Aidan Sweeney

Capstone

Dr. Bednar

11 March 2021

Final Paper Draft

Introduction which is the Eric Andre Show. This object proves to be pertinent to the field of communication studies through the framework of comedy, which is a rhetorical tool. In addition, it is useful to know the specific aspects of comedy and literary tools that make up the

Eric Andre Show, such as parody, anti-comedy, and even surrealism, and how he uses these things to break the expectations of genre and of those who chose to watch or participate in the show. Parody has been talked about by many communications scholars, is used as a means of comedy, and can be used as a means of commentary as well. As for the Eric Andre Show, its use of parody of course has some commentary, as is a purpose for parody, however it focuses more on the comedic aspects of anti-comedy and surreal comedy to create a very chaotic parody.

Other things that are important to go into are: genre, anti-comedy, and surreal comedy. All these things will shape a viewers’ perception of the show, and that is to say, what they will get out of the show when the watch it in accordance to the reaction that the writers and creators of the show (mostly the doing of Eric Andre) seek from their audience. Of course, most of this will be broken down in the analysis, but it is important to show what makes this study pertinent to comm. Context and Description

A Little About the Eric Andre Show The Eric Andre Show is an anti-talk show (Zinoman) that first aired on Adult Swim in

2012. Its cast consists of host Eric Andre and co-host, Hannibal Buress, along with famous guests that appear on every episode such as Tyler the Creator and Jack Black. The show is based in New York City and has aired for five seasons now. Co-host Hannibal Buress is no longer on the show, but was on the show for the first four seasons. Buress, started his career as a stand-up comic at open mics, played smaller roles and is most esteemed for his appearance on

Broad City as Lincoln Rice, and, of course, the Eric Andre Show (Wikipedia). Host and creator of the show, Eric Andre, actually graduated from Berklee School of Music with a Bachelor of Fine

Arts degree, although he does most of his work in film and television. He has done many things since his career started such as be a voice actor for various animated shows and movies such as

Robot Chicken and The Lion King (the most recent one), and has made brief appearances in other shows such as the Big Bang Theory and Zeke and Luther. However, his biggest involvement is, of course, the Eric Andre Show (Wikipiedia). At first glance, it looks like your average, low budget talk show, but it makes very apparent from the beginning that this show does everything in its power to create a parody out of surreal anti-comedy. The show consists of a deranged host who is unhinged and seeks to push whatever boundaries he can, a co-host who is somewhat apathetic and critical of Andre’s attempts of comedy, a studio audience and crew that seems halfway dissatisfied and disconnected from the show with sparse applause, a crew that participates in the show such in ways that either seems random or forced and sketches and pranks that are deliberately absurd and nonsensible that attempt to warrant laughter from their shock value (hence, surreal comedy). Guests on the show consist of two things: musical and entertainment acts that conclude the show (like a band would on a regular talk show like Conan) and that are forced to perform in surreal and even tortuous ways (like when 311 Performs with shock collars on or when two bands perform at the same time), and celebrities invited to be interviewed who are made uncomfortable by Andre and his unfiltered methods of interviewing. In any case, the show does its best to be off the rails and make a parody of a talk show by bringing the spirit of anti-comedy to help guide the way.

Genres Considered in the Eric Andre Show The Eric Andre Show is, at its core, a talk show parody. It is staged like a talk show, looks like a talk show, and even operates like a talk show. However, instead of talking about current events/ news, interviewing guest celebrities, and having fun little skits in a “normal” fashion,

Eric Andre decides to take all those ideas and make fun of them in a surreal and anti-comedic kind of way. He stumbles through monologues, telling bad jokes and inaccurate details about the news (or just says crazy things). He interviews celebrities starting with valid questions, then completely bails on them by interrupting them or staging a prank, and his skits are normally off- the-rails adventures through New York City in which he attempts to prank people and break the norm and get reactions out of pedestrians in an absurd way involving anything from race, history and politics, to things that are just completely random as if he is trying to make a movie scene in a real-life scenario. There have been other talk show parodies that have been aired in recent years like The Colbert Report (IMBD), which was a satirical parody of a conservative talk show, however, Eric Andre is not as much focused on satire as he is pranks, surreal comedy and anti-comedic episodes, which would make his work more closely related to Andy Kaufmann, who was commonly referred to as an anti-comedian during his career in the 1970s and 1980s.

