Kushal Haran Mr. Nguyen AP Lang 2/23/14 Comedic Art What makes something funny?

Scientists are likely accurate in their assessment that it is merely a reflex resulting from an incongruence detected by our left side of the brain. E.B. White was closer though, claiming humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process (West). After all, explaining the joke ruins it. Nevertheless, we can all agree we love to laugh. This is one universality that dominates the human condition. Ultimately, laughing is a reprieve from the awkward trauma of life in which, for a transient moment, we embrace the occasional playfulness of life. In that sense, laughing is fundamentally necessary for us to get through the challenge that is life. This, while nihilistic, is perhaps the reason why comedians even exist and are not just members of common society but are showered with fame and fortune (when successful of course). Comedians are not just workers; rather, they are artists that reveal the absurdity of life so as to enable us to enjoy life just a little bit more. This is where I locate my essay: a comparison between arguably the two best artists of todayLouis C.K. and Bill Burr. Both are hysterical misanthropes that force the audience to embrace their own anguish and laugh at their melancholy. Ironically, in their excessive cynicism, they improve the lives of everyone in the crowd, if only for an ephemeral period. They are artists just like Picasso and Hitchcock, producing pieces of art (jokes) that evoke an affective investment in the material (laughter). However, while Bill Burr relies on his angry voice and emotional exuberance to elicit laughter, Louis C.K. uses elaborate stories imbued with empathetic elements concluding with a painfully honest conclusion

about humanity that is both hilarious (ironically a title of one of his bits) and illuminating. Therefore, Louis C.K. remains the king of comedy because of the profundity that is engrained in his style which is missing in Bill Burrs technique. Louis C.K.s genius begins with his style. For the most part, he uses storytelling as his medium to tell jokes in which he constructs hypothetical scenarios or tells actual stories from his life intertwined with ludicrous details to convey his joke. However, many times, Louis C.K.s act of telling the story is where he derives most of the comedy from his joke. In this sense, the medium really is the message. For example, in the aforementioned Hilarious bit, the fundamental joke is that hilarious is overused when its definition was actually used to describe something so funny that you almost went insane. He sets up the joke by describing a quotidian experience at a diner in which he overhears a conversation that uses hilarious for a mundane joke. He then proceeds by giving the punch line and goes on constructing a story full of vulgarities and absurdities that actually would be considered hilarious, thus, arousing a roaring laughter in the audience (Hilarious). The majority of the comedy in this joke is found after the punch line, in Louis C.K.s animated telling of his constructed story. However, in this aspect Bill Burr may surpass Louis C.K.s storytelling ability. In fact, his stage persona and comic rhythm are more charismatic and distinct (Zinoman). Bill Burr tells stories in a similar way, deriving his humor from the angry retelling of his life events. For instance, he describes his experience buying a gun with an angry, disparaging tone towards rednecks who sell the guns thus building comic momentum with his magnetic voice (Zinoman). His tone is much more emphatic than Louis C.K.s in that he seems invested in his story while Louis C.K. seems more detached. Hence, Bill Burrs irate personality on stage produces a dimension to his performance that is lacking in Louis C.K.s. However, what Louis C.K. is missing in tonal enthusiasm, he makes up for in his linguistic choices. Put simply, Louis C.K.s vocabulary is more diverse than Bill Burrs which enables him to use words to evoke the emotional reaction Bill Burr conveyed with his enthusiasm. Nonetheless, the most important distinction between Louis C.K. and Bill

Burr is that Louis C.K. always has a fundamental argument in his story whereas Bill Burrs story is more like a play. Like in the aforementioned examples, Louis C.K. was talking about the overuse of some words while Bill Burr just discussed a funny situation. There is always some thesis that Louis C.K. articulates, of which the stories are merely analogues for. While this does not necessarily make Louis C.K. funnier, it certainly makes him the better artist. While the concept of art is subjective and inherently undefinable, there is something to be said about the way Louis C.K. treats his work as opposed to Bill Burrs treatment of his material. In a conversation between four renowned comedians, Louis C.K. claimed the process of creating specials is cathartic and only for himself the audience can react in whatever way they want to (Talking Funny). This is evidenced by how many of his jokes are unscripted and sometimes do not hit the audience directly but he still goes on with the line of thought. Bill Burr, on the other hand, has claimed in multiple interviews that he does not think of comedy as a job at all but just a hobby he is occasionally paid for and extremely invested in (Evans). This self-deprecating attitude, while maybe used for humorous purposes, does reflect Bill Burrs detachment from the creative process of comedy that Louis C.K. affirms. In fact, Bill Burr has even made the joke about how ridiculous it is that an audience pays him to listen to him talk when he is not saying anything meaningful (You People are all the Same). The logic behind this statement conveys how Burr does not necessarily think of his material as something to be proud of. Moreover, when looking at Louis C.K.s other work like his show Louie, it is clear how he interprets his work as art. Louie is a surrealist show with each episode containing a set of absurd vignettes that are both thought provoking and morbidly funny. Just the unique presentation of the show alone illustrates Louis C.K.s artistic investment in his work, not to mention the deep themes the show hits like hopeless romanticism and the liminality of dreaming. This is not to say Bill Burr is not an artist, though he would disavow any notion of the sort. Burr is still creating a comedic aesthetic that is presented on stage to an audience who affectively engages and judges the material. If this relation is not

