by Tim Ferguson
4. Select a simple story element that will infer missing information that transforms the assumed scenario.
For example: The man’s wife remarks that he’s lost his wheelchair, implying that he is crippled, or she remarks that he’s the publican and they live above the pub.
Irony and Sarcasm
There is controversy over the true meaning of the term ‘irony’—possibly even more than over the meaning of the word ‘No’ in certain circles.
Some say irony is sarcasm, or a type of sarcasm, or that sarcasm is a type of irony. Or neither. Or both. Irony and sarcasm, however, are distinct. There are two essential qualities for irony: intentionality and unintended consequence. The Iraq War is ironic because its stated intention was to stabilise the Middle East. Sarcasm is related because the unintended consequence is there, but the intention is always attributed after the fact by the sarcastic observer, as in seeing someone trip over their shoelace and saying, ‘That was smart.’ The person falling over may or may not have believed they were smart. But if Steve Jobs tripped on his shoelaces while demonstrating the high-tech iPhone, that would be ironic. God is reminding us that He has control. If sarcasm is a shotgun, irony is a dirty First Aid kit. Irony comes in various forms.
COMIC IRONY
Although all categories of irony have comic potential, ‘comic irony’ occurs in only two forms:
a) Because of their own actions, a character’s intention or desire is denied. For example, Karl flirts with a woman, hoping his wife will become enraged and leave him. His wife however thinks he’s flirting with the woman so they can all have a threesome and desires him all the more.
b) Because of their own true nature, a character’s intention or desire is denied. For example, Karl’s natural inability to make emotional connections is misread by his wife who thinks he’s merely playing hard-to-get—an irresistible challenge!
A security guard with chronic insecurities, a would-be Casanova with Tourette’s Syndrome and a doctor who can’t stand the sight of blood are all ironic characters because they are doomed to frustration. A rocket scientist, despite his brilliance, might be so absent-minded he can’t walk home without company: that would be ironic. In a similar vein, one Gary Larson cartoon depicts a student trying to enter the Midvale School for the Gifted. He is pushing as hard as he can against a door marked ‘Pull’.
EXERCISE
Devise your own comic ironies using the following set-ups:
1. Brunhilde is a sweet and shy woman who wants to find a husband.
2. Vladimir is a chronic gambler who wants one last win.
3. Rex is a superhero who wants to win a local weight-lifting competition.
SITUATIONAL IRONY
The outcome of an action differs from, or is contrary to, the expected or intended outcome.
A claustrophobic man from the city decides to avoid close spaces by climbing to the top of a mountain. But the weather turns bad and he’s forced to spend the night in a cramped cave on the mountainside, where his claustrophobia is worse than before.
EXERCISE
Devise ironic events and outcomes for these scenarios:
1. Claudio is tired of being ignored. He wants to meet someone who will listen to his problems and arranges some dates over the internet.
2. Jemima is a realist. She wants her best friend, Sybilla, to abandon her belief in God. She takes Sybilla to a church and calls upon God to appear.
3. The Archangel Gabriel is given a new assignment: impregnate a virgin in Sydney’s western suburbs.
DRAMATIC IRONY
Due to a character’s lack of knowledge, their every action or word is laced with a different or opposite meaning for the other characters in the story and also for the audience.
In Act One of Three Amigos! (by Steve Martin, Lorne Michaels and Randy Newman), the villagers who hire the amigos to save them from the dreaded bandit El Guapo have no idea the Amigos are actors, not gunfighters. The Amigos themselves are unaware that their identity has been mistaken and happily prepare to do a ‘show’ for the villagers with El Guapo (whom they assume is an actor). The audience knows all and watches the two groups labour under their respective misapprehensions.
EXERCISE
Devise dramatic ironies that undermine the following scenarios:
1. Davo excitedly shows Suzie his plans for a bank robbery.
2. Detective Smith leads the Chief of Police through a murder scene.
3. John weds Marsha.
VERBAL IRONY
The intended meaning differs from or is contrary to the actual meaning.
