Comedy and PC Culture: Grow Up Already
I used to perform stand-up comedy. And, just so you know, this isn’t about how PC culture drove me out of stand-up. Frustration at not moving up in the stand-up world drove me away from stand-up. I was edgy, loved to take risks, but comedy clubs don’t want risky openers. A great opening comic in St. Louis, Craig Hawksley, told me that it was the MC’s job to “set the table for the evening.” It was good advice. I ignored it because I just wanted to eat.
First of all, I’d say that political correctness has goodness and decency at its heart. I don’t begrudge the good intentions of political correctness: that is, to be polite to one another. As an atheist, I’ve always thought that the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” was a great mantra for all of us to live by. And I’d like to thank Jesus for naming it after my family.
Performing stand-up comedy is inherently risky. You go up there with one primary goal in mind: make the audience laugh. And your entire act depends on making the audience laugh. Personally, I had to work very hard to overcome stage fright. From my cowardly perspective, it made comedy even riskier. I know I’m diverging from the point a bit, but stick with me.
I had performed with a group in St. Louis called The Network. We had a regular show at Catch A Rising Star. The stage fright experienced performing sketch and improv comedy is significantly different than the stage fright endured performing stand-up. In improv, for instance, you’re focused on your scene partner(s) and the audience is background. Obviously, you’re aware of the audience’s reaction (or lack thereof) but it isn’t what you’re most tuned in to. If a scene fails, it isn’t all on you. If a scene goes well, it means we all succeeded. In other words, it’s a shared experience.
When you perform stand-up, your focus is completely on the audience. If you fail, you’re the asshole.
I performed stand-up for the first time on a Monday night within The Network’s show. The owner of the Catch a Rising Star chain was there along with six audience members. No pressure! Needless to say, I was terrified and terrible (and, yet, I felt compelled to say it).
But, somehow I forced myself to attend open mics and learn how to be a stand-up. It was difficult, but gratifying. I could feel myself getting better and better each week. I finally reached a point where I was performing challenging material and making the audience laugh. I’ve always viewed stand-up as a way, not just to get laughs, but to convey ideas, to have an agenda, to have something to say. I want to do something that’s inherently risky (stand-up) and raise the ante. Sometimes, that involves saying words that might be offensive to particular people.
Incidentally, I started as a clean comic and later used foul language. I don’t use foul language because “it’s so easy.” I use it because there is a certain rhythm to all language — and I love words. Why should I deny myself the use of some of those words because an audience member might be offended? I believe in free speech and fully use that freedom to the hilt. I am libertarian to the nth degree on only two things: speech and ideas.
Here’s why: neither of them really hurt anyone. I’ll acknowledge that they can lead to hurting someone — you may remember the speeches and ideas of a fella named Adolph Hitler, for instance. But, most truly bad ideas die on the vine. And opposing speech and ideas are always welcome — that’s the idea of free speech.
For instance, I find Ann Coulter and her ideas tremendously offensive. Guess, what I don’t do? I don’t go to an Ann Coulter book signing and I sure as hell don’t buy her books (I don’t burn them either). Occasionally I’m ambushed by Ann Coulter on a news or entertainment show and I may suffer through her imbecilic rants because I enjoy Bill Maher’s show and know that her lunacy will be illuminated by other, more sensible guests. I will say that it’s incomprehensible to me that people who are so unwilling to pay taxes willingly spend their hard-earned money on the trash she writes. Perhaps there’s a nip-slip centerfold in her books of which I am completely and blessedly unaware. While I’m at it, I’d like to start an unsubstantiated rumor that she is on the cusp of calling herself Bruce Jenner.
But, again, I digress. I’ll give you a couple of examples from my stand-up career that may be illuminating. The first time I used the N-word on stage, I could feel the audience freezing up. First of all, I was quoting an ignoramus. Second, I was on the right side of the issue. But that didn’t matter. Third, they froze up for a reason — it was my fault. As Chris Rock says in this article on Salon, we’re workshopping our material. And I was working on material. Here’s why it was my fault: I was not well-equipped to say that word. I mentioned stage fright, right? Well, saying the N-word on stage was challenging, because it’s not a word that comes out of my mouth. Saying it in front of a group of people was too much for my dainty and fainthearted sensibilities. I didn’t say it confidently, so it didn’t matter if I was on the right side of the issue. The issue was that I was not far enough along in my development to use that word on stage. The audience, correctly, sensed that. I’ve always said that the audience is not always right but, in this case, they were. (Audiences have loved me when my performance was mediocre and dismissed me when I performed well— it cuts both ways — same tried and true material, so I know where the fault lies).
By the way, I don’t wish to offend any audience deeply — in other words, my goal is not to stab them in the heart. But, I am perfectly willing to offend people’s sensibilities. I want an audience to have something to think about, talk about and debate after a show. Is that asking too much? I don’t think it is.
My second quasi-PC story involves a bit I called “Kill the Poor.” It was meant to be a satiric piece along the lines of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. The bit was about how we blame the poor for everything so we should just kill them all. I’d done this bit a once to modest success. Then I did it one night at the South County Funnybone in St. Louis. And it killed! The audience absolutely loved it. And then I figured out why: they thought that the subtext of the piece was that we should kill black people. They equated THE POOR as black people. That thought had never entered my mind (remember how I said the audience can be wrong?). I never did the piece again. How many comics toss a new, successful bit in the trash? I had to. I had no desire to start touring Klan rallies around the country.
And so it comes around again — here’s the issue with PC culture: sometimes an audience just pays attention to the words, without any sense of context. If you just hear the words but don’t understand the author’s intent, it’s the most infantile way of observing an artist. You’re like a child saying, “awwww, you said a bad word.” Grow up.
Sometimes the audience can misunderstand the context or subtext and, again, fail to see the intention of the author. That’s why we workshop our material in front of audiences. You’ll have to forgive us for failing or succeeding in front of you — that’s how we learn. We refine, finesse, alter our performance and dump our work based on your reaction. In that regard, we’re already a bit self-censoring. But we censor based on laughs, not special words that displease you. Please let us experiment with our art in front of you without you being sooooo sensitive. We don’t paint by numbers. We’re not perfect and neither are you.
