READER’S EDITORIAL: HERE LIES STAND UP COMEDY (1966-2020)
Total Views: 38 By Darryl Littleton March 30, 2020 (San Diego) — Stand Up Comedy is dead! Official cause of death – Coronavirus with Trump complications. After a lengthy illness due to the politically correct sanctions, and despite recent signs of resurgence (thanks to Netflix), Stand Up finally succumbed this month from the prescription of no public gatherings over 10 people. That dose was barely enough for a club staff, much less a show. Not a Stand Up show, anyway. Not a real one. Social distancing’s now the New World Order. Six feet apart minimum, sending industries scrambling to decipher how to hold crowd events without crowds. Football assured their players that the games would still be played. Just no fans in the stands. Music moved seamlessly into the new format of empty concerts when a worldwide audience experienced the history making performance of DJ Nice. From wealthy dignitaries to those who had no idea how they’d keep food on the table, an entire society was served up the future in the unifying dialogue of beats and sounds. [Photo courtesy of the author of This Day in Comedy] Stand Up was always the odd one out. Though athletes and musicians feed off the crowd, Stand Up depend on them. Without laughter, what is Stand Up? Riffing material into a camera is performance and in some cases therapy, but the absence of individuals to validate those musings with the requisite reaction diminishes the art to self-indulgent monologuing. Who says what you’re saying is funny – you? That’s akin to the lawyer who represents himself. Stand Up relies on interaction. The old traditions from Africa of call & response, innuendo, pantomime are all by-products, and by the way Stand Up was the hardest art form of them all because it demanded your instant reaction. Thus making Stand Up more intricate than Painting, Sculpting, Music, Dance and by far Acting. Ever notice that some of the greatest thespians, such as DeNiro, Olivier and Hanks couldn’t credibly pull off playing stand-up comedians, yet stand-up comedians have earned prestigious awards for playing anything but stand-up comedians? Needless to say, the public will be offered substitutes to fill the void. Some will even resemble Stand Up. For instance, on March 21, 2020 comedian Nate Jackson secured an empty studio and with only 8 hours of promotion did a live pay-per-view comedy show he dubbed “Laughter Lockdown Comedy”. Six people showed up and sat spread apart His pay-per-view take was substantial, but he admitted that the experience of doing the actual show was “weird”. Of course it was. It wasn’t really Stand Up. It was incorporating homosapien metronomes. Other such altered configurations also popped up that fateful weekend Flappers Comedy Club in Burbank, California had a virtual reality open mic, consisting of comics doing 3-4 minute sets from home (one was even lying in bed) and receiving laughs from the other comics; the ones waiting for the camera to display them. In Virginia, Team Fred charged $10 for a virtual night of comedy with a portion of the proceeds going to their local food bank. While in other parts of the country, individual comedians did virtual sets for Cash-App payments. So money can still be made doing comedy; just not Stand Up. Or is stream of consciousness in a vacuum the future of what was once Stand Up? In 2018, HBO aired the Jerrod Carmichael directed experimental comedy special written and performed by comedian Drew Michael. A very artsy endeavor that had Michael looking into the camera to express his inner thoughts on a topic before delivering material on said topic while pacing about in a surreal environment. Occasionally a girl would appear in another setting and validate or destroy his ramblings. It was not without merit and definitely a producer’s dream, but it was not Stand Up. It was talking by yourself. Interesting, but without an audience and immediate acceptance or rejection of a punchline – no cigar. Stand-Up was magical. Its disciples were combination performer, writer, producer, editor and director all in one. Stand Up gave birth to verbal virtuosos and physical phenomenons. Not just an art of ability, but one of endurance. They are a lot of inherently funny people, but few of those had what it took to claim kinship to Stand Up. That required being professionally funny. Make ‘em laugh even when you don’t feel like it. That’s why to prove yourself to Stand Up you had to put in 5-10 years as an apprentice before claiming true Stand Up status. This is the reason the passing of Stand-Up should be felt like a mule kick to the throat. It produced troopers as well as stylized wordsmiths. Stand Up was about “getting no respect”, “Mudbone”, “She ready”, “The 7 words you can’t say on TV”, “Let me tell you”, “I ain’t scared of you muthaf**kas”, “You may be a redneck if . . . “ “What my name is?”, “Bebe’s Kids”, “Oh, yeah”, “Shuckey Duckey quack, quack”, fright wigs & cigarette holders, tight leather suits, boxy looking suits, moo moos & false teeth, dashikis, tuxedos, perms, suspenders, sunglasses at night, topless routines, removable hairpieces, stage names and other assorted picadilloes. Stand Up welcomed people with so-called “problems”. A comedian devoid of issues was most times not funny. Stand Up encouraged those soul’s unbridled freedom to say whatever they wanted – let ‘er rip, but also taught the human mindset and the consequences associated with abusing that freedom. The audience subconsciously needed to look down at the jester to feel good about themselves. Just as every joke needs a butt, every person wants their ego stroked and what better way to feel uplifted than to hear the plight of another who is not you? Stand Up was psychology, wit and charm. Nobody ever laughed at anybody they hated. You could offend an audience and win them over with your askew viewpoint, but you could never get them to laugh with you