Absurdism
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Transcript:
At first, absurdism may just seem like silly nonsense.
And it is kind of that. It doesn’t have to mean anything. In that sense, it is nonsense.
And if you had to choose between nonsense that was serious in tone vs. nonsense that was upbeat and silly in tone, most people would probably choose the upbeat version of nonsense. People probably wouldn’t be too keen on watching Spongebob if it was more tragic absurdity than lighthearted fun. That would be a more niche audience among children.
The absurd seems harmless on the surface. It doesn’t seem to point at anything.
But if you look at the philosophical history of the absurd, Kierkegaard and Camus, it’s more interesting than that. Absurdism is a psychological reaction to an existential crisis. It’s this kind of letting go. It’s this allowance for you to go a little crazy without actually being crazy, because why not? It’s a justifiable philosophical stance that can be born out of logical analysis of the human condition - even though it just looks like a weirdo doing goofy crap.
And I’m mashing concepts together here in a way some people are going to dislike. Absurdism in comedy isn’t exactly the same as absurdism in philosophy. But they share similar roots - absurdism in art and philosophy are linked.
Personally, I think the basis of just about all comedy in one way or another is that we are finite beings with a vague sense of the infinite, and that leaves us in an absurd position. We’re animals with an imagination. That’s very strange, to be a conscious animal.
There’s a book you can read that really hammers at this dichotomy in the human condition - The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. Becker was a cultural anthropologist and that book was written to clarify and extend the psychoanalytic project of Sigmund Freud. People say Becker brought closure to Freud by substituting the centrality of sex in Freudian analysis with the concept of death anxiety. And there’s this whole terror management theory branch of psychology that spun out of that. You can look those things up if you want.
The reason I bring up the book is because if you want to study how jokes work, I’m not sure how many people out there geek out about jokes the way I do, but if you really want to understand them, understanding what Ernest Becker keeps hammering at in The Denial of Death can actually be really useful. But also, you wanna be on pretty psychologically stable ground before you read this book, cuz it can be kinda harsh. It can be a rough read if it’s your first exposure to these sorts of ideas. My guess is that if you’re steeped enough in an appreciation for comedy to still be watching this video, it’s not gonna be your first exposure to these kinds of thoughts.
You need contrast in comedy. And the fundamental contrast in the human condition is our bipolar capacity - we can be deeply depressed and feel like a useless animal that just wants to lay on a couch and die, and then we can reach these heights of striving where we’re in a magnificent flow state and we feel on top of the world - like we could discover the elixir of life and populate the whole universe with digitized versions of ourselves or something. Becker quotes Karl Marx at one point in the book, Marx once wrote “I am nothing but I should be everything.” If that doesn’t just sum it up perfectly. That’s what’s so funny about us as human beings. We’re dirt, yet we’re the most incredible thing alive. That’s why fart jokes are so funny. You can be rolling through some beautiful screed about the nature of man and how to live an authentic life blah blah blah, in the middle a’ that, your body decides to rip out a huge toot without your permission. There’s your reminder, you’re just a dumb animal. You’re big smartypants important brain thing isn’t in control of any a’ this. Isn’t that silly?
People talk about Shakespeare being able to appeal to the nobility as well as the lower class. I’m no Shakespeare scholar but I’ve read enough to know that he understood the human condition on a deep level. He understood that contrast between our animal nature and this aspirational, philosophical, logical, reaching that has come out of the evolution of the frontal cortex in the human brain. If you read up on scholars who know Freud and Shakespeare well, there’s a lot of people that argue that Freud was just repeating things Shakespeare had already said in his plays. Freud just sort of retread Shakespeare in the realm of psychology. And it’s interesting, Freud actually wrote a book about his theory of jokes, why things are funny. It’s called Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious. I haven’t read it, but I’ve read commentaries on it. Freud thought there was all this repression of everything. There kind of is, but also maybe we just can’t be simultaneously aware of all of the activity in our brains at once. There’s a lot goin’ on up in your brain. It’s not just one sequence of neurons active at a time. We have all sorts of neural networks firing away. Consciousness, whatever that is, our capacity to pay attention to parts of our own mind, it doesn’t have direct, simultaneous access to each part of the brain. So I don’t know if it’s so much repression as it is a limited capacity. Anyway.
This is supposed to be about comedy. My point is, I really enjoy absurdist comedy that is well done. And it’s something I strive to be able to do better.
Absurdism opens so many portals to different ways of thinking and approaching things. Comedy is all about shifting perspective, flipping things on their head. Absurdist comedy is like jumping on some kinda whirlygig at an amusement park or one of those things at NASA that shakes you around like a paint can - it can be very disorienting, but also so much fun if you can handle the ride.
