Stand-up Comedians, Part 2

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Woody Allen is better known as a movie producer, but the funnyman started his career as a stand-up comedian. As such, he created a stock character unique to modern sensibilities. Known for expressing the angst of the set-upon everyman, Allen portrayed the putz, a nerdy, needy egghead who is unvalued and misunderstood. Typically, his character is a neurotic, if philosophical, lost soul. Much of his comedy involves an existential take on things. Much of his comedy alludes to psychoanalysis, reflecting the three decades that he spent on the Freudian couch. In his early years, Allen was also a comedy writer for Herb Shriner, Sid Caesar, Candid Camera, and other comedians and comedy shows.

According to Willy Loman, “spite” is the word of Biff’s “undoing.” This may or may not be true--Willy was hardly a good judge of character, after all, but one can say with certainty that “disrespect” is the word upon which Rodney Dangerfield built his career as a stand-up comedian. After a succession of failures--as a singing waiter, an acrobatic diver, and an aluminum siding salesman, Dangerfield came to understand that he needed an “image,” or a persona that would both define him as a comedian and resonate with his audiences. He found himself as a comedian when he complained that he didn’t get any respect from anyone. He often began a joke with his trademark grievance, “I get no respect,” following his protest with a humorous example to prove his contention: “When I was a kid I got no respect. The time I was lost on the beach and the cop helped me look for my parents I said, "Do you think we'll find them?" He said, "I don't know, kid, there's so many places they could hide.” Dangerfield’s career demonstrates how a simple gimmick, properly employed, can establish a comedian’s career.

Flip Wilson, one of the first black stand-up comedians, also banked on a well-established character--in his case, a female alter ego named Geraldine, who was, as it were a regular guest star on the Flip Wilson Show. Outspoken and irascible, a daughter of the ghetto, Geraldine delivered hip, modern maxims and proverbs, including “When you’re hot, you’re hot” and “The devil made me do it.” However, Wilson’s comedy sometimes offended some African-Americans who viewed his routines as fostering stereotypes of black culture. Some also did not appreciate the dialect in which some of his onstage characters spoke.

Although he wasn’t a comedian, major league baseball player and manager Yogi Berra misused the English language unlike anyone since Mrs. Malaprop and is unequalled in his use of malapropisms except, perhaps, by former president George W. Bush, and his fractured phrasing should be a continued inspiration to humorists and comedians for years to come. A few quotations demonstrate the comic effect that is derived from the oddly appropriate, but misspoken, quips for which Berra is famous:

• “Ninety percent of the game [of baseball],“ he contended, “is half mental.”
  
• His reason for foregoing meals at Ruggeri's, a St. Louis restaurant: “Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.”
  
• His take on when to call it quits: “It ain’t over till it's over.”
  
• Giving directions to Joe Garagiola as to how to get to his New Jersey home, which could be reached by two alternative routes: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
  
• On the benefits of observation: “You can observe a lot by watching.”
  
• Concerning the need to attend friends’ funerals: “Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't go to yours.”

George W. Bush is also known for his mangling of the English tongue, although not all of the former president’s misstatements take the form of the malapropism. Again, a sample of his tongue twisters shows the humorous effect of such speech:

• “One of the very difficult parts of the decision I made on the financial crisis was to use hardworking people's money to help prevent there to be a crisis.”
  
• “I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best.”
  
• “I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”
  
• “I've been in the Bible every day since I've been the president.”
  
• “This thaw--took a while to thaw, it's going to take a while to unthaw.”
  
• “Anyone engaging in illegal financial transactions will be caught and persecuted.”
  
• “The people in Louisiana must know that all across our country there's a lot of prayer--prayer for those whose lives have been turned upside down. And I'm one of them.”
  
• “Throughout our history, the words of the Declaration have inspired immigrants from around the world to set sail to our shores. These immigrants have helped transform 13 small colonies into a great and growing nation of more than 300 people.”
  
• “I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office."

Next: Applying Humorous Writing Techniques

Stand-up Comedians

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Stand-up comedians also provide many examples of how to get laughs that can assist the humorist who is more interested in writing than in enacting or delivering funny lines. In humor, as in comedy and all other forms of entertainment, all is grist for the mill, and the humorist should learn continuously from as many sources as possible, adapting others’ methods and techniques to his or her own purposes and needs. For this reason, it is helpful to consider such the method in the apparent madness of such brilliant stand-up comedians as Lenny Bruce, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, Flip Wilson, Jonathan Winters, and such unintentional comics as Yogi Berra, George W. Bush, and Mrs. Malaprop.

Lenny Bruce was regarded as an iconoclast by his peers. Columnist Herb Caen characterized the stand-up comedian in this fashion:

They call Lenny Bruce a sick comic, and sick he is. Sick of all the pretentious phoniness of a generation that makes his vicious humor meaningful. He is a rebel, but not without a cause, for there are shirts that need un-stuffing, egos that need deflating. Sometimes you feel guilty laughing at some of Lenny’s mordant jabs, but that disappears a second later when your inner voice tells you with pleased surprise, ‘but that’s true.’

Critic Albert Goldman describes Bruce’s Carnegie Hall Concert as “the greatest performance” of a “rapidly rising young comedian” given to improvisation and the fine art of adlibbing:

Lenny worshipped the gods of Spontaneity, Candor and Free Association. He fancied himself an oral jazzman. His ideal was to walk out there like Charlie Parker, take that mike in his hand like a horn and blow, blow, blow everything that came into his head just as it came into his head with nothing censored, nothing translated, nothing mediated, until he was pure mind, pure head sending out brainwaves like radio waves into the heads of every man and woman seated in that vast hall. Sending, sending, sending, he would finally reach a point of clairvoyance where he was no longer a performer but rather a medium transmitting messages that just came to him from out there--from recall, fantasy, prophecy. A point at which, like the practitioners of automatic writing, his tongue would outrun his mind and he would be saying things he didn't plan to say, things that surprised, delighted him, cracked him up--as if he were a spectator at his own performance!

Bruce’s freewheeling style and his penchant to include a good deal of profanity and obscenity in his adlibbed monologues got the performer in trouble on more than one occasion. He was arrested and for indecency several times and was finally sentenced to four months’ incarceration in a workhouse, dying while his sentence was being appealed.

He is often held up as an example of the free speech that humorists claim that they deserve. In fact, many humorists contend that they should be exempted from the politically correct restrictions on free speech that ordinary men and women experience because they are, as it were, the “all-licensed fools” of whom King Lear speaks, referring to the tradition that allowed court jesters to speak frankly to the king or queen without fear of appraisal; thus the fool was not a “yes man,” and could serve as a trusted advisor.

Modern authorities, promoters, audiences, readers, publishers, and societies have been at times reluctant to extend comedic carte blanche to today’s equivalents of the court jester, or fool, as Bruce’s case and that of others, including David Letterman’s, indicate, and humorists should not simply assume that they have such license. Instead, they should determine which topics, language, and treatments are acceptable to their audiences or readers and which are taboo.

Red Skelton’s stand-up comedy routines reflected his gentle spirit. Having honed his comedic talents in vaudeville and on various radio programs after earlier performing as a circus clown, Skelton starred in many movies (comedies, of course) before starting his own television comedy-variety show, The Red Skelton Hour. His acts centered around characters he created, which became familiar to an audience of millions: Freddie the Freeloader, a tramp; singing cabbie Clem Kaddiddehopper; the Mean Liddle Boy; besotted Willy Lump-Lump; Sheriff Deadeye; and even a pair of seagulls, Gertrude and Heathcliffe. His characters endeared him to the public, as did his laughing at his own jokes and his sign off, “Goodnight, and may God bless.” Like Bill Cosby, Skelton eschewed profanity and obscenity, believing it not only inappropriate, but unnecessary, for a comedian to resort to vulgarity to get laughs. Some of his skits involved pantomime, and Groucho Marx regarded Skelton as comedy’s heir to Charlie Chaplin.

The successor to Johnny Carson as the host of National Broadcasting Company’s (NBC’s) The Tonight Show, Jay Leno delivered a nightly monologue, Monday through Friday, on topical events, often political in nature, lampooning presidents and senators as often as he did fads and follies. He also bantered with his band leader and engaged in repartee with the political and celebrity guests of his talk show. Unlike some stand-up comedians, Leno himself is an able writer, and, during a writer’s strike, he wrote the material for his own monologue. He also writes a monthly column for Octane, an online magazine that concerns itself with “the world’s greatest classic and performance cars.” In one article, afraid that he will be stopped by a police officer for speeding on his Morgan three-wheeler, while “screaming down Mulholland Drive,” he is surprised when the officer informs him that, rather than traveling at a speed of seventy miles per hour, as he’d thought, he was going only thirty-five miles per hour--ten miles per hour under the speed limit. Leno’s columns’ style reflect the boy-next-door charm, the slightly goody humor, and the easy identification with middle America that make him popular as a comedian and a humorist, both on the screen and the printed page.

Leno’s competitor, David Letterman, hosts Columbia Broadcasting System’s (CBS’) Late Show with David Letterman. Letterman is often caustic in interviewing his guests. Once, he said to Joaquin Phoenix, who was relatively unresponsive during his interview, “I’m sorry you couldn’t be here.” Letterman also sparred with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, host of The O’Reilly Factor, and with such other celebrities as Cher, Shirley MacLaine, Charles Grodin, and Madonna. Once, wearing a Velcro suit, he leaped onto a wall covered in the same material, becoming stuck several feet off the ground. Like Leno, he delivers a monologue. Letterman also performs brief skits, and his show features several regular spoofs and send-ups, including “Stupid Pet Tricks” and its spin-off, “Stupid Human Tricks.” His “Top Ten List” is also a regular feature, during which he recites a list of the top ten things pertaining to a specific topic, such as “Top Ten rejected James Bond Gadgets,” in reverse order.

In June 2009, Letterman caused a controversy when he made a joke about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Willow, being impregnated, or “knocked up,” by New York Yankees’ player Alex (“A-Rod”) Rodriguez while she was attending a baseball game with her mother. Letterman’s attempt to clarify the issue by apologizing for any offense the governor and her family might have felt and insisting that it was Palin’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Bristol, whom he’d intended to lampoon, not Willow, Letterman only made the situation worse, and his show was picketed by angry former fans. Many of his sponsors heard from irate viewers as well, some of them canceling their sponsorship of the show. In addition, Rodriguez also called for an apology from Letterman, saying, “Not funny, funnyman. Time for you to man-up and say you're sorry to me, the Yankees, the fans, and to ball players all over the world. We may love women, but we're not all womanizers.” Michelle Malkin and others characterized Letterman’s joke as “pedophile” humor, and Palin herself described Letterman as “pathetic.” This incident, like the arrest and incarceration of comedian Lenny Bruce, demonstrates that the “all-licensed fool” of whom Shakespeare’s King Lear speaks is not “all-licensed” in politically correct times such as ours, if ever, in fact, he was so “licensed.” (A fool was a court jester, or joker, a clown to whom a king traditionally granted the privilege of speaking frankly, without fear of reprisal; thus the fool was not a “yes man,” and could serve as a trusted advisor.) Like comedians, humorists would do well to remember that the Constitution may guarantee free speech, but it does not guarantee that such speech can be exercised with impunity in the court of public opinion.


