Does it matter if comedy punches up or down?
Are you an edge-lord or an emp-queen?
I'll casually refer to 'Edge-lord' and 'Emp-queen' as the two poles of the comedy spectrum. To further emphasise my aloofness, I'll use the shorthand terms 'edgy' and 'empo'.
What is punching up and down?
You’re probably familiar with this term, it refers to the target of your joke. Punching up is when your joke targets those who hold more power, and punching down is when your joke targets those with less power. For example, if you wanted to make a joke about homelessness, mocking an unhoused person would probably make you look like a bully, even if the person was incredibly problematic.
It’s hard not to feel deep empathy for someone that lives in poverty, and their anger at the world is kind of justified. But if your joke was to attack the power system that allows homelessness to exist, that is punching up. Your audience has to like you in order to laugh, in general people don’t like bullies. And I get it “It’s only a joke mate!”. Yeah, it still has to be funny. Take the Ricky Gervais meme above, It’s not unfunny to me because it’s “punching down” it’s unfunny because any bloke down the pub could come up with the same thing, it’s boring.
Unchecked icky robs your set of laughs
- William Shakespeare
That’s not to say you can’t be funny and “punch-down”, but you have to tip-toe the icky feeling. Unchecked icky robs your set of laughs. Be as icky as you like, but own the icky, make jokes about it, use it to laugh at you and society. Be cartoonishly absurd, flip the attitude. In comedy you can say whatever you want, but you are responsible for the energy you put out in to the room.
Punching up/down was only ever meant to be a shorthand to explain a complicated issue. It’s not a rule, but rather a tool you can use to review why a bit maybe isn’t working. But, like all well meaning short-cuts, both edgy and empo comics have co-opted it to trumpet what they believe to their own echo chamber.
Use real feelings to write the joke
The trouble with jokes that punch down is they often ignore any emotional depth, meaning they aren’t believable/relatable.
Believability + Surprise = Laughter
From:
Whatever topic you choose, there’s a reason it occurred to you as interesting, and that reason was born out of real feelings. Going back to the homelessness example. Assuming you’re not or have never been unhoused, how is the way homelessness effects your life? It probably makes you feel bad, it makes you feel guilty. You don’t like being asked for money while you’re cheersing Mimosas and guzzling a €40 brunch. Does a millionaire see you how you see an unhoused person? Can they actually see unhoused people, or are they outside the spectrum of wealth they can see?
I was only using homelessness as an example and now I seem obsessed
This bit is from 10 years ago, perhaps longer and I’d say it’s aged as well as it could because it doesn’t mock its subject.
Write about what you want, joke about what you want, but always ask yourself why this subject? Do you really care about this subject, or are you trying to tick it off some edge-lord bingo card? If you write about yourself, you can never go wrong.
Absolutely!
Many years ago, I survived a house fire with my oldest son just 3 days before a show in town I had booked to "headline." They called a headlining spot but it was long showcase of small sets with a 20min feature at the end if we're living in reality.
I kept the spot, wrote about the experience and it was everything I or an audience ever wanted from a live comedy experience. Raw, real, deep and funny. At one point, I shared a story about how the afternoon after the early morning fire, I was walking with a friend downtown in Olympia, and was approaching a homeless person sitting on the sidewalk. I told the audience that I had mentioned to my friend that I could not wait for this guy to ask me for change because I will get to tell him that all my money burned up and I won't be lying - it received, maybe a chuckle. I realized this and asked the crowd, "Is it because in this scenario, there is still a person who is homeless with no resources? Is that why its' not funny?"
My awareness and sarcasm pointed at myself got everyone back on track and we continued to laugh about how all of my belongings were gone. The real me doesn't think the houseless community is funny at all. I was rambling on stage and this unformed idea came out and my real-time feedback was that it was not good. And I realized why immediately and made fun of myself for it.