Humorous Techniques: Erma Bombeck

Copyright 2009 by Gary L. Pullman

Before we consider specific examples of humorists’ writings, let’s summarize the principles and techniques that we’ve gleaned from our review of the history of comedy and humor and those who have perfected these forms of entertainment.

The Old Comedy of ancient Greece involved bawdy humor, humorous references to body parts and bodily processes, social criticism, puns and wordplay, and the satirical parody of famous men, such as the philosopher Socrates. Middle Comedy and New Comedy replaced the coarse humor of Old Comedy with a comedy of manners and with romantic intrigue that ended in marriage, and established many stock characters. In the fabliaux of the Middle Ages, earthy, even obscene and pornographic, humor returned, in poetic, rather than dramatic, form, as did the biting satire against authority and aristocratic figures, especially hypocritical and sanctimonious clergymen. Modern history’s contribution to comedy and humor takes the form, primarily, of the situation comedy, in which recurring stock characters are involved in amusing situations. Whether two, three, or four acts in length, such comedies tend to follow a circular pattern, offering a twist, at their ends, on the situations and themes with which they began.

In general, as Harman and Holman observe in A Handbook to Literature, 10th edition, humor results from a display of “incongruity of speech, action, or character. The incongruity may be verbal, as with a play on words; or bodily, as when stilts are used; or satirical, as when the effect depends upon the beholder’s ability to perceive the discrepancy between fact and pretense exhibited by a braggart. . . . Viewed in another sense, comedy may be considered to deal with people in their human state, restrained and often made ridiculous by their limitations, faults, bodily functions, and animal nature.”

Twain’s humor often offers social criticism as well as burlesque, satire, irony, and parody, which unifies his work and elevates it above mere humor for humor’s sake. His works are also unified through travel, cases of mistaken identity, the commission and solving of a crime, specific historical periods as settings, the use of recurring characters, and the fictionalization of personal experience. Erma Bombeck’s humorous essays are often made coherent by offering comments upon various aspects of an analogy, explicit or implicit, that she draws between one realm of human experience and another or between a realm of human experience and a natural order or phenomenon, as when she compares psychology to ethnology, motherhood to prostitution, or family activities to sadomasochistic bondage and discipline pursuits. Humorous essays must also adhere to a central point of view and to a dominant tone; indeed, the point of view may comprise a refutation of a theological or a philosophical proposition, as Voltaire’s Candide and the Marquis de Sade’s Justine do.

In addition to the topics and themes of comedy and humor that ancient Greek playwrights identified, modern humorists have added process analysis, or “how-to” humor; verbal duels between friendly or romantically involved, but diametrically opposed, characters who are confined to close quarters with one another; ironic fables; teen angst; and grotesque or absurd situations. The more avant-garde humorists reveal the surreal undercurrents that are often active just below the conscious level of the modern mind and its mindset.

Now that we have considered the principles and techniques that apply in general to comedy and humor, let’s look at those which such famous humorists as Erma Bombeck and Mark Twain employ in their work.

How does a writer go about starting a humorous essay? How does he or she introduce the essay’s topic, capture the reader’s interest, and establish his or her tone? Once begun, how does a humorist unify his or her thoughts and humor, and how does he or she structure the essay?

Many humorous essays begin with a confession or a claim, a statement that piques the reader’s interest and lays the foundation for the rest of the piece. These opening sentences are short. Sometimes, they are pithy as well. Ideally, they are themselves funny, although not all of them are. Here is an example, the opening sentences of Erma Bombeck’s “Dieting Is a Losing Battle,” published March 21, 1978:

It’s no use for me to diet. I know that now.

With these sentences, Bombeck:

• Announces her topic (dieting)
• Suggests her attitude toward her topic (dieting is useless)
• Implies that she has learned a lesson from personal experience (“I know that now.”)
• Suggests a plaintive, perhaps humble, and defeated tone.

As we track through Bombeck’s essay, we note that she uses short sentences to form short paragraphs. In addition, she writes in a colloquial, or informal, style that tends to employ short words. Many of her sentences are actually fragments that begin with “And” or “But,” a technique that prevents compound sentences from becoming longer than they would be were they written as correct grammar dictates. She uses contractions, such as “I’m” instead of “I am.” Except for a few necessary functional sentences, such as those which introduce topics, provide transitions, or set up a situation as a way of introducing a punch line, each and every sentence--or, at the very least, each and every paragraph--of her essay contains a humorous phrase, creates a funny situation, or makes a joke.

Having piqued her readers’ interest and established her topic, tone, and point of view, Bombeck next introduces a pair of personifications, as she lets her body do the talking; her knees whisper, and her mouth speaks:

All those years when my knees rubbing together whispered “no, no”but there is a
“yes, yes” in my mouth, I fought the battle.

These personifications indicate body parts (knees and mouth) that are in conflict with one another, and the end of the sentence introduces the analogy upon which Bombeck will develop her essay: dieting = battle, which ties in with the essay’s title, “Dieting Is a Losing Battle.”

