The best comedy leads the audience somewhere they're not prepared to go
Matt Labash: "Beating wokesters over the head is not an unworthy endeavor. But it’s also become a crutch. There’s no challenge or surprise in it."
Matt Labash, journalist and author, recently gave an interview that had some sharp insights on comedy. Three takeaways below…
1) Don’t be predictable. All comedy (and drama) turns on not knowing exactly what’s coming next.
There are a lot of comics who aren’t card-carrying wingers, who are just now openly revolting against the anti-comic Stasi, and who almost sound like wingers as a result. Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, etc. They’ve been hammered so hard, they’re tired of it. And I don’t blame them, and welcome their free-speech advocacy. Because without the freest of free speech, almost nothing that gets said is worth saying. If you want to illuminate the human condition, the mind needs room to roam.
Conversely, many overt wingers have also lost their senses of humor, unbeknownst to them. Because they, too, have become overly-politicized. (Like I said before, politics ruin everyone.) They rely too much on the same three clapter punchlines that are more social statements than jokes, that don’t depend so much on funniness, as they do on your audience agreeing with you. So much of what now passes for conservative “comedy” is just beating wokesters over the head. And don’t get me wrong, they deserve to be beaten over the head. That is not an unworthy endeavor. But it’s also become a crutch. There’s no challenge or surprise in it. And all good drama and comedy turns on not knowing exactly what’s coming next. The best drama/comedy leads the audience some place they weren’t necessarily prepared to go. Dave Chappelle understands that intrinsically. Which is why he’s so interesting to watch, even when he’s not trying to be overtly funny. In fact, he sometimes makes me laugh the hardest when he’s being dead serious, then peppers his seriousness with a joke. He understands the deeper kind of funny. Which is an increasingly lost art.
2) Get outside yourself. Appreciate the humanity of people you find disagreeable.
I would say that we all, of course, have our political predilections, our biases, our pocket lists of villains we think deserve to die slow, painful deaths. That’s natural. But our politics, held onto too tightly, inevitably ruin just about everyone. If you can never hear the music, or appreciate the humanity of the people you disagree with – and they almost all have something to recommend them - whether you’re a foaming-at-the-mouth Trumpster, or some tight-assed faculty-lounge wokester, you’re gonna miss out on the full human experience. You’re gonna live in your cramped, filthy hovel of a world with grievance and anger and resentment, which ain’t gonna affect your ideological enemies very much, but it will eat up your insides. So my advice would be get outside. Both physically – in nature, which is a balm – and outside yourself, as well. Your crap never smells as good as you think it does. So smell somebody else’s on occasion. Read other things besides political BS. My reading diet spans lots of subjects – I very rarely read straight-up political books. Because political life, as currently practiced, is death. You can only take so much of it, and stay healthy.
3) Trying not to suck is a full-time job. Don’t look back on your hits; the only thing that really matters is what you write next.
But the truth is, none of [the things I’ve written] matter now. Because if you’re still writing, the only thing you really care about, or should, is the next piece. Every one of which, is a chance to fail anew. Trying not to suck is a full-time job for any writer, or should be. The minute you think you can’t, you probably will.
He’s a great (and funny) writer. His Slack Tide newsletter is here.