Next: Stand-up Comedians, Part 2

Situation Comedy

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Like playwrights and screenwriters, television situation comedy writers often receive short shrift. They work behind the scenes, not on stage or behind the camera. As a result, many of them remain relatively anonymous. However, one can learn a tremendous amount from them as to how to write humor, even though their media are more visually than textually oriented.

There are too many situation comedies to review in anything less than several volumes, but we can learn much from considering the genre itself, its conventions, techniques, and some specific illustrations of each of these elements.

As the name “situation comedy” (or “sitcom,” as it is often abbreviated) implies, these stories emphasize comical situations, or sets of circumstances, over characters. As a result, their dramatic personae tend to be stock characters of the type which Durant identifies with respect to the ancient Greek’s New Comedy (“the cruel father, the benevolent old man, the prodigal son, the heiress mistaken for a poor girl, the bragging soldier, the clever slave, the flatterer, the parasite, the physician, the priest, the philosopher, the cook, the courtesan, the procuress, and the pimp”); which we have identified with regard to contemporary humor ( the country bumpkin, the con artist, the egghead, the fish out of water (displaced person), the hypocrite, and the blowhard); and which people the pages, as it were, of “An Excerpt of Character Writings of the 17th Century” (see Appendix A). These characters recur on a regular basis, often in a specific setting that reflects a location that is familiar with a wide audience. Homes and workplaces, schools and public places are frequently the settings for such comedies.

The sitcom tells a story, and, although the story is slight and often superficial, it is the occasion for the jokes, humorous anecdotes, and amusing situations that ensue. The story acts much like the string upon which beads or jewels are strung to make a necklace, with the beads or the jewels themselves representing the jokes, humorous anecdotes, and amusing situations. Thus, a sitcom is, at least potentially, doubly delightful: it offers both a comical story and plenty of laughs along the way. Sitcoms have been a major influence on modern humor, both in the United States and around the world, with hundreds and hundreds of them having been produced since their debut, which, arguably, was 1928, the year during which Amos and Andy was launched on American radio. Since their inception, situation comedies have taken on nearly every aspect of contemporary life, from domestic bliss to irascible bosses, from macabre neighbors and busybodies to sentimental slobs, from cute, precocious kids and rebellious teens to battling in-laws and quirky roommates. Therefore, anyone who is interested in writing hilarious humor needs to be aware of the conventions and techniques of the sitcom writer, for, even if one has no intention him- or herself ever of writing a sitcom, the genre has shaped and reshaped comedy and humor, changing audiences’ and readers’ expectations as to what should be regarded as funny. That doesn’t mean that a humorist must write only in the same vein as sitcom writers, but it does mean that the humorist should be aware of the major influence that sitcoms have had on humor in general and comedy in particular.

In The Comic Toolbox: How To Be Funny Even If You’re Not, John Vorhaus, a film and television writer with over 20 years of experience, offers tips concerning how to write speculation scripts, or “specs,” for television situation comedies. Some of his advice applies to humorists of every stripe. For example, Vorhaus advises his readers to “play to your strengths”: “Do you have a knack for gags? Then you want to spec a gag-driven show. Do you have ‘heart’? Then you want to write a sample for a show that has lots of ‘heartfelt’ moments. Can you write kids well? Write a kids’ show spec.” He also reminds his readers to remember that every sitcom has a “rule” that governs how the story will be told. A “rule” for Married. . . With Children, he says, is “that Al Bundy always loses.”

Likewise, “on Murphy Brown there’s often a gag, or even a running gag, about a secretary, but. . . the stories are never built around a secretary.” These rules, he says, affect every element of their respective sitcoms:

A show's rules extend to all aspects of that show. Which character gets the main story? Who gets the secondary stories? Is someone a straight man? Do characters tell jokes and make wisecracks, or do all the laughs come from the characters' comic perspectives? What sort of language do these people use? What topics are taboo? Do they make reference to the outside world, or do they live within a hermetically sealed sitcom bubble? Will given characters act the fool?

Vorhaus also offers excellent instruction as to how the typical sitcom is structured and how he himself applies the genre’s strict guidelines as to how such a comedy should be put together:

Situation comedies are structured either as two-act or three act tales. Mad About You, M*A*S*H and Married. . . with Children are two-act structures; Murphy Brown and The Simpsons play in three acts. Each act ends with an act break, a big dramatic moment which (one hopes) creates a sense of expectation and dread strong enough to hold the viewers' interest across the commercial break and bring them back for more. . . .

. . . In three-act structure, as in two-act structure, it's necessary for the moment before each commercial to have some real drama and urgency, to carry the viewer over the break. I like to think of my three-act act breaks in terms of trouble is coming and trouble is here. At the end of the first act, the characters know that a bad, bad thing is looming on the horizon. At the second act break, the consequences of that bad thing have been brought home. This second break corresponds roughly with the moment of maximum dread in traditional two-act structure. . . .

No matter what happens in your story, remember that situation comedies are essentially circular; things always end up more or less back where they started. If a
character gets fed up with his family and moves out of the house, clearly the act break is the moment when he leaves.

Just as clearly, the story will end with the character having moved back home.

Many sitcoms, Vorhaus points out, have a main story and a secondary, related story, the two of which may (or may not) be connected by their sharing of a common theme:

Many, though not all situation comedies slice themselves up into a-story and b-story. The a-story is the main story, the big problem, the heavy emotional issue with which a given half-hour of television reality chooses to concern itself. Typically, the a-story is given to the star of the show, the main character. Also, the a-story explores the theme of the episode. Whether that theme is, "tell the truth," or "be true to your school," or "don't do stupid things," it's played out in the largest, deepest, and most dramatic sense in the a story.

The b-story is much smaller and lighter than the a story. It usually involves secondary characters. It carries far less emotional weight and gets less screen time than the a-story. In a well crafted sitcom, there's a thematic connection between the a-story and the b-story, in which the b-story comments on and amplifies the meaning of the a-story.

Vorhaus also offers a “shortcut” for writing sitcoms that reveals the basic structure of this genre and provides the humorist with yet another tool for his or her humorists’ toolbox:

. . . I'd like to introduce yet another quick-and-dirty way to get a line on your sitcom story. To use this shortcut, think in the following terms: introduction, complication, consequence, and relevance. The introduction to a sitcom story is the thing that gets the trouble started or puts the tale in motion. An out-of-town guest arrives. An old girlfriend turns up. A first date looms. A driver's license expires. A party is planned.

The complication is the thing that makes the bad situation worse. If the introduction is one character taking cough medicine, the complication is another character bringing the boss home for dinner. If the introduction is one character running for school office, the complication is another character entering the race. If the introduction is a character weaving a lie into an English essay, the complication is that essay winning a major prize. If the introduction is Mr. Wacky going to the doctor, the complication is discovering he only has three weeks to live. The consequence is the result of the conflict created by the introduction and the complication. If two people are running for the same office, then the consequence is the outcome of the election. In the cough medicine story, the consequence is when the cough medicine blows up, so to speak, in the boss's face.

The consequenceof Mr. Wacky facing death is his coming to terms with his mortality, only to discover (since we'd like to run the series for another five years or so) that he's not actually dying after all. The relevance is simply a statement of the story's theme. Stand by your friends. Do the right thing. Don't fear the future. Stop and smell the roses. Accept your own mortality. Shower the people you love with love; that sort of thing.

Earlier, we identified some of the common stock characters of humor and comedy. Using the television sitcoms in which these characters appear as examples, we can get a better idea of how actual sitcoms were developed by referring to the summaries of these shows that are provided by the TV Land website.

The Beverly Hillbillies: Jed and Jethro (front seat); Elly May and Granny (back seat)
For our example of the country bumpkin, we used Jethro Bodine, a character on The Beverly Hillbillies. This show is based upon the premise that Jed Clampett, attempting to kill game he’s hunting near his mountain cabin in Bug Tussle, unearths an underground oil reserve, making him instantly wealthy. He and his family load up their truck and move to Beverly Hills, California, where life, for them (and everyone they encounter there) is decidedly different. TV Land describes the series as “always rich in the absurd”:

. . . The Beverly Hillbillies was chock full of lowbrow but hilarious situations. As sitcom humor would have it, Jed and his brood move next door to the greedy banker, Milburn Drysdale, who in an effort to make his financial institution the home of the Clampett millions, takes the fresh-off-the-farm family under his wing. Most of the early shows revolve around the impossible adjustments the poor mountain folk must make to city life, and Jed Clampett's backwoods brand of wisdom always wins out in the end. Despite their brand-new mansion with its cement pond and indoor plumbing, the Hillbillies stay true to their rustic roots. Many episodes center around
Drysdale's attempts to keep the Clampetts in good spirits in their big city setting (thus keeping their money in his bank). Enrolling Jethro in elementary school, buying Jed a movie studio, letting Granny open a medical practice and finding Elly May a beau are just a few of the silly but entertaining storylines.

Our example of the con artist, Mr. Haney, is taken from the sitcom Green Acres, in which attorney Oliver Wendell Douglas, wanting to get back to the basic way of life that he believes made America great, purchases a run-down farm, complete with ramshackle house and barn, from Mr. Haney, who is forever afterward selling the new farmer an assortment of junk that Douglas does not want or need. The show’s gags result from Douglas’ attempt to farm the unproductive land, producing sparse crops of miniature vegetables that are the laughingstock of his neighbors; the house’s lack of basic utilities, facilities, and utilities, such as a telephone, a closet, and dependable appliances; Douglas’ socialite wife Lisa’s ineptitude as a housewife and her longing to return to Manhattan; the Douglas’ incompetent employee Eb; zany neighbors; Douglas’ naiveté about country life; and his occasional trips to Hooterville.

TV Land describes the show:

Successful lawyer Oliver Wendell Douglas. . . longs to leave behind the complications of modern society and life as a Manhattanite, and despite the protestations of his glamorous, socialite, Hungarian wife Lisa. . . , Oliver buys a farm, sight unseen, from swindler Mr. Haney. The couple says “goodbye[,] city life!” and take up residence in Hooterville, U.S.A. While there is some debate amongst the show's fans as to the actual geographic location of Hooterville, one thing is clear; it exists in a state of mind-bending logic and hallucinatory natural laws, and is inhabited by an eccentric population that includes favorite son Arnold Ziffel, a multi-lingual, television watching pig. The farm Oliver has purchased is a shambles, the farmhouse in a state of advanced disrepair. Along with hired hand Eb, Oliver tries to make a go at being
a gentleman farmer.Meanwhile, Lisa settles in to her new surroundings despite herself, and attempts to bring gracious living and the finer things to the oddball residents of this off-the-map town.

