What's So Funny?

Dan French, a comedian and an academic, considers whether comedy can cross a line. 

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Michael Lee: [00:00:00] When We Disagree is a show about arguments. How we have them, why we have them, and their impact on our relationships and ourselves. Meaning is contextual. Many communication scholars have spent their careers promoting variations on this theme. The meaning of a word, a statement, a deed, is context dependent.

Our old friend Aristotle 500 years ago when he argued that there are three types of occasions. Ceremonial, Forensic, and Deliberative. And these three occasions can influence the arguments we make, and the types of arguments we expect. Ceremonial occasions concern communal identity in the present.

Forensic occasions concern conduct in the past. Deliberative occasions concern actions in the future. That is, Deliberative occasions are about our collective need to take or avoid some action. A homeowner's association might want to persuade owners to pay more in annual dues this year [00:01:00] so that everybody can get a new roof.

A city might want safer streets or nicer playgrounds. A nation might want to make health care more affordable. The lines of arguments are often the same across deliberative occasions, however. What is happening? How quickly is it happening? How great is the threat? Are we doing anything about it now, and should we do anything about it in the future?

I'm Michael Lee, Professor of Communication and Director of the Civility Initiative at the College of Charleston. Our guest on When We Disagree is Dan French, a comedian with a PhD. He's a former late night staff writer for David Letterman and others. He spent 17 weeks as a cruise ship stand up last year.

He does political communication training and hosts the podcast, Rhetoric Training for America. Dan, tell us an argument story. 

Dan French: My whole life is argument stories, it seems like. Uh, I thought what's kind of interesting this weekend, Jerry [00:02:00] Seinfeld popped back up into the news, which he does, I don't know, every few cycles, uh, stomping on people for limiting his comedy.

And this time, it's usually the left he goes after, the far left, the woke. The college audiences who no longer, you know, the PC audiences who will no longer let him. He's not a very political comedian anyway, but I guess he doesn't like any limits at all. So that was always kind of interesting to me. It's because it's an argument I've had for 40 years, because I've been doing standup for a long time.

And the question is whether there should be limits on comedy of any type, whether there's social awareness or the value of the comedy, or are you harming somebody Versus totally unfettered, no rules whatsoever for comedy. And I always land on the far side of, yeah, I really don't like rules for comedy. I don't, I'm not sure that's the point.

Michael Lee: You land on the side of [00:03:00] anybody asking for limits doesn't get comedy. 

Dan French: It's always serious people who are trying to limit comedy. Which doesn't seem like the right people to be laying down the rules for comedy. 

Michael Lee: Yeah, this is a kind of fascinating. It's certainly come up since the so much since the the world got so much more contentious maybe in the last 10 years or so the kind of sensitivity and then Certain comedians being quote unquote canceled, but then arguably their career is benefiting from being canceled and becoming all that much more popular with certain audiences because they've been canceled and so now they're Selling out places that they never would have sold out before post cancellation, which is the deepest irony of that But this whole thing is a debate about what is funny?

What should be funny? Who should be allowed to To tell what jokes so from your point of view Anybody should be allowed to tell any joke and the only test is is it's funny [00:04:00] 

Dan French: Well, that's not even the test the comedy is a different You know, it's a different environment. It's a very different world than social contract and social construct than every other form of public rhetoric like I worked in writer's rooms for a long time, and on TV shows and talk shows, the rules are different.

Like, you are not restricted by the morality of your jokes. In fact, you get celebrated for being the least moral person in the room. The person who says the most horrendous thing in the cleverest way wins in writer's rooms. And that's the dominant aesthetic. There's no judgment. There's no moral judgment because it's just comedy.

Nobody's trying to push a social agenda. Nobody's trying to get this out into the world. They're trying to be funny within the constructs of that aesthetic. 

Michael Lee: The question is, does it work? And [00:05:00] working has a context and working in a writer's room is different than the public at large, but at least in the logic of the writer's room, if it works, meaning, is it the most clever expression, perhaps of a cutting statement?

