Comedy and theft

A question from my inbox, along with my response:

I’ve noticed how fierce comedians are about joke stealing. Are there examples of comedians who use influences to produce original material?

Of course. Like any artist, a comedian takes what’s come before them and turns it into something new. They begin by trying out the voices of other comedians and eventually find a voice of their own.

There’s a whole paragraph about comedians in Steal Like An Artist:

Conan O’Brien has talked about how comedians try to emulate their heroes, fall short, and end up doing their own thing. Johnny Carson tried to be Jack Benny but ended up Johnny Carson. David Letterman tried to copy Johnny Carson but ended up David Letterman. And Conan O’Brien tried to be David Letterman but ended up Conan O’Brien. In O’Brien’s words, “It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.”

One of my all-time favorite comedians is Richard Pryor. His writer, Paul Mooney, once quoted Milton Berle: “I know a good joke when I steal one.”

One of my favorite Richard Pryor skits is “Exorcist,” off That Nigger’s Crazy. Pryor imagines the movie if there were black people in it. “The movie would’ve been about seven minutes long. [In The Devil’s voice] ‘Hello?’ [In Pryor’s voice] ‘Goodbye!’”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InLfUMjyKNo

About a decade later, Eddie Murphy stole Pryor’s joke and updated it using Poltergeist: “Why don’t white people just leave the house when there’s a ghost in the house?” (See also: Jordan Peele’s Get Out.)

This is what makes comedy so rich: When you listen to any particular lineage of comedians, you can often hear the echoes and trace the influences in their work. (I love the beginning of Chris Rock’s Bring The Pain — he actually flashes images of some of his favorite comedy albums before the set, acknowledging the masters he’s trying to join.)

What these guys did, of course, is steal from the comedians who came before them and transform the jokes into something new. Most of the joke-stealing ire you see online now is the result of comedians stealing from their contemporaries, or worse, stealing from lesser-known comedians.

Good theft vs. bad theft.

Hope that helps?

Here is an I.W.W. “stickerette” produced in the 1910s, protesting the exploitation of children in textile mills.

I can’t help but think of it when my first grader complains about going to school:

“The day felt like a week!”

“I don’t get to think about what I want to think about!”

“It takes me away from my music!”

His protests aren’t that school is all that bad (he has a great teacher and a sunny classroom) but it’s just too long.

It’s like Chris Rock said in Kill The Messenger: “There ain’t enough time when you got a career. When you got a job, there’s too much time.”

Here’s Jenny Odell (author of How To Do Nothing) on how she tries to slow down time for the students in her classes:

I can’t give my students more time in their lives; but what I try to do is change the way they think about and value it in the first place. My class typically includes students who aren’t art majors, some of whom may never have made art before. I give them the same advice every quarter: Leave yourself twice as much time as you think you need for a project, knowing that half of that may not look like “making” anything at all. There is no Soylent version of thought and reflection — creativity is unpredictable, and it simply takes time.

Emphasis mine. The first grader knows it already, and all too well… and it’ll only get worse!