Talking about one specific branch or style of comedy or comedic writing is a little difficult. Currently, much of joke writing involves a lot of different types of comedy to complete the joke. For example, I am an observational comic first, but I use all forms of comedic styles in my jokes to get laughs and everything in between. While I might be an observational comic, I use plenty of wit, surreal, insult, satire, improv, and even topical jokes in my bits. I feel compelled to use all of these for a bit to come together nicely. Because of this progression in joke writing, and how difficult it may be to differential styles, I’ll do my best to provide examples and put a sizeable microscope on the genre of observational comedic writing.
The reason I mention all the joke styles above is because, usually, jokes will start in the form of an observation but devolve into one of the styles. Other times jokes will begin with a topic or theme and go on to make observations of in the style or umbrella of other styles. Ultimately, the conclusion can be drawn is that observational comedy is very cyclical in its application. Let me provide a few examples to analyze.
“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.” -George Carlin
It’s an observation, plain and simple, it has basic elements of simple everyday life, that we as the audience can connect to and understand. However, jumping to or from the styles of topical, satire, and even wit are very clear here. It is an observation formed from within a topic of a bit, knowing Carlin, probably satire or topical. Let’s take another example from Louis C.K.
“When you have bacon in your mouth, it doesn’t matter who’s President.”
This line has all the word choices, sentence structure, and style of something observational. But when we look at context, it is obviously not observation. It is mostly deadpan parody, it sounds like an observation because of its sentence structure, that comparative nature of the wording. And making it slightly political can move it to satire but it isn’t imitating anything. Now I want to go over something particular by Stephen Colbert.
“If this is going to be Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.”
Brilliant satire by one of the master here. The observation is somewhere else in the bit, but we’re not worried about that right now. What I want to focus on is this just perfect social satire. We’re rooted in an observation (as pretty much all jokes are), but this is really just satire. Colbert is ridiculing the overall handling of the less fortunate by the nation. It takes on a pinch of irony and instead of what is meant, it is poking fun at what is happening when crossed with belief or statements. Let’s do one more joke…
“According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.” -Jerry Seinfeld
Pure observation at its best. There is basically nothing else being used in this joke other than comparative observation, looking at something and making a statement about it, something we all overlook. Not only is it a perfect and hilarious joke, but it sets up its own magic. Jerry gives us two facts we rely on him for, and whether they are actually true are not (going to assume they are) it all comes together for us in our heads. There’s no extra words, it gives us the setup, morphs right into that observational punchline, and just like that we have a great observational joke.
The genre made a massive leap in the late 70s and 80s with the growth of Seinfeld. At the same time an exorbitant amount of terrible comedians were also grasping at the same stardom from his approach. It engulfed the genre while simultaneously propelling its popularity. Jerry is considered one of, if not the most pure of comedians there ever was or will be, and one of the best joke writers of all time. The whole “what’s the deal with…” or “what’s up with…” is all his doing. Much of modern comedy writing has more or less built itself off of this platform.
With the insane rise in social media and websites such at Twitter, the ability to make observations rooted in topical or satirical structures is staggering. It puts a massive strain on comedy and comedians to be more, to have more, have better material and be smarter. With more eyes on a subject able to observe and with a voice and platform to express it, those jokes come quicker, and it might not be from a comedian per se.
It is very hard to have a new, unique, funny look on things that everyone knows and does but seemingly overlooks on a day to day. It lends itself to such high demand because of the revolutionary nature of it. They usually invoke thought and make you feel as if it was something you never realized, or at least it should, I think. With that higher demand, you can assume the higher call for quality, only so many things exist, and only so many perfect angles can be taken to attack something before they are exhausted entirely.
Speaking to some of my friends who are also stand-ups we sort of all came to the same realization that I mentioned above. You find yourself struggling for that pure style, it becomes harder and harder to maintain quality material with it. Derrick Gaines, a friend of mine, a rather good observational comic, said he found himself holding onto material longer, he found really great stuff in his jokes that were pure observation. He barely messed with them, he got them down perfectly, the words, the structuring, the timing, all of it was done so many times he knew how to get the biggest laughs out of it, but he’s been doing it for months and months. By no means is this wrong, or bad, it just proves to how difficult it is to find that good stuff.
What he and many others find themselves doing is using as many elements of other types of comedy to ‘beef up’ those jokes and bits. You start with observing something, but it is involved in political satire. You observe something an audience member does or says or wears or looks and you insult them. You take a recent event and point out something you noticed or felt about it. These examples are all observational, but respectively, the first one is satire, the second insult, and the last is topical. Comics are relying more and more on a wider window of observing what we see and making a joke that is laced with multiple types of writing.
I really am drawing to the conclusion that comedy is evolving, it is finding a way to take all the awesome stuff from (as early as the 30s and 40s honestly) the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and grouping them and combining them to find new ways to write jokes. It is really rather interesting, being caught in the middle of the evolution of a business, adapting to its growth and change according and swiftly.
That observation isn’t going anywhere, I don’t think anyone will ever get tired of that type of stuff. What is really going on is there has been so many jokes written about so many things, it is really hard to not step on someone else’s toes, and trust me, the worst thing you can do is steal a joke, intentional or not. Another important point a friend came up with is when you hear something that isn’t on par with a joke of the same topic or subject, it hurts. It hurts you, it hurts your act, it hurt the audience if they know the better joke, and when they make the connection, all of that is hurtful and it puts you and the your set in jeopardy. Usually reserved for jokes that are very topical in nature, there is a little unwritten rule in comedy: If someone nails a topical joke, thats it, its over, no one else should go back to the topic unless they got some really good shit to say. Because if it doesn’t blow the best bit out of the water, it just gets negatively compared back to that best bit. Usually referred to as ending or closing a topic, the best material has been found and used, everyone stay away. Furthermore, multiple comedies doing jokes on the same topic, sort of bothers crowds, unless it’s a real juicy bit, most people think “but we already went over this?”
I guess it’s just a continuous grind for us with a good focus on nothing.