Dan French: Those are the two dominant rules. Can you say the worst thing possible and can you say it in the most clever way? And that doesn't clearly, that doesn't exist in the rest of the culture. Rest of society doesn't really want to base it. Public talk on those two rules, but in comedy like high level Super pro comedy.

That's what the dominant aesthetic is 

Michael Lee: I want to get back to the Seinfeld example in just a second because I find it interesting That he of all people has a kind of militant defense of comedy when his act is In no way, shape, or form is pushing the envelope on what's sayable, on what's funny, on what's cruel.[00:06:00] 

Can you tell us a bit about your act? How do you work vis a vis Jerry Seinfeld? Are you more on the Seinfeld end or more on the shock comic end or somewhere in between? 

Dan French: I'm definitely more on the Seinfeld end, but only because it's too much trouble to do hardcore comedy in public. Like if you're going to do that comedy, you have to deal with the blowback to that comedy.

And I have a lot of favorite comedians who are hardcore comics. I have favorite comics who are very clean comics. I'm very artful about comedy writing. Like I believe in the, uh, the art itself, the aesthetics, how well you write that joke is what matters to me. I don't really care whether it's got language or whether it's a horrible thing to say to people or mean or cruel.

I care about the art of the joke. And I think Seinfeld is that same way. The problem with standups is once you start interviewing them on an intellectual basis, they fall apart really quickly, [00:07:00] like he has a terrible argument. The idea that it's the left and PC and woke, I'm like, the right is just as restrictive more so about comedy and language and all the things that will accept it's about restrictors.

It's not about a political position. And so most standups can't really intellectualize that they're comedians. They can make it funny. Within a certain range, but they can't intellectually support most of the stuff that they believe 

Michael Lee: I'm not a stand up Uh don't study it consume stand up love it, but i'm in no way an expert or in a position to talk about this But i'm going to ask a question from my own personal experience and you can offer your correction as needed of the kind of seinfeldian position that there are too many people trying to police comedy.

Too many people are asking the question, where's the line to these comics who are just trying to be funny and trying to entertain people. It seems like the [00:08:00] consistent scapegoat is the woke left and not a sensitivity that comes from the center or the right. Why is that? 

Dan French: Well, I think in the past, like you said, 10 years, you know, at the rise of social media, Alternative groups, aggrieved groups, any type of subgroup that didn't have power to talk in public before now get some space to talk.

They probably never liked that kind of humor. Nobody really likes being the target of humor. But now they've got a forum for getting some public attention for their criticism. And that's what's really changed. It's not that the world is more PC. I mean, you can't tell me the world's more PC than the 50s and Lenny Bruce getting thrown in jail for a couple of words.

You know, it's far, it's far less PC than it's ever been. But comedy now gets drug into context where it wasn't originally created. It probably wasn't [00:09:00] intended to be in that context. And now people can do whatever they want to it as responders, as critics. And that's just not the way comedy is really built.

Like in standup clubs, standups are very intimate. The club is very intimate. It's very bordered. It's not made for video. It's not made to be broadcast. You know, like when you actually record a full show, you might do more work on it to do that. There's a comic, Chad Daniels, really good standup. Been around for quite a while.

Gathered. Following now basically through Pandora and some of the social media places, but he just released basically a special where he walked down the middle of the political divide and he keeps saying, I disagree with both sides. I agree with both sides and it kind of works, but it's just technique.

You know, it's just total stand up technique where he's laying the blame for his jokes off on something else other than himself. 

Michael Lee: Yeah, there's tons of, there's a few comics that come to mind who, because [00:10:00] so much of the world, all entertainment has been sucked into a kind of red or blue vortex, and what kind of car I drive, what kind of clothes I wear, what college I go to or don't go to, what city I live in, all map onto church and guns and who I vote for.

And the same is true with the shows I watch, whether it's Yellowstone or this or that. And comedy is the same way and there's a, there's essays about comedians like Nate Marghezzi and others who are trying very hard to work rooms in Mobile, Alabama, as well as San Francisco. Some are doing so successfully, some are doing so unsuccessfully.

Are you a type of comic who's trying to work multiple different types of rooms or are you more easily pigeonholed? 