This would help explain Eric Andre’s techniques of comedy a little bit better, for his show is situated in a different form of comedy that is called “anti-comedy”, which is related to something called surreal humor (Shibles). Surrealism was a movement that developed after

World War 1 (Khan Academy), and it was an art technique that involved juxtaposing things from varying realities which would defy logic when put together and represent a dream reality in a piece of art, such as a painting of elephants with Tubas for heads (Khan Academy). A lot of art uses surrealistic concepts, and it has made its was into other mediums, most namely, for the sake of this paper, comedy. Surreal humor is basically humor based in no logic. It aims to have jokes that are incongruent with its initial expectations, and it does things that are inherently and obviously against reasoning (World). Anti-comedy is within this realm because it does not resonate with jokes and witty skits meant to be relatable and therefore funny, but rather jokes that are deliberately bad, things done that are meant to be absurd such as pranks, deliberately violating logic and reasoning for jokes that are incongruent with expectations, making a fool out of oneself and having no shame and making others uncomfortable and throwing them for a loop by the other techniques just described (Shibles). It is similar of what others have tried to do such as Bad Grandpa with Johnny Knoxville and Borat with Sasha Barron-Cohen, however,

Andre really takes it to a new level. So, to debrief, the Eric Andre Show is a surreal, anti- comedic parody of a sketch comedy talk show, or simply put, an anti-talk show (Zinoman).

So, what are Eric Andre’s comedic techniques and how do they commit to breaking expectations? What are good examples of surreal comedy and anti-comedy what does it come from? How does genre play a key role in the Eric Andre Show? How is parody and comedy used as a rhetorical device in the show if even at all? What political and social implications are brought about by his approach to comedy and what purpose does it serve: to convey a message through parody or simply to entertain people? All questions will be answered in due time, that is to say, in the analysis. For now, it is safe to say that we are dealing with an object that has been unique throughout communication studies and there is much to be said about what the

Eric Andre Show really is in the eyes of comedy and how comedy can grow from it and further itself into modernity.

Comedy 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. 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). Simply put, most parodies aim to make fun of the original work in a way that provides political, historical, or social commentary on the original source. This begs the question, what is the commentary and the purpose in the eyes of Eric Andre?

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.

Analysis

The Eric Andre Show has been on for five seasons now, the newest season having been released this past year. Each season the show gets a little bit better production value, a better band, better guests, and better ideas, that is to say humor (or anti-humor in this case). It is important to look at how the show has progressed up until now and I will now analyze 2 different episodes of the Eric Andre Show, including scenes from the show that are reoccurring throughout the season. The episodes included in the analysis, the ones that will get the idea across the best, are what I see as the episode that exemplifies my claim the most. These are

(named by the guests who are on each episode): the Pilot (of course) and Jack Black and

Jennette McCurdy. Each episode will exemplify a certain aspect of the show that goes into making the lore of the anti-talk show (anti-comedy parody) that we know as the Eric Andre

Show. That is: pranks, random skits, interviews with guests, and musical acts.

Ladies and Gentlemen, It’s the Eric Andre Show!!

To get an idea of what the Eric Andre Show is all about and why it would be put in the realm of anti-comedy, it would be best to go into some of the things that are reoccurring on the show. Namely, the introduction. The show opens up every episode with a wide view of the stage where the desk and armchair are in visual followed by a male voice who triumphantly announces, “Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s the Eric Andre show!” Then, Eric Andre runs from off screen screaming as he jumps off the armchair and flings himself into the décor behind the desk and into the curtains as the band on the set begins to play upbeat, chaotic, and nearly off- tempo jazz music. Eric then runs over to the band and tackles the drummer and tosses his kick drum into the middle of the set, then runs off to the middle of the screen and jumps through the shelves that are stage left to his desk. Next, he continues the chaos by using weapons to destroy musical instruments, stages himself or others fighting while he cheers them on or puts on displays of self-harm such as cutting off a prop tongue from his mouth with garden shears or putting raw chickens on his hands that he uses to hit himself in the head with. Once the set is promptly destroyed, he ends up by the one thing that is not: his chair. He tosses an object from his hands and plops straight in his chair as the music stops, out of breath with a disturbed look on his face. The set is then replaced by a new, identical set that is intact as he continues to sit there disturbed and exhausted, though the floor of the set is still a complete mess. Then the co- host, Hannibal Buress, walks out on set from the curtains in the back followed by sparse applause as he sits down in the armchair stage right of Eric’s desk. Once sat down, Eric looks at

