Saturday, March 10, 2018

Anatomy of a joke: Who's on First?
So, Who's on First? The classic Abbott and Costello routine (the link is here, there are other versions of it depending on your tolerance for hunting it down).
Why would I call this "Deconstructed" humor?
Because it's not a joke, first. Read a transcript, and there's no one thing that you can point to and call a joke.
But at the same time, if you watch or listen to the bit, it's a continuous joke: the rhythm of setup-punchline is continuous from beginning to end, and it's all in the delivery.
Which says there's a second reason it's a deconstructed joke: it's all wordplay. There's no object, no butt of the joke. All there is, is two guys playing with words. Setting 'em up and knocking 'em down.
In other words, it's jazz, with words alone. Pure poetry and the rhythm, the feel of conversation.
Which is why it works as sign language.
The idea contains multitudes. An obvious one is George Carlin and the Seven Words you can't say on television (not linking for the obvious not-safe-for-work factor). The analogy breaks down a little for me in the setup, because it's George playing a little with general hypocrisy, but when he gets rolling, really all he's doing is riffing on the words, what they sound like, how to play with words.
Again, there's no object of the joke (assuming the FCA doesn't count), it's just Carlin playing with words, to great effect.
But back to something about the Who's on First bit. I wonder if you could take a pair of kids who'd never heard of it, give one Bud's part and one Lou's part, and turn them loose to memorize it and come back and play it on stage. How far do you think they could get through it trying to play it straight?
In other words, the other think I think about this is that it's so well constructed that it doesn't matter how they start out, eventually the rhythm of the thing takes over, and all of a sudden you're Lou Costello trying like hell to understand what in the world is going on with this crazy baseball team...

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Please keep it on the sane side. There are an awful lot of places on the internet for discussions of politics, money, sex, religion, etc. etc. et bloody cetera. In this time and place, let us talk about something else, and politely, please.