She next offers an example of her persistence in fighting her “losing battle”; in doing so, she introduces an element of the absurd, exaggerating her weekly weight problem by locating her loss of weight in her “neck” and her “bust”:

All those years when I lost 10 pounds every Monday (five in my neck and five in my bust), I hung in there.

By repeating the phrase “All those years” and a variant of “I hung in there” (“I gave it my all”), Bombeck continues to suggest her persistence, the humor in the sentence that follows stemming from an absurd metaphor that equates her embracing of “cottage cheese” to a “religion”:
All those years when I embraced cottage cheese as a formal religion, I gave it my all.

Having provided her reader with two examples of her persistent battle, she reiterates her essay’s theme: she is losing the battle.

But after yesterday, I have to admit, I’m beaten. I’m fighting the battle alone.

She says “It started in the morning.” By “it,” she means her loss of her battle to lose weight. Her placing of her hand over her heart and her substitution of the phrase “allegiance to hunger” for “to the flag of the United States” is humorous because the cause to which she allies herself, hunger, is a natural and instinctive drive that needs no allegiance and because such an “allegiance” pales in significance to confessing loyalty to one’s country. Humor often works in this manner, by substituting the trivial for the important. Her “allegiance to hunger,” rather than to dieting, represents a turning point; now that she has decided to give in to “hunger,” she can feel “virtuous” in defying her diet:

It started in the morning when I faced the refrigerator with my hand over my heart and once again pledged allegiance to hunger. I poured myself half a glass of tomato juice mixed with half a glass of buttermilk and tossed it down. I felt virtuous.

Although this is a short paragraph, it is longer than most of the others in Bombeck’s essay. Therefore, it highlights itself. It is important to her theme, because it sets up Bombeck’s rebellion against dieting, something that she equates, implicitly (by placing her hand on her heart and swearing “allegiance to hunger”) with patriotism; it is an act not unlike the founding fathers’ revolt against the tyranny of England. This analogy makes her essay’s title more significant, for the “battle” of which it speaks seems now to be associated with the Revolutionary War.

It seems that Bombeck will suggest that her “allegiance to hunger” rather than to dieting is a courageous and honorable one, akin to the colonists’ revolt against the British crown, but, instead of extending this analogy, she abandons it, the remainder of her essay exemplifying how she continues to add to and enhance the simple meal that she’s prepared for dinner and blames her husband for her having done so (to punish him for being late, she adds “whipped potatoes to the meal,” and to distract him from “the small main course,” she prepares “a robust appetizer,” and then accuses him of not caring “about other people at all” or “how they look”).

Although Bombeck, in abandoning the implicit metaphor she creates by likening her “allegiance to hunger” to the colonists’ revolt against British tyranny as a stand-in for the tyranny, as it were, of dieting, her essay, having pulled readers in, continues to amuse, which shows that, once a humorous essay gets started, it can proceed, even if it unexpectedly and irrationally changes direction in midstream. After all, readers are looking for humor, not logic. However, an essay that does both--amuses and stays true to its implicit rationale--would give readers the best of both possibilities and, arguably, would, therefore, be of superior quality. Bombeck is a master at setting up the humorous essay. We can learn a lot from her techniques for doing so. As we saw, many humorous essays begin with a confession or a claim, a statement that piques the reader’s interest and lays the foundation for the rest of the piece, and Bombeck is adroit at such beginnings.

However, she also uses plenty of other ways to open her essays.

One is the surprising statement. She opens “Hello, Young Mothers” with the declaration that “Once. . . just once. . . I’d like to be dressed for an emergency.” Since one does not dress for “an emergency” and because, even, if one were wont to do so, an emergency, by its very nature, would not allow one the time (or clarity of mind) to pick out an outfit to wear for the occasion. Therefore, her expressed desire to dress for crises is as unexpected to readers as it is ludicrous. By surprising her readers with such an odd and irrational statement, Bombeck makes them want to read further. Therefore, the sentence is an effective opener.

“Birds, Bees, and Guppies” opens with a declaration to which all parents would be likely to assent, although it addresses a topic that they’d probably be just as happy to avoid altogether, were it possible to do so: “The sex education of a child is pretty important. None of us wants to blow it.” Since her comment addresses a sensitive, potentially embarrassing topic, readers may read on to see whether the famous humorist can transform her subject matter into something more lighthearted than somber. Perhaps humor will put the matter of “the sex education of a child” into perspective. By suggesting that she can use her humor to cut such a serious subject down to size, so to speak, Bombeck reassures parents who may soon have to instruct their own children in this difficult subject.

In “Outgrowing Naps,” Bombeck resorts to an effective strategy for broaching her essay’s topic while hooking her readers: without humor or fanfare, she simply states the situation that her essay will proceed to develop: “A group of young mothers huddled around the kiddie pool the other day discussing children’s naps.” She tries the same gambit for “How to Communicate with Toddlers,” writing, “A father in Champagne, Illinois, is enquiring how to communicate with toddlers.” Her reputation as a humorist alone promises that something funny will come of this situation. For those who have not yet garnered such a reputation, a different, more obviously humorous approach might be a better way to start an essay; Bombeck uses this approach to initiate “I’m-Not-Going Syndrome”: “I’m at the age of my life where every time I buy something of any value, I have visions of my kids marking it down to $2 at a garage sale.”

