Tig Notaro: a Comedian Makes “Sick” Humor the Main
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THE ARTS AND MEDICINE Tig Notaro A Comedian Makes “Sick” Humor the Main Act Jennifer Abbasi ithin the first 5 minutes of her semiautobiographi- There’s magic in that set if you listen to it, a camaraderie and cal television “traumedy” One Mississippi, we see electricity that come through the recording. At one point Notaro W Tig Notaro—last name Bavaro on the show—visit an wavers, wondering if she should switch to lighter fare, and a man airport restroom three times. When her character’s brother, Remy, in the audience shouts out, “This is fucking amazing!” arrives to pick her up, he blurts out that she also looks like shit. Humor lifted Tig, both the real and fictionalized ver- He’s right: She’s skeletal, but for good reason. She’s recently un- sions. In her memoir, I’m Just a Person, published in June, she dergone a bilateral mastectomy for invasive breast cancer and describes the natural high she felt leaving the stage that night, now she’s dealing with a severe case of Clostridium difficile in- the complete opposite of her psychological state 30 minutes fection that’s causing those trips to the restroom. Heaping on the prior. In a scene in One Mississippi, Tig and a nurse share a big, misfortune, she has flown in to be at her mother’s hospital bed- hearty laugh after her mother has taken her last labored breath. side when she is taken off life support. An accident, we learn, has It’s imagined, though—a fantasy version of events Tig conjures left Tig’s mother brain dead. up in which all of this is not quite so horrible. A later episode brings a shattering revelation about her mother’s life. In the wake of this exposure, Tig finally mus- ters the courage to examine her own truth. She takes her shirt off and looks at her chest in a mirror for the first time after her mastectomy, revealing the scars where her breasts used to be. (Notaro, already small-chested, chose not to have reconstruc- tive surgery. “I’d essentially be surgically attaching the equiva- lent of two kiwis, less hair, no stickers,” she writes in I’m Just a Person.) She also goes topless for a good portion of her new HBO special, Tig Notaro: Boyish Girl Interrupted. Her courage to bare all on camera took my breath away. So yes, she’s incredibly brave. But is she funny? Notaro’s jokes about her health crises and the death of her mother are arguably her best material. Before this, one of her well-known bits was about repeatedly running into late ’80s It reads, but doesn’t play—thankfully—like a medical melo- pop star Taylor Dayne around LA. She’s funnier when she’s drama. And it’s true, with a few minor tweaks. Over the course wryly riffing on the hospital satisfaction questionnaire sent to of four months in 2012, Notaro, a Los Angeles–based stand-up her dead mother, or the possibility of a fecal transplant from comedian, was hit with this trifecta, albeit in different chro- her anal-retentive stepfather. nology. A week after spending nine days in the hospital for the On Live, Notaro does a bit about her diagnostic mammo- gut bug, she got the news that her mother—vibrant and youth- gram. Looking down during the scan, the radiology tech ful in her middle age—had tripped and hit her head in her remarks, “Oh my gosh, you have such a flat stomach. What is Mississippi home and would never wake up from a coma. Then, your secret?” “Oh, I’m dying,” Tig innocently responds. The Notaro’s cancer was diagnosed, and the surgery followed. The joke—about what she calls her “C diff diet”—kills. “Don’t like end of a relationship compounded the onslaught. exercising? Who does, girlfriend? This diet does all the work About a week after the diagnosis, steeped in fear and for you.” sadness, Notaro walked out on stage at LA’s Largo comedy club Wisdom has it that comedy = tragedy + time. But, in a tes- and greeted the audience: “Good evening, hello. I have cancer, tament to her skill, Notaro didn’t wait until a “comfortable” how are you?” The crowd laughed, assuming she was joking. amount of time had passed to joke about her cancer, and she She assured them that she was, in fact, serious, but over the still brought the house down. course of her set she reassured them: She might die, yes, She has been wise to let us, the audience, in on her secrets. but not tonight. That night they would laugh at the absurdity “These aren’t topics we usually discuss except in small groups,” . Photo credit: Amazon. of it all—the cancer, the life-threatening infection, the sud- said Mitch Earlywine, PhD. Earlywine is a professor of psychol- den loss of her mother. The set, recorded on the concert al- ogy at SUNY Albany, an occasional stand-up comedian, and the bum Live (verb, not adjective), went viral and brought her a author of the book Humor 101. “It’s extra funny because it’s such One Mississippi Grammy nomination. a forbidden, intimate domain,” he explained. From 1850 JAMA November 8, 2016 Volume 316, Number 18 (Reprinted) jama.com Copyright 2016 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. Downloaded From: https://jamanetwork.com/ on 10/02/2021 The Arts and Medicine Notaro, of course, didn’t invent gallows humor, this par- ticular brand of joke that pokes fun at illness and death. In the 1970s, comedian Totie Fields riffed on her recently ampu- tated leg in an episode of an HBO comedy show titled, aptly, Standing Room Only. And in a slapstick home video filmed by Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner—in treatment for ovarian cancer— remarked to the camera, “Through the miracle of chemo- therapy, I am able to play tennis as badly now as I did before I had cancer.” Richard Pryor’s bit about his heart attack is considered one of his all-time funniest. On stage, he joked about his alcohol- ism and drug abuse and, finally, his multiple sclerosis. Accord- ing to comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff, “After Richard Pryor, comedians felt OK to really expose their inner secrets, and that included serious health issues.” Because gallows humor has worked so well for comedians like Pryor and Notaro, we should expect to see more of it, Nesteroff said. That’s probably a good thing, if the growing body of evi- dence around the psychological and physiological benefits of humor is any indication. Scott Weems, PhD, a cognitive neu- roscientist and author of Ha! The Science of When We Laugh and Why, told me of one now-classic study, in which patients who watched comedies while they were in their hospital recovery phase required less pain medication. Gallows humor has its place in all of this, Weems added, Capitalizing on research like this, many hospitals now of- pointing to research showing that people who are able to find fer humor carts and rooms loaded up with things like silly humor in their medical conditions have the quickest psycho- games and funny movies. Some hospitals train their physi- logical recoveries. cians to incorporate humor into their bedside manner or em- So to Notaro and other comedians: Keep the cancer and ploy therapeutic clowns for pediatric and adult patients. Pro- illness jokes coming. They’re good for our collective health. fessional medical clowns from Big Apple Circus’s Vaudeville Visits program bring humor to elderly patients at Saint Barna- bas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey, for example, and Author Affiliation: Senior Staff Writer, Medical News & Perspectives, JAMA, Chicago, Illinois. in the Bay Area the Medical Clown Project serves Alzheimer’s Corresponding Author: Jennifer Abbasi ([email protected]). patients at facilities like California Pacific Medical Center. The Section Editor: Roxanne K. Young, Associate Senior Editor. University of Southern California Norris Comprehensive Can- Conflict of Interest Disclosures: The author has completed and submitted the cer Center also uses medical clowns to enhance the adult pa- ICMJE Form for the Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest and none were tient experience. “This isn’t frivolous, but is beneficial for both reported. patients and staff, since it means reduced use of drugs and in- Submissions: The Arts and Medicine editors welcome proposals for features in patient services,” Weems said. the section. Submit yours at [email protected]. jama.com (Reprinted) JAMA November 8, 2016 Volume 316, Number 18 1851 Copyright 2016 American Medical Association. All rights reserved. Downloaded From: https://jamanetwork.com/ on 10/02/2021.