Comedy in a Post-9/11 World: What Did It Take to Get New York Laughing Again?
Taken from here.
After 9/11, there was a prevailing sentiment that nothing was funny. Humor seemed meaningless: Many comedians thought, “Why am I telling jokes about x, y, and z when THIS just happened.” And many were of the opinion that this was the way it was going to be from then on– that humor has lost its place in our world, that we needed it less because 9/11 made us a “more serious people.” But some heard that, and they said “No.” And you know what?
They were right.
Take Gilbert Gottfried, for instance. His tasteless humor has gotten him into trouble more than once, but the interesting thing to note is that even if it’s tasteless, it’s rarely– if ever– thoughtless. And in typical Gottfried fashion, he wanted to tell the first tasteless joke after 9/11, so he said, “to shock people out of their stupid.” So at a Friar’s Roast three weeks after the attacks, he told his audience, “I have to leave early tonight; I have to fly to LA. I couldn’t get a direct flight, though; we have to make a stop at the Empire State Building.” There was a giant gasp from the audience along with the sounds of shuffling and unrest, and one person even stood up and shouted, “Too soon.” But Gottfried went from that right into the now-famous Aristocrats joke– which lead to a big, huge, massive release of a laugh. Because of this, Gottfried is credited as being the first one to get the cathartic reaction the public needed in the wake of the attacks.
WNYC’s Jim O’Grady went on a mission to investigate how 9/11 changed comedy. He interviewed countless comedians, among them Gottfried; and perhaps more importantly, he sat down at a roundtable with comedians John Fisch, Tom Shilue, Ophira Eisenberg, Jane Borden, and Ted Alexandro as the professional funnypeople discussed how they dealt with the nature of their work– making people laugh– in the aftermath of so tragic an event. Fisch remembered thinking, “When are going to do comedy again?”… and he told himself that he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to do it. Borden recollected heading down to the Upright Citizen’s Brigade theatre two days after the attacks, not for a show– the theatre was closed, of course– but so that a handful of regulars could get together and perform for each other. And it was hard: “It felt like it had been ages, but it had only been two days,” she said. Eisenberg remembered a punchline to a joke she had seen performed before 9/11 and thinking afterwards how weird it now seemed (and also that the poor comedian who had used it just lost his closer. Ouch).
Shilue took a few months out to mourn. When he came back, though, he found that spoofing anything related to 9/11 was always going to offend somebody. He remembered a time that someone approached him after a show and told him it was great, but “9/11? Not funny.” His reaction was to ask what WASN’T funny about it. It WAS funny, he said, “because the audience was doubled over in laughter.” And interestingly, this point about always offending somebody is more or less true for ALL comedy. I remember one time in this strange, new, post-9/11 world that a couple of high school friends and I attempted to rent a movie together to watch in the common room of one of our dorms (I went to a half-day, half-boarding school). We spent far longer in the video store than we probably should have, largely because we were trying to find something politically correct. But you know what we decided? We decided that it wasn’t possible, and that no matter what we rented, we were probably going to offend someone– so we opted for something that was going to offend EVERYONE and got Airplane!.
The members of the roundtable pointed out that it’s silly to think that comedy has no place in a world rife with tragedy. No, comedy is part of the healing process. When you can finally laugh at something, you know you’re going to be okay. Going back to Gottfried, the Master of Tastelessness told O’Grady, “Comedy and tragedy are roommates, so wherever tragedy it is, comedy is staring over its shoulder, sticking its tongue out.” And they’re right, all of them. Just because something terrible has happened doesn’t mean that comedy no longer has a place in the world. If anything, the greater the tragedy, the stronger the need for comedy.
So go ahead. Mourn. Remember. Memorialize.
But don’t forget to laugh a little, too.
Catch Jim O’Grady’s roundtable over at Studio 360, and while you’re at it, take a listen to these related pieces at WNYC and The Takeaway. They might be just what you need.
