Is stand-up comedy a uniquely North American art form?

Cafe Society
21

In its current form, manzai only dates to the 1920s, when all elements other than comic dialogue were removed.

That would be very close to it. As a matter of fact, in the link Omi no Kami provided, the Two Beats start talking about baseball (hence the swinging gestures) in a way that’s very reminiscent of Who’s on First?

Also worthy of mention is rakugo, while technically it’s sit-down rather than stand-up comedy, unlike manzai it features only a single performer. Here’s a good example. In its current form, it can be traced back to the 17th century, making it technically older than manzai and much older than American stand-up. Here’s another example, in English (it’s not half as funny as in Japanese as much of the humour lies in the choice of words). While a lot of rakugo is based on a set of standard stories, which act like jazz standards, there’s also some stuff that’s very close to American stand-up monologues.

Somewhat half-way between rakugo and manzai, is mandan which appeared in the 1930s. Here’s one of the best mandan performers, Kimimaro doing his stuff. Content-wise, it’s also very, very close to stand-up.

22

That’s definitely true. I only mentioned that Manzai in the Edo period began to use comedic elements to establish that it was moving towards something resembling English stand up long before the format had a chance to rub off.

Rakugo is a much better example though, you’re right. In a way, I think it’s a much more demanding form of comedy: good manzai relies on (often) stunningly creative wordplay and on the performers abilities to go back and forth without losing momentum, but part of the fun of a good rakugo routine is the performer’s ability with a fan: the entertainers in jovan’s link do this a little bit, but traditionally the only prop a rakugo performer is allowed to take on stage is a paper fan. Since most rakugo routines involve telling a single, increasingly convoluted story, the good performers will use the fan to pantomime various objects and props that their story requires, and these guys can be unbelievably creative in making a single fan look like an enormous variety of stuff.

23

[tangent]

I can’t offer an opinion on Italian, Spanish humour or the like, but Northern German, and especially Danish humour can be, and frequently is, about as morbid, cruel and offensive as you can get. An example is a popular comeback when joking back and forth that I guess satirizes Godwin’s Law to some extent.

The word “gas” means both gas and a joke, so after making a joke/jibe at someone a Dane’ll say “It’s a joke (simultaneous meaning - It’s just gas), you can handle it!”, to which the answer is
“Well, the Jews couldn’t!”

[/tangent]

Also, stand-up in Denmark tends to run the gamut from the classic “Two guys in a bar” type stand-up, to very intellectual humour. I’m thinking specifically of two artists, Anden and Mikkel Kjeldberg, who have both written shows that go very much beyond what we think of as classic stand-up, moving into the realm requiring analysis.

Anden’s latest show was a meld of theatre (he’s well-known for character-standup) and real stand-up, in that is was a fictionalised version of “him”, alone in his apartment, trying to write the show. It had slapstick, 'classic" standup (done by talking into the mirror or -even better- to his pet fish, which involved his back to the audience and a camera in the tank), and created a sketch of a very angry guy who can’t really handle reality - classic 'why is this so weird anyway? standup. It then moved into some very self-referential territory when he’s haunted by his old standup-characters (representing the “easy way out”) - and in the end it was an apology from the guy, having faced his demons in the shape of the easy way out, and recognizing that as much as he wants to change the world, he’s the one who needs changing. How he’s a shitty person, and maybe we’ve been able to reflect on our own shitty-ness in contrast with his.

I’m not doing a very good job of explaining it, but the guy had people rolling in the aisles with helpless laughter

  • watching TV became a monologue on how Peter Pan was a pedophile trying to keep the Lost Boys from growing up maybe that’s why he wanted to kill Wendy - and Beyonce on TV became "I hate dancing! If you want to sweat on me while moving rhythmically, then let’s get straight to it,eh?
  • while managing to muse on human nature.
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That doesn’t really sound like stand-up comedy to me. Sketch humor, maybe. I think of stand-up as the comedian talking directly to the audience: there’s no “fourth wall” to break. If a comedian is performing as a “character” that’s unaware of the audience, I don’t consider that stand-up.

Nor would I consider the “cross-talks” that are popular in China and Japan: even if the actors are peripherally aware of the audience, they’re not interacting directly with the audience but rather with one another, with the audience listening in.

25

It is stand-up - in fact the show opens with him in front of the curtain (which conceals the "apartment) with a mike, a suit and a bottle of water - it’s just that the danish version of stand-up specializes in pushing boundaries, and I was describing the outer limits.
Most of his (and his colleagues) shows are what you would call “traditional” stand up.

26

There’s (some) audience interaction in rakugo and manzai, but “heckling” performers is, I think, an essentially American phenomenon. In the video I linked, Kimimaro starts his monologue with “so you thought, I’m going to see Kimimaro tonight, and you looked for your best dress… this?” (obviously pointing at someone in particular). Now, I’m sure he uses the line at every show, but he’s clearly pointing at someone in particular, something he does several times afterwards also. I also heard a recent story about a famous rakugo performer who worked in a spectator’s ringing cellphone in his routine.

27

The Irish economy is held up by IT, biotech firms, singer-songwriters and stand-up comedians. There are more stand-ups here per capita than in any other city on earth, FACT*.

*Ok, so that’s not a fact, per se, but there are a hell of a lot of stand-ups.

