An Oral History of the SCMS 2018 Comedy Field Trip
Every year at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, the Comedy and Humor Studies SIG goes on a field trip -- an evening at a local improv theater, a stand-up comedy club, or other such mirthful venue. The event is a nice chance for members to bond over their shared laughter and have some fun.
This year's outing to a small comedy club in downtown Toronto was somewhat different. To try to salvage something productive from this experience, we solicited accounts from some of our members who were there, so that we may look back unfondly on the night for years to come.
The following stories are all 100% true, real, and unembellished.
Stephanie Brown, co-organizer of event.
My dissertation research has involved attending many painfully bad local stand-up shows, where the only way I kept my cool was to bring a friend with whom I could exchange knowing looks. I remember doing literature reviews and noticing that much of the theorizing of what stand-up is or does focuses on the best, most polished, most progressive, or most significant forms or performers of stand-up comedy. Many of the celebratory definitions of what stand-up can do culturally does not align with what I was seeing at the local level. Because comedy has only recently been taken seriously as an academic or critical object of study, the discourse surrounding comedy as an art form often functions as proof of worth of a so-called “bad object.” But what do we miss when we don’t look at the worst of what stand-up is? Even research that centers controversial comics like Daniel Tosh or Jim Norton are examining comics who, whether we like or hate them, are at the top of their game. They’re visible, they’re popular, and they know how to write and perform. In his sociological research of urban nightlife and comedy clubs, James M. Thomas (2015) theorizes the production of comedy within local entertainment economies rather than within the context of national media industries. He argues that we tend to focus more on the “interiority” of comedy, or the “linguistic, discursive, or symbolic components of comedy” than on the “exteriority” of comedy, or “the spaces in which comics, good or bad, perform” (9). Great comics, he argues, are the exception, not the norm. What are we missing by avoiding bad comics?
Ok, so, really, what I’m trying to do here is justify our supremely terrible comedy club experience, for which I feel partially responsible. In Chicago, we took a delightful trip to iO (Improv Olympics), and thought we’d try for stand-up comedy for this year’s outing. What we forgot is that stand-up is hard to pre-screen and is thus wildly variable. While we bought tickets to a showcase instead of an open mic, the performers were not much better than those at the Chicago open mics I have attended. Improv spaces like iO and Second City tend to be tourist-friendly, and the art form lends itself to bringing audiences in rather than alienating them. However, as we quickly discovered, it’s very easy to accidentally bring a group of scholars to a show with a line-up full of men who spew a series of misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic “jokes.” While my dissertation research at open mics helped me build up the mental endurance needed to survive our outing, I feared halfway through the show that my fellow SIG members may not make it.
My personal favorite set was by a comic who we collectively could not decipher: he was either doing a Andy Kaufmanesque bit about misogynistic comics or he was a horrifyingly misogynistic comic. In the end, it didn’t really matter, because we were surrounded by audience members who were laughing at the word “femtard,” and I don’t think they were doing so on some ironic, meta level. I brought my roommate, a reality television scholar, with me to the show, and she was so deeply uncomfortable the entire time, I thought she was going to slide off of her chair and crawl out of the room.
Needless to say, the ten or so of us who braved the tiny comedy club grew closer as humor colleagues that night, and will no doubt tell stories of the show for years to come.
Seth Soulstein, brave attendee.
If you're not laughing at a comedy show, is it still funny? Nine or so members of the Comedy and Humor Studies SIG were treated to an immersive examination of this important question, in the form of an outing to a comedy club, for a thoroughly crap-tastic (to use the academic term) night of comedy. I was one of those brave souls, and I lived to tell the tale.
To a certain extent, it was our own fault. Why would a bunch of comedy scholars think that a tiny comedy club featuring six local stand-up comedians on a Friday night in Toronto would be anything other than a deep dive into the misogynistic, homophobic, just-plain-bad comedy we know exists as a (very well-populated) counterpoint to all the Wanda Sykeses and Tig Notaros of the world? But there we found ourselves, in a cramped walk-in closet-sized comedy club, being berated by a variety of angry white men, with no possibility for escape.
"Where are you guys from, a teachers' convention?" barked the emcee, not 3 minutes into his opening set, noting how, despite our best efforts to be good sports and support his efforts, our bloc just didn't seem to be laughing. Give him an "A" for observation, there. "Yes," replied one of our lot. "So it's not that we're humorless - quite the opposite, we study humor! - but rather that we find your brand of anti-intellectual, "ironically" anti-PC, aggressive and negative humor to be distasteful, and don't want to reward or encourage it by smiling or laughing," added no one.
