Standing Upright: Podcasting, Performance, and Alternative Comedy Vince M. Meserko Studies in American Humor, Series 4, Volume 1, Number 1, 2015, pp. 20-40 (Article) Published by Penn State University Press For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/579162 [ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] Standing Upright Podcasting, Performance, and Alternative Comedy VINCE M. MESERKO ABSTRACT: Within the Los Angeles stand-up comedy scene, the podcast has become an increasingly popular communication medium for alternative comic performance. Comedians Jimmy Pardo of Never Not Funny (NNF), Scott Aukerman of Comedy Bang-Bang (CBB), Jesse Thorn and Jordan Morris of Jordan, Jesse, GO!, and Doug Benson of Doug Loves Movies (DLM) have been using the podcast as an artistic outlet and tool for self-promotion over the last several years. These podcasters have each forged distinct places for themselves within this community, and their use of this upstart medium represents an important case study in the shifting cultural dynamics that the podcast introduces. The podcast medium allows this group of comedians not only to skirt FCC regulations and produce content not indebted to advertis- ers, gatekeepers, club owners, or executives, but also to feel empowered that their content will reach their most ardent fans in the most direct, intimate way. KEYWORDS: podcast, alternative comedy, performance, medium theory, Upright Citizens Brigade, intimacy, radio, broadcasting Within the Los Angeles stand-up comedy scene, the podcast has become an increasingly popular communication medium for comic performance. Comedians Jimmy Pardo of Never Not Funny (NNF), Scott Aukerman of Comedy Bang-Bang (CBB), Jesse Thorn and Jordan Morris of Jordan, Jesse, GO!, and Doug Benson of Doug Loves Movies (DLM) have been using the podcast as an artistic outlet and self-promotional tool over the last several years. NNF began in 2006, Comedy Bang-Bang (formerly Comedy Death Ray) began in 2009, Jordan, Jesse, GO! began in 2007, and Doug Loves Movies (formerly I Love Movies) began in 2006. All four podcasts share similar Studies in American Humor, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2015 Copyright © 2015 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA StAH 1.1_02_Meserko.indd 20 06/04/15 4:43 PM Standing Upright 21 guests and are tied to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (UCB), the small Los Angeles theatre located just north of Hollywood Boulevard that has become the hub through which many of these podcasters travel. The podcast medium allows this group of comedians not only to skirt FCC regulations and produce content not indebted to advertisers, gatekeepers, club own- ers, or executives, but also to feel empowered that their content will reach their most ardent fans in the most direct, intimate way. The comedy pod- cast has certainly found an audience. Podcasts such as Marc Maron’s WTF, which began in 2009, generated 20 million downloads in its first two years in operation, while others such as Scott Aukerman’s CBB podcast receive 175,000 downloads per week.1 Overall, comedy podcasts account for most of iTunes’s top-10 podcasts each week.2 While the podcasts have been particu- larly effective for mid-level comics who are aspiring to acquire more fans, an appearance on a popular podcast can also rejuvenate a floundering career or jumpstart a nascent one.3 Many of these podcasts complement the UCB Theatre, whose small con- fines and intimate seating arrangement make palpable the energy that flows between the audience and the stage. In this way, the podcast provides a sense of continuity between physical places, like the UCB, and the virtual commu- nity of fans who have embraced this medium. I call this scene “the UCB alter- native comedy scene” because its members have been principled in drawing distinctions between their style of comedy and the more staid, traditional schools of improvisational comedy, such as Chicago’s famed Second City. The UCB alternative comedy scene differs in performance style and venue from the established improvisational schools, and it is clearly rooted in a physical place. It also is using an intrepid, nontraditional medium. These podcasters have each forged distinct places for themselves within this com- munity, and their use of this upstart medium represents an important case study in the shifting cultural dynamics that the podcast introduces. Each podcaster’s own biographical profile offers a few possible explanations as to why comedians have taken to this medium so passionately. Despite their separate identities, and the divergent personalities at their helm, these podcasts are nevertheless linked to one another through shared comedic sensibilities and a shared talent roster that each of them taps. These podcasts are further linked together by their shared commitment to live performances at the UCB Theatre. The revolving cast offamiliar voices that turn up on these podcasts ensures that these comics retain a core identity. StAH 1.1_02_Meserko.indd 