The sitcom M*A*S*H supplied our example of the egghead character in the person, so to speak, of Major Charles Emerson Winchester III. This comedy is set in Korea, during the Korean War. It involves the medical and support personnel of the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, or MASH. Commanded by Colonel Sherman T, Potter (who is later replaced by Lt. Col. Henry Blake), Dr. Hawkeye Pierce and Dr. John Francis Xavier McIntyre, who goes by the nickname “Trapper John,” are unconventional doctors who, despite their hatred of war (and the Army), do their best to save the lives of wounded soldiers by practicing “meatball surgery” under less-than-idea conditions. To maintain their sanity, they flaunt Army rules and regulations, play practical jokes on one another, and tease Major Frank Burns and his paramour, Major Margaret (“Hot Lips”) Houlihan, who, despite their affair with one another, insist that everyone else should do everything strictly by the book. Pierce and Honeycutt get away with their unorthodox behavior--keeping a still in their tent, wearing Hawaiian shirts instead of uniforms, and displaying a general lack of disrespect for their superiors--because their surgical skills are not only necessary but extraordinary. Besides Blake, Burns, Houlihan, and Winchester, other characters in the series include Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger, who sports a dress and wears high heels and carries a purse in the hope of receiving a psychiatric discharged; Colonel Water Eugene (“Radar”) O’Reilly, a clairvoyant clerk who announces that casualties are “incoming,” even before he receives official word; and Father Francis Mulcahy, a Catholic priest.

TV Land describes M*A*S*H from the protagonist’s point of view:

For Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce, love and war, politics and
prose, collide at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. He was named Hawkeye
after a character in The Last of the Mohicans.

Hawkeye is originally assigned to work with Captain "Trapper John" McIntyre, the two become fast friends as they figure out a way to mix hi-jinks and humor with the stark reality of war. He forms a bond with seemingly psychic Corporal Walter "Radar" O. Reilly, Corporal Maxwell Klinger, who would do anything to be sent home, including dress in drag, and mild mannered Father Francis Mulcahy. After Trapper
is discharged Life at camp returns to normal for Hawkeye with the arrival of new best friend, Captain B.J. Hunnicutt. Growing more learned by war, through out his tour Hawkeye transforms from a wise cracking practical joker to a man of conscious; but perhaps his biggest strength is the ability to find humor, sanity and humanity in time of war.

We exemplified the fish out of water, or displaced person, character with Will Smith of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and with Jethro Bodine and the Clampetts of The Beverly Hillbillies. In Fresh Prince, Will, living in Philadelphia, starts to have trouble with members of a street gang, so his guardian aunt sends him to live with the Banks, well-to-do relatives who live in in Bel Air, California. In his new surroundings, as he is exposed to situations and characters he’d never dreamed of, Will struggles to develop a sense of identity that can include other people’s values, ways of life, beliefs, and concerns and to adjust to his new environment. He is changed for the better by his encounter with his uncle, a judge, his aunt, and their children, Will’s cousins dimwitted Hilary, pedantic Carlton, and young Ashley, just as they are changed for the better by him. Much of the series’ humor comes from Will’s struggle to fit in, from his encountering new ideas and situations, and from his conflict with his uncle and his cousins

Our examples of the hypocrite and the blowhard, Tartuffe and Sir John Falstaff, were taken from dramatic comedies, Tartuffe and King Henry IV, Parts I and II and the Merry Wives of Windsor, respectively, rather than from television sitcoms.

(Because sitcoms’ theme songs often provide a humorous way to introduce the concepts, or premises, of their respective shows, we have included the lyrics of several of them in Appendix C.)

Next: Standup Comedians

“Luann”: A Situation-Based, Character-Driven Comic Strip

Copyright 2009 by Gary Pullman

“Luann,” by Greg Evans, features the teenage exploits of Luann DeGroot; her parents, Frank and Nancy; her brother Brad; Brad’s girlfriend Toni Daytona; and his buddy T. J.; and Luann’s friends and high school classmates, including her best friend Bernice Halper; her romantic rival Tiffany Farrell; and her nerdy admirer Gunther Berger. Occasionally, other characters appear in the strip, including Aaron Hill, the boy upon whom Luann has an unrequited crush; Toni’s abusive ex-boyfriend Dirk; and Bernice’s handicapped, wheelchair-bound ex-boyfriend Zane.

The comic strip is aimed at teenage and young adult readers, although its situations and humor appeal to a general audience. Much of the conflict is situation-based and, as the Internet website Toonopedia’s article on the comic strip points out, concerns “the ordinary hassles of teenage life,” such as Luann’s or Brad’s interaction with their family and friends, but, some sequences include serious or “touchy” issues such as menstruation, “drug abuse,” “drunk driving,” and “cancer” (“Luann”). With the exception of October 25, the theme for the sequence of the comic strip that appeared from October 25 through October 31, 2009, focuses on Halloween and shows the characters’ personalities as they are revealed by their reactions to problems and conflicts that arise from ordinary, everyday situations.

Halloween is a quintessential children’s holiday, and, since “Luann” appeals primarily to teenagers and young adults, its creator focuses most of an entire week’s worth of his comic strip on this festive occasion. The exception is the Sunday, October 25, 2009, edition. All of Evans’ Sunday strips are stand-alone works. They are not part of the daily sequence. Therefore, they must make sense by themselves. The strip for Sunday, October 25, 2009, shows Luann and her friends standing shoulder to shoulder at the front of their classroom. Behind them, the theme of the day’s lesson is written on the chalkboard: “Day of Service--How will you help others?” As their teacher, Mr. Fogarty, looks on, the students tell their peers what each of them intends to do during the Day of Service. Luann is the next to the last in line; Tiffany stands to her left. Each of the students except Tiffany plans to perform a more-or-less significant act of kindness and assistance. Bernice announces that she intends to “visit” a “disabled neighbor.” Crystal plans to “give manicures at the senior center.” Knute will “mentor at the skateboard park.” Delta hopes to “start a citywide volunteer corps.” Gunther intends to “donate extra time at the library.” Luann is going to “clean up litter.” Since all the other students have a relatively important and meaningful task in mind for the Day of Service, the reader anticipates that Tiffany, the last in line, will also have a noble and helpful task in mind. However, her announcement surprises both Luann and the reader. When Tiffany declares that she will do all that she “can to look incredibly gorgeous,” Luann turns to her, in the next panel, and asks, “How does that help others, Tiffany?” Although her explanation is obviously ludicrous, it reflects her shallow and narcissistic character, and, juxtaposed to her peers’ more important plans to help others, is amusing.

The rest of the week focuses upon Halloween. In the October 26, 2009, strip, Frank and Nancy, seated across from one another in their living room, discuss what to hand out to visiting trick or treaters. Nancy confides to her husband, “I didn’t buy Halloween candy. I hate it that kids gorge on sweets, but I don’t know what to give. Carrots? Toys? Dimes?” Her practical husband suggests “garage stuff.” His response seems to surprise Nancy. “What?” she asks him. “We have junk in the garage we plan to sell,” Frank tells her. “Give it to the kids. Win-win.” Unimpressed, Nancy illustrates the absurdity of Frank’s suggestion. Pretending to give the garage items to visiting trick or treaters, she says, as if she were speaking to them, “A bent golf club for you, an ugly tie for you, a half roll of wallpaper for you, a broken lamp for you.” Her humorous protest prompts Frank to response, “See? It’s even kinda scary.” This strip uses a problem--children’s stuffing themselves with “sweets”--to set up a humorous attempt by the characters to find a solution. Nancy’s suggestions for alternative treats (“carrots. . . toys. . . dimes”) are serious, but Frank’s (“junk in the garage”) is both playfully self-serving and humorous. The strip combines a serious health issue with an everyday situation (cleaning out the family’s garage) and a holiday (Halloween) to appeal to a wide audience, which includes both children, adults, parents, and homeowners.

The October 27, 2009, edition of the comic strip continues the situation that the previous day’s installment established: what to give visiting trick or treaters on Halloween. Again, Frank and Nancy are seated opposite one another in their living room. Nancy opens the conversation between them: “I think I’ll bake sugarless bran muffins for Halloween treats.” Frank offers an interesting alternative. At first, it sounds ridiculous, even a bit cruel: “Here’s a better idea. Take one of our 500-piece jigsaw puzzles and give each kid a handful of pieces.” However, in the next panel, he explains his reasoning, and the idea doesn’t seem as absurd: “The kids will have to get together to assemble the puzzle. They’ll make new friends! It’ll strengthen the very fiber of our neighborhood!” Nancy’s response is based upon a play on the word “fiber” that Frank has used. “My bran muffins are all about fiber,” she observes. “Yeah,” Frank replies, “but it’s the kind that tends to separate people.” His response suggests that the fiber in the muffins will facilitate the children’s need to use the bathroom, since fiber has a laxative effect on people, and their doing so will cause them to “separate” rather than to “assemble.” This strip shows that both Nancy and Frank care about the welfare of children. Nancy has their health in mind, whereas Frank is concerned with their social wellbeing. Their proposed solutions to the problem of what treats to hand out to children on Halloween also show them to be creative. The conflict between them is gentle and rational, rather than harsh and emotional, showing that they are mature and logical adults. Like many of Evans’ other strips, this one, based upon a specific situation, reveals the traits of his characters’ personalities.

The October 28, 2009, edition of the comic strip continues the same situation, as Frank, discovering a kitchen “drawer full of rubber bands from the newspaper” to which they subscribe, suggests to Nancy, as she pours a cup of coffee, “Let’s give these out to the trick or treaters.” She asks a logical question in response, wondering what the recipients “are supposed to do with a rubber band.” In the next panel, Frank explains, “Honey, they’re kids. They’ll think of things.” Nancy agrees, but her rejoinder suggests that the “things” of which the children are apt to think to do with the rubber bands may be undesirable and, potentially, hazardous: “Yeah. Like zing you upside the head as you close the door.” Frank’s suggestion is based upon his understanding that children are imaginative, but Nancy’s comeback addresses another facet of adolescent behavior. Children, she suggests, are also unruly, and their rowdiness could cause unpleasant or dangerous results. It is evident that both characters, as the parents of Luann and Brad, understand children well. The strip also seems to imply that, in caring for children, two heads are better than one, because both Frank and Nancy contribute to an awareness of the nature of children which is truer and more developed than either of their perceptions would be by itself. Children are imaginative, as Frank points out, but they are also immature and disorderly at times, as Nancy indicates.

The October 29, 2009, edition of “Luann” is atypical in that it is not humorous in itself. Rather, it sets up the strip that is to appear the next day and, as the inclusion of a web address in the lower right corner of its single panel indicates, it is more of a public service effort than it is an attempt to tell a joke or to express humor. This time, the action, such as it is, occurs in Luann’s bedroom, as her dog Puddles sleeps on her bed and her best friend Bernice, reading a magazine or a book, lounges on the floor, her back against the side of the mattress, while Luann contemplates a large collection of books in her bookcase. Bernice reads to Luann some facts that have captured her attention: “Wow. In America, kids collect almost 3 billion pieces of candy on Halloween.” She finds this information disturbing because of the hazards to children’s health that it represents: “That’s a lot of hyper, obese, bad-teeth kids.” Luann, contemplating her bookcase, says, “Look at all these old children’s books of mine. Wonder what I could do with them?” A teenager, she has outgrown the “children’s books.” What were once welcome diversions are now undesirable clutter to her. However, possibly because they have sentimental value to her, she doesn’t appear to want to simply discard them, for she wonders what she “could do with them.” The strip for the next day will provide the solution to her problem.