Hannibal and says: “That’s all I had planned for the show. What should I do now?” (which he says every season premiere). Hannibal’s response is, without fail “Do a monologue”. Eric then goes to the front of the set and proceeds to stumble through said monologue, saying outrageous things, bad jokes and inaccurate but funny information about celebrities to which

Hannibal criticizes him about without fail. This will build up into an absurd comedic moment which that will cut off halfway through on a snapshot of someone’s face with the words next to it “we’ll be right back” to que a commercial break, but also to poke at a feeling of being unresolved. The Pilot: Pranks, Parody and Surreal Humor

The pilot episode first opens up to a low-budget set in which Eric Andre destroys the set as he normally does. Hannibal arrives on set to sparse applause and Andre says: “That’s all I had planned for the show. What should I do next?” To which Hannibal says: “Do a monologue.” He goes up stage to the microphone and begins to nervously stumble through a monologue, starting off by saying: “So Michael Jackson, he hasn’t been in the news too much lately. It’s like where ya hidin’ Jacko?.” Hannibal corrects him by saying: “He’s dead, man.” Andre responds:

“are you serious?” Hannibal advises him to work the crowd to recover (as if there is even a crowd), and Andre goes on to say: “So Beyonce is trying to trim that baby fat, I saw her without her shirt on and I was like ‘woah, who’s that chick with six tits like a dog?” and continues to mock Beyonce. Hannibal says: “You for real think that those words you just said should be on television?” The camera makes its way back to Andre as ominous music plays as he solemnly whispers: “I’m dying.” Hannibal responds with: “we all are” and the scene cuts to a shot that says “We’ll be right back”.

The first guest on the show is “George Clooney”, however it is not really George

Clooney, but a George Clooney look alike who they continue to claim is George Clooney. They tell him to do some of his “Award winning stand-up comedy” before he sits down. He goes up to the microphone and starts muttering nonsense about doing karate with his bros, having no clear punchline or even attempt at humor, but they clap anyways and the Clooney sits down for the interview. The first prank of the episode, we see a person walking down the streets of New York and they throw something in the garbage can. Andre then pops up out of the garbage can about a third of the way through the episode and it opens up on a Civil War reenactment festival. In the distance we see Buress and Andre wearing shackles and being chased by a large white man as the scream “Hide us!” and things of that nature. A redneck voice yells: “Don’t forget about them slaves!” as Eric Andre and Hannibal Burress run through the Civil War reenactment being chased and whipped by this large man as people look at them shocked and borderline offended.

When the scene arrives back on set, Andre starts off by introducing the next guest of the show when he is cut off and a male voice announces: “It’s time to play this or that!” Two podiums are placed at the front of the set, Andre and Buress walk to the podiums and the voice says “contestants, are you ready?” Both confused, they answer no. The voice begins to give them questions, the first one being a photo of a man doing Tai Chi. The voice asks, “First question” Yoga or Tai Chi?” Andre answers “Tai chi?”. A buzzer rings denoting a wrong answer and the voice says: “I’m sorry we could not hear you, hot coffee to the face!” and someone splashes hot coffee in Andre’s face to which he writhes in pain. They are then shown a picture of lettuce and ask “molested, or genius?” Hannibal answers, “lettuce” and a bell rings to denote a correct answer. When Andre says that he could not hear the question, they splash more coffee in his face and he screams and says “How does this game even work?!” They then ask

“Co-klea or co-chela” (cochlea), and Eric responds with the correct pronunciation of the word, but they still consider it wrong and splash more coffee in his face. Subsequent to that, Hannibal sneezes, and the wrong-answer buzzer goes off again and they splash more coffee in Andre’s face. Next, a cart rolls out with two jugs of milk on it, and the voice says, “Eric, drink this milk and tell us: is it fresh or spoiled?” Someone forcefully puts the jug to his mouth and pours it down his throat, and Eric violently pulls away and yells: “Definitely spoiled!” To which the right answer bell rings, though they still throw coffee in his face and the break the coffee pot over his head. The game concludes and they slap the scores on the scoreboard: Hannibal $3000, Eric $0.

Hannibal looks at Eric, points to the scoreboard and says, “you owe me 3000 bucks, son.”