Verbal irony can be intentional:
(On Donald Rumsfeld) He’s described as the architect of the war on Iraq. And he should be very proud because he’s built something that is going to last for years and years.
—Jay Leno
Or unintentional:
World War I was waged ‘to end all wars’. World War II followed soon after.
Put the horse before the cart. Layering a script with ironies is a process best begun in the planning or treatment stage. Imposing ironies once characters and stories are built can involve undoing much of the work you’ve done.
SARCASM
According to the Oxford Concise, ‘sarcasm’ is used ‘to improve the mood and self-esteem of others; an innocent diversion’.
Yeah, right …
Sarcasm is to state the opposite of one’s meaning in a way deliberately intended to ridicule, injure or criticise. It’s derived from the Greek ‘sarkazo’ meaning ‘to tear flesh’ and ‘gnash the teeth’.
Sarcasm is as witty as the person who applies it. When Oscar Wilde said that sarcasm ‘is the lowest form of wit’ he was, of course, being sarcastic, given that he used it with such deftness.
I often take exercise. Why only yesterday I had breakfast in bed.
—Oscar Wilde
Sarcasm cuts to the chase. It can sum up a situation, character or idea with deadly accuracy. By the same token, its directness means that sarcastic characters can become monotonous. To stay a step ahead of the audience, sarcastic characters need to vary their technique. For instance, they can—
Invert the truth:
GARY: Does my arse look fat in these shorts?
GRACE: Fat? In those miniscule things? Not at all.
Invert their meaning:
GARY: I thought I’d wear the shorts to the dinner party.
GRACE: Oh, wonderful. Fabulous. Terrific …
Exaggerate while implying the opposite:
GARY: Come on, these shorts are quite stylish.
GRACE: Yeah, you look like Brad Pitt.
Unfairly compare:
GARY: But don’t I look sexy in these shorts?
GRACE: Oh, yes … sexy like a hippo in a g-string.
Suggest an unpleasant consequence:
GARY: I’m wearing these shorts to the dinner party whether you like it or not.
GRACE: Great. Just give me a minute to kill myself.
Of course, sarcasm is a trait that implies cynicism or wisdom, and thus is not suitable for every character. Sarcasm in the mouth of a sweet or innocent character distracts from the story because it violates their nature, unless the change is dramatically justified.
Observation Humour
Most things become silly if you look at them closely enough. Many comedians make careers out of highlighting the silliness of everyday events, actions or objects. Their skewed observations can surprise us with anomalies, contradictions and paradoxes that are plain once we think about them. This kind of comedy is devised through deconstructing the subject matter by observing it from a fresh perspective, or changing its context.
Audience familiarity with the subject matter is crucial in observation comedy: it works by making the familiar strange, seizing on common behaviour that would otherwise go unnoticed. Holding the commonplace but unconsidered action up to scrutiny plays upon our mild, but genuine, embarrassment.
The devilishly clever Irish-Austral
ian comedian Jimeoin performs a routine about stifling yawns. He imitates the various faces people pull, and the strange voices in which they speak, as they struggle to conceal their yawns from others. The audience laughs at Jimeoin’s canny identification of this insignificant but revealing behaviour and the obsessive detail with which he portrays it gives the humour another layer. Reverence is given to the trivial.
DECONSTRUCTION
The absurdity concealed in the mundane can be revealed by deconstructing something and examining its individual components. Robin Williams has a routine in which he explains the basics of golf. In typical Williams’ style, he portrays both a mad Scotsman and a polite, well-spoken questioner.
Here’s my idea of a fucking sport—I knock a ball into a gopher hole. ‘Oh, you mean like pool?’ Fuck off pool! Not with a straight stick. With a little fucked-up stick …
—Robin Williams
The golf routine goes on to detail all the elements essential to golf: the laborious process by which a little ball must be propelled into a tiny hole deliberately placed among sandpits, long grass and ponds. It requires a stick, a flag in the hole (‘to give you hope’) and he caps the routine with a declaration that the process doesn’t take place once—it must be repeated eighteen times. Along the way his polite interlocutor suggests comparisons: is golf like pool? Croquet? Bowling? Each are robustly rejected by the Scotsman: ‘Fuck, no!’