In the October 30, 2009 strip, Frank and Nancy are still trying to resolve their problem as to what to give trick or treaters in lieu of candy. This time, they are seated at the dining room table. Nancy names “apples” and “stickers” and other possibilities. Frank, once again, suggests an absurd alternative: “paper clips.” As her parents struggle with the issue, Nancy listing their ideas on a sheet of paper, Luann approaches them, carrying a tall stack of books. “How ‘bout givin’ my old children’s books?” she suggests. In the next panel, the parents are alone again, Luann having left the stack of books on the table. Her mother and father stare at the books, speechless. In the last panel, Nancy tosses her crumpled list as Frank offers the strip’s punch line: “It’s scary when she’s more clever than we are, isn’t it?” Although this strip, considered in isolation from the previous editions in the sequence, is not all that amusing in itself, its humor becomes funnier because it builds upon the continuing situation that previous days’ editions of the strip have developed, this one becoming, as it were, not only amusing in itself but the punch line for the whole series of related strips to date. Because Frank and Nancy have considered a series of possible alternatives to the giving of candy to visiting children as Halloween treats without success, Luann’s casual resolution of their long-running dilemma is also amusing, since she is a teenager, while they are adults. Usually, the parents solve problems, but, in this strip, the roles of parents and child are reversed, which helps to fuel the amusement.

The October 31, 2009, edition of the comic strip represents the culmination of the Halloween-based series as children visit the DeGroot household to trick or treat. Luann hands out the books. “Just for you,” she says to a girl in a witch’s costume, naming the title of the book she is giving her, “If I Ran the Zoo.” Her announcement of the book’s title brings her father running, as he cries out, in horror at the thought of the loss of the book, “That book is inscribed by Ted Geisel inside!” His announcement shocks Luann, who stares wide-eyed and speechless. “Ted Geisel” is the actual name of the author who has written a popular series of children’s books under the pen name “Dr. Seuss.” The fact that he has “inscribed” the book that Luann is giving away suggests that the volume may be worth a fair amount of money. As such, it is not something that is appropriate to be given away to a child, which explains Frank’s horror and the speed with which he intervenes as well as Luann’s own shock. Luann’s diplomatic way of resolving this crisis is to offer the child two books for the one that she originally gives her, and the girl gladly accepts, so that, at the end, everyone--the girl, Luann, and Frank--is content with the outcome. Luann’s actions show her to be sensitive, kind, and tactful. She may be a teenager, but she is maturing well emotionally and morally, her behavior suggests. She is also witty, because her dialogue, constituting, as it does, a rhymed couplet, in her offering of two books for the one she originally gives the girl, resembles the rhyming couplets in which Dr. Seuss’ books are written.

Just as she earlier solved her parents’ dilemma concerning what to give trick or treaters instead of candy, Luann now resolves the crisis of reclaiming the book she originally gives a child in a diplomatic, and even witty, manner. Although her parents are obviously mature adults--Frank provides for the financial necessities of a family of four, just as Nancy keeps house for them, and both parents show an understanding of and a concern for both their own children and children in general--both Nancy and Frank can also act childishly on occasion, as is indicated by Frank’s panic at the possibility of losing a book signed by a famous author and his grabbing it out of Luann’s hands the moment she retrieves it from the trick or treater and Nancy’s earlier insistence that her bran muffins were superior to Frank’s suggestion for a Halloween treat because her muffins would be “all about fiber.” The comedy of “Luann” springs from Evans’ display of his characters’ personalities through their responses to the problems and conflicts which arise from specific situations related to everyday life. Such humor appeals to children, teenagers, parents, and other adults alike.

Works Cited

Evans, Greg. “Luann.” Comic Strip. The Las Vegas Review-Journal.
25 Oct. 2009-31 Oct. 2009: C8. Print.

Markstein, Don. (2009). Luann. Don Markstein’s Toonopedia. Retrieved November 4, 2009, from http://www.toonopedia.com/luann.htm.


Next: Situation Comedy

Cartoonists and Other Humorists

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Although cartoonists, illustrators, stand-up comedians, and comedic television and movie stars are not literary humorists per se, they have contributed to the form and have much to offer those who would adapt their techniques to the needs and purposes of literary humor. Included in this group of humorists are cartoonists and illustrators such as James Thurber, Charles Schultz, Greg Evans, Gary Larson, Chic Young, and Norman Rockwell; situation comedy writers; standup comedians such as Lenny Bruce, Red Skelton, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, Flip Wilson, and Jonathan Winters; television and movie stars such as Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, W. C. Fields, Groucho Marx, Charlie Chaplin, Bill Cosby, Roseanne, Jerry Seinfeld, and Ray Romano.

Typically, cartoons are either single-panel or multiple-panel illustrations. Single-panel cartoons, which may not, but more typically do, include a caption, or line of text, at the bottom (often to deliver the punch line, or the point, of the joke), portray a simple, humorous situation. Multiple-panel cartoons often consist of three panels, in which the first sets up the situation, the second makes a commentary on the situation, and the third delivers the punch line. However, multiple-panel cartoons can also consist of one, four, or some other number of panels. Normally, with regard to newspaper cartoons, or comics, the daily strips are one-panel or three-panel, with the Sunday versions running to several panels which depict and narrate more complicated jokes and humorous situations.

There is a great competition among cartoonists. There is a limited market, even with the hundreds of newspapers and magazines published weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually in the United States and elsewhere, and there are many talented illustrators and writers vying for the available space. Therefore, a cartoonist must find a slant, a topic, or an approach that will connect with a sizeable body of readers but, at the same time, will be unique or at least different enough from the usual fare to earn his or her work a place among the many strips that are already being printed on a regular basis. Competition among such humorists has enriched the genre of humor writing for cartoonists and other humorists, as it has for their readers as well.

We have sought to capitalize upon the competition among cartoonists and other illustrators by selecting a few, past and present, whose works exemplify the diversity within the field and, at the same time, have had staying power with fans. By discerning the techniques and methods of such humorists, one can expand his or her own concept and understanding of humor. James Thurber, a cartoonist on the staff of The New Yorker, drew simple cartoons in a wavering hand. He had poor eyesight, which failed more and more as he aged, and his fluttery drawing style reflected his poor vision. It also happened to complement his vision of the world, which was surreal and fantastic, rather than realistic or mundane. Fellow humorist Dorothy Parker described Thurber’s drawings as resembling “unbaked cookies,” and Thurber himself admitted that others likened them to illustrations drawn under water.

Like many other humorists, Thurber fictionalized his own experiences in plotting his short stories and cartoons, many of which are collected in My Life and Hard Times. Such stories as “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” and “The Cat-bird Seat,” like his Fables For Our Time are well-known examples of his work, as are cartoons he frequently published in The New Yorker.
He drew and wrote of ordinary people who sought to escape the tedium of everyday life, often through imaginative flights and fancies. Often, his protagonists are shy, timid men who long to live heroic lives or milquetoasts who wish that they, not their wives, ruled their roosts.
His Is Sex Necessary? or, Why You Feel the Way You Do is a send-up of self-help psychology books (as is Bombeck’s Aunt Erma’s Cope Book). Thurber also wrote several books of contemporary, satirical fables with punch lines instead of morals.

Children are a popular theme among cartoonists. Charles Schultz, who drew the Peanuts comic strip, peopled his work with such well-known characters as Charlie Brown and his kid sister Sally, Lucy van Pelt and her little brother Linus, Pig-Pen, Woodstock, and Charlie Brown’s pet beagle, Snoopy. Although he himself claimed to be a “secular humanist,” Schultz was brought up in the Lutheran faith, and Robert L. Short detected enough of the Christian worldview in Schultz’s work to write The Gospel According to Peanuts. Since millions of the strip’s readers, both in the United States and worldwide, are either themselves Christians or are, like Schultz, familiar with and, perhaps, influenced by, Christian theology and doctrine, it is likely that this religious and cultural subtext adds to the strip’s universal appeal, as does the fact that Schultz’s “gospel” is never presented in a heavy-handed fashion but remains subtle and nuanced, as most do not want a side order of sermon with their humorous fare.

Peanuts was also popular because of the characters themselves. Each of them, it might be argued, is, in his or her own way, archetypal, representing various personas of the reader’s own self. Like Charlie Brown, we are all shy and clumsy; we are all put-upon “losers” more often than we are winners--or apt to feel that we are--and, yet, eternal optimists, we remain determined, believing that, somehow, this time, to kick the elusive football. Likewise, we, like the arrogant and self-absorbed Lucy, can be cynical and cruel, bullying and insensitive, loud and loutish. There is also a bit of the compassionate and caring, nurturing Linus in all of us. We are all these characters, at times, overtly or covertly, just as there are elements of the loyal Sally Brown, the artistic Schroeder, the neglected Pig-Pen, and the dominant-submissive, aggressive-passive duality of the Patricia (“Peppermint Patty”) Reichardt and Marcie duo. Humor with which we can identify personally is appealing to us, even when--or, perhaps, especially when--it points out our foibles and our follies, if it does so in a gentle and tolerant manner.

The relationships between the various Peanuts characters also make the strip--and its humor--attractive. Charlie Brown, who is arguably the strip’s central character--has many friends in his community, despite his awkward, shy demeanor and his low levels of confidence and self-esteem, and he is often matched up against Lucy van Pelt, Linus van Pelt, and the Little Red-Haired Girl upon whom he has a crush. Likewise, there is a one-sided, budding romance between Lucy and Schroeder, and Lucy often is paired against her brother Linus, Charlie Brown, or Snoopy.

The strip also features running gags (humorous themes or situations that frequently snowball as they are repeated and varied over time) such as Lucy’s operation of a “Psychiatric Help” booth, from which she dispenses self-help wisdom for a five-cents fee; Charlie Brown’s attempts to kick a football that Lucy holds for him and always jerks away at the last instant; Charlie Brown’s unsuccessful attempts to fly a kite, only to have it fall victim to another “kite eating tree” or some other mishap; Lucy’s unrequited love for Schroeder, who cares only for Beethoven and his piano; and Linus’ annual attempts to greet The Great Pumpkin as it rises from the pumpkin patch to deliver gifts to girls and boys throughout the world, only to have his hopes dashed, once again. (Persistence in spite of dashed hopes is a major theme of the strip as a whole.)

Greg Evans, the creator of the newspaper comic strip Luann, often involves his protagonist or other characters in crushes: Luann long sought to land her heartthrob, Aaron Hill, or to decide whether she likes Aaron, nerdy Gunther Berger, or suave Miguel Vargas better. Aaron himself had a girlfriend, Claudia, but that didn’t stop him from flirting with Luann, Tiffany Farrel, and other girls. Likewise, Luann’s brother Brad seems eternally to court fellow firefighter Toni Daytona, although, prior to her, he briefly dated other girls, including Diane. As often as not, once the teens hook up, they break up, as Aaron and Claudia did, as Brad and Diane did, and as Luann’s friend, Bernice Halper, and Zane did. Teen romance is one of the strip’s backbones, but the conflicts that arise between the characters also unify the strip. Much of the conflict results from Tiffany’s narcissistic interest in herself and her rivalry with Luann over boys.