21 06/04/15 4:43 PM 22 STUDIES IN AMERICAN HUMOR However, the individual personalities build the shows, and ultimately the differing comedic styles shape the content. It is in this way that the podcasts are an empowering medium for the comics and perhaps the most direct means to engage their audience. Such artist empowerment has been felt in the broader new media environment as well. As demonstrated in books by Phyllis Caddell, Guy Hart-Davis, and Henry Jenkins, promotion, marketing, and branding have increasingly become do-it-yourself enterprises.4 Rather than rely on publi- cists or marketing companies, most of these UCB podcasters have embraced this do-it-yourself mentality, similar to the participatory culture that Jenkins has described. Third-party intermediaries are eliminated in this scenario, and the comedians using these podcasts have seen the resulting immediacy, intimacy, and direct relationship forged between artist and fan contribute to an ever-broadening fan base that drifts fluidly between physical and vir- tual places. These comedians have made an attempt to shape technology rather than have it determined for them. As Wiebe Bijker and John Law argue, “technologies do not evolve under the impetus of some necessary inner technological or scientific logic”; rather, technology is “pressed into shape” by those who use it—that is, users are the people who determine the trajectory of our technologies.5 In this sense, these comedians have become technology shapers by understanding how the properties of various media can be used to their benefit. In Marshall McLuhan’s aphorism, these comics are attuned to the fact that often the “medium is the message.”6 Moreover, this technology-shaping comes from a group of comedians who value their alternative label but who are also in some way beholden to large, commer- cial, and mainstream industries to provide them with some semblance of monetary stability. Such competing demands create an interesting dynamic and produce a tension that is negotiated in the discussions and interviews between comedians that make up a substantial part of podcast discourse. As Steven McClung and Kristine Johnson note, much of the academic research that has been done on podcasting has been limited to tracking the motives of the podcast user, the rate in which podcasts are being downloaded, and how podcasts are being used in educational and business settings.7 The uses of the podcast in education have been an especially prevalent research topic in a number of scholarly articles.8 While this particular research is useful and gives much-needed definition to often intangible concepts, there none- theless exists a significant void in inquiry into podcasting that transcends StAH 1.1_02_Meserko.indd 22 06/04/15 4:43 PM Standing Upright 23 these genres. Podcasting studies can benefit from thec onsiderable amount of new media research that details the ways in which the Internet and other digital communication technologies have fundamentally altered notions of fandom, artist-fan co-creation, online community, and the participatory nature of contemporary artistic creation. Jenkins, Nancy Baym, and Cecilia Hiesun Suhr have described in detail how cultures of media convergence are participatory and transformational in the ways that fans and artists relate to one another and how consumers themselves are adding their own creative touches to the media they consume.9 An often overlooked critical approach, however, is the engagement of these texts as inherently important and as exceptional examples of the inventive use of new media from the perspective of the artist. The dynamics of the artist-fan relationship are profoundly influenced by the content itself. If the user feels compelled to participate with media he or she consumes, then something must exist within these texts that makes engagement with them attractive to those who seek them out. By turning a critical eye to new media texts as rhetorical discourse for a situated audience, I illuminate the form of the podcast medium while developing and building on previous research on the dynamics of com- munication technology. These comedy podcasts function as a unique space for comedy performance, oftentimes featuring absurd characters and stream-of- consciousness wit. My analysis shows that the UCB community of podcasters has used the freedom of the medium not just to perform their craft, but also to comment specifically on that craft—to situate it in a cultural context, to define the parameters of alternative comedy, and to comment on how to maintain artistic integrity. I conclude that these functions are the defining characteristics that structure the UCB alternative comedy community. These comics are tied together by place (the UCB), but they are also tied together by the style of the comedy and by the tenor of the conversation within the podcast medium. What seems to be a wholly unpredictable medium has a characteristic style for a situ- ated group of artists, and this style reinforces the ways the comics identify with each other.