art then nothing is. However, Louis C.K.s artistic attachment to his work makes him more of an artist than Bill Burr even leading Burr to calling him the king (Evans). However, Louis C.K. really transcends all other comedians, including Bill Burr because with each of his jokes comes a revelation about the way the world or humanity works, making experiencing his comedy enlightening. Louis C.K.s comedy describes the world in profound ways that are rarely even captured in deep philosophical texts. For example, Louis C.K. has a bit labeled I enjoy being white which involves him discussing different choices of race and how choosing to be white is clearly the best option no matter how unfair that may be. After giving multiple examples and involving a mythological story, Louis C.K. concludes that white people are always treated better (Chewed Up). While not revolutionary, the blatant and parodical portrayal of white privilege enables the audience to gain insight on the institution of whiteness that is missing from many dissertations and peer reviewed articles on the subject. This is perhaps representative of Freuds theory that disturbing ideas will be discussed in the form of dreams, verbal slips, and jokes (Leong 22). However, that is not to deny the ability of Louis C.K. to reveal facets of society generally hidden from our traditional interpretation of the world. This technique of being painfully honest traditionally falls under the umbrella term of observational comedy. This type of comedy makes use of the its funny cause its true mentality. However, Louis C.K. is specifically talented in revealing the absurd incongruences in the world that everyone in the crowd has witnessed and in making a joke of them. This capability induces empathy from the crowd for the situation that Louis C.K. is describing, making the joke all the more funny. This revolutionizes comedy for it is no longer a medium to tell jokes with a blatant punch line but a medium to analyze the absurdity of life as a whole and bask in that absurdity rather than nihilistically remain passive about it. In some sense, Louis C.K. transforms cynical negativity into positive affirmation of life by converting that melancholic, negative aspect of the world into something that joy can be derived from. Bill Burr certainly accesses this ability as well. For example, his bit what are you, a fag? is really a satirical interpretation

of traditional gender roles. In it, Burr explains how he and a slew of other guys do not act in certain ways because they would be labeled a fag (You People are all the Same) . Bill Burrs reflection on the phrase as brutal reveals a criticism of the institution of heteronormativity and how it constrains how we perform our identity. However, it does not accomplish the same positive affirmation that Louis C.K.s jokes do. Furthermore, it is rarely in his specials. For the most part, Burr relies on his magnetic voice and the anomalistic absurdity of the situation to generate humor rather than the fundamental condition of the world. Put another way, Burr takes events that are crazy and rare and makes a joke of them while Louis C.K. takes mundane events that reflect badly on humanity and transforms them into hilarious situations. This transformation from mundane and miserable to joyous and funny is what makes Louis C.K. the best comedic artist of today. Humans have always had a desire for humorous amusement. Even hundreds of years ago, jesters were employed by nobility to provide humorous relief to their otherwise serious and stressful jobs. Laughter is not a mere emotion that is occasionally felt. It is an experience we delight in for whatever reason, it is a way to gauge a relationship between two people, it is a sometimes painful reflex we embrace to interrupt the monotony of everyday life. We all love to wax poetic about our desires and passions but at the end of the day, when presented with the opportunity we would always rather laugh. Therefore, it is slightly unsatisfying and ironic that an essay dedicated to comedy transformed into a serious and overly theoretical contemplation on humor. This is why Louis C.K. and Bill Burr are not just funny, but artists. For one hour on stage, almost every day they make the crowd laugh at the world and the hardships that constitute their lives, making their otherwise difficult lives a little more manageable. However, there is only one king and that is Louis C.K. because he takes meaninglessness and turns it into joyous meaning. That is literally what converting absurdity into humor is. To affirm the life of all those in the crowd, even for a moment is to improve the world if only an infinitesimal amount. This is what makes Louis C.K. not just an artist but the artist

Bibliography Campbell, Troy. "Why We Love Louis CK? -- His Painful Honesty." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com,15 Nov. 2013. Web. 24 February 2014.

Chewed Up. By Louis C.K. Boston, MA, Boston. 1 Mar. 2008. Performance.

C.K., Louis, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and Ricky Gervais. "Talking Funny." Interview.Youtube.com. N.p., 9 June 2013. Web. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAxoRh06XM4>.

Evans, Bradford. "Bill Burr Responds to 'Rolling Stone' Calling Him "The New Louis C.K.""Splitsider. N.p., 07 Nov. 2013. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.

Hilarious. By Louis C.K. New York City. 21 Jan. 2010. Performance.

Leong, Nancy. "Racial Capitalism." By Nancy Leong. Harvard Law Review, June 2013. Web. 24 Feb. 2014. West, Jinae. "What Makes Something Funny?" NPR. NPR, n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.

You People Are All the Same. By Bill Burr. Pennsylvania. 2012. Performance.

Zinoman, Jason. "This Guys No Puppy Hugger." The New York Times. The New York Times, 07 Nov. 2013. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.