Toni’s former boyfriend Dirk stalks Toni, whom he abuses emotionally, and attacks Brad. Ann Eiffel, a feminist and Bernice’s former employer at Borderline Books, caused a riff between Bernice and Zane when she became jealous of Zane. It was implied that Ann was herself infatuated with Bernice. The strip’s villains represent the types of threats that Evans sees as menacing teens and young adults and these dangers and risks also help to bring additional unity to the strip’s otherwise rather episodic character.

Gary Larson’s now-defunct single-panel strip, The Far Side, provided an offbeat, even bizarre, take on ordinary life, delving beneath the accepted and the “real” to show the absurd, the fantastic, the bizarre, and the eerie underbelly of human experience. Many strips feature anthropomorphic animals--cows are a favorite of Larson’s--presumably because they, being animals rather than humans, can get away with saying and doing things that people could not do without annoying or offending readers and because there has always been something innately amusing about casting animals in the roles of human beings. In one strip, Larson featured a boy attempting to enter The School of the Gifted by pushing a door, despite the presence of a sign indicating that the door must be pulled to be opened. In another cartoon, labeled “A Pigeon’s View of the World,” humans were shown from above, a bull’s-eye painted atop their heads.

The use of chickens, chimpanzees, cows, dogs, and other animals as stand-ins for humans has not always let Larson off the hook in depicting situations that some readers found too gory, politically incorrect, or otherwise offensive to some readers. One that caused controversy hinted at bestiality between ethnologist Jane Goodall and a chimpanzee. While being groomed by his mate, the female chimpanzee finds a human hair in the male’s coat, and asks, rather archly, one imagines, “Conducting a little more 'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?”

Although humorists are given much wider leeway in making jokes or telling anecdotes than is the case with ordinary men and women, there is a limit even on what readers will accept from such once “all-licensed fools,” as we shall see even more clearly when we discuss the David Letterman-Sarah Palin controversy concerning Governor Palin’s 14-year-old daughter, Willow.

Chic Young created the Blondie comic strip, which, like many newspaper comics, spawned a movie. This strip, which began in 1930, originally featured a spunky, independent young flapper with golden locks named Blondie Boopadoop and her raccoon coat-clad, pork-pie-wearing boyfriend, Dagwood Bumstead. Over the years, as times changed, they traded in their Roaring Twenties togs for more contemporary clothing, Blondie became a stay-at-home mother, raising two children, and a dog, Daisy, completed their happy family. Meanwhile, Dagwood went to work as an executive for J. C. Dithers Construction Company. The strip’s props show the passage of time by constantly updating the characters’ allusions, dress, and possessions, Dagwood, for example, buying a flat-screen monitor for his home computer and foregoing the wearing of a hat and garters for his socks.

A cavalcade of other characters were added, including son Alexander and daughter Cookie; Mr. Beasley, the postal carrier who collides with Dagwood every morning as, late for work again, Dagwood rushes to meet his fellow carpool participants; the Bumsteads’ neighbor, Herb Woodley, with whom Dagwood plays an occasional round of golf, and Herb‘s wife, Tootsie; Dagwood’s boss and colleagues; the pesky neighbor boy Elmo Tuttle; Mr. Dithers’ wife, Cora; and the owner of Lou’s diner. In addition, Blondie has started her own catering business.

Like many other comic strips, Blondie features a number of running gags: Dagwood’s famous sandwiches, sofa naps, collisions with Mr. Beasley, Dagwood’s interrupted baths, Dagwood’s being fired by Mr. Dithers (only to be rehired when the boss cools off), Dagwood’s insomnia, Dagwood and Blondie seated in armchairs that face in different directions while they occupy themselves with separate pastimes or tasks, Dagwood’s chronic lateness to work; Dagwood’s having to run to catch the carpool vehicle, and Dagwood’s demand for a salary increase that Mr. Dithers refuses to honor.

From Blondie, humorists can learn both the need to keep humor contemporary and the techniques by which to do so. By staying current with the changes that come with changing times, the strip retains its relevancy and appeal as new generations are introduced to the strip. Were its creator and present staff to ignore such changes, it is like that their strip would soon become as obsolete as Blondie’s flapper togs or Dagwood’s raccoon coat. In addition, new characters keep the strip fresh, while the familiarity of recurring characters and running gags make readers feel as if they know the Bumsteads and their acquaintances.

Norman Rockwell is not a name that one necessarily associates with humor, although many of his paintings--and not merely those that depict April’s Fools states of affairs--depict humorous situations. His is a gentle sense of humor, teasing a smile of recognition from his admirers rather than a sense of outrage, annoyance, chagrin, or embarrassment. We laugh at the boy who, standing upon a chair, his pants and underpants pulled half way down, anxiously peruses the diploma of the family doctor who, loading a hypodermic syringe, is about to administer a shot, for we ourselves have been in the boy’s place and understand his apprehension.

Likewise, we identify with the plight of the young runaway, his knapsack laid on the floor beside his stool as he sits beside the policeman who has napped him treats him to an ice cream sundae; with the sailor who visits a tattooist to have the latest of his girlfriends’ names added, above a series of cross-out feminine names, below it; and with the worry of the little girl who watches the family physician as he listens intently to her doll’s chest through his stethoscope.

Rockwell’s humor touches the heart, capturing the simple, sincere emotions of the young and old, depicting, for his generation, the essence of marriage, family, patriotism, love, and faith, his art showing that humor can be gentle and subtle and tender and nostalgic, or even melodramatic, just as it can be sardonic, caustic, and satirical. Certainly, it can be primarily visual as well, as he and other artists have demonstrated.

We can learn from humor, wherever it occurs, and, for this reason, humorous advertisements should not be overlooked. Rockwell painted many himself, although none were as sassy and sexy as many of the ones that appear in today’s magazines.

Because magazine advertisements are more visual than linguistic in their communication of their messages, it is helpful to know the techniques by which they communicate their meanings. Otherwise, their messages may be perceived unconsciously, without one being aware of how he or she is being manipulated. Many advertisements use humor to get their messages across, and, by understanding the means of indirect communication that an advertisement employs, the reader can better appreciate both the act of communication itself and the advertisement’s humor.

As is the case with regard to other commercials, a printed advertisement’s purpose is to sell a product or a service. However, they often seem to be about something else, such as an emotion or an experience. Such advertisements imply that the product or service will make the buyer feel a certain way or have a particular experience. The emotion or experience is apt to be pleasurable and desirable. By equating the product or the service that is being advertised with such an emotion or experience, the advertisement attempts to persuade its viewer to purchase the commodity.

The language that advertisers use is primarily visual; however, it also includes minimal text. The text is usually the key to the meaning of the advertisement, suggesting how the drawing or photograph should be interpreted. Many times, the text uses a pun, or play on words, as a clue to how the visual component of the advertisement should be understood. The advertisement’s text, which may be no more than a caption, a phrase, or, sometimes, even a word, typically uses such rhetorical devises as allusions, double-entendres, metaphors or similes, and symbolism to convey the meaning of the advertisement’s image. In reading an advertisement, it is usually best to start with its imagery, or the visual component of the advertisement. In doing so, keep in mind that everything in an advertisement is planned. Nothing is there by accident.
Advertisements cost hundreds, thousands, or, in a few cases, even millions of dollars. Because they are expensive and because advertisers want to sell their products or services, every detail of an advertisement is carefully designed. Nothing is left to chance. Therefore, in reading an advertisement, one should consider every detail, both individually and in relation to one another and to the advertisement as a whole.

Most advertisements feature one or more models. When there is more than one model, the figure who is nearest to the center of the advertisement (and, often, the one who is also bigger or who stands out in some other way) represents the advertisement’s central focus. It is with him or her that the advertiser wants the viewer to identify. The advertisement invites the viewer to imagine that he or she is this figure. Besides placement and size, the advertisement’s central figure can be made to stand out from other models by being shown in the brightest area of the picture, by wearing colorful or fashionable costume while the others are wearing plainer costume, by having other models’ gazes focused on him or her, by smiling while others are not smiling, and by many other ways. However the advertisement makes the central figure stand out from other models, the technique will involve contrast. By making him or her look different than everyone else in the picture, the advertisement highlights him or her.

In reading an advertisement, ask yourself how and why the main figure stands out from others. Consider everything you can think of concerning the central figure. Is this model male or female? Older or younger? Wealthy, of the middle class, or poor? What type of costume does he or she wear? Is the costume formal, semi-formal, or casual, and is the fabric silk, satin, velvet, synthetic, or cotton? Are properties (props) involved? If so, what are they? If the central character is male, does he wear a hat, a scarf, a necklace or other jewelry, a cape? Does he carry a cane or smoke a cigarette, a cigar, or a pipe? If the central character is female, does she wear makeup? In what style is her hair done? Does she wear a hat, a scarf, or jewelry? What kind of purse does she carry? Is it large or small, expensive or economical? Does it match the rest of her outfit? Do her shoes have high heels? Are the pumps? Are they flats? Is she wearing tennis shoes or sandals? Does she smoke? What other props are shown in the picture? Are there cars, a beach, mountains, a sunset, posters, a bottle of whiskey, beer, wine, or champagne? Is there food? Where is the model or models? In a restaurant? At a resort? In a living room? In a bar or nightclub? In a bedroom? In a bathroom? In a swimming pool? On a highway? In the mountains? In a desert? In a jungle? What does the advertisement’s setting suggest about the central figure’s values and lifestyle?

Answer the same questions with regard to the secondary, or supporting, figures in the advertisement. Also consider how they are related to the main figure. Are they equals? Subordinates? Are they of the same sex, the opposite sex, or are they in mixed company (both males and females)? Is the central figure the same age, older, or younger than the other models? Do their expressions suggest the type of relationship they share? Is it romantic? Competitive? Friendly? Parental? Dependent? How would you characterize their relationship and why?

Readers read from left to right and from top to bottom, and, in general, viewers are apt to do the same. People also remember best what they hear or see last. Next, they tend to recall better what they hear or see first. What they see or hear in between is remembered least. Artists use various techniques, but chiefly contrast, to move the viewer’s eye, or gaze, across the “canvas” of the page. Where does one’s gaze enter the picture? What pathway does it follow as the viewer considers the advertisement’s picture? Where does the gaze pause or double back for a second look before continuing? Where does the gaze end? In what order were the objects and other elements in the drawing or the photograph encountered? Was a relationship among them of some kind suggested? If so, what and how? (Pay particular attention to contrasts.)

Consider the text. Is it a paragraph? A sentence or two? A phrase? A single word or a series of words, each of which is capitalized and punctuated as if it were a sentence? Is the style formal or informal? Is the language scientific, professional, or scholarly, or is it the language of everyday speech as used in ordinary discourse? Does the text contain jargon (highly specialized vocabulary used to communicate specialized knowledge) or slang? Is it original or trite? Colorful or plain? What types of figures of speech (allusion, hyperbole or exaggeration, irony, metaphor, parody, personification, pun or play on words, quotation, reification, sarcasm, satire, simile, symbol, synecdoche, understatement, zoomorphism) does the advertisement’s text employ?

