And how much of that is a persona?
Are Comedians... Cool?
While doing research for my interview with Raanan Hershberg (which you can read below!), I stumbled upon something he said on the podcast NO LAUGH TRACK with Justin Severson that caught my attention:
Being funny isn’t cool. I think actually being funny is not cool, y’know? In my opinion.
The comment made me pause at first, and I quickly jotted down a reminder to ask Hershberg about it when we spoke. I couldn’t quite tuck the thought away: Do people look at comedians as cool? Do people generally consider them cool? I thought of the endless amount of “I had to go to my buddy’s improv show, wah-wah,” jokes I’d heard; surely most people saw comedians that way, aka a little bit embarrassing. But I also considered the fact that comedians are performers, and there’s an inherent coolness to being a performer.
I wanted to start this rabbit hole adventure by figuring out what makes someone cool. While I found tons of “Top X Things That Make People Cool” articles, the most articulate answer I found was in a Bustle article. “A 'cool' person is generally someone whose attitude and behaviors are composed but seen as uniquely their own," Dr. Julie Gurner tells the website.
Considering comedy is based on taking ideas and mannerisms and composing them into something unique, that sounded like it matched the definition of cool. So by textbook definition, being a comedian was cool.
It seemed to be the same way by popular vote as well. When polled about what makes someone cool, humor or being funny shows up on the answer list at least once — guaranteed. Plus, most of those “Top X Things That Make People Cool” that plagued my search screen had it listed, too. It seemed pretty cut and dry to say that doing comedy was actually cool.
Then, I found an interview in The Independent with stand-up Mary Beth Barone, in which she asserts comedians definitely aren’t cool in a more straightforward way.
And she doesn’t mind being called a comedy influencer of sorts, she would like to clarify one thing: the joke’s on us because comedy isn’t cool. “Maybe it’s our fault because we’re making it look fun,” says Barone. “But comedy is the most embarrassing and the worst thing you could ever do.” I can’t tell if she’s joking.
Barone agreed that being a comedian appeared to be fun, but she argues that comedians are to blame for that because they’re only making it look that way. On stage, comedians craft a specific image, and we’re seeing them how they want to be seen. In reality, though, it’s just some person performing in front of a group of strangers. They’re literally just some guy. Off stage, comedians are usually expected to have an online image. There’s a similarity to being an influencer that comes with being a comedian nowadays, and that can make it seem fun. But if comedians spend too much time crafting their image and making it look fun, they can miss out on the time needed for crafting their jokes.
“A lot of comedians are much better at looking cool when they're bombing than writing good jokes that would keep them from bombing,” Hershberg told me when I asked him to expand on his original remark.
Plus, there’s an ambition for fun in the idea that comedy could get you (with very slim chances) famous. Once you’re famous, you’re automatically cool. You could get on a late-night show, where people can watch you on TV and the internet. You could travel to perform around the country (or world). There are a lot of cool opportunities that come with doing comedy.
But Barone refutes that with the fact that it’s actually really embarrassing. Going up on stage and performing a routine is about letting people look at you and judge you, regardless of whether you’re being honest and vulnerable or lost in a character. You’re making jokes on purpose in a room full of people you don’t know who will form their own opinions about you based on an image you show them — which is kind of cringe. And to become famous, you have to do it all the time — like multiple times a night — and essentially commit your life to comedy. You have to kind of re-prioritize your life to suit your career, which isn’t necessarily fun in any way.
The point of this was to do a little digging into whether there was a clear answer either way whether comedians are cool, and it seems there’s not. You could potentially hypothesize that comedians would probably say what they do isn’t very cool, but that people who enjoy comedy would say comedians are pretty cool. There’s a power dynamic at play in performing, considering your goal is to captivate the person watching you and essentially seduce their attention. And when you’re drawn in, it’s easy to think that person is funny and interesting and cool.
Whether being a comedian is cool or not is really up to you. Do you think the confidence and swagger that comes with standing in front of a microphone is cool, or do comedians remind you of the middle school class clown? Are you excited by the idea of a basement show, or does going to your friend's improv class performance make you cringe? When it comes down to it, just like comedy itself, it all depends on how you look at it.
If you do think they’re cool, though, remember not to let yourself think they’re too cool, lest you end up idolizing someone you shouldn’t.
Interview with a Comedian: Raanan Hershberg
Raanan Hershberg is a self-proclaimed "loud, neurotic Jew from Louisville, KY." Now based in NYC, Hershberg combines observational humor with dark punchlines and even darker twists. Fresh of his recent late-night set on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, I spoke to Hershberg via email about his love of movies, performing on TV vs. off, and whether cancel culture is real.
How would you describe your comedy?
Too Much Information.
Can you tell me about your path to comedy? Where did your interest start, and how'd you get to your stand-up nowadays?
I went to film school and wrote screenplays with a buddy of mine. We would spend six months on a script and then maybe have four friends read it reluctantly. Then, I did stand-up one night and the instant gratification of getting 100 people to hear a dumb, fat joke I thought of four hours earlier — when I could barely get anyone to read a script I had spent months on — seduced me. Stand-up is the art of instant gratification. [It's] a good and bad thing.
I'd love to hear a bit about the experience of doing a set on late night shows! You've performed on both James Corden and Jimmy Fallon — how did those experiences compare? What's it like performing a TV set vs. an off-screen show set?
It's weird. Stand-up is like scuba diving: The more you do it, the less surreal it feels. (I've never scuba-dived, so I've done no research for this metaphor.) I've done stand-up in clubs so much [that] it feels like second nature. But I've done stand-up in a studio twice, so I'm basically a virgin. (I've done a lot of research for that metaphor). But yeah, it's two very different beasts. I know when I've done well in a club; I have no idea how to gauge what doing well is on TV. I always feel weird and unsure, and then people congratulate me and I do my best to believe they're not lying.
They were both fun experiences, but Fallon was during a pandemic, which was a little — haha — more stressful.
I heard you say on a podcast that the more specific something is, the more universal it is. I'd love if you could expand a bit on both that idea and how you utilize that in your own comedy.
Definitely not the first one to say that, but yeah, it's a fundamental rule in art — maybe the most fundamental. We all have different experiences, but the commonality between all those experiences is that they're full of specifics, so specificity is the universal language. In comedy, the details make things feel more real, and feeling real is crucial. ... So many jokes don't work because you know the thing didn't happen, or the comic doesn't really care about what he's getting all heated up about.
You also co-host a podcast called Joe & Raanan Talk Movies. Where does your love of movies come from?
Watching Jurassic Park in theaters when I was 10 years old was the greatest experience of my life. It's all been downhill since then.
[Note: I asked Hershberg a series of questions about Louis CK, who he both opens for and has featured on his podcast more than once. These have been condensed to one question.] You've worked with Louis CK. Any comment on that?
He's my friend, that's really it.
Got it. And kind of in the same vein, how do you feel about cancel culture in comedy?
Some of it is merited, and some goes a little too far. For example, I was terrified of just admitting it can go a little too far.
Do you feel like "offensive" comedy exists?
Not to me. I'm dead inside.
What's a joke you love that either never lands or lands really inconsistently?
I have a joke