Charged Humor from McCarthyism to Covid
Beck Krefting
March 14, 2021
Beck Krefting is Chair of American Studies at Skidmore. Also a former standup comic. Her academic work concerns social and cultural issues around humor. Krefting’s CDHS talk was titled, “Charged Humor from McCarthyism to Covid.” She said her aim was not to make us laugh; and indeed, the presentation was fairly laugh-free.
She began by explaining what she means by “charged humor.” As distinguished from ordinary humor. Charged humor has an edge based on projecting some viewpoint about social or cultural matters. It can both attract and repel hearers. She said that it spotlights problems and also points toward solutions. Krefting also said its being charged is not incidental or accidental; it’s clear what the comic is up to, and they cannot be misunderstood.
She sought to present an “historical through-line.” The story begins with blackface minstrelsy, which Krefting deemed the earliest standup comedy. Emerging in the 1700s, the performers were originally Black, and they were actually mocking white European pretensions; only in 1840s did minstrelsy change to denigrating Blacks, becoming much more popular.
Around the turn of the 20th century, Vaudeville was the primary venue for comedy performance. There were some Black Vaudevillians – who, Krefting said, were forced to caricature themselves. Standup in its modern form emerged around mid-century, with a big boom occurring in the 1980s with a proliferation of comedy clubs. This also entailed the rise of “shock comedy,” not doable on network TV, but gaining a wide audience through clubs and also cable TV.
Krefting noted that while there were niche audiences for such material, a comic could not make a big mainstream career from it. But she cited the case of George Lopez, who did make a big name for himself with “family-friendly” comedy on network TV but then went on, building from that, to edgier “charged” humor.
Meantime, however, the routes for bucking conventional standards were growing. Krefting spoke of comics doing not simple jokes with punchlines but rather telling stories. And, in particular, new opportunities for them to flourish in genres outside the traditional ones. Women, especially, who’d been unwelcome in old-line comedy could now spread their wings. Krefting went on to talk about further niches – African-American comedy (which, while the larger comedy boom fizzled in the 1990s, became much more prominent); Arab-American comedy in the wake of 9/11; and queer comedy.
Audiences, she said, were hungry for such fare. And they got hungrier after the 2016 election, which kind of demanded attention being paid. Then there was the rise of the metoo and BLM movements, with a similar effect. All this made comics feel they had to start being more meaningful, in a time of historical reckoning; and Krefting saw them as rising to the challenge.
But, meantime, she also spoke of pushback. For example, the metoo movement widely being seen as going too far, women being cast as a bunch of whiny complainers. And there is also a genre of alt-right charged humor.
All of which goes to show that comedy is, indeed, no laughing matter.