Why Is Most Stand Up Comedy So Awkward?

Recently, I visited a free stand up comedy show. I used to do this often when I was a student. I even ended up performing my own stand up. I quit both attending and performing eventually, for a number of reasons. Primarily, it was because I found the evenings so, so awkward.

As you may imagine, I had mixed feelings about attending a new stand up show. I remembered the old shows and tried to keep a balanced perspective. On the one hand, when a room was lit up with a genuinely talented comedian's wit, it was occasionally an incredible experience. On the other hand, when a comedian was awful, it was often excruciating.

I tagged along to the show, hoping it wouldn't be as bad as I remembered. It was worse.

I won't be rude enough to point out which show it was that I witnessed. I'll also acknowledge that good comedy, perhaps more so than any other entertainment, is subjective. It was a show for professional comedians to practice new material, hence it being free. With this in mind, obviously not everything was expected to be belly laugh inducing comedy. But still!

I can sum up the overall tone of the show with the following question: Just how funny do people find talking about “taboo” subjects with no subversion or clever twists? I'm not prudish, and I don't think that risque or edgy topics should be avoided, but I do think that it's important to stick something in that makes people consider the subject matter in a new way.

So many of the comedians' jokes were dedicated to going “Hey, people are different from each other in this way,” or “Here's a shocking thing” and moving on, without further elaboration. This may sound like an oversimplification, but it really was like that. I can remember one of the stand ups awkwardly shoehorning in a Bill Cosby reference, comparing a quiet audience member to his scandals. Don't you see? If the audience member was quiet, obviously he had something to hide. Just like Bill Cosby. That was the joke! Did he go any further? Perhaps this could have been a springboard for some smart observations? No. Straight on to the next “this is a sex act” joke. Hilarious...

Now that I've presented myself as a complete killjoy, I want to ponder just how out of place my views are. I do think that lots of people would agree with me about the sheer awkwardness of stand up, to a certain level. The HBO show Crashing makes awkward comedy stand up shows a great arena for a series. I remember watching it and thinking that I've experienced exactly the kind of painful sets that that show prominently features. Where I think I may differ is with the shocking references part of stand up. A lot of people appear to be content with a confidently presented, well timed yet obvious joke, so long as there's an element of shock. I'm not. There's nothing wrong with a joke of this nature, but for me a joke needs a special twist. It needs something that makes me reconsider the situation and assess my values.

Not all stand up is based around shock humor, of course, but in America it definitely seems like a linchpin. In theory, this is fine; however, before I go back to watching a stand up show, I think I'll need to do some research into the performers. Then, hopefully, I'll be able to avoid another evening of awkwardness.