One atom bumps hard into another on the sidewalk, and the second one falls over.
The first one says, “Jeez, sorry about that! Are you all right?”
The second one replies,“Uh, I don’t think so. I think I lost an electron.”
The first one looks around with a worried expression. “Gosh, are you sure?”
“Yeah. I’m positive.”
Painful iony, but no stereotypes.
I went to a general store, but they wouldn’t sell me anything specific.
You sure did, though in my defense it wasn’t a blink so much as a “type slowly enough and you’ll miss what the last dozen people said” thing. It’s my fault for not looking before I hit “submit.” Sorry.
I think the word “stereotype” is being used here where the phrase “frame of reference” should be. (And I am probably not going to be half as clear as King of Soup just was, so bear with me.)
The punchline “Does the Pope shit in the woods?” is funny because it’s a mixed line, but if you don’t KNOW both that the Pope is Catholic and that bears shit in the woods, AND know how both lines are usually used, you just won’t “get” the funny.
Loopydude’s joke is a good example, because you DO need a frame of reference - not a stereotype or even a generalization.
I think communication of any kind needs a frame of reference, otherwise it is indistunguishable from noise.
Well, yeah. But I mean you can understand the words, but not why something is funny. Whether or not it’s humorous depends on your frame of reference.
Here’s an example of my own: I find Eddie Izzard to be totally brilliant about 90% of the time, but there have been a few jokes I simply don’t get because they’re out of my frame of reference. I don’t know why being friends with “Mary, Mungo and Midge” makes a British audience howl with laughter. The line MAY be a huge stereotype - but if it is, it makes no sense to me. Or it might be funny because it’s a pun - but I don’t know what words it’s a play on, you see?
You might be right, but I’ve always felt “wild and crazy guy” was less about caricaturizing foreigners and more like mocking someone who didn’t realize he was a “fish out of water.” Much like how City Slickers was less about cowboys and urbanites, and more about some schmuck who sticks out like a sore thumb…
Yes, Virginia, comedy is possible without stereotypes. What’s…difficult, I would say, without stereotypes is telling jokes that rely on stereotypes. But if your definition of comedy is that narrowly defined, you’re missing out.
Ah, I didn’t read the thread, nor even the OP. You were using the word “stereotype” very broadly, as I feared. Tut, tut.
What? The movie about two slacker guys having a really bad day at work? One of whom dates an overreacting woman of Italian descent who brings him lasagna? The mortally offended customer? The guidance counselor? Nearly all of the minor characters were immediately recognizable as types.
I’m sorry if I’m stereotyping the word stereotype. There was a large hijack in t’other thread regarding “the kernal of truth supporting stereotypes” which seemed to indicate that **any **generalization made and attached to a label like “men,” “women,” or “mother-in-laws” that wasn’t true of every member of that category was a stereotype, so that’s what I was thinking of. Again, can someone offer a more useful definition?
Thanks to whomevers pointed out that slapstick and puns do not rely on stereotype. I do agree. So now it’s no longer true that I can’t “think of an example of comedy that doesn’t involve an understanding of generalizations or stereotypes”.
It still seems like the vast majority of stand-up, observational humor, simple joke telling and situational comedy relies on it. Removing all stereotypes from humor leaves me with not much that I actually find funny. (Steven Wright excepted, of course!) Maybe it’s my issue alone, but somehow, I don’t think so.
Either your husband has balls of steel, or you didn’t him very hard.
Of course, in addition to the “man gets hit in the nuts”, we have the “woman gets hit in the boob” humor.
I think one could dig up countless jokes that don’t involve stereotypes. Also, physical comedy doesn’t necessarily require stereotyping, though some of it does.
However, I think the OP is looking for instances of sustained monologue in standup that doesn’t involve stereotyping. Preferably not the “classic hack” standup such as complaining about airline food.
I would submit George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say On Television” as a stereotype-free sustained monologue. Also, his “A Place For My Stuff” might qualify, in that the stereotype being commented on is supposed to be attributable to the entire human race. I could be wrong, though, as I haven’t heard either bit in twenty years.
Another thread reminded me of another one of Carlin’s routines that doesn’t seem to rely on stereotypes. The “10 Commandments” bit is great fun. I think he winnowed the list down to 2 commandments. “10 was a marketing decision” is priceless.
1: Thou Shalt Always Be Honest and Faithful to the Provider of Thy Nookie
2: Thou Shalt Try Real Hard Not to Kill Anyone, Unless of Course They Pray to a Different Invisible Man Than You. 
Speaking of Steve Martin!
so, it’s a stereotype that all pet shop owners are co men who will sell dead birds, and pretend they are sleeping, while harbouring a secret desire to become a lumberjack?
I’d like to add sight gags to the list.
The first example that springs to mind is a gag I saw several months ago on (I think) Letterman. The screen showed what appeared to be the bare buttocks and thighs of a person walking away from the camera. Then the camera pulled back to reveal that it was actually just some goofy guy’s hands! He’d clasped his hands together so the part below each thumb looked like a butt cheek, and was moving his wrists so they’d look like legs walking. Try it yourself and you’ll see.
I can’t think of any generalization involved in this gag except “Things that look like naked butts are usually naked butts”. The humor comes from the revelation that this generalization doesn’t always hold true. What the viewer expects to see has been replaced by something that looks similar, but isn’t the same. In this way a sight gag is like a pun, where the expected word is replaced by something that sounds alike but is really different.
There are sight gags that do require stereotypes in the dictionary sense I mentioned in my earlier post:
I can think of a few crude racist caricatures that would fall into this category. However, it’s not a necessary feature of sight gags.