Aidan Sweeney

Capstone

Bob Bednar

25 February 2021

Prospectus

Introduction

People have used comedy as a means of expression, rhetoric, and communication for as long as we have been able to communicate. It is something that coincides with the human condition and that people continue to explore all the time. In a hypermodern era, however, society finds itself juggling and experimenting with new ways of expressing humor and provoking laughter. On that note, I open up into the Eric Andre Show. The Eric Andre Show has been on Adult Swim since 2012 and is a very popular show amongst young adults and teenagers in the 21st century, and it uses comedic techniques that have not gotten much attention in the entertainment world, but have proven to be very effective. These techniques are anti-comedy, and something called surreal comedy. Anti-comedy is a type of comedy in which one, for example, would tell a joke that is intentionally not funny in order to break expectations and cause comedic effect (Golin, 2018).

Surreal comedy, or surreal humor as it is called, is something that is a bit odd. Surreal humor is based on intentionally bizarre behavior and the violation of casual reasoning in order to produce laughter. It usually consists of events that are blatantly illogical, juxtaposing things that are unrelated or that doesn’t make sense, jokes with a punchline that is incongruent with the rest of the joke, and scenes and expressions of utter nonsense. Surreal comedy is said to come from the artistic expression of surrealism, which is a style of art that is based of the juxtaposing things in a work that violates reasoning and reality in order to create a lore of a dream state within the image

(Khan). These things are, of course, not new to the world of comedy, art and entertainment, however, the way in which it is used in the Eric Andre Show proves to be rather unique. For instance, The Eric Andre Show is staged like a late-night, sketch comedy talk show, however, it uses pranks, bizarre and non-sensible monologues, and deliberate acts of ridiculous behavior to make it into a parody. By doing so, the show has a new take on genre, as it deliberately defies expectations of what genre is supposed to have set. So, how does Andre use genre in order to deliberately defy expectations, and how does this set up room for other genres to be established? What comedic tactics do they interact with viewers’ and guests’ expectations of certain genres that are staged in the show? How does this concur with genre theory? What are the rhetorical and political implications, as well as commentary, of the comedy that Andre uses if any at all?

Literature Review

The sources that I have compiled for this go in depth about comedy, genre theory, and parody. Genre theory is one of the first scholarly conversations to unfold when going into said research questions and what defines genre and why. The first source I go into is called “An

Introduction to Genre Theory” by Chandler Daniel, and it goes into gives an overlay of what there is to know about the concept of genre, from its history to application. Chandler goes into the fact that there is and has been a dispute over the definition of genre but there are common implications and understandings of genre. For instance, in the world of Western Classical music literature, they classify genre on the basis of musical content and form, and consider modern conceptions of genre

(rock, country, funk, blues), as style. For instance, genres in Western Classical music are symphonies, sonatas, string quartets and operas, and styles would be Romantic, Galant, and

Baroque (Coe, 2021). So by this logic, if you took the song Hurt by Nine-Inch Nails its famous cover by Johnny Cash, both genres would be a song. However, the Nine-Inch Nails version of it would be in the style of electro-alternative, and the Johnny Cash version would be in the style of folk-country.

The definitions have flipped in colloquialism in the most recent century due to the fact that popular music is primarily and almost exclusively song based (a song being defined as a lyrical poem). This is mainly because it was more tangible for one to designate these works into certain groups, for it is more closely related to the origins of the word, in which Chandler states: “The word genre comes from the French (and originally Latin) word for 'kind' or 'class'” (Chandler 1997). In addition, it is more concrete to designate genre Despite all of the conflict over the true definition of genre, it is important to know is that the common denominator, simply put, is that genre is conceptualized around the idea of certain expectations which are conventionally assigned to a text. “Genres can be seen as constituting a kind of tacit contract between authors and readers” (Chandler, 1997).

Meaning the genre of a work, for example, a western, it goes without saying that the film will have cowboys, saloons, and be based on the western frontier of 19th century America, such as Lonesome

Dove or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This is because So, as it is said in the work of genre theory by Chandler, “To take a genre such as the 'western', analyze it, and list its principal characteristics, is to beg the question that we must first isolate the body of films which are

'westerns'. But they can only be isolated on the basis of the 'principal characteristics' which can only be discovered from the films themselves after they have been isolated. (Cited in Gledhill 1985, 59)”

(Chandler, 1997). So, by that logic, “Genre provides an important frame of reference which helps readers to identify, select and interpret texts” (Chandler, 1997). Henceforth, though there is much dispute over a solid definition of genre, the main implication is that genre is meant to set dispute over a clear definition of genre, the common denominator and function of genre is to set expectations of the work for viewers and readers by designating it into a larger body of works which share common characteristics or, in other words, “Particular features which are characteristic of a genre are not normally unique to it; it is their relative prominence, combination and functions which are distinctive (Neale 1980, 22-3)” (Chandler, 1997).