Six more comics ensued. There were a few good jokes, some nice moments of timing, but by and large it was the kind of show that left you wanting to take a shower after was all over. On the plus side, we all laughed more as the night went on - not at the jokes about the local art-school kids, or the one about how no man would get out of bed in the morning if it weren't for the siren call of women's genitals - but at the preposterousness of the situation, and at the tone-deaf approach of the increasingly manic comics. It was a bonding experience! Ice breakers and trust falls might get you there quicker, but this did the trick.
"Come back at 11 - we'll be doing this all over again!" said the emcee, to close out the night. We declined the invitation.
Kristen Anderson Wagner, who took the extra-academic step of making a pie-chart.
I’ve never done stand-up comedy. I imagine it must be incredibly difficult, going on stage in front of a room full of strangers and making yourself vulnerable to scorn, abuse, derision, or, worst of all, indifference. A good stand-up comic can create a bond with this room full of strangers, making the audience feel like the comic’s best friend and confidant; making us laugh with, not at them; finding the delicate balance between silliness and sincerity, between confidence and self-deprecation. The material needs to be simultaneously original and relatable, and the delivery should make the comic seem quirky without being off-putting, approachable without being bland. Truly talented comics can do all of this effortlessly, erasing all traces of their labor and making it seem like they’re just sharing some funny stories with their friends in the audience. Really, there’s nothing like a good stand-up comic.
And on our trip to a comedy club in Toronto during SCMS, there was nothing like a good stand-up comic. Okay, that’s not exactly true. There were a couple of comics who were genuinely funny, and each performer told at least a few jokes that landed. And, to be fair, we were an odd crowd – four tables of comedy scholars, surrounded by a smattering of young couples on dates. I’m sure the vibe we gave off was very different from what the performers typically get from a Friday night crowd, and as a result they seemed to find us perplexing. They really wanted to draw us into their acts, to make some jokes at our expense, but they could never really figure out an angle, and so they all ultimately turned their attention to the low-hanging fruit of the dating couples sitting up front. The room was small, and so no one in the audience had the option of blending into the background – everyone was a potential target. The size of the room also meant that failed jokes were met with a silence that was impossible to ignore, and that no doubt made everyone feel awkward and embarrassed for the performers, not exactly the ideal reaction for a comedy club. On the plus side, the comics did succeed in getting the audience to bond, although at times we were bonding with each other, as people in a hostage situation might do, and not with the performers.
Most of the comedians seemed like they were mass-produced in a Canadian comedy-bro factory. There was a sameness to their material and delivery that made them blend together and difficult to remember afterwards. There were a lot of dick jokes. A LOT of dick jokes.
It’s perhaps no surprise that the evening’s best comics were the two who were least like the others: the lone woman on the bill and a man who was one of the only non-white performers. Both represented a refreshing change from the onslaught of sex and drug jokes offered by the others (not that these two didn’t do sex and drug jokes, they just did better sex and drug jokes). All of the performers were uneven at times, but these two had the most original material and the most nuanced delivery of the night.
When the show was mercifully over we started to leave, only to find the night’s performers lining the narrow stairway leading to the exit, so that we had to pass them on the way out. It was unbelievably awkward. I was glad for the chance to compliment the comedian I liked (the female comic had the good sense to skip the receiving line), but as the crowd slowly made their way up the stairs I couldn’t bring myself to do anything but smile and nod weakly at the others. What could I say? “You looked like you were having fun up there!” “I like your shoes!” “You sure know a lot of dick jokes!” Best to just say nothing and make my escape.
Bill Costanzo, who gets right to the point.
Briefly, it was one of the most uncomfortable encounters with “humor” I can remember, and I don’t mean that in a good way. The snarky tone was set, and sustained, by a smug host who gave new meaning to the words “corner” and “club.” He used comedy to corner his audience and club them into submission. The first listener to say something, a young man behind us who was just trying to contribute to the entertainment, became the first target of a nasty, relentless attack. Then the host looked for more victims. It reminded me of what someone said at the SIG meeting earlier that day about teachers who use their position and humor as weapons in a game of power. Most of the stand-ups who followed just repeated over-worn, tediously grubby jokes, I thought. Only two had anything interesting or original to add—one who made clever use of accents, another whose dull-witted persona kept us guessing when his next clever comment would slip out sideways from the mask. All in all, I left feeling defensive and dissatisfied.
Thanks to Kristen, Seth, and Bill for sharing their accounts and reliving the experience one more time. And thanks to everyone who came with us to the show.
We’re taking recommendations for Seattle 2019, which we promise will be a more positive experience.