Consider the advertisement as a whole. What is the dominant emotion it seeks to convey? What basic metaphor does it suggest? What pun or play on word occurs in the text, and how does it relate to the advertisement’s picture? What type of product or service does the advertisement sell? To whom does the advertisement seek to sell the product or service? (Hint: the viewer is supposed to identify with the central figure in the advertisement.)




Here is an example of how to use these techniques to read an advertisement. This advertisement, which appeals to men of the same approximate age as its female model, shows a young woman from behind, as she walks along a trolley station. Her face is not shown. Therefore, the emphasis of the picture is on her body, rather than her face, on the physical rather than the personal. She is an object, rather than a person. She is dressed very simply. She wears a simple, green top that exposes her midriff, a charm bracelet, and a white mini-skirt. A small, simple, black purse is slung over her right shoulder.

She is the largest object in the picture, and she is the closest to the image’s center, her positioning within the picture, like her size, emphasizing her over everything else that is depicted in the advertisement. Next to the figure of the young woman herself, the most outstanding prop in the picture is her skirt. It is short enough to reveal the lower portions of her buttocks, which are bare, suggesting that she either wears a thong or no underwear at all. The exposure of these parts of her anatomy draws the eye, as does the apparent fringe that adorns the bottom of her skirt, some of the tassels of which are missing, revealing the parts of her buttocks that show.

There is something else odd about the fringe: the tassels, which are short, rectangular strips, bear printed text that is too small to read. However, on the seat of her skirt, in red cursive lettering, below which is an arrowhead, pointing downward, is the message, “My number.” This message makes it clear to the advertisement’s viewer that the text printed on the tassels identifies her telephone number. Her skirt is itself an advertisement of the sort that includes, along its bottom edge, a series of tags that are printed with a telephone number to which those who are interested in the product or the service that the advertisement promotes may respond. Essentially, the model is saying, to all interested parties, “Call me.” It is based upon a play on words, alluding to the common phrase, “I have your number.”

The accompanying text at the bottom of the advertisement, which is printed in smaller font than the message on the model’s skirt, indicates that the image that the advertisement creates--of a nubile young woman who is available to anyone who is interested in calling her--is a fantasy: “Let us keep on dreaming of a better world.” The advertisement has a playful tone, suggesting that the “better world” to which it alludes would be a fun place to be, and the fun would be of a physically intimate variety. Following this fine print, as it were, is the logo that identifies the product that the advertisement is selling, Ché, a “men’s magazine.”

The model seems to represent the sort of fantasy girl that the magazine is apt to feature on a routine basis. By purchasing or subscribing to this magazine, customers gain admittance to the “better world” of fun-loving, available dream girls. The train represents opportunity. The model is approaching the station. If the viewer were present, he might meet her, and, if he were to join her on the trolley, the train might convey him--or, rather, him and the young woman--to a common destination. The silent text of the advertisement seems to be. “Don’t miss the train!” and represents a call to action, or, in the language of the trade, the closing sales pitch.


Next: “Luann”

Literary Humorists

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

In learning how to write hilarious humor, there is no substitute for knowing the work of famous literary humorists. They are textbooks in themselves, for they have mastered the techniques of humor over careers spanning lifetimes and, indeed, generations. Any list of such humorists must include the following men and women: Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), Voltaire, Miguel de Cervantes, Erma Bombeck, Dave Barry, Dorothy Parker, Art Buchwald, Shirley Jackson, Jean Kerr, William Shakespeare, and Neil Simon.

In addition, many situation comedy writers deserve serious study as literary humorists, even if they write scripts for television shows or movies rather than short stories and novels. It is helpful to consider the influences of such men and women, too--the predecessors and contemporaries from whom they themselves learned how to be funny--and the sources of their humor, when these are discoverable. Of course, in the process, it’s enormously helpful to examine their work and the techniques they use to evoke laughter from their audiences.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (“Mark Twain”)

In learning to write hilarious humor, there is no substitute for studying the work of great humorists. Chief among them, by most people’s measure, is Samuel Langhorne Clemens, who is more familiar to many by his famous pen name, Mark Twain. The author of such timeless classics of humor as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Roughing It, Life on the Mississippi, A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator, The Innocents Abroad, and a host of other comic masterpieces, Twain, more than any other writer, living or dead, established the genre.

From Twain, the student of horror learns that humor can have a purpose beyond mere entertainment. It can evoke laughter, but it can also lampoon social ills and satirize both the institutions of evil and the institutionalization of evil. Humor can poke fun at traditions, mores, hypocrisy, villainy, culture, and even civilization itself, as Twain’s humor does; at the same time, it can, and, indeed, must, make its readers laugh. Great humor is a double-edge sword, one edge of which provokes laughter while the other cuts through pretense, arrogance, and plain hogwash. Twain’s humor, like that of George Bernard Shaw’s, shows how it is done.

From Twain and other humorists, we also learn another requirement of written humor--that is, humor as it occurs in short stories, novels, plays, and movies, rather than in stand-up comedians’ one-liners and skits. Such humor must be comprised of more than simply a series of unconnected jokes. Written humor of the type with which we are concerned has to be about something; it must have a center and a purpose beyond itself. The jokes and anecdotes and other humorous sequences must be connected by a point of view and a theme.

The point of view, which will be closely allied with the tone of the humor, may be one of gentle censure, harsh satire, tolerant lampoon, insolent farce, or ribald burlesque. The theme, or the point, might be to acknowledge human folly, to identify social injustices, to highlight absurdities in human behavior, to condemn human cruelty, to right social wrongs, or any of a host of other purposes.

There must also be a means by which to unite the humor, the point of view, and the tone--a way, as it were, to give a backbone to the various parts of the organism. Often, this backbone is an analogy of some kind.

Erma Bombeck

In All I Know About Animal Behavior I learned in Loehman’s Dressing Room, Erma Bombeck, inspired, apparently, by Jane Goodall’s study of primate behavior, equates human conduct with animal behavior. This analogy is the spine of her book, allowing her to compare various human actions to those of their beastly counterparts over the length of a couple hundred pages rather than a few paragraphs. At the same time, it unifies her sketches, making them part of a bigger narrative and allows her to adopt a humorous, slightly critical point of view (which might be said to be people are such animals!“) and a matching gently chiding tone.

Analogies are commonly the devices by which humorists unify their jokes, anecdotes, and literary sketches, but they also employ ironic reversals upon common themes, almost as if to refute the wisdom, plausibility, or efficacy of the approach theirs is opposing. Twain takes uses this method, which we might call the antithetical approach, in The Innocents Abroad, explaining to his readers that his book is meant to be a sort of corrective to the travel accounts of others whose travelogues are more about what a traveler should see than what he or she would see:

This book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a solemn scientific expedition it would have about it the gravity, that profundity, and that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper to works of that kind, and withal so attractive. Yet not withstanding it is only a record of a picnic, it has a purpose, which is, to suggest to the reader how he would be likely to see Europe and the East if he looked at them with his own eyes instead of the eyes of those who traveled in those countries before him. I make small pretense of showing anyone how he ought to look at objects of interest beyond the sea–other books do that, and therefore, even if I were competent to do it, there is no need [italics added].

Likewise, Voltaire’s tongue-in-cheek masterpiece, Candide, is an argument, both implicitly and explicitly, against Dr. Pangloss’ (i. e., Gottfried Leibnitz’s) view that, in “the best of all possible worlds,” everything must happen for the best. When the protagonist, Candide, leaves the sheltered life he enjoys to embark (with the help of a boot to the rear) upon his travels in the wide world beyond, he encounters one calamity and catastrophe after another, realizing that the world is a dangerous, inhospitable place full of opportunities for sorrow and despair.

In a similar manner, but with respect to the idea that virtue is as precious as gold and should be sought and maintained at all costs, Donatien Alphonse Françiois de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade, puts the protagonist of his darkly humorous novel, Justine, or The Misfortunes of Virtue, through her paces until, at last, she is struck dead by bolt of lightning, as if nature itself were delivering his judgment against her.

Miguel de Cervantes

Also in a similar fashion, Miguel de Cervantes points out the absurdity of the values and traditions of medieval chivalry. In his immortal classic, the picaresque novel Don Quixote, Cervantes’ main character, an elderly rustic, becomes addlebrained as a result of reading chivalrous romances and, donning an old set of armor, mounts his dilapidated farm horse and rides to adventures, tilting at windmills, with his neighbor Sancho Panza, whom he convinces to serve as his squire. The theme seems clear: too much romance is antithetical not only to reason but to practical living as well.

Dave Barry

Humorists also connect their humorous content in various other ways as well. Dave Barry, who began his career as a columnist, sees the absurdity of human existence in the modern world as the source for much of his humor: He defines “sense of humor” as “a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason,” and says, “Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge.” Barry’s novels typically feature several subplots that seem to meander independently of one another in an episodic fashion until, ultimately, they merge toward the end of his narrative.

His more traditional humor tomes are tongue-in-cheek “how-to” books (Claw Your Way to the Top: How To Become the Head of a Major Corporation in Roughly a Week); fictionalized personal experience as the basis for advice to others (Dave Barry Turns 40, Dave Barry’s Guide to Life, Dave Barry’s Guide to Marriage and/or Sex, Dave Barry’s Gift Guide to End All Gift Guides, Dave Barry’s Guide to Guys); flippant travel guides (Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need, Dave Barry Does Japan); and fabricated histories (Dave Barry Slept Here: A Short History of the United States, Dave Barry’s Guide to the Millennium [So Far]). The tone is usually madcap to match his absurdist vision of contemporary America.

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker is a departure of sorts in that much of her humorous material takes the form of poetry rather than of prose. One poem, “Resume,” appears to be a sort of humorous argument against the death penalty, locating the arguments not in any objection to the death of the executed, but in the faultiness of the means of execution. Furthermore, these means are objectionable not for any significant reason; they do not represent “cruel and unusual” means of execution, but are, if anything, nuisances or petty annoyances:

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Her method is similar to that of Woody Allen’s humor, which often juxtaposes the significant or somber against the trivial and ludicrous, and it frequently addresses subjects with which sophisticated urban readers can identify.

Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson is better known, perhaps, for her horror novels (The Haunting of Hill House is a classic) than for her humorous work. However, like Jean Kerr, she wrote novels about domestic tranquility gone haywire, centering her humor on the trials and tribulations of family and suburban or rural life. Laura Shapiro calls Jackson’s Life Among the Savages, a novel in which a series of short stories represent fictionalized accounts of her four children, “the literature of domestic chaos.”

The treatment of one of the four, newborn Barry, only recently arrived home from the hospital, is typical of Jackson’s detached, ironic portrayal of her fictionalized children. He is the center of attention of his three siblings, Laurie, Jannie, and Sally (ages nine, six, and “the baby”--at least, until Barry’s birth) only briefly. Disappointed that he’s not “something a little bigger,” they soon lose interest in him except as a distraction for their mother to take their places now that they have “all grown up.”

Jackson also wrote another book about her “domestic chaos” as a wife and mother, Raising Demons. Deborah Kerr’s Please Don’t Eat the Daisies is similar to Jackson’s books, offering a collection of essays concerning the domestic bliss that results from rearing four boys in suburbia. The book became the basis of the film starring Doris Day and David Niven and, later, a television series starring Patricia Crowley and Mark Miller.

