As part of a process of simultaneous self improvement/effacement, over the past couple months I have been undertaking a course in stand-up comedy.
During the process of the course a number of interesting exercises and incidents occurred that seemed to have particular semiotic interest. The aim of this post is to briefly explore some of these, and comment on any relevant semiotic learnings gleaned from the course.
Seeing Yourself as the Audience Does:
The very first exercise on the course dealt with a common concern in the world of commercial semiotics, the gap between intended meaning and received meaning.
We were tasked in advance to spend some time stood in front of a mirror, and to each write a description of how we saw ourselves. Upon arrival at the course each student took a turn to stand in front of the group and read their description. The other course members and tutor would then comment on anything they felt they had missed. Once this was completed the other students were invited to speculate on a series of questions about the student along the following lines:
-Is this person heterosexual or homosexual?
-Are they single, in a relationship, or married?
-Are they ‘nice’ or ‘nasty’?
-When they go on holiday, do they go to look at castles and monuments, or to have a party?
-What is their job?
The aim of this exercise was not simply icebreaking, it was to ensure that as performers we understood that our personal self image and feelings are less important than the meanings that the audience understand when looking at us. It was made clear that if a performer who appeared to be ‘nice’ started their performance in a ‘nasty’ persona, this would be inauthentic to the audience, and would present a barrier to engagement for many audience members. In many cases the perceptions of the group did not match with the individuals view of themselves, this was sometimes initially troubling, but often provided interesting stimulus in terms of the development of the individuals comic persona.
Set up – Punch:
Next we moved on to look at joke structure. the first important learning here was an acknowledgement of the competition that a comedian faces in the live environment, both from hecklers, as well as other noises and distractions for the audience (such as mobile phones). Due to this, there is a ‘rule’ of stand-up that dictates a performer should be getting a minimum of a laugh every 15 seconds (something to bear in mind analogously for client presentations). Sticking too this rule prevents audience members becoming distracted/restless and is an important consideration for writing structure.
Bearing this in mind we were introduced to the fundamental structure of a joke, namely set up – punch.
Set up punch refers to the two essential parts of a joke, the eponymous ‘set up’, and ‘punch’
-The set up contains essential contextual information necessary to understand the punchline. It should be short and to the point, brevity is the priority over correct punctuation or pronunciation, words can be and are run into each other in order to condense this section.
-The punch(line) contains new information, that somehow changes or recontextualises the information provided in the set up. Again the punch should be as economical as possible, BUT additions can be made as long as they promote further laugher and do not dilute the initial punch.
This structure underlines all* stand-up comedy, it was illustrated to us that the narrative structures that we associate with standup performance are actually constructed retrospectively by combining a series of ‘set up – punch’ jokes on the same subject. Additionally punch(lines) do not necessarily need to be spoken, but can be acted/mimed etc.
Making Associations:
There are a number of methods for generating material, from ‘ranting and raving’ to the more sedate ‘list method’. But in all cases the initial process of joke writing involves selecting a subject and expanding it out in order to explore it from all possible angles. This expansion by association utilises a number of semiotic phenomena such as connotation, metaphorical connectivity, and even material considerations such as rhythm, rhyme, homophony and contronyms.
Rather than plunging into unlimited semiosis however, this process had to be carefully managed. For the purposes of the course associations were divided into ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’, with primary associations deemed the strongest for constructing jokes.
While this process was very semiotically relevant, I personally found the process harder than most. I found that due to my semiotic bias, I typically moved straight to ‘secondary’ associations and overlooked some useful ‘primary’ ones.
A primary association would be along the lines of:
Policeman -> Helmet
Whereas I was typically thinking of secondary associations, such as;
Policeman -> Authority
As we know from the work of Barthes, connotation often appears “natural” and “immediate” (Cobley 2004, 50), while denotation is unpacked subsequently. It seems my problem was related to this, in that I was ‘jumping ahead’ into the diffuse world of connotation, while overlooking denotation and risking writing material that would not be understandable by the audience.
As an example, in one of our early exercises we were working from a set of idioms as inspiration and trying to expand them out. During this I came up with the following potential joke (presented here as an example of a work in progress, not as a demonstration of ability!):
They say an army marches on it’s stomach. That’s why I’m afraid of snakes.
The link here was apparent to me (that snakes crawl on their stomachs), but was opaque to the rest of the class, resulting (among other reasons) in the joke failing. A more successful joke based on this idiom would probably relate to the stomach in a more direct fashion (something about hunger, or involving a portly captain perhaps).
Use of Familiar Phrases and Subject Matter:
While my attempt was unsuccessful, the use of idioms and familiar phrases is very common in comedy. During the course these phrases ranged from expressions such as ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’ to more mundane notes like; ‘please leave this toilet as you expect to find it’. The cultural embeddedness of these phrases is a useful for comedy as humour, and therefore the punch of ‘set up – punch’, is built upon surprise. It is therefore necessary to have a culturally familiar subject which you can twist or subvert in some way in order to provide the surprise.
In a recent post I used the following quote from Groucho Marx as a demonstration of how a significant proportion of humour is based on such semiotic misdirection.
The humour in this joke results from the western culturally ingrained symbolic interpretation of back cats as signs of bad luck and witchcraft. Instead Marx subverts this habitual expectation, by offering an alternative interpretation of the cats movement as an indexical sign of its desire to go somewhere. The humour here is precisely located in the interpretation of something usually discussed in the context of symbolism, instead as an index.
As semioticians we are aware of the culturally specific nature of certain types of knowledge. This becomes increasingly diffuse as we enter into connotation and tangential links.
In order to ensure our adherence to the pool of widely held cultural knowledge. We were advised on the course to pretend that we were writing jokes to appeal to someone radically different than ourselves, namely a fifty year old Swedish woman. This ensured that all of our jokes would be maximally understandable, as well as provide a sufficiently surprising punchline.
Performance:
Finally for those interested, the video below documents my debut performance (it was shot by a friend who saw fit to add ‘Lemon Live Exclusive’ in the Corner and make it black and white.) Feel free to have a watch and let me know if you have any questions or additional thoughts concerning semiotics and stand up!
Further Information:
http://www.londoncomedycourse.com
References:
Cobley, Paul 2004. Introducing Semiotics. Icon Books
Notes:
*Stewart Lee was highlighted on the course as a general exception to all of the ‘rules’ of comedy as he performs in his own idiosyncratic style (employing repetition, drawn out silences, direct attacks on other comedians, intellectual material, and moves to deliberately divide the audience). He is a personal favourite, but we were strongly advised not to copy him, as he has earned the right to perform in his style over years of touring. Additionally he often advertises his shows including negative reviews, to highlight the unusual nature of his act and ensure that audience members do not turn up unawares.
decoding semiotics 