Next, with genre theory defined, it would be important to look into what comedy has to offer in this field, and what kinds of humor that are practiced in the Eric Andre Show and are pertinent to understanding what the show is about to assign genre to the show and how it uses genre to break expectations of genre. Therefore, we must look into the three types of comedic tactics that the show relies on, which are: parody, surreal humor, and anti-humor. However, to get a better understanding of these types of humor, we must go into the theory of humor itself. In a psychological study of humor, comedy and laughter published by the University of Illinois Press by

John W. Willman called An Analysis of Humor and Laughter, he sets certain expectations and rules for humor in which he states: “…humor always results from the union of two ideas which involve some sort of contradiction or incongruity. -The importance of incongruity in humor has long been recognized, but the fact that the two incongruous parts must be united in some specific way has generally been neglected. This union is accomplished in three different ways; (1) the two ideas may be united by possessing important common elements, (2) the one may simply be an inference drawn from the other, or (3) they may be seen actually to occur together in objective reality. In one or another of these three ways we are compelled to consider the two incongruous ideas as a logical unit” (Willman, 1940). This definition of humor suggests that there is a logical explanation and, for lack of a better word, formula for the way humor may manifest in ways such as a joke. The difference between it and anti-humor is that the two ideas of incongruency in anti-humor do not operate as a logical unit, but rather illogically in order to make fun of conventional and logical humor. He goes on to frame his example by explaining two jokes, one of the jokes involving words exchanged between two friends before one of them is to be hanged. He says: “Friend: "Isn't there anything you would like to say, Sam, before they pull the rope?" Sam (with head in noose): "Jes' tell the judge maybe he done a good thing after all. This is gonna be a mighty good lesson to me." In the latter of these examples the incongruity is obvious: if the man is about to die how can he mend his ways in the future? The execution will end his life, while the idea of 'a good lesson' to him requires that his life continue. We may express this diagrammatically in the following way: That it will Being hanged be a good lesson to him cessation continuation of life of life” (Willman, 1940). The humor is expressed through two contradictory statements that work as a logical unit that, in this case, “…fit in the matter of punishment” (Willman, 1940). There are many type of humor such as dry humor, slapstick comedy, practical jokes and pranks, all of which concur with Willman’s statement

“"Laughter occurs when a total situation causes surprise, shock or alarm, and at the same time induces an antagonistic attitude of playfulness or indifference”” (Willman, 1940). Which brings us to surreal humor, anti-humor, and parody, which are pertinent to the research object.

In a study done by Dennis Golin called “Is This S**t For Real?” Adorno, Benjamin, and Anti-

Comedy. They define anti-comedy as “a practice focused on the vulnerabilities and potential

‘failures’ of public performance… comedy that is explicitly about the art of comedy itself, a foregrounding of its expectations, conventions, and execution” (Sconce 2013, 75). Whereas dry traditional humor, according to philosopher Simon Critchley, is “a consequence of city life, maybe even of metropolitan life… what civilized people do, share, have in common” (Dillon & Critchley

2005), anti-comedy elevates the provincial, the unpleasant or disturbing, and the unfamiliar” (Golin,

2018). Thus, anti-comedy, as the title suggests and otherwise known as, is something called “meta- comedy” (Golin, 2018). Its purpose is to make comedy out of comedy itself by defying the conventions of traditional comedy which are things that provide humor through a logical unit of incongruency of two parts that relate together through a common aspect of the joke or scene as a whole. Anti-humor does not operate as a logical unit, instead, it defies this by, for instance, setting up the expectation of a joke and following through with a punchline that is either a literal or random answer which throws a monkey wrench in the jokes expectations by being just defying them and sounding absurd and even kind of stupid. Surreal humor is humor that is based in no logic and, like Surrealism, juxtaposes two irrational things together meant to create a “surreal” aura. It aims to have jokes that are incongruent with its initial expectations, and it does things that are inherently and obviously against reasoning (World). And “a parody imitates the manner, style or characteristics of a particular literary work/ genre/ author, and deflates the original by applying the imitation to a lowly or inappropriate subject” (Mambrol, 2021). In other words: “Parody, by contrast, is defined by imitating a subject. It is humor based on borrowing from an existing sign system. Margaret Rose, writing on the history of parody, defines it as “the comic refunctioning of preformed linguistic or artistic material.”214 The style and content of a work identify it as parody, as well as its reception by an audience. Parody creates at least three levels of meaning: signification borrowed from the original parodied source, the creation of its own parodic context, and new meaning forged from a union of the two” (Hersey, 2013).

Methodology

The methodology will be to define the genre of the Eric Andre Show, and go into how he uses genre to defy the expectations of genre by using different types of humor, including parody, to create an anti-talk show. It will be framed through psychoanalytical study of genre and comedy as well as a rhetorical analysis of the show and its genres and techniques to find out just how Andre pushes the limits of comedy and entertainment to break expectations by making chaos and insanity into humor, as well as to discover social and political implications, if any, the show seeks to portray by the platform of a parody and seeing what kinds of commentary apply to said parody.

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