Medium Specificity

 

For my medium I selected stand-up comedy – something I have a few years of experience in performing. In my time performing I have written a lot of different jokes, helped a lot of other people fine tune their own, and I’ve watched a lot of different comedians perform – in person and on T.V. or the internet. In all the thousands of jokes I’ve been involved with, there are several topics that seem to be covered in depth by just about every comedian. Topics include, but are not limited to: dating, marriage, differences between men and women, pregnancy, food, childhood, the difference between kids today and us, technology, social media, celebrities, politics, and current events. The reason for this is the fact that these topics are very relatable, easily understood by most members of any audience. Each comedian has a different spin on each topic, due to his or her experiences and perceptions. But as the root of it all, are those same exact topics.
In response to this I wrote a set of jokes that simply explore the most basic joke topics, and the general sentiment that most comedians have towards those topics. The difference is my jokes can simply be described as premises – ideas about those topics. Rather than explore the specifics, which are what distinguish comedians from one another, I chose instead to explore what makes them the same. Comedy at its root is simply observation about every-day things. So my set of jokes is simply observation about those observations. Although these comedians say very different things on the microscopic level, on the macro, it’s all very much the same.
I drew inspiration from both the reading and the Daffy Duck video that we watched in class. I really love the idea of a medium of art talking about itself, observing itself, identifying its origins and the different elements that make it what it is like in “Show and Tell”. Another piece that inspired me was the comedy of Demitri Martin. In one particular set, he explores the origins of his own material. He calls it the “the place where his jokes come from.” I attempted to do the same with my piece. I wanted to explore what all stand-up comedy is really saying and use stand-up comedy to say it. I really enjoyed this part of the assignment, looking deeper in to something that I’ve done for a long time now, but figuring out what makes it unique from other mediums of art. I tried to pretend that I was stand-up comedy and then I had my Zoolander moment, looking into the water and staring into my own reflection and I ask, “Who am I?”