In Autumn I visited the Gold Coast for a week and had the chance to go to a local bar’s comedy night in Surfer’s Paradise. I went with my girlfriend and her parents, and we paid $20 each for entry, which included a lineup of five amateur comedians and one professional comic, who was due to perform at the end. We also got a drink included.
We arrived at about 7:45pm, and sat at one of the tall stool tables in the back. The only thing illuminating the dimly light, black walls and flooring was the stage to the side of the bar, which was to our right.
A tall Asian guy with a thick Aussie accent was holding the mic and making jokes and riffing on some rehearsed material. He was the comedy night’s MC.
In the bar there were about twenty-five of us assembled at various tables making up the crowd. The Asian guy would frequently ask the crowd questions, most of which were cast out to nobody in particular, like an amateur fisherman using the wrong bait, hook and sinker. His tone was not one of wry confidence, but one of naïve hope. It didn’t help that the crowd was also not yet warmed up and ready to engage in the interplay. His questions were largely ignored.
To soothe the angsty awkwardness after not getting much of a response, he would mutter ‘tough crowd, tough crowd’ just loud enough for us to hear. To his credit, he kept trying valiantly despite the lack of appreciation, eventually in a twist of irony thanking us and disappearing backstage.
He returned a few minutes later to introduce the first of the comedians for the night. A young guy about my age was first. He was a white Australian with a buzz cut, a t-shirt and a toothy smile. He made a bunch of back-to-back rehearsed jokes, got a few laughs, and was done in five minutes.
Next up was an early to mid-thirties guy, and aged in a specific way that you can tell. Some guys in their thirties look a decade younger, but this guy had the reddish, leathery skin of high-frequency sun exposure. He was from a nearby smaller town, and he worked for a pool equipment company. He did about as well as the first guy, getting the odd laugh but nothing truly memorable.
After these two, a short, wrinkled woman came on. She looked like she’d spent a decade doing meth, which to nobody’s surprise she started immediately talking about it. A self-aware queen indeed.
Since she obviously looked drug-addled, her jokes about it weren’t really funny and just inspired pity in myself and others. There was no incongruity between what she looked like and what she said, therefore there were no laughs to be had. For an example of what I am saying, think about if a suburban mother, appearing like the perfect image of rational sensibleness, started talking about smoking meth after she put the kids to bed. What moves people to laugh, or cry, is a reversal in expectations and inconsistency between what we perceive and what reality is.
She was also a disability social worker, which is ripe material for edgy comedy and she tried to take advantage of this. The word ‘retard’ needs to make a comeback and this woman tried her hardest make it work. I respected her courage.
After this, she transitioned into ranting about the Gaza conflict. This was mostly an absolute disaster. Clearly favouring the Palestinian side of things, she passionately rambled about this for several awkward minutes as we all sat in complete silence.
Political comedy works for some, but not for others. For this woman, in this crowd, it didn’t suit the situation. If the crowd came to see you, chances are they would know and expect your political comedy. But this crowd just came for the comedy night, not necessarily to see a particular comedian. What was needed was material that would appeal to the most amount of people possible. What got the most laughs across the whole night were jokes about universal experiences, pains and taboos. Not a political conflict occurring halfway across the other side of the world.
She then talked about being a prostitute, getting picked up by a middle-aged Jewish man and taken to a hotel. She then made some gag about getting fucked by the Jews. This got the best response of her whole set because it used incongruity between perception and reality. Was the painfully long rambling beforehand worth it?
However, she was memorable compared to the first two in part because of her sheer boldness.
Next up was a tall fat man with a huge beard, dressed in all red. This gave him the appearance of a human fire hydrant. Clearly, he wanted to stand out.
He shouted out a few rehearsed bits but despite filling the room with his voice he was getting absolutely no response. His voice began to betray his fading confidence and he began to shift awkwardly left and right on his feet. Yet his obvious nervousness was greeted only with apathetic silence from the crowd.
Soon enough, we got the mournful proclamation:
“I’m shit at this!” He told us, his voice tempered by embarrassment and defeat.
But he even kept going for several more minutes with his pitiful self-deprecation, which only got more uncomfortable as you can’t laugh with, or even at, a drowning man.
“I’m out!” He finally said, giving his soul that night a merciful end to its embarrassment.
Self-deprecation, when not employed by a confident target, only inspires pity and sadness within the audience. It is not a particularly good tool for a comedian who lacks confidence to begin with.
