Thought 16: Is novelty the heart of comedy?

I've heard this one a couple of times.  It is generally used less to defend a particular piece of comedy and more to attack a particular piece of comedy.  Usually the piece of comedy in question is something relatively formulaic.  The general form of the argument is "If I know how the joke is going to end it isn't funny".

While I understand the sentiment taking the step to "Therefore novelty is the only or most important part of comedy" is just wrong.  Even if you narrow comedy down to "comic performance" I don't think that argument stands up.

But let's start with our first critique.  How many times have you heard a story start with "Remember that time..." and end in hysterical laughter?  You've heard it happen plenty of times.  Humans are social creatures and we crave common experiences.  Some of the worst loneliness comes from a place when you think no one understands you or has similar experiences to you.  While you can have novelty inside a shared space, there needs to at least be some common assumptions and agreed upon rules of interpretation for comedy to take place.

A great example of humor that hasn't evolved much is racist humor (note, this is not racial humor, but racist humor).  Every group of people that holds a negative view of another group has some racist jokes.  These are general not novel.  I have heard many jokes told over and over with the only difference being whether the speaker wants to make fun of blondes, other sexes, other races, or alumni from different schools.  In college my chemistry teacher would stop the class every day to tell a joke about students from our rival college.  These jokes are recycled, yet people still laugh at them.  The laughter is less inspired by the wit of the joke and more by the sense of togetherness engendered by mocking the lesser group, but it is still "comedy" by any realistic definition.

I think I need to make an important point here.  When discussing any kind of art, music, or any other subjectively enjoyable aesthetic based performance we need to make a distinction.  For example if you listen to Jeff Dunham and you don't like his comedy you can say "That isn't funny" (or my preference "I don't think that is funny") but you can't say "That isn't comedy".  You can say it is bad comedy, but you shouldn't refuse to grant it the ability to define itself as comedy.

We also need to draw distinctions between "That is not subjectively funny" and "That is not well crafted humor".  Someone can craft a very well put together rape joke.  I'm not going to think it is funny because of the topic.  I can still appreciate the craft put into it and determine whether or not someone is skillful in creation and delivery.

Basically comedy is much richer of an experience than "I haven't seen that before".  While novelty/shock value should not be underestimated (I can only hear so many airplane food jokes before I stop laughing at them unless you have a new angle) it isn't the only (or even the most important) part of comedy.  The context (racial humor by majority people against minority people is very differen than vice versa), who we listen to the comedy with (in a club vs alone in a car vs in my living room), the content, the delivery (personality, timing, etc...), these all have just as much impact as whether or not I've heard a similar set before.