Related posts:
Post from: Crushable
After 9/11, there was a prevailing sentiment that nothing was funny. Humor seemed meaningless: Many comedians thought, “Why am I telling jokes about x, y, and z when THIS just happened.” And many were of the opinion that this was the way it was going to be from then on– that humor has lost its place in our world, that we needed it less because 9/11 made us a “more serious people.” But some heard that, and they said “No.” And you know what?
They were right.
Take Gilbert Gottfried, for instance. His tasteless humor has gotten him into trouble more than once, but the interesting thing to note is that even if it’s tasteless, it’s rarely– if ever– thoughtless. And in typical Gottfried fashion, he wanted to tell the first tasteless joke after 9/11, so he said, “to shock people out of their stupid.” So at a Friar’s Roast three weeks after the attacks, he told his audience, “I have to leave early tonight; I have to fly to LA. I couldn’t get a direct flight, though; we have to make a stop at the Empire State Building.” There was a giant gasp from the audience along with the sounds of shuffling and unrest, and one person even stood up and shouted, “Too soon.” But Gottfried went from that right into the now-famous Aristocrats joke– which lead to a big, huge, massive release of a laugh. Because of this, Gottfried is credited as being the first one to get the cathartic reaction the public needed in the wake of the attacks.
WNYC’s Jim O’Grady went on a mission to investigate how 9/11 changed comedy. He interviewed countless comedians, among them Gottfried; and perhaps more importantly, he sat down at a roundtable with comedians John Fisch, Tom Shilue, Ophira Eisenberg, Jane Borden, and Ted Alexandro as the professional funnypeople discussed how they dealt with the nature of their work– making people laugh– in the aftermath of so tragic an event. Fisch remembered thinking, “When are going to do comedy again?”… and he told himself that he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to do it. Borden recollected heading down to the Upright Citizen’s Brigade theatre two days after the attacks, not for a show– the theatre was closed, of course– but so that a handful of regulars could get together and perform for each other. And it was hard: “It felt like it had been ages, but it had only been two days,” she said. Eisenberg remembered a punchline to a joke she had seen performed before 9/11 and thinking afterwards how weird it now seemed (and also that the poor comedian who had used it just lost his closer. Ouch).
Shilue took a few months out to mourn. When he came back, though, he found that spoofing anything related to 9/11 was always going to offend somebody. He remembered a time that someone approached him after a show and told him it was great, but “9/11? Not funny.” His reaction was to ask what WASN’T funny about it. It WAS funny, he said, “because the audience was doubled over in laughter.” And interestingly, this point about always offending somebody is more or less true for ALL comedy. I remember one time in this strange, new, post-9/11 world that a couple of high school friends and I attempted to rent a movie together to watch in the common room of one of our dorms (I went to a half-day, half-boarding school). We spent far longer in the video store than we probably should have, largely because we were trying to find something politically correct. But you know what we decided? We decided that it wasn’t possible, and that no matter what we rented, we were probably going to offend someone– so we opted for something that was going to offend EVERYONE and got Airplane!.
The members of the roundtable pointed out that it’s silly to think that comedy has no place in a world rife with tragedy. No, comedy is part of the healing process. When you can finally laugh at something, you know you’re going to be okay. Going back to Gottfried, the Master of Tastelessness told O’Grady, “Comedy and tragedy are roommates, so wherever tragedy it is, comedy is staring over its shoulder, sticking its tongue out.” And they’re right, all of them. Just because something terrible has happened doesn’t mean that comedy no longer has a place in the world. If anything, the greater the tragedy, the stronger the need for comedy.
So go ahead. Mourn. Remember. Memorialize.
But don’t forget to laugh a little, too.
Catch Jim O’Grady’s roundtable over at Studio 360, and while you’re at it, take a listen to these related pieces at WNYC and The Takeaway. They might be just what you need.
Related posts:
Post from: Crushable
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