Art Buchwald

Art Buchwald is the grandfather, so to speak, of humorous political commentary. A columnist for The Washington Post, his wry commentaries on the political machinations and abuses inside the Capitol Beltway made this iconoclastic humorist an American icon, winning him the Pulitzer Prize for Outstanding Commentary in both 1982 and 1986. He maintained that sound in the missing 18-and-an-half-minute segment of the Watergate tape was President Richard Nixon humming.

The titles of his many books suggest their political themes; some of the more memorable ones include Son of the Great Society, The Establishment Is Alive and Well in Washington, Washington Is Leaking, While Reagan Slept, and Beating Around the Bush. Buchwald may be regarded as establishing the genre of the modern satirical political commentary that now includes works by such divergent humorists as Stephen Colbert’s I Am America (And So Can You!), Andy Borowitz’s The Republican Playbook, P. J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire Government, Ann Coulter’s How To Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), Michael Savages’ The Political Zoo, and Dave Barry’s Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway.

Neil Simon

We mentioned one of Shakespeare’s great comic creations, Sir John Falstaff, but the bard has given many other gifts to the humor genre, not the least of which are plots that involve mistaken identities, cross dressing, a series of unlikely errors, star-crossed lovers, and the participation of supernatural beings in human affairs.

A more contemporary playwright whose comic plots are heavily laced with humor is Neil Simon, who wrote Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, The Goodbye Girl, and many other contemporary plays. The means by which he unifies the action (and the humor) of his dramas is to juxtapose two strongly contrasting characters who live together.

In Barefoot in the Park, newlyweds Corie and Paul Bratter move into a postage-stamp size apartment in downtown Manhattan. Their tiny residence is miserable. There is no heat, the skylight has a large hole in it, they must ascend and descend several flights of stairs, they live next to screwball neighbor, Victor Velasco. Free-spirited Corie and priggish Paul are mismatched in personality traits and temperaments, and the humor of the play results from their contrary traits and disposition as much as from the petty annoyances they must endure.

Most people have seen The Odd Couple, either as a play, a movie, or a television series. Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, two divorced men, share an apartment. Easygoing Oscar is a total slob. Edgy Felix insists upon keeping an immaculate household. The only things that the “odd couple” have in common is that each is divorced and each is a writer. Their opposing personality traits and temperaments are the bases of the shows’ humor.

The Goodbye Girl pits a single mother, Paula McFadden, against Elliot Garfield, the man to whom her ex-boyfriend sublet the apartment that he’d shared with Paula. From the beginning, the pair get on one another’s nerves. Nevertheless, they manage to fall in love, right before Elliot is offered a once-in-a lifetime opportunity in another city and Paula fears that he will leave her, as all the other men in her life have done. As with The Odd Couple, the characters’ opposing personality traits and temperaments are the bases of the movie’s humor, and their only common interests (besides the happiness and welfare of Paula’s 10-year-old daughter, Lucy) are their being reluctant roommates and their career choices: Paula is a former dancer who is trying to make a comeback, and Elliot is an actor trying to get established in his profession.

These plays show Simon’s basic approach to unifying his stories and their humor. He confines two characters with strongly contrasting personality traits and temperaments to a relatively small place where their interaction is both inevitable and frequent, allowing their personality differences to ignite sparks; the humor results from the ensuing interactions between the characters and is tempered with romance, friendship, or affection. As a result of their relationships, whether as husband and wife, friends and roommates, or romantic couple, the characters teach one another something important about each other, helping one another to mature.

Next: Cartoonists and Other Humorists

Types of Humorous Stock Characters

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

During the hundreds and hundreds of years during which humor has been developed, a number of humorous stock characters have been developed. We are familiar with many of them, not so much from the stage as from television situation comedies and stand-up comedians’ personas. An awareness of such characters can help us to people our own short stories, novels, scripts, and screenplays with the same types of humorous characters, giving them the special and unique twists that only we can provide, based upon our own personalities, backgrounds, and experiences.

Some of the more common humorous stock characters are the country bumpkin, the con artist, the egghead, the fish out of water (displaced person), the hypocrite, and the blowhard.

The Beverly Hillbillies, a television situation comedy, features perhaps the quintessential country bumpkin of modern times. Jethro Bodine is a nephew to Jed Clampett, the “mountaineer” whose discovery of oil on his property in Bug Tussle, Tennessee, allows him to move his family to a mansion in elegant Beverly Hills, California. As a result, the entire family--Jed, Granny, Elly May, and Jethro--become fish out of water.

Much of the series’ more obvious comedy revolves around Jethro. After twelve years in school, Jethro manages to pass the sixth grade, and, as a result, the others defer to him in matters of arithmetic and other academic subjects. He recites aloud mnemonics associated with division whenever he must perform this operation, and refers to arithmetic as “ciphering.” Possessed of a tremendous appetite, he loves Granny’s cooking of such delicacies as crawdad and ‘possum
stew.

He constantly seeks employment opportunities that would showcase his business and leadership skills--or those, at any rate, that he imagines he has. He becomes (always on a short-term and to disastrous effect) a brain surgeon, a Hollywood producer, and a bullfighter, and he joins the army, buying himself a tank for practicing drills, to impress women.

He considers himself quite a playboy, never suspecting that attractive women put up with his ignorance, crudity, and boorish behavior only because of his uncle’s wealth. He thinks, too, that topless dancers perform without wearing hats. The normal denizens of Beverly Hills or the businesses in which Jethro works, however briefly, are his foils.

Green Acres’ Mr. Haney is an example par excellence of the con artist. Not only is he the character who sells New York City attorney Oliver Wendell Douglas and his beautiful, scatterbrained wife Lisa a ramshackle farm outside the town of Hooterville, but he also returns, time after time, to sell Oliver a mind-boggling array of junk from his well-stocked truck.

His technique was as simple as it proved effective (Oliver almost always ended up buying whatever was being offered for sale): The fast-talking Mr. Haney would invent some absurd, polysyllabic name for a useless or broken item, assign it a purpose or use that it did not have and could not serve, indicate that it was of inexpressible value, and do his customer the “favor” or “service” of letting him purchase the invaluable object for the fraction of its true value that Mr. Haney was asking for it. His truck was equipped with a pull-down sign that displayed the very item of merchandise that Mr. Haney just happened to be selling. The gravellyvoiced, unctuous character fairly oozed with the oil of the Western frontier’s snake oil salesman.

Major Charles Winchester of the television situation comedy M*A*S*H is a good example of the egghead. An arrogant, pompous, and condescending airbag, the Army surgeon would come across as contemptible rather than humorous except for his genuine, if not readily apparent, compassion for his patients and his capacity to develop authentic friendships, over time, with his colleagues.

A sort of curmudgeon, he his humanity behind the façade of the misanthropic and superior aristocrat, pretending to be better than others and to know it all. His surgical technique was brilliant, but, he found, it didn’t meet the needs of the “meatball surgery” that his fellow surgeons found necessary to tend to combat injuries in the less-than-ideal conditions of a mobile Army surgical hospital, or MASH.

Through dramatic irony, the show’s writers often let the audience in on the secret of the doctor’s humanity by showing him contributing to a charity, feeling homesick, and treating lesser officers with dignity and respect rather than pulling rank on them or putting them on report for their often-unmilitary behavior, although Winchester‘s fellow characters often did not see him perform such actions. In addition, he did his utmost to save his patients and grieved over the loss of any of them. Despite his know-it-all attitude concerning surgery, culture, and the good life, Winchester endeared himself to audiences and to many of his fellow characters because of the compassionate and humane values and characteristics he displayed, if with occasional embarrassment and reluctance.

The television situation comedy Gilligan’s Island also featured an exemplary egghead in the character of Professor Roy Hinkley. Much of the professor’s time was spent in inventing bizarre contraptions, often of bamboo, that were intended either to facilitate his and his fellow castaways’ rescue from the island on which they washed up after their yacht, The Minnow, capsized, or to help them to become more comfortable on the island as they awaited rescue.

A character can overlap two or more types. For example, as we mentioned earlier, Jethro Bodine is not only a country bumpkin, but he is also a fish out of water, or a displaced person, as are the other members of his family, Uncle Jed Clampett, Granny, and cousin Elly May Clampett.

The fish out of water is a displaced person. He or she is out of place, emotionally or actually. He or she is taken out of a familiar environment. Then, this character is placed in unfamiliar surroundings. He or she is a stranger in a strange land. As such, the fish out of water has trouble functioning according to the new community‘s standards. He or she makes many mistakes. Some are errors in judgment. Others errors are due to miscommunication. Still others are caused by mistaken beliefs or false assumptions. This character usually tries to fit in. Often, he or she wants to belong. This character tries to play his or her assigned role.

The fish out of water often appears in sitcoms. This character may also appear in stories with more serious themes. He or she may be a foil to socially pretentious behavior. He or she may express other social criticisms. This character may replace someone who belongs in the position that he or she takes. Then, he or she can show what life is like in both sets of circumstances. This character’s use also lets writers look at familiar situations and themes in a fresh way.

Every fish out of water character has at least one (and usually several) foils, for it is by opposition that the displaced character is shown as different from the rest of the characters and how, specifically, he or she is different.

The Clampett’s vocabulary alone suggests their unrefined stature and ignorance. They refer to their estate’s swimming pool as a “cement pond.” Their billiard table is considered a “fancy eating table” for company dinners, and the cue sticks are believed to be used to pass pots across the table; sharpened, they become instruments for impaling meat. The family thinks flamingos are oversize pink chickens. Later, the Clampetts plow their front lawn to grow their own vegetables. Golf balls are the eggs of a mysterious underground “critter.” Elly May tried to cook some, after melting them, “shells” and all. Granny thinks an escaped kangaroo is a gigantic jackrabbit. Because of their dress, they are sometimes mistaken for servants, and they mistake a butler for a tenant of the rooming house they turn their mansion into in one episode.

The series’ humor (and social criticism) also results from the Clampett’s next-door neighbors, the Drysdales. Mr. Drysdale is Jed’s banker, and, consequently, he argues that admittance into the rarified strata of the upper class depends upon nothing more than one’s wealth, whereas his arrogant spouse insists that one must be born into the upper crust. To save money, Mr. Drysdale orders his bank’s employees to obtain their healthcare from Granny, who makes dubious home remedies from a variety of exotic substances.

The Drysdales--and their whole way of life--are major foils to Jethro and the Clampetts. When the banker advises Jed to invest in stocks, the hillbilly buys cows, pigs, and chickens to raise on his estate. When Mrs. Drysdale’s son, Sonny, leads Elly May on before jilting her, the Clampetts feud with the Drysdales.

Granny rides the racehorse Mr. Drysdale gives the Clampetts back and forth to the store and later buys matching horses and buggies for Mrs. Drysdale and herself so they can compete in races with one another.

A number of con artists try to part Jed from his money, always without success. In one instance, a con man attempts to sell him Central Park. Another tries to get Jed to buy a fan that is supposedly big enough to blow the smog out of Los Angeles. Still another get Jed to buy local landmarks such as the Hollywood Bowl and a freeway. Their behavior suggests how greedy, unprincipled men will take advantage of honest, though unsophisticated people. The Beverly Hillbillies’ use of Jethro and the Clampetts allowed the show’s writers to poke fun at both the upper and the lower classes, but, usually, Jethro and the Clampetts were portrayed in a more positive light than the Drysdales and other wealthy and successful business leaders.