Dan French: I like to write for hardcore comics. I like writing hardcore comedy. I like social political comedy. I worked for Dennis Miller for a while, and he was already sort of drifted over into the hardcore zealot right, but the show itself was [00:11:00] super fun to write for because it was a staff full of really smart people.

And Dennis would add political orientation on his own. All he cared about really was whether the joke was funny. And any public figure, you can take shots at. They've all got foibles, they've all got problems, they've all got things, weaknesses that you can take shots at. So, you didn't really have to take shots at just the liberals and the left for Dennis.

Like, as long as it was funny, he would say it. Which was, you know, very, there's very little professional outlets for people who like to write social issue comedy or political comedy. There really is not a lot. 

Michael Lee: I heard you earlier, and I want to make sure I got it right, say that you work relatively clean on the Seinfeld end.

And part of the reason for that is not wanting the blowback. Perhaps it's self censorship. 

Dan French: Uh, it's self shaping. I mean, but that's the nature of professional [00:12:00] comedy. There's always limits on what you do and what you don't do. I also worked for a sports comedy show called The Best Dance Sports Show, period.

Michael Lee: Yeah, I remember that show. Which was really 

Dan French: popular at the time. And I remember Pete Rose admitted that he bet on baseball, uh, during while we were on that show and the executive producer of the show was friends with Pete Rose and he wouldn't let us tell jokes about Pete Rose. The whole world was telling Pete Rose jokes, but the sports comedy, the preeminent sports comedy show was not allowed to do Pete Rose jokes.

And that's just the nature of professional comedy. You've always got limits. There's always like, Hey. We talk about these things, we go this far, and, you know, they limit. That's why I tell people most of the really great comedy that is created in American media, you never get to hear. It stays in the writer's rooms 

Michael Lee: because they're let's talk for a second about those limits because [00:13:00] this whole argument is about whether there should be limits or whether quote unquote accountability or cancellation is an appropriate response to a joke and then you're also saying well maybe there shouldn't be that's really an unfair way to look at comedy or comedy wasn't really designed to be limited in that sense and also most comedy is not heard by the mass public because of these limits.

Dan French: Yeah, it's a complicated field. Um, if I, if I really want to hear good comedy, then I would sit in a writer's room because unfettered, great minds saying whatever they want, create the best comedy. Uh, every once in a while you'll see a show like a TV show that gets a little bit of that in there. I thought Tosh 0.

0 cause a lot of those writers were standups and he was a standup, which meant he liked to push limits. Um, I think, uh, South Park, especially when it first started, would push [00:14:00] towards stand up kind of limits. Uh, really good comedy clubs, if the comedian feels protected enough to just talk about whatever they want to talk about, man, they'll go, they'll go so far into a topic.

And, again, they, it's whether you're artful, whether you can actually make this funny. Just being shocky, which is also part of stand up especially, and again I have no problem with it, like being mean and rude and cruel and shocky is a art and you're trying to get those responses from people. You don't want the other, but you don't want the other response.

You really don't want blowback. You don't want to be canceled and all this stuff. Even the comedians who have benefited from it have also been harmed by it because you're going to get attacked and like even Chappelle. You know, it can't do live shows without somebody going after him during this during the show.

Michael Lee: Is there a sense of the [00:15:00] appropriateness of the target? In other words, there's so much discourse about comedy, for instance, some of the criticism about Chappelle's and Chappelle's evolution over the years, to put it mildly, is that early Chappelle was always punching up from a down power position, taking shots at people who are far more culturally, politically, economically powerful.

And then a transition to, from his point of view, having hundreds of millions of dollars punching down at marginalized groups from a seat of power. And so the, the criticism is that about power and not necessarily anything else. 

Dan French: Yeah, and again, it's just a tradition. It's our tradition of comedy, of punching up.

It's not like there's no room for punching down in comedy. I think Letterman went through this same transition in a lot of ways. When he was coming out, he was very mischievous. Very about, you know, he used to do all sorts of about when GE [00:16:00] bought NBC, he would harass and heckle GE executives with a bullhorn.

