By using a folkloristic approach to stand-up comedy, Brodie leverages the discipline's central method of studying interpersonal, artistic communication and performance. This book regards everything from microphones to clothing and LPs to twitter as strategies for bridging the spatial, temporal, and sociocultural distances between the performer and the audience.
Below is a conversation with Ian about his book, research, and what he sees as emerging trends in stand-up comedy. A Vulgar Art is now available from UPM.
Explain your title: is comedy
necessarily ‘vulgar’?
No, at least not in the sense of
dealing with taboo topics or using offensive language. But the title comes from
a quote of George Carlin. In some of his final interviews he reminded us that
‘vulgar’ means ‘of the people’ (or ‘of the crowd’). It is not a top-down art
form that requires the training of the academy or the conservatory: it emerges
out of the real-world experience of people typically from outside of the
corridors of power, and is directed to people of similar experiences.
So A Vulgar Art refers to an inherently participatory form of talk
between people in a non-hierarchical relationship that is similar to kinship
and friendship, even when the comedian and the audience are actually strangers.
But many comedians can and do
use vulgarity, in the more common sense meaning of that word.
True, but so can friends when
they are among themselves. We speak according to the mores and norms of our
group: we use different language in front of strangers from what we use in
front of our families and our peers, and we are aware of those cues. And we use
different language in times of play and leisure than we do at times of work. So
comedians use the language appropriate to the group. If you do not like
vulgarity in your day-to-day life you probably won’t like it much in your entertainment.
Both the language and the content of stand-up is not what we would expect to
hear in serious talk, in talk that is meant to be constructive or instrumental.
It is play, and part of the comedian’s art is testing the limits of what is
considered appropriate as part of that play, and he or she allowed to do so
because the audience also frames it
as play.
What makes ‘good’ stand-up
comedy?
 |
| Louis CK |
Stand-up aims at laughter: that
is its goal. If a comic generates laughs it is good: if it does not it is bad
(or, rather, it is a failed performance). It doesn't have to meet your criteria for what is funny, only
the specific audience’s. A comic who has earned high praise from critics and
crowds alike – let’s use
Louis CK as an example – still needs to make the
people in front of him laugh, and if he does not it is a bad performance,
because it stems from misreading the crowd. A comedian that might be otherwise
thought of as a hack – let’s not use a named example – is performing ‘good’
comedy if the crowd is left laughing. What do you see as the next trend in stand-up comedy?
Stand-up is always informed by
the media in which it circulates. The two most recent trends have been wholly
self-financed and self-released specials – like Louis CK’s Live at the Beacon Theater or Greg Proops Live at Musso and Frank’s – and specials directly produced for
streaming services like Netflix or download sites like the now defunct
chill.com. The former eliminate the gatekeepers of formal distribution
networks, much like indie records have done: it was simply a matter of waiting
until bandwidth’s expanded capacity and the simplification of online commerce
made it feasible.
Netflix streaming is still
essentially a distributor, but with no tangible product to deliver and no
broadcasting schedule to negotiate, their risk is minimal, while both the large
subscription base and recommendation algorithms give broad exposure to the
comedian. The stand-up comedy special itself is still largely informed by the
model set forth by the cable special: I imagine that soon we’ll start to see
more experimental work (like Maria Bamford’s The Special Special Special) or simply shifts away from established
expectations like the 58 minute length.
Over the course of your
research, what was the biggest revelation you had about stand-up comedy?
I don’t know if revelation fits, but
one of the profound moments I had came while I was reading something for
pleasure that I don’t even cite in A
Vulgar Art. It was the first volume of (Monty Python member) Michael
Palin’s Diaries, which detailed
significant stretches of time when one or another member of the troupe was
facing financial difficulties and encouraging group projects. As a fan at a
distance, I think I always imagined that self-evidently talented people just
got paid somehow for being who they are (despite me not being necessarily naïve
in other things).
It brought home the realization
that whatever romance we place on the entertainer – particularly with the
comedian and the identity of an itinerant truth-teller – this is a profession,
something that people enter into with the hope of supporting themselves and
loved ones. Podcasts, which in the last five years have allowed for new
insights into the private lives of comedians, have reinforced the reality of
the professional comedian, but it was Palin’s work that first made that clear
to me. This isn't a book about the economics of the profession or the industry
– that isn't the book I set out to write – but I think it is grounded in this
realist perspective.
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