[OisinMoran]

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

The equating of jokes and comedy here is an affront for anyone who has explored different avenues of comedy in any way. The analysis is fine and even interesting for (as others have pointed out) one specific type of joke but just flippantly calling that all of comedy is very jarring as it is obviously wrong.

I just completed a clown workshop this weekend where I was in tears laughing from an exercise of simply playing peekaboo, my improvised musical team has gotten laughs and applause from our piano man simply starting to play music and from us rhyming two words, I've seen TJ & Dave erupt a room from being as realistic and truthful as possible in their improv, one of my Edinburgh Fringe highlights was a performer crashing a live podcast recording multiple times and falling over, spilling many pints in the process.

That is all just to say that comedy is much more than just jokes, and especially much more than jokes that fit this theory. To be clear though, I am not against attempting such formalisms and theories (I have many myself and do think this kind of thinking is great for generating ideas), I've just yet to see a good comprehensive one.

[scandox]

Heard Adrian Edmondson on Desert Island Discs and one of the interesting things he said about comedy was that there were a limited number of jokes all of which he believed are contained in the recorded works of Laurel and Hardy and that he would be able to enumerate and show all of them from those works.

He also said he was tired of comedy as he knew all of the jokes. Later he sort of contradicted himself by saying that Waiting For Godot is a very funny play and that he felt he had not yet understood it all.

So that's kind of an interesting counterpoint...he does essentially conflate comedy and jokes.

[wanda]

I think the word "joke" in the context of his interview was more or less intended to mean "bit" or "skit" or "humour-incitement type" -- rather than literally joke as in "knock knock."

I believe he actually said that all humour is passed on, i.e. that all the comic acts that have come along after Laurel and Hardy were in essence re-enacting scenes that they had performed, in another form, prior.

Of course, Laurel and Hardy were brilliant, but it would actually be naive to think that the chain began there. Performed comedy is as old as civilisation itself, and always fluctuates in sophistication/depth relative to the target audience.

Laurel and Hardy represent a talented comedic duo, heavy on physical humour (though not without wit) captured on film so that the physicality of their performance was not up for debate or a supposition, and was available to be absorbed and drawn upon by later comedic performers, and I think this physicality is why Adrian calls back to them. For him, they offer a textbook approach to a broad category of humour.

As for the finitude of humour, I think it would be rather more bizarre if the contrary was true and humour was infinite. Then everything could be funny. Maybe there are a lot of permutations for humour -- if you think about it, the audience (and by extension the time they live in) somewhat dictate what is and isn't funny, and there are considerations as well for cultural context (i.e. JP and CN are going to have a lot of material that will seem nonsensical to a Western audience and vice versa) some humour is obviously universal.

But even to include all topical, regional humour, the number of phrases and physical movements of bodies that can trigger genuine amusement is very likely to be a finite subset of the possible permutations, especially given that all permutations themselves will be finite in total number (there are not an infinite number of words or possible physical occurrences...)

Perhaps indeed there is even a small number of types of humour-incitement, of which all topical, regional jokes are simply manifestations. To group humour-incitement types in this way, Adrian's assertion seems even more acceptable.

He doesn't say Laurel and Hardy invented humour or anything that we could immediately refute. I think he considers their work to be the textbook. Everything you should see before coming up with your own material can be found in their catalogue.

Like all art, grasp the fundaments and figure out which rules you want to subvert to get your message across, for the sake of doing so rather than empty rebellion or feeding reviewers from a marketing perspective.

Sometimes there's no reason to break a rule, and sometimes there's every reason.

As for his fatigue, whether the man has had exposure to humour from other cultures is not clear, but certainly in the context of his own culture I would be inclined to agree. The vast majority of comedy in the West is very obviously recycled material with different packaging. That's not to say that sometimes the later recyclings aren't better than the "originals" —- a lot of it is in the delivery, and if you watch them all without bias (nostalgia) you can probably pick out some cases where a comedy from 2007 is funnier than something conceptually similar from 1987.

A lot of people grew up with comedy shows that were the best of their time and thus become the best for those people, and they watch stuff 20 years later after having rewatched their favourites a dozen times as well and it all seems less novel. Perhaps the same effect occurs for the performers as well as the audience.

Adrian also lost his partner in comedy, the infamous Rik Mayall, and this perhaps soured him on comedy without that second half to bounce off of. They used to tour live and they would often break character and break the fourth wall —- while their long collaboration and friendship would lend a good deal of weight to it, as well as topical spice depending on the region, I think they were keen to do it anyway to keep their material a little fresher and keep things interesting for themselves while doing it. Touring the same act up and down the country would surely be enough to convince anyone it's all been done before. Losing that certainly confines one's repertoire to only the rehearsed material.

I think he's married to Jennifer Saunders (of Absolutely Fabulous and French and Saunders fame) but I don't think they ever collaborated much.

[airstrike]

> if the contrary was true and humour was infinite. Then everything could be funny.

I don't think that necessarily follows. Some infinities are greater than others.

(Even though I happen to think anything could be funny with sufficient effort. Even tragedy)

[wanda]

Schadenfreude to the extent of humour. That is a difficulty isn't it, the audience can find whatever it wants funny if that's how it's wired. Perhaps you're right.

[psunavy03]

It's definitely contextual. As an example, military or veterans, first responders, doctors, lawyers, and others like that will usually have a much greater appreciation for dark humor than people who haven't had to deal with tragic circumstances in their day jobs.

