An Alternative Theory for the Amy Schumer Imbroglio: Convergent Evolution

“On my life, I have never and would never steal a joke.” — Amy Schumer

Jim Gaffigan was the first stand-up comedian I saw in person. It was New Year’s Eve at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee. I recall vividly that, as the clock struck midnight, he dialed his wife on stage. It was adorable — and original.

However, the rest of the set came word-for-word from a dvd I’d already memorized. Don’t get me wrong, I laughed so hard I had to use my inhaler. But, I learned something about stand-up that I hadn’t realized before: successful comedians perform their bits with endless repetition. Gaffigan has probably performed his Hot Pocket routine thousands of times; and while it sounds identical each time today, it didn’t aways. Since that first show, I’ve become a more seasoned consumer of comedy, and I’ve noticed that jokes evolve. This raises an interesting possibility when it comes to accusations of plagiarism.

To recap the TL;DR of the week: Comedians Wendy Liebman, Tammy Pescatelli and Kathleen Madigan took to Twitter to complain that Amy Schumer had been performing their bits as her own. A particularly damning video then surfaced, which shows Schumer performing a bit nearly identical to one delivered by the late Patrice O’Neal (it’s deliciously NSFW, and the worst part for Schumer? Patrice does it better). Yada yada, Schumer flatly denied joke stealing, and then appeared on Jim Norton’s SiriusXM with a kitchen-sink defense.

Now. I’ll admit that I personally think there’s something phony here. But as an ecologist and Amy Schumer bff, I’m bringing science to her defense. Three hypotheses have been proposed: (1) Amy is lying. She stole the jokes fair and square. (2) “Subconscious plagiarism.” Amy isn’t lying, she just heard the jokes long ago and forgot. And for (3), I defer to Shane Ryan at Paste Magazine: “A third theory is ‘parallel thinking,’ an alternative reality in which Schumer and the original comedian both came up with the joke independently. Considering the level of highly specific similarity, and the fact that Schumer has been in the comedy world for a long time and would have had to go far out of her way not to see the original bits at some point, I find the idea totally laughable.”

But there is a fourth hypothesis no one has considered: (4) “Convergent Evolution.” In nature, convergent evolution is the process by which species that are distantly related evolve toward analogous morphologies. Common examples are sharks and dolphins, or bats and birds. My bias tends toward the plant community:

Pictured left is Casuarina cunninghamiana (more commonly “ironwood”), a native of Australia. At a glance — and even upon close inspection — it looks like a pine tree. It has needle-like leaves and cones. Yet, it is more closely related to oaks and beeches than to pine. Casuarina’s closest relationship to pine is, well… they’re both plants?

Casuarina’s ancestors, angiosperms, diverged from gymnosperms more than 200 million years ago, around the dawn of the Cretaceous period.

Convergent evolution often leads distantly related species down a similar morphological path. But could this happen in stand-up comedy?

I suggest that the mechanisms by which a stand-up bit evolves allow for this possibility. The action of delivering a joke faces natural selection: jokes that make people laugh are more likely to be retold than jokes that fall flat.

Stand-up also has mutations — producing new genetic variation upon which natural selection can act. Comedians riff and ad lib constantly, often playing off the crowd. Nebulous bits can be born in this environment, and sculpted gradually over time. Watching older bits from some of your favorite comedians illuminates this. In early stand-up, Gaffigan lacked the deep baritone of his modern act, and his signature “crowd reply” voice seems more like a defense mechanism than part of his act. In the older material, he uses the voice rarely, and it only seems to appear after failed jokes: “Someone died in that joke. That was a sad one.” Today this voice delivers his punchlines: “I buy all my groceries from Sharper Image. And SkyMall. No-one buys anything from SkyMall! ‘Hey buddy, I work for SkyMall!’”

So evolution, but convergence? And on this level of detail? Let’s consider the Wendy Liebman bit, from a 1990 delivery: “Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I like it when the guy pays [giggles…] for sex. I-I mean that.” Vis-a-vis Schumer in 2015: “I am a good person, I swear to you, like I’m very old-school, I think the guy should always pay on the first date [deadpans…] for sex.” The words are somewhat different, but the delivery is nearly identical. It is rather hard to imagine Liebman and Schumer sitting at their respective desks, 25 years apart, drafting jokes and miraculously stumble upon an identical punchline.

But as we’ve seen, jokes evolve with repeat performances. Another possibility is that, starting from rather ordinary material in the comedy world (i.e., dating), Liebman and Schumer riffed about chivalry night after night. They got some laughs. And then one night they landed this devastating punchline and the joke stuck. Unlikely, perhaps. But possible.

Deconstructing the Patrice O’Neal bit would be a big lift. But you get the idea.

Imma go watch Trainwreck again.