But it’s not on the audience to be able to handle the ride. Going on a weird trip through an absurdist bit - that requires a lot of trust in the performer. The audience has to be very comfortable with you as a comic and you have to have so much unbroken, committed confidence in the nonsense you’re doing up there.
That’s why I think it’s so impressive when comics can pull off an absurdist bit. Cuz sometimes, a lotta the time, absurdism fails. It doesn’t connect. The audience isn’t into it. They look at it like, “What is this? Keep this away from me.” They observe at a distance. Maybe they chuckle nervously, but they don’t participate. If you can go into the absurd and get people to follow you enthusiastically into the lollipop forest, that’s impressive. Not a lot of comics can lead those expeditions successfully.
You have to get to a level of confidence where you know you are right about this thing that on the surface doesn’t make any real sense. If they aren’t on board initially, you cannot bend. You have to, through force of will and energy, lift the audience up to the weird place you’re at. You have to do it with performance, not just writing. The writing of an absurdist bit typically is not enough when you’re being weird on stage. You have to create the vibe and essence in the room with your performance. And that can be low energy as well. It doesn’t always have to be high energy. But it still has to be tremendously confident. You have to be able to sit in those silences when they come as if everyone else in the room who is out of sync with you - they’re the ones who just don’t get it. And you’re not doing that in a condescending way; it’s just an invitation. You’re fine - they’re missing the beauty of what’s so terrifically funny over here, and you’re gonna stand firm until they come over and take a look and enjoy themselves. We’re all here; we don’ have anything better to do.
And there still has to be some essential truth in the absurdist performance in order for it to connect. You can’t fake it. You can’t just be zany and wacky for no reason. There has to be an emotional touchpoint behind it to justify it.
There’s this Kurt Vonnegut quote, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful what we pretend to be.” So whenever you’re performing and you’re doing something absurd, you still have to ask yourself, “Where is the essential humanity in this? What is the core element people are going to be able to grab onto - where’s the life raft in this maelstrom of ridiculousness?” You’re still a human being up there. Don’t mask that. You’re not a lowly animal ruled purely by your passions moment to moment and you’re not a comedy god - you’re a person. What’s the essential you on display in the middle of the silliness? That’s what people can relate to even if the rest of it seems terrifically bizarre.
I was listening to Judd Apatow on Pete Holmes podcast, You Made It Weird! back in 2018. This was when Judd was putting together his documentary about Garry Shandling, which I finally recently got around to watching, four years later. So Garry, he was into Zen Buddhism. He spoke about the concept of performance and non-performance blending such that you were trying very hard, but at the same time not trying at all because you are just being you and that’s coming through to the audience (in the podcast discussion they compared it to the muscle memory of really great athletes who are able to put aside the mental clutter and just let the game come to them). Judd said some of the best advice Garry ever gave him was for his characters in his shows and movies: “Don’t try to be funny. That’s when you get off track. Don’t try to be a comedian. Just be the authentic you.” For characters in the shows, he would always say, “What would a real person with this character’s life experience and position in this scene do if this really happened or this was really said? Don’t go for the funny line or reaction, go for the authentic line or reaction. That’s the truth in comedy that people really want.”
Why am I bringing this up in the context of absurdity? Because you can get off track if you try to be absurd just to get a laugh. You still have to find the human authenticity within the absurdity so that people can relate and connect and get it. Something led you to want to go on this weird absurdist journey. How do you give the audience that same itch? You have some sort of itch that needs scratched. Maybe other people have it too, but if you just start scratching them before they also have the itch, that’s confusing. Why are you scratching me? They need to feel what you feel to justify the itch scratching. And the way they feel what you feel is by you being authentic and not posturing and pretending to be something you aren’t.
That’s what’s so interesting, is there can be hacky absurdist humor. What’s worse than that? That shouldn’t exist. You do this strange unique performance thing, and yet somehow it comes across as artificial and constructed and an imitation of someone or something else. It’s an attempt at being unique, but it’s not actually you. It’s not authentic. You see that sometimes. I’ve done that. You can do a kind of hacky absurd thing that makes people think “I guess this is funny?” It’s like mouthing off about something political without having any real jokes - just so you can get the clapter from people who happen to agree with you already about your carefully constructed facade of an opinion or personality.
One of the central things I enjoy about comedy is how free it is. It’s such an unchained art form. It can go in so many directions. It can manifest in so many ways. And I love seeing comedians who dive down the Rabbit Holes. If you can go into the depths of your own mind and articulate what’s going on in there in a real way that is also silly and fun - people love that.
But you gotta be careful that you don’t get high on your own supply. You can also end up in a situation where you’re just dancing around in your own little funhouse and nobody knows what the heck you’re talking about or why you’re talking about it.
Which might ultimately be how this video comes across.