[airstrike]

Mike Birbiglia IMHO is a master of turning terrible things into hilarious ones

[state_less]

Yes, for example, odd numbers are infinite, that doesn’t imply everything is odd.

[louthy]

> they used to break character

My personal favourite:

https://youtu.be/G_X_7TrcHGM?feature=shared

> I think he's married to Jennifer Saunders (of Absolutely Fabulous and French and Saunders fame) but I don't think they ever collaborated much.

He appeared in Ab Fab, but it was all written by Saunders. She previously collaborated with Dawn French.

[clucas]

Yes, the article mistakes punchlines for comedy. Watch some of Norm MacDonald's stuff on Conan (troubled moth, Jacques de Gatineaux, drunk dart thrower, Andy the Swedish-German)... sure, the punchlines fit the model in the article, but the real humor comes from his delivery and the weird worlds he creates leading up to the punchlines.

[petesergeant]

> troubled moth

This is worth googling for anybody who’s not urgently meant to be doing something for the next ten minutes. Also on Conan, for anyone looking for an amazing example of humour without a punchline is “conan nathan fielder susan”

[nickpeterson]

I’m a big fan of his dirty Johnny joke on stern, https://youtu.be/4gshCmZVAV8

[BizarroLand]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJN9mBRX3uo

That is comedy gold

[tetris11]

Same with Phil Hartman and Matt Berry, they can make the most boring lines instantly funny through sheer power of charisma and vocal inflections.

[amenhotep]

You and he were buddies, weren't you?

[tetris11]

I'm a one track lover...

[bena]

With all of these, there's an element of absurdity. It's not about the world Norm is creating, it's the fact that the words aren't the joke, the joke is on you. The joke is that it's a long, boring story to set up a shitty punchline. You wait, and wait, and wait for the catharsis, but it never comes from the joke itself, it comes only a beat or two after when you realize what just happened.

Matt Berry gets mileage out of responding to everything with a sort of bombastic over-seriousness. He is a character that does nothing small.

Observational comedy is the pointing out of absurdity in everyday life.

[aantix]

“Some say funny things.

Others say things funny.”

Something like that.

[golergka]

Thank g-d for the hatchery.

[zzbzq]

Comedy is a complex superstructure. I think the site has a probably-correct description of the ground-floor basis of that superstructure. But the rest of the structure is where the magic is.

I describe this "ground-floor basis" not as "comedy is search" but "comedy is learning." One of the first things babies laugh at is object permanence. But you quickly get into forms of comedy that are much more than the formula discussed into the article. Consider sarcasm. Consider crass humor derived from blatant invocation of socially inappropriate subjects. Consider "inside jokes" which are often purely social, having lost all connection to the "relating two concepts."

[patcon]

Interesting. Re: search vs learning.

With search, I understand it as a process of learning, where diff search strategies create different learnings. Maybe laughter is a strategy of search, or what the algorithm feels like from the inside attention head...?

And search feels like moving around a tree or maybe graph (moving thru graph from known origin to unknown extremities, this is maybe tree-like in any meaningful local sense). Anyhow, searches being depth-first vs breadth-first with attention feels related.

Thinking through your comment has me reflecting on the distinction between depth-first vs breadth-first comedy, and if that even makes sense :)

[n4r9]

> I was in tears laughing from an exercise of simply playing peekaboo

My wife and I have a 15 month old and one of our favourite games is for one of us to sit with him on the stairs looking through the bannisters at the other one dancing and singing. Sometimes we are all in absolute hysterics. Humour is very much about a collective will to engage in the shared enjoyment, and I reckon most parents would agree with me.

But yes, OP's article does not really cover satire, parody, toilet humour, slapstick, deadpan, cringe humour etc...

[the_af]

Related to what you're saying, there's a whole essay by Mark Twain where he explains the difference between comedy (and comedic storytelling) and simply "telling a joke". He didn't think much of the "punchline" type of jokes, he was all about the storytelling... as you can tell by "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" and his many other stories.

[BizarroLand]

Mark Twain wrote a book called "Roughing It", and I can't put my finger on it and tell you exactly what it is about this book, but there's some essence of Mark Twain dictating this story to you, the reader, that has persisted all of these many years since it was written that imbues it with a special kind of comedy magic the likes of which you are unlikely to find anywhere else.

I have tried to read it 3 times and ended up laughing so hard my stomach hurt until I had to stop reading.

I can't finish it, it's too funny.

100% worth an attempt to read at least 3 times so far.

[jsrcout]

What a wondrous book. So many hilarious anecdotes. Tom Quartz the mining cat. The escaped tarantulas. The retired Admiral. But it's not just the little stories. His characters, the comical exaggerations, his poking fun at his younger and ridiculously naive self, the description of the places, the little observations serious and humorous, the very language are all just a pleasure.

[m463]

> I can't finish it, it's too funny.

maybe like monty python's ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funniest_Joke_in_the_World

[jonkratz]

I'm interested in reading that essay — is this the one? https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3250/3250-h/3250-h.htm

[the_af]

Yes! Good find.

> There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind—the humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the matter.

> The humorous story is strictly a work of art—high and delicate art—and only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling the comic and the witty story; anybody can do it. The art of telling a humorous story—understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print—was created in America, and has remained at home.

I'm not sure I agree the humorous story is purely American, though doubtless Mark Twain was one of its masters.

[pohl]

I feel like I've read this comment before, except the topic was music theory and the focus was on harmony and someone who valued rhythm, texture, and timbre felt left out.