It’s a funny routine and golf is revealed as an inane pastime comprised of unlikely elements that only an idiot or a bastard would devise. But not once does Williams stray from the truth. He may exaggerate the frustration of trying to get a ball into a faraway hole with only a ‘little fucked-up stick’, and he may use his own funny turns of phrase, but he tells us the facts. His explanation is rendered comic by the way he isolates the elements of golf, none of which, by themselves, seem in any way enjoyable or worthwhile. Taken as a whole they might make a fun game, but detailed separately they sound like a form of torture.
Any process with which the audience is familiar can be deconstructed in the same way. Even the other games mentioned in Williams’ golf routine (pool, croquet and bowling) would not stand up to scrutiny of their individual elements. Similarly, rituals such as weddings, marriage proposals and funerals are comprised of odd or incongruous elements (e.g. veils, going down on one knee, open coffins) that can be held up to the light one by one to comic effect.
PERSPECTIVE
The commonplace can also appear quirky or unique when examined from an original perspective.
In the following routine Steven Wright takes a bird’s perspective on annual migration. Wright begins by reporting that he saw a bird wearing a badge saying ‘I ain’t flying nowhere’.
He said, ‘I’m sick of this stuff. Every year it’s the same thing—winter here, summer there. I dunno who thought this up but it certainly wasn’t a bird’.
—Steven Wright
Wright’s bird is given the human characteristics of a bored truck driver stuck on the same route, back and forth, day after day. He’s over it.
Seeing things through the eyes of a character or archetype can make common activities new and surprising. Robin Williams’ Scotsman above is fiercely proud that golf is the most cruel and pointless of sports. His enthusiastic description juxtaposes some unlikely ideas: leisure and cruelty, pride and inanity.
CHANGING CONTEXT
The question, ‘[Subject]: what’s that about?’ is a cliché of stand-up comedy. Changing the context of familiar things can highlight their silliness and reveal a larger truth in the same way as a metaphor. For instance, throwing rice at newlyweds is a traditional part of the wedding ritual. But what about other foods that often go with rice? How would the newlyweds react if we pelted them with beef casserole or soy sauce? What if the rice was cooked? What if we threw rice at our married friends every time we saw them? All these absurdities highlight the larger truth that throwing rice at newlyweds has lost its traditional meaning. It’s become something we do without thinking.
Thoughtless group behaviour is prime material for a context change. For instance:
The Mexican wave: what the hell is that about? Thousands of football fans throw their arms up and shout in sequence. I wonder, when a Mexican waves at his friend in the street, does everyone else in the street wave in sequence? And, once the wave starts, where does it stop? No wonder the Mexico economy’s in trouble—every thirty seconds, everyone has to stop working and wave.
—Tallulah Lowe
Even a whistling kettle can be turned to comic effect with a change of context. Kettles are inanimate household objects, but whistling is a human pastime. Comic juxtapositions emerge when, for instance, we imagine other common household items also doing entertaining things:
I have a kettle that whistles when the water boils. Now I want a toaster that sings.
Specifics can make a gag more vivid and immediate. A generality such as ‘sings’ is okay—we get the idea. But the gag has more kick if it contains a detail that tells a bigger story.
… Now I want a toaster that sings ‘Viva Las Vegas’.
The punchline could relate to the topic in some way.
… Now I want a toaster that sings ‘A Hunka-Hunka Burning Bread’.
On the other hand, the comic juxtaposition could emerge from an examination of the whistle rather than the kettle. What happens when we hear humans whistling?
The kettle’s driving me crazy. Once I hear it I’ve got the tune in my head all day.
Virtually anything commonplace to the audience can be turned to comic effect through deconstruction, or a change of perspective or context.