Andre, who is leaning on his podium as if he has just been administered a beating, slowly starts to look up when a large man walks up to him with a hatchet and cuts his fingers off. In shock and pain, the camera zooms in on his face, freezes, and the “We’ll be right back” theme segues the show into an ad break.

The first episode sets the pace for the surrealistic humor lore that the show relies on.

The brash cuts from each scene as they capture an image placed by the words “We’ll be right back”, really brings emphasis to the convention of humor, for it is meant for emphasis on a representation of the scene. This really puts the idea of parody into perspective because the viewer gets to see that the show operates like a late-night talk show: the guests and interviews, the musical act, the random bits that are staged like games and such, and a little bit of fun and jokes between the host and co-host. However, there is such a surreal way in which these things happen, such as the “this or that” game where Eric gets his fingers chopped off (well, prop fingers), and the fake George Clooney spouting nonsensible stand-up comedy. This things don’t logically affirm the concept of a joke or dry humor (Willman, 1940), but are funny because it is so out there with lack of causal reasoning that it adds shock value for, well, its surrealness. Jack Black and Jennette McCurdy: Pranking guests

One integral part of how the parody of the talk show functions through anti-comedy is how Andre and Buress mess with all of the guests that come on the show by Eric’s unorthodox and chaotic interviewing tactics and Hannibal’s awkwardly placed and stated comments, as they subject the guests to crazy things and target their personality. One of the best one’s he pulls of is the episode where he interviews Jack Black and Jennette McCurdy: one who plays along and one who is not as keen on playing along. The first interview is with musician, actor and comedian Jack Black, the one who plays along. As many are aware, Jack Black is a pretty goofy guy himself being in acts such as Tenacious D and movies like Nacho Libre. Be it as it may, he is no match for the surreal randomness of Eric Andre. It starts off seeming like Jack Black is going to play along. He arrives on the set joyfully, doing a little dance and laughs at Andre’s first joke. They even do a whippet together on screen and go crazy for about 30 seconds.

Immediately after, gunshots go off and startle Jack Black and then Andre points out the fact that there are birds up in the rafters (which there really were), which further startles Black after one knocks over some bird seed onto his chair. Andre goes on to do some anti-joke about Brad

Pitt in the movie 12 Monkeys, then, all of a sudden, the coffee mug on Andre’s desk starts spewing out coffee like a fountain all over the place, which again, startles Jack Black to the point where he jumps out of his chair. Andre comments: “That thing is broken. Yea, can we fix this!? Can someone get me another coffee please?” Next he makes a comment to Jack Black about his favorite band, Led Zeppelin, saying: “they should rename themselves ‘the Four Losers’ am I right?” And he signals for high five, however Jack Black declines the offer not wanting to dish disrespect to his favorite band. Not long after that, Jack Black mentions how he doesn’t have any brain cells left for the interview after the whippet he took and zones out. Then one of the birds defecates on him from the rafters and once again startles Mr. Black as the scene cuts.

After a short prank break, we come back to the interview with Jack Black and they decide to give him a lie detector test. Up to this point, Black has played along with their act pretty well.

They set up the lie detector test and start their line of questions. However, every question time he answers, whether its true or false, the test shocks him. They ask him his home address and a bunch of ridiculous questions, and he is shocked regardless of the answer. Jack Black at this point is laughing at the fact that they are borderline torturing him and asks who is shocking him, and it turns out it’s the camera man off screen whom the camera man zooms into.

When Jennette McCurdy comes on the show, she is greeted, and the interview starts off as any interview on a late-night sketch comedy talk show might: with questions about the guest. Eric initially looks smitten by her attractiveness, as he gets loses track of the fact that he is supposed to interview her and Hannibal has to get him back on track. The first question was conventional, asking her about the fact that she was on Nickelodeon, and then Andre starts to get into the anti-comedy. He asks her: “So you dated a basketball player?” She says “I did”.