Bombeck also uses a rhetorical question, on occasion, to start an essay. Often, in doing so, she puts the question into an invented character’s mouth, as though someone other than she were posing the query. “Disposable Diapers” opens this way: “The question being asked by baby boomers isn’t, ‘Is there life after throwaway diapers are abolished?’ but, ‘Is that life worth living?’” “Alaska Cruise and Smoked Salmon” opens in a similar manner: “Last spring, my husband looked up from the travel section of the newspaper and said, ‘Have you ever thought of what it would be like to catch and smoke your own salmon’?” More rarely, Bombeck herself, or her stand-in persona, will ask the question directly, as she does in “The Instead-of Cookbook”: “Why doesn’t someone write a cookbook for the suburban woman with one car that is used by her husband?”

She also starts essays with dialogue which is often intriguing in itself or becomes so within a few lines. “I don’t want to go to grandma’s” (“I Don’t Want to Go to Grandma’s”), “You don’t love me!” (“I Loved You Enough to. . . “), and “‘Hey, if you write a column for a newspaper,’ said the voice on the telephone, ‘how come you don’t tell women how to get stains out of their stainless steel sinks?’” (“Household Hint”).

Some of her essays begin with a complaint: “I don’t know what my husband thinks I’m made of!” (“Soap Operas”); “There is no delicate way to say it. My social life is somewhere to the right of a sedated parrot” (“My Social Life”), Occasionally, a sentence will serve as a sort of straight man so that the one that follows it can deliver a humorous punch line. Bombeck opens chapter three of All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehman’s Dressing Room with this technique, with her use of exaggeration effecting the humor: “I have come up with a wonderful solution to end all wars. Let men give directions on how to get there.” She uses the same approach to open chapter fifteen of the same book, again using exaggeration to deliver the humor: “I was never caught up in the jogging/running movement that swept the country in the seventies and eighties. Face it, I call a cab to go to the mailbox.” More rarely, a sentence that itself contains the setup for the joke it contains is used to open a chapter or an essay.

The first half of such a sentence sets up the joke, which follows in the second half of the sentence. Chapter eight of All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehman’s Dressing Room begins with such a sentence: “Compared to the IRS when they cash your check, the cheetah is standing still.”

Like her books, Bombeck’s essays are often built upon an analogy, and she uses familiar figures of speech--metaphors, personifications--in unexpected, and, therefore, humorous ways to make her points as she presents the central “argument” that her essay’s title suggests. All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehmann’s Dressing Room equates “animal behavior” with human conduct, suggesting that by using the principles and techniques of ethnology, she can better understand the behavior of her fellow human beings. In other words, her book is based upon the analogy that “people are animals.” To maintain this analogy, she starts each chapter with a tongue-in-cheek epigraph from a spurious ethnological treatise. Frequently, this epigraph creates a point of departure for Bombeck’s comments concerning a specific human habit, practice, or behavior.

For example, chapter seven of her book deals with human packrats. She opens the
chapter with this epigraph:

Many animals tend to store things. The bowerbirds of Australia and New Guinea
decorate their courting grounds with everything from beetle wings to pilfered
car keys. They will hoard anything. After mating, the male splits and the female
raises the brood by herself.

This counterfeit quotation provides the jumping-off point for her wry observations on concerning her need to collect everything and to part with nothing:

Lest you confuse me with some amateur collector, I must tell you there are levels of savers. There’s the common garden variety who hoard rubber bands like they’re never going to see another one. And the bread tie disciples who don’t have a clue what they can use them for, and of course the proverbial plastic margarine container freaks who use them to store leftovers that they are going to throw away in three day. They’re novices.

No, I’m talking about a woman who still has her report cards from the third grade. . . food coupons that have expired. . . Single earrings. . . boots with a hole in one of them. . . and a wildlife calendar from 1987 because February shows a bear in a party hat.

This same pattern is repeated throughout the book, as Bombeck offers her take on courtship, reproduction, potty training, eating, and other activities, showing how human conduct parallels animal behavior and suggesting that it is not necessary to go, as Jane Goodall went, into the African veldt, to study the human species; it’s enough to be a wife and mother.

Like many other humorists, Bombeck’s books, if not her essays, have extremely long titles. Such titles are themselves ludicrous, since they fly in the face of the conventional requirement of publishers and the natural tendency of writers to keep their titles as short as possible. A list of some of her works makes this technique clear:

• Just Wait Till you Have Children of Your Own!”
• Lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression
• The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank
• If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits
• Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession
• Family: The Ties That Bind. . . and Gag!
• I Want to Grow Hair, I Want to Grow Up, I Want to Go to Boise
• When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It’s Time to Go Home
• A Marriage Made in Heaven. . . Or Too Tired for an Affair
• All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehmann’s Dressing Room
  

Next: Mark Twain

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