A change of perspective or context can be enhanced when the teller themselves seems at one remove from the mainstream. Many successful observation comedians have, or play characters who have, strong regional accents (e.g. Billy Connolly, Jimeoin, Chris Rock, Jeff Foxworthy). Others have an offbeat appearance (Elliot Goblet, Steven Wright, Bill Bailey) or exhibit a personal quality that sets them apart from the herd (Eddie Izzard wears dresses, Julian Clary is deliciously camp, Emo Phillips sounds like a deranged cartoon animal).
Creating a distinctive on-stage persona enhances the ‘otherness’ of the comedian, commanding attention by holding out the prospect of a fresh perspective on familiar things. Even a ventriloquist’s dummy is in essence a character disjointed or removed from the ordinary, and therefore capable of saying anything.
In other words, looking and sounding funny can be half the battle. If you intend to perform an observation routine, a good place to start is by devising a distinctive on-stage persona, based perhaps on an aspect of yourself that is already a little different.
EXERCISE
Deconstruct, change perspective on, or the context of, the following rituals of courtship in order to reveal comic insights.
For example, French kissing can be deconstructed into lips, tongues, teeth, saliva and heavy breathing. It involves an approach and meeting of mouths, the choosing of sides to tilt one’s head, one kisser’s adaptation to the other’s technique, nibbling, sucking and tongues revolving around tongues. It doesn’t take much scrutiny before each of these on their own begin to seem silly and a little disgusting. Even the name itself is odd: the French didn’t invent passionate kissing any more than they invented etiquette—though they might have been the first to do it shamelessly.
A perspective change to a tongue’s point of view will reveal this romantic pastime in a new light. A tongue might see kissing as a tiresome exercise for little reward—‘I work and work but in the end I can’t taste a thing, except sometimes a little stale tobacco’. Or the tongue might make a comparison to something incongruous like mining: ‘It’s hard work in the dark, but even if you find a gold tooth, you don’t have anything to drill it with’.
Giving one of the kissers an archetypal personality yields other results: a toothless pensioner, a teenager with braces or Robin Williams’ Scotsman will each have their own view on the art
of pashing. And if a germ-o-phobe or someone with a blocked nose is asked to French kiss, how do they go about it?
Changing the context of French kissing prompts other questions: why don’t newlyweds French kiss at the altar? Do the French always kiss like that? Wouldn’t it make kissing goodbye to their grandmothers a little awkward?
Under this kind of scrutiny it doesn’t take long before the act of French kissing seems ludicrous, pointless, embarrassing and un-sexy. Examine each of the topics below in the same way:
Proposing marriage
Wooing a potential lover
Dumping a lover
Truth and Humorists
Many comedians and wise-cracking sitcom characters can get a laugh simply by voicing insights that their audience accepts have a grain of truth.
There is no formula to making insights funny beyond keeping them brief. The best comic lines of this type tend to imply a lot more than is said.
Sharp-witted comic characters can put their views in a nutshell. The right-wing radio talkback host, Neville Roach in Shock Jock, sums up his defence of gun ownership with the declaration ‘Guns don’t kill people—God kills people’ (‘Heaven Must Be There’ by Steve Myhill).
Comedians who rely principally on this kind of material, such as the brilliant US reactionary Mort Sahl, sometimes call themselves ‘humorists’. They don’t do ‘gags’ per se. Instead, they make observations about the real world, typically politics, prejudice, relationships and the sexes. They are not exactly universal truths, but they express a perspective born of the comedian’s own experience and shared by their fans.
Because a humorist’s polemic is not gag-based, there is no guarantee it will work for every audience. A well-made, well-delivered gag will always have a degree of success: we can laugh at a joke even when we don’t agree with its message. But the insights of Rod Quantock, the acerbic Australian left-winger, probably won’t play in the gun clubs of Northern Queensland. Likewise, Friends of the Earth are unlikely to book the US Republican humorist PJ O’Rourke for any porpoise-kissing jamboree. While gags are, more or less, universally accessible, hard-won pearls of wisdom are not. If stand-up comedy is the performance vehicle of the brave, these people are at the foolhardy end of it.