Andre quickly responds with, “Magic Johnson.” She says no for that is not true. He continues by saying: “Says here you also dated Eazy E and Freddie Mercury right after that”, which infers that he is trying to say she has AIDS. After that, the set shakes and the sound of a train rolling by plays to give the effect that they are under a train station. He then asks about the fact that she had nudes leaked, to which she responds: “In all fairness they weren’t nudes”. He then follows that up by saying: “We actually have a picture of one of your nudes right here” as he holds up a picture of a naked man holding his crotch with Barack Obama’s head photoshopped to it. “And I think it’s tasteless, I can’t believe you did that” he says. Next, out of the blue, Hannibal says:

“Hannibal’s goin’ to Japan! I got my own spinoff show”. A clip from said spinoff show, which is kind of a play on a martial arts anime show, proceeds to play for about 10 seconds, and when we get back to the set, Andre is in the process of completely destroying his desk as he struggles and stumbles everywhere around him, gripping the microphone and tripping on the wire. As he finally recovers, he crawls over to McCurdy, gets within a foot of her face and begins to have an existential crisis and vents to her. “You know, I’m really having a tough time interviewing people here. You gotta make me look good or else I’ll fall flat on my face and I can’t face the music” He says to start his spiel. As Andre continues to mess with her, you can watch her start to get agitated and uncomfortable with the fact that this is happening. He goes on with a distraught look on his face and worrisome tone in his voice saying “You gotta help me out here” and telling her that he loves her. He notices that she is getting uncomfortable by saying such things to which he says: “I feel like you’re pulling back but I need you to push forward.” The camera cuts to Hannibal, who has completely checked out at this point, and he starts reading a nudie magazine titled “Jugs” and the shot freezes on him to transition, and the screen reads

“We’ll be right back” to denote a commercial break.

The interviews that Andre conducts with his guest represent parody more than anything else, as well as the whole surrealistic lore that surrounds the show. As Mambrol define parody

“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), He is taking all of it and rather than satirically restructuring his techniques, he just uses anti-humor and says random stuff Led Zeppelin thing with Jack Black, or surreal humor, like when he destroys his desk for no apparent reason then has an existential crisis that he vents about to Jennette McCurdy about within about a foot of her face. It is also interesting to look at the two types of people that are a part of these interviews: the ones that know what their getting into, and the ones that have no clue. A lot of the celebrity guests on the show seem to have some sort of idea of the Eric Andre Show, but many of them do not expect the show to go down in the way they think it does or don’t know what to expect at all.

Conclusions

It is hard to see what purpose Andre strives for in the creation of this show. Do his pranks have political implications or does he do them purely to entertain people? Is there any inferred commentary on this parody of a talk show or does it seek to just make fun of talk shows in a surreal fashion? Well, there are two things in which I have been able to deduce from an analysis of the Eric Andre show as far as a purpose for the show. The first, being the more obvious one, is to parody late night sketch comedy talk shows and the manner in which their humor operates in a fashion that seeks to be surreal, unscripted and somewhat nihilistic, and to alienate the audience from their expectations of what humor and genre can be by creating something within a genre that is an unconventional take and makes people question their idea of what a genre can be. In any case, he is doing it to entertain.

In Golin’s article about anti-comedy, he talks about the implications of anti-humor and how it operates, describing it 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 (it is worth remembering that Kaufman’s most successful character was named “Foreign Man”)—to find comedy in the uncommon and to experience humanizing laughter rather than fear when faced with the idea of the Other (Golin, 2018).

First off, this means that the nature of anti-comedy is to break expectations as it is as it makes fun of comedy in a way. “Was this meant to be ‘funny’ or ‘not funny,’ or was it funny precisely because it wasn’t actually all that funny?””

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I have acted with honesty and integrity in producing this work and am unaware of anyone who has not.

AZS

Other scenes: pilot guest bands, ranch it up,

Traditionally, late night comedy talk shows are meant to have political implications to their

Anti comedy

Quotes from Golin article

“to alienate the audience in a lasting manner, through thought, from the conditions in which it lives” (2003, 101). Te weirdness of modern anti-comedy can trace its history to this principle. Tim and Eric frequently use non-professional actors, degraded video, and abrupt edits to break through the artifce of conventional sketch premises. As Eric Wareheim told the New York Times, “It added to the mystery. It makes people think: Is this real? Is this acting or not?

Tat’s exciting to us”

“Brecht talks about epic theatre, and mentions plays acted by children in which faults of performance, operating as alienation efects, impart epic characteristics to the production.

Something similar may occur in third-rate provincial theatre”

““epic theatre” which employed unconventional methods to destroy the illusion of straightforward representation: “Actors spoke as if they were reciting someone else’s words; they went in and out of character on stage; scenes formed a discontinuous montage, and were, at times, frozen into a tableau vivant” ”