Recently, there has been a disturbing trend in comedy, where the entire story has just been characters screaming for no apparent reason while completely random events surround them. This kind of comedy, quite frankly, is trash.
Unfortunately, people have been defending it by referring to it as absurdist humor, a term which does not apply at all. Absurdist humor is very different in that there is always an inherent logic to the situation, and the events make sense within context. Yes, absurdity is defined as “wildly unreasonable, illogical, or inappropriate,” so it can be seen why some would call this trash absurdist comedy. But the key word is “comedy.”
Randomness is not funny; it is lazy. In order to be absurdist comedy, something needs to be crazy and absurd, yet at the same time be logical and relatable. Anything else is just poor writing. And when excuses are made for laziness, laziness becomes more acceptable. The sub-par products of this laziness begin to flood the market, and audiences and artists who actually care suffer. This is my hate mail to Tim and Eric.
A big rule of comedy is that there has to be a certain level of relatability in order to be funny. This is why there are sayings such as, “It’s funny because it’s true,” or “Oh wow, I can totally relate. This makes me laugh!” Now, this is not to say that all comedy has to be super realistic, because that itself is unrealistic. There has to be something for the audience to latch onto. That way, when the audience sees something that they relate too, they can predict what happens next.
When something unexpected then happens, they laugh. But in order for it to be funny, that initial relatability needs to happen. For example, in the movie Airplane!, the protagonist claims to have a drinking problem. The audience assumes that this means that he is a raging alcoholic. Instead, after the character makes this claim, he splashes his drink in his own face. The audiences expectations have been subverted, and the joke works. But if you take out that initial relatable phrase, “I have a drinking problem,” and just have the character randomly throw their drink in their face, then the humor is gone. The joke isn’t even a joke. It’s just someone randomly throwing water in their own face.
Comedy also has to be realistic. Now, comedies obviously don’t have to follow the rules of our universe, and most don’t, cause our universe sucks and is boring and isn’t Star Wars. Fiction is allowed to be goofy and ridiculous and magical. But that doesn’t mean that the writers can simply do anything that they want. Everything should follow an inherent logic, should tie together into a nice little package. Rules for their universes need to be made, and then not be broken. And these rules are known as plot and characters.
The plot must logically progress from one part to another, and the characters must act like themselves. If the plot suddenly takes a completely unexplained twist or contradicts itself, or if the characters begin to act completely differently for absolutely no reason, then the logic of the situation is gone. The audience becomes confused, and it’s not funny anymore. Even in the most absurd comedic situations, you still need to get from point A to point B. You can’t just throw in a point crow. This is the largest problem with so many comedies being produced today. So often they are just characters screaming random thing for no reason.
It’s all so chaotic and crazy that the story never seems to appear. Anybody can string a few random words together and call it a story. Waffle. Moose. Cantaloupe. Mango. Lincoln. See? Even I can do it, and everybody agrees that I’m not funny. It’s so simple and boring, but it makes so little sense that it ends up confusing. Anybody can wave around bright, flashy lights, but it takes a master of organization and skill to make a light show.
The movie Airplane! was excellent at this. The movie was certainly absurd, and none of the characters could really exist in real life, but it followed a focused, coherent plot. The jokes were relevant to the situations, and while they were most certainly absurd, they always had a degree of relatability for the audience to latch onto, it made its own kind of sense. It is the perfect example of absurdist comedy, and comparing it to “random comedy” being produced today is an insult.
So please, stop defending this junk by hiding behind absurdism, acting like it’s just too deep for me andsayingthatIjustdon’tgetit.It’s trash, and I don’t like it so neither should you.