesn’t.
Now, I’m a businessman. A bad businessman, a truly astoundingly poor businessman, but one nonetheless, and there’s another simple reason to care about comedy: people like them better than dramas!
Not since Kahneman and Tversky suggested that people may not be entirely rational has such an obvious statement been ignored by so much industry.
I care about live theater. It’s the thing I love most in the world (yes, more than ice cream), and theater has an entertainment problem entirely of their own making.
Walter Kerr argues in his 1956 book How Not to Write a Play that at the beginning of the 1900’s theater deliberately took a turn towards the over-serious and didactic in order to impress the stodgy elites and compete more directly with stuffy forms of art such as opera and symphony.
In doing this they expected the commoner (or shop girl, as Kerr puts it) to just follow along and eat their vegetables, but they didn’t, and the theater has had a tough time sustaining itself ever since. Who wants to pay fifty dollars to be lectured at for two hours? No one I know (apart from me, but no one should use me as an example).
Comedy has been set to one side because some quirk of human psychology makes us think that happy people are stupid, and it simply isn’t true. I haven’t met a tragedy that comedy couldn’t alleviate the pain of while building a platform of understanding, and that is why the work I do is comedy-focused.
Life is absurd, and comedy is the only way to understand it.
Far from diminishing the importance of history, comedy elevates it and makes it relatable.
Aaron is the creator and producer of the hilarious scifi sitcom, Space Train. The podcast is available spacetrain.fireside.fm.
He is the writer/director of the upcoming Houston-based sketch show Start Your Endings. If you are in the Houston area, don’t miss out on the show: https://pronoiatheater.wellattended.com/events/start-your-endings