You know, he was always causing trouble for power. And then once he kind of got in there and they're like really paying him, Then he started doing, you know, taking shots at people on the streets, you know, and things like that, which again, I don't care, either one is fine, you just have to choose whether as an audience you find this funny or not.

To me, like, criticizing a comedian for their moral positions is silly, like either laugh or don't laugh, turn them off or don't turn them off. But to start to bring the intellectual criticism and positioning into comedy, it doesn't fit that, that idiom to me. 

Michael Lee: As I recall, this was George Carlin's criticism of Andrew Dice Clay.

Dice Clay worked pretty bold, but also pretty conservative. And he said, if I remember correctly, in the early 90s on Larry King, of course, he thinks he's [00:17:00] pretty funny and is kind of blown away by the Dice Clay phenomenon there. And at the same time is worried that he's emboldening the forces of bigotry.

And so it could be both simultaneously that he has a niche audience, that niche audience is massive. Um, certainly a fad for a hot moment there. And he's fanning the flames of, of bigotry and deserves some blow back along those lines. 

Dan French: Yeah. And again, if you want to play social issue games with comedy, that's, that's an approach, there's a lot of comedy that.

Right now in stand up. There's sort of a right wing comedy. 

Michael Lee: It's 

Dan French: invaded the Space and it's almost always, you know, young white guys Who don't really understand? I don't think again their positions intellectually But they've been able to merge At least faux comedy technique. I wouldn't call it real comedy But they've at least adopted enough stand up technique.

They can [00:18:00] merge it with a different political ideology And it kind of sounds like comedy And people don't really distinguish and a lot of times with sort of fine tunedness about whether that's real comedy is that like these guys are pushing an agenda to me a political agenda, which again is fine. You want to do that with comedy.

But once you do that, then you've melded it with a new social contract, and I want to hear your justification. If you're going to do that, then you have to play both games. You don't get just hide behind. Oh, I'm a comedian. Out there you criticize me because you're you're doing two forms of talk So to me, you've got to be able to answer to both of them if you want to play both those games 

Michael Lee: You've written and practiced comedy for quite some time.

Can you recall being in a position where you? Fundamentally ideologically objected to a joke 

Dan French: Oh, all the time. Like, uh, [00:19:00] I usually object to them on their faulty intellectualism. You know, there'll be logos issues in their argument. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But again, if they found a clever way of stating it, uh, then I appreciate.

I appreciate it for that, but I would never challenge a comedian based on their, their idea quality. I just wouldn't do it. I'm like, if you want to talk to me outside of comedy and do intellectualism, awesome. Love doing that stuff, but I'm not going to drag a comedian into that if it's not their agenda.

And there are, there's some comedians who are way overblown in their, their own justification or ego about the quality of their thought. You know, there's a lot of people who want to be George Carlin, but they are not George Carlin. They're not Bill Hicks. They are not at that level of thinker, but they, they'd like to play it and you know, you'll see them sort of preach politics or social issues and I'm like, yeah, [00:20:00] I don't think you're there.

I don't think you've reached the pinnacle that you think you have of insight. 

Michael Lee: What's your, as we close, what's your takeaway as both a producer and a consumer? Of comedy, 

Dan French: uh, open it up, you know, take all the rules off all the governors all the, you know, repercussions Let comedians search out the limits of everything and quit to me like quit applying things that are going to limit your comedy to moralism I I just don't see it as being a positive for comedy itself.

Like we want high quality comedy We want our comedians to be our most creative and Pushiest, immoral, outsider, whatever you want to be. You want those people over there. You don't want them limiting themselves. You want them thinking, man, I can say whatever I want. I'm going to try to push the limits here.

Michael Lee: Dan French, thank you [00:21:00] very much for being on When We Disagree. 

Dan French: Yeah, super fun, man. I love, I love these discussions. 

Michael Lee: When We Disagree is recorded at the College of Charleston with creator and host Michael Lee. Recording and sound engineering by Jesse Kunz and Lance Laidlaw. Reach out to us at whenwedisagree@gmail.com