Humor

For the Humor unit we were tasked to study different humorist and create our own humor performance.

In my research I studied Key & Peele, Eric Andre and Mike Birbiglia. Key and Peele often use absurd humor, caricature, situational humor and Straight Line/Wavy Line. Eric Andre uses a lot of absurd humor, blue humor as well as jokes and practical jokes. Mike Birbiglia often uses anecdotes and jokes.

Key & Peele or Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are two African American comedians.Key & Peele is a sketch comedy show that often addresses with social norms but can also go in a less serious direction and focus on a more absurd humor. When Key & Peele feel like putting a mirror up to society they’ll often make a a satirical skit that focuses on racism. In some skit’s they’ll portray very over the top caricatures of black people that show how society sees black people. In other skits they’ll have a white character be the main focus (though sometimes played by them) that is saying something either racist or not at all racist in a tone that indicates that this isn’t how people actually talk about black people. For example, in the “Black Ice” skit, two white newscasters are talking about how black ice is very dangerous in ways that could appear as if though they could be talking about black people rather than ice, as the newscasters are talking about the ice, it cuts to Key and Peele playing a weather man and a field reporter clearly picking up on the “accidental” racist comments of the newscasters. If Key & Peele want to take a more fun approach, they’ll make a skit with blue humor or a bit of slapstick and absurd humor. A great example is their “Dicknanigans” skit, where they are onstage performers and are repetitively hitting each other in the balls followed by a narrator saying “Dicknanigans”.

Eric Andre is the half black half Jewish host of The Eric Andre Show on Adult Swim. On the show, there is a celebrity interviewee that often doesn’t know what is actually going to happen on the show. This often results in a lot of shock from the guest from the extreme humors that Eric Andre puts them through. Eric Andre’s humor is often very dark, with a lot of absurdity and a little bit of blue humor mixed in in different places. It’s common for the guest to be on the butt end of a practical joke, for example when Jack Black went on he was put into a fake lie detector test that would shock him no matter what he said. A couple of examples of some of the shock humor he does are; faking throwing up on his desk then eating the fake throw-up which is actually food (I didn’t find this funny at first either, just sorta nasty), often guests are thrown in to a shot segment where someone gets fake shot at the end of the segment and other times Eric Andre or his co-host Hannibal Buress will pull out a gum themselves and fake shoot someone or will get shot.

Mike Birbiglia is a stand-up comedian from Massachusetts. He often uses his real life events and turns them into comedic anecdotes and wisecracks. Birbiglia also commonly uses callbacks within jokes and in later jokes. Birbiglia’s anecdotes are often real life experiences of his that are put into jokes. He also commonly uses his jokes to come to a meaningful conclusion or moral. His morals often have to do with accepting people and themselves or a change in his own perspective. In this way it could also be said that his comedy is satirical because it sometimes points out problems with society. Birbiglia’s humor can often be slightly absurd and is formatted in a joke by joke line up. In most of his stand up videos he will do a quick recap of what he had said at the end of his show in comical ways such as listing of the worst things he said in an out of context conversation or a funny song.

Of the three comedians, I opted for an approach more similar to Birbiglia’s stand up. The idea of having an ending that is has some sort of message. I would have liked to do a skit though with the time given I didn’t feel that I could complete a skit to the level that I would expect from myself for a comedy skit. I also think that stand up would be a good choice, because I have made skits before this project, therefore stand up is the more challenging and newer experience of the two.

Mike Birbiglia is definitely the largest of the three influences as well because I had grown up more with stand up comedy that skit comedy, so with the opportunity to make an attempt at stand up I decided that having a larger influence from the stand up of the three comedy acts that I analyzed above would make the most sense.

From Birbiglia, I really enjoy his use of anecdotes with a punchline over jokes with a punchline, because it feels like a more completed joke to me personally than just a stand alone joke.