Television situation comedy Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’s Will Smith is another excellent example of a fish out of water. Will is a street-smart, if not exactly, street-tough youth from the inner city streets of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When he gets into trouble, his mother sends him to live with his aunt and uncle, Philip and Vivian Banks, their sons, Carlton and Nicky, and their daughter Ashley.

Will’s uncle is a judge, his aunt is a professor, and his cousin is a preppy who, according to Will, may not be quite “black” enough. The family lives in a mansion, complete with servants, in the exclusive Los Angeles community of Bel-Air. His newfound family and their lifestyle are everything that Will is not. Their wealth, politics, education, values, interests, and even their mode of speech, dress, and demeanor. Upon his arrival in their neighborhood, Will becomes a fish out of water. Much of the television series’ humor derives from Will’s trying to understand, adapt to, and fit in with his new environment. In addition, a good deal of the humor results from the opposition of Will’s character to those of such foils as Carlton and Ashley.

Since The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is a situation comedy, rather than a stand-alone story, we’ll dip into several episodes to compile a list of incidents and situations that showcase Will’s nature as a fish out of water character.

Will has preconceived ideas as to what it means to be black, most of which he acquired from his own experience as a resident of an all-black, inner city neighborhood, and few of which accord with the Banks’ lifestyle. When his notions don’t coincide with the realities of his new environment, he often defends his ideas against these new realities, claiming that there is something wrong with those characters, whether the character is Carlton, Ashley, or someone else, rather than with his own beliefs as to what should and shouldn’t be considered “black.”

His aunt and uncle are held up by his mother as examples of successful blacks, which implies that neither she nor Will are successful, since their lives are nothing like those of their wealthy West Coast relatives. Will has had trouble with the law, which his Ivy league-educated uncle, as a judge, represents. Uncle Philip’s Republican political beliefs and support do not mesh with Will’s political values.

Will has many more opportunities to learn about life and people in Bel-Air than he is likely to have had in Philadelphia. He works at a variety of jobs, including a part on a daytime soap opera, salesman at Mulholland Motors, a costumed waiter at the Brawny Deep, a waiter at Chelsea’s Touchdown sports bar, a yellow chicken for a television commercial, and a assistant on his cousin’s TV show, The Hilary Show. Will also meets such celebrities as William Shatner and Jay Leno. These experiences teach him that not everyone believes, thinks, feels, and acts as the acquaintances he left behind in Philadelphia and that life offers possibilities beyond basketball, street gangs, and rap music. Such incidents and situations also allow opportunities for gentle criticisms of social institutions.

Moliere’s Tartuffe offers a perfect example of the hypocrite. Hypocrisy results from a discrepancy between what one says and what one does. The action does not match the words. For example, a person who affects to be an honest man but who cheats widows, orphans, and the physically disabled is a hypocrite because he preaches honesty, as it were, but, by his actions, shows himself to be a dishonest person.

Tartuffe is supposedly a man of surpassingly great religious zeal. He is alleged to have the precepts of Jesus, as taught by the church, ever before him and to insist on a true and pious devotion to these teachings at all times. In reality, Tartuffe is a schemer and a fraud, utterly devoid of the attributes he champions and an absolute scoundrel who seeks to seduce a man’s wife and cheat the same man, Orgon, out of his wealth and property and to marry his daughter.

The rest of Orgon’s family sees through Tartuffe’s flimsy pretenses, but Orgon, the master of the house, remains deceived until it is too late and Tartuffe has stolen the other’s wealth and property. It is only as Tartuffe is evicting the family that he is arrested on the order of the king, who has heard of the hypocrite’s chicanery and has ordered that he be taken into custody. Moliere’s comedy offended many, causing him to write a defense of the work, which sheds light on the nature of humor and comedy:

The comic is the outward and visible form that nature's bounty has attached to everything unreasonable, so that we should see, and avoid, it. To know the comic we must know the rational, of which it denotes the absence and we must see wherein the rational consists . . . incongruity is the heart of the comic . . . it follows that all lying,
disguise, cheating, dissimulation, all outward show different fromthe reality, all contradiction in fact between actions that proceedfrom a single source, all this is in essence comic.

Another excellent example of the hypocrite is the Pardoner in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales. A representative of the church, he sells indulgences to sinners while, at the same time, urging them to sin as much as they like, since he can and will as readily sell them the remedies to their transgressions, the indulgences which he hawks to them.

As a prelude to his offering of his stock of indulgences for sale to his listeners, he preaches against the sin of greed, but it is this very sin that motivates his every deed, including both his sermons and the sales of indulgences which follow them. In addition to the indulgences which he sells, the Pardoner also sells worthless pigs’ bones, ordinary metal, and other worthless artifacts, declaring them to be genuine holy relics. He openly delights in his ability to dupe the simple folk who gather around him to buy their way out of the punishments of purgatory and to ease their consciences and freely admits that he is unconcerned with the eternal fate of those who entrust their souls to him and to the worthless trinkets he sells them. His honesty about his dishonesty and his slight silliness make him rather an endearing character, despite the monstrous nature of his character as a hypocrite and a swindler without conscience or compassion. Obviously, Chaucer uses this character as a means to criticize the more blatant abuses of the church and its clerics at the outset of the Protestant Reformation and the Renaissance. This critical dimension also makes the Pardoner a more acceptable, if not exactly likeable, character.

The blowhard is an annoying braggart, or one who bloviates or boasts, especially when he or she has little, if anything, about which to blow his or her own horn. One of the great blowhards is Sir John Falstaff, the obese, lying, conniving, drunken knight in William Shakespeare’s plays, King Henry IV, Part I, King Henry IV, Part II, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

A companion to the carousing Prince Hal, he is both vainglorious and cowardly and prefers to spend his time feasting, drinking, and womanizing rather than fighting. Prince Hal characterizes the knight as “that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox.” He lies, swearing his falsehoods to be true; interprets Christian doctrine loosely or wrongly, often to his own advantage (as does Chaucer’s Wife of Bath), is openly sensuous and hedonistic, considers the idea of honor as worthless as a “mere scrutcheon,” and keeps a bottle of sack (wine) in his holster, rather than a pistol. A corrupting influence upon the young prince, to whose delinquency he contributes mightily, the eternal partygoer brags about every aspect of his service as a knight, as he does concerning his immense appetites for food, drink, sex, and other fleshly desires, telling Prince Hal that, to “banish plump Jack” would be to “banish all the world.” In this exaggerated estimate of his own worth, the knight is ironically telling the truth, for, in his carnal appetites, hedonistic nature, and zest for life and all its physical pleasures, if not necessarily its moral responsibilities, Falstaff truly does represent all that Christianity regards as “the world,” or “worldliness.”

Many other stock characters are common to humorous stories and comedies. Descriptions of many of them appear in “Appendix A: An Excerpt of Character Writings of the 17th Century.” In availing yourself of these character sketches, it’s advisable to translate them, as it were, into more modern terms, by which operation they shall be made more intelligible, and then to make such revisions as seem necessary or prudent so that they better fit these, rather than earlier, times. Here is an example; the original is provided first, with the paraphrase following:

AN AFFECTED TRAVELLER (ORIGINAL)

Is a speaking fashion; he hath taken pains to be ridiculous, and hath seen more than he hath perceived. His attire speaks French or Italian, and his gait cries, Behold me. He censures all things by countenances and shrugs, and speaks his own language with shame and lisping; hewill choke rather than confess beer good drink, and his pick-tooth is a main part of his behavior. He chooseth rather to be counted a spy than not a politician, and maintains his reputation by naming great men familiarly.

He chooseth rather to tell lies than not wonders, and talks with men singly; his discourse sounds big, but means nothing; and his boy is bound to admire him howsoever. He comes still from great personages, but goes with mean. He takes occasion to show jewels given him in regard of his virtue, that were bought in St. Martin's; and not long after having with a mountebank's method pronounced them worth thousands, impawned them for a few shillings. Upon festival days he goes to court, and salutes without resaluting; at night in an ordinary he canvasseth the business in hand, and seems as conversant with all intents and plots as if he begot them. His extraordinary account of men is, first to tell them the ends of all matters of consequence, and then to borrow money of them; he offers courtesies to show them, rather than himself, humble.

He disdains all things above his reach, and preferreth all countries before his own. He imputeth his want and poverty to the ignorance of the time, not his own nworthiness; and concludes his discourse with half a period, or a word, and leaves the rest to imagination. In a word, his religion is fashion, and both body and soul are governed by fame; he loves most voices above truth.

AN AFFECTED TRAVELLER (PARAPRASED)

He’s ridiculous, understanding little that he sees. Swaggering around in French or Italian clothing, he dismisses everything with a smirk or a shrug. Lisping, he speaks his own language with shame. He’d rather choke than admit that beer’s a good drink, and he customarily uses a toothpick to clean his teeth. He’d rather be considered a spy than a politician, and he’s a name-dropper. He’s a liar, and he talks with men individually; his speech is pompous but meaningless. Although he says he has important ancestors, he keeps low company. He makes a point of showing themedals he’s been given for his virtue, but, actually, he bought themin St. Martin’s; and, not long after having fraudulently declared themto be worth thousands, he pawns them for mere pennies. During festivals, he offers token greetings. At night, from a cab, he takes in the business at hand, assuming the casual air of one who’s financed everything. He tells men what’s important and then borrows moneyfrom them. His courtesies are meant to humble others, rather than toshow his own humility. He puts down anything he can’t have and prefers any other country to his own. He says he’s poor because he’s ahead of his time, not because he’s unworthy, and he leaves sentences unfinished to let others finish his thoughts. He worshipsfashion, fame; and praise.

Another way to compile a list of humorous stock characters is simply to review various situation comedies that you have watched and make note of, and describe, in some detail, the various other such characters that you have seen in such shows. For example, on Bewitched, Darrin and Samantha Stevens are plagued by nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz and Gladys’ longsuffering husband Abner. In the persons, so to speak, of Samantha’s family of witches and warlocks, there is a cavalcade of eccentric minor characters as well, including Samantha’s vain and catty mother Endora, her aristocratic, womanizing father Maurice, her bumbling, perhaps senile Aunt Clara.

The Andy Griffith Show’s Deputy Barney Fife, as pompous as he is incompetent, is a classic example of the humorous sidekick (as is Cervantes’ Sancho Panza, page to the zany knight Don Quixote).

Household servants, whether lazy, wise, sarcastic, belligerent, or otherwise, are another humorous stock character, appearing in such diverse situation comedies as Hazel, The Jeffersons, The Brady Bunch, Family Affair, and Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

Eccentric or irascible coworkers, such as those on Cheers, Taxi, Ally McBeal, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and Alice are tried-and-true humorous stock characters as well. (If you are not familiar with some of these shows, you can watch many of them, free, on the Fancast.com, Hulu.com, and other websites; doing so will enhance your understanding of such characters and how to create them.)



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