When we consume standup comedy, so often we watch a professional at the top of his craft on YouTube, or Netflix. Having not seen their failures and painful learning through humiliation of their craft, we only see a finished product. Like all mastery, it has the appearance of ease and simplicity, but always what lies behind a master is eons of struggle.
***
After at least an hour of the amateurs, who were courageously trying their best in a cruel and unforgiving art form, at last the professional comedian that was advertised came on. His name was Lindsay Webb, a squat middle-aged man with slicked back hair.
“Bit rough with some of these guys tonight?” He said, to the snickers of the crowd. The very fact he acknowledged this was harsh, but gave the crowd a taste of his self-assurance.
It was immediately clear that there was a vast gulf in skill between this man and the previous comedians. The guy walked up on the stage like he owned the place, a vision of confidence, experience and talent. He was smiling, cheery and completely comfortable being the centre of attention.
There was very rarely a time in his routine where his jokes didn’t land. Every bit he did was constructed in the well-worn comedian method of twisting and turning stories, playing with audience expectations in the right ways to induce the desired result. His mastery, clearly the result of experience and training, was stark compared to the amateurs.
Notably, he didn’t bother with obscure topics, or political ones. Israel-Palestine might play well with the more geopolitically inclined and sensitive YouTube comments section, but here in the real physical world at a random bar on a Wednesday night, the crowd is more easily moved to laugh by things with which are universal experiences. Traffic on the freeway being terrible because of construction, for example.
Webb’s focus on universal experiences helped him engage the crowd better. He found out someone else lost his driver’s license for speeding and the person next to him owned a car that didn’t work, an ironic contrast that is treasure for comedy.
He was able to return to these two targets repeatedly to punctuate other jokes, using the crowd to build out his routine like an elaborately constructed house. Fertile information about audience members like this provides spontaneous material which is naturally funny because we like to laugh at other’s misfortune. Unlike the Gaza conflict, a general audience feels far more comfortable at laughing at the more minor misfortune of not owning a car or losing one’s license. This still seems immensely cruel, but once you consider that laughter also devalues the pain one feels over something bad, it becomes medicinal. People say being able to laugh at yourself is important, and the reason they think this is because it reduces the pride of suffering,
I was struck by how little he seemed to prepare for his routine. I remember him even telling us this. He made so much of it about his interactions with the crowd that he seemed to barely need any pre-rehearsed material aside from a few introductory lines and basic topics. With a few twigs he built a proud and roaring fireplace of laughter in the bar.
So stark was the contrast between him and the amateurs it I quickly felt stupid comparing them. The amateurs had clearly had not even a quarter of his training or experience. Perhaps some of them, given his chances and opportunities, could turn out better. Pity is not something a comedian wants to evoke in their audience, but I felt admiration at the amateur’s efforts, and pity when their jokes fell flat. It was at least partly the fault of the audience, who for sure were reluctant laughers, me among them. There is a reason why sitcoms have laugh tracks at the punchlines, oiling the vocal cords of the viewers at home.
Stand-up itself is an inherently awkward medium of art and entertainment. It requires blatant exhibitionism, exposing subjects with taboo that regular people are afraid to discuss in a public setting. It requires a budding comedian to manufacture laughter in non-conservational context, unlike most human humour which flows from dynamic back-and-forth reactions between people and groups. Lastly, the feedback from standup is instantaneous – the audience either laughs a little, a lot or not at all. Every time a standup comedian gets up on the stage, they are broadcasting themselves for potential embarrassment.
On the other hand, the rewards can be immense. The feeling of making someone else feel exactly what you want them to feel. The feeling of orchestrating the emotions of a crowd, holding fame in the immediate sense for precious minutes, is no doubt one of the most delicious pleasures of human power in the world today. People say they go into comedy because they like to make others laugh – well, that’s only a small shadow of the whole truth – they are gratified by their own power, their growing self-esteem and worship, the therapeutic effect of laughter to remedy suffering – all these things are behind the face of comedians.
In apes, smiling is a sign of submission, a friendliness, of an intent not to hurt. The comedian must win the crowd over with a display of social power, the ability to make everyone laugh. They need to be liked, or better, loved. At the very least, they crave respect.
If you can tell a funny and meaningful story, you can hold and move the minds of people like puppets, which is an exceedingly powerful and profitable skill in any endeavor that requires cooperation and interaction with others. In our time especially, as only governments are allowed to use violence to get what they want, we quiet citizens must craft narratives of ourselves and others to establish ourselves in the world. But very few of us practice this specifically. Imagine how powerful we could become if we did.