28

Zhu geliang was a really (in)famously crude Taiwanese stand up in the 1980’s. gangster too, think he’d been shot oce. he was a folTaiwanese spewing comic.

Ge You is mainlander movvie star but mainly a stand up.

there are plenty of chinese tand ups. these are two that jump out.

29

In Spain there is a tradition of “Monologues”. Some guy will talk to the audience about something, and will utter a funny, funny monologue/essay/musing about whatever is in the news, or is happening at the moment. There are several performers that have become famous, and have had their monologues compiled and published in book form. A bit like George Carlin, you could say.

Some names: “El Gran Wyoming” (pseudonym, obviously :stuck_out_tongue: ), Florentino Fernández, Buenafuente… There are quite a few.

There was a TV program on Spanish TV called “El Club de la Comedia” (“Comedy Club”) which was dedicated, exclusively, to “monologues”. In other words, to stand-up comedy.

The “interacting with the audience” bit is not prevalent, though. That doesn’t happen. For the rest, I think that it is classic stand-up comedy: One guy, alone, talking to a bunch of people. No more, no less.

Just my 2 eurocent!

30

I disagree. Never heard of Ge You, but I suffered through tapes of Zhu Geliang’s show while riding on cross-island highway buses, and the guy was anything but a stand-up comic. More of an abrasive variety show host, and insufferable bully to his guests. Never saw him do anything even approaching stand-up comedy like what I’m talking about here.

I’m sceptical about the existence of any real stand-up artists in the Sinophone sphere, at all. What with most Chinese peoples’ extremely thin skins regarding any kind of loss of face, I doubt whether you could find a single performer with the confidence to handle a room and face down hecklers like the kind of stand up comic I’m thinking of.

Very reason I started this thread, in fact.

31

Really interesting. How subversive does this kind of humor get? Are there topics that Americans do that Spanish comics would find too sensitive, like politics or sexuality or race relations?

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.

As much as it pains me to say this…cite?

I ask because I am sincerely unsure of the veracity of this claim. I concede that there are many Jewish comedians, but did they actually invent stand-up (at least as it’s found in America)?

33

I would not say Bluegrass is transmogrified Celtic. It’s closest link there is through several-hndred-year-old American folk music through a millenia of European folk music to any Celtic root. Anyway, don’t forget, y’know… TV. All movies. Most car racing. Folk literature isn’t uniquely American (as everyone has its own), but America was in large part behind its modern emergence, largely because there was no established high literature. And of cours,e several styles of painting and scultpure and architecture.

America birthed many art forms.

34

One of the few? Just adding to your music list, how about rock n roll, blues and country? I am not sure if you meant the way that reads but it sounds bizarre. The list of U.S. cultural contributions to the world is wildly disproportionate even taking population size into account. That is what happens when you mix everyone from African slaves to Germans to Mexicans together and make them assimilate to some degree into one culture.

35

Koxinga, in monologues subversive is the name of the game! Politics, sexuality, scandals, religion… those are par for the course. They are very irreverent and they respect nothing and no-one.

I gave away as a gift to a friend my copy of the monologues by “El Gran Wyoming”, but I remember that he said (in finely wrought satirical style) things about the church, the government (of all stripes!), the financial powers, the King and the royal family, the average person who goes to the soccer matches and (to sum up) everyone and everything that have to be heard (or read) to be believed. And it made me roll on the floor in fits of laughter.

(This guy is the same that, if you read his article on wikipedia, had a TV program cancelled for saying things about the daughter of the king that were considered to be insulting. It is just that he said what many people were thinking).

He has now a short program right after the main news in “La Sexta” on Spanish TV. The name of his space? “You have just heard the news; now let’s hear the truth”. Let’s see how long it lasts.

Some of his best monologues were about “Paco el Pocero” (Paco the sewer-man), a guy who has become obscenely rich thanks to (very likely shady) construction dealings. I have nothing against that “per se” if the guy had some redeeming qualities, but the problem is that that man takes as a badge of honour being 99% illiterate. He knows only how to sign his name, and goes around saying that school “is useless”, practically encouraging kids not to apply themselves to their studies, because, “look at me! Look where I am, and I didn’t need schooling for this!”. He also has zero taste, and a passion for collecting business jets (25 of them per the latest count). As you can imagine, he is ripe for ridicule. But I digress.

(With the slump in the construction industry in Spain, very likely he will hit some very hard times, but I digress again).

Anyway, to answer, in short, the question Koxinga made: Yes, monologues in Spain are very subversive. Spanish comedy tends towards subversion, in my opinion, but that is a subject for a completely different thread.

36

I don’t deny your conclusion about American artforms, but that particular assertion is seriously compromised by the research of Cecil Sharp, who followed ‘songlines’ direct from Ireland and Scotland (and England: see “English folk songs from the southern Appalachians”, OUP, 1932) all the way down the Appalachian chain, each song or tune getting its own particular lyrical, rhythmic or tonal mutations along the way, but still distinctly recognisable as an alteration of the original. It is of course an amazing artform in its own right, but at its foundation, bluegrass is profoundly British Isles in origin.

37

Except that an awful lot of “modern” bluegrass isn’t those ancient songs. Influenced by, yes, but unless you want to say that all the folk music of half of Europe is merely a variant of celtic (which would grossly trivilize a vast array of traditions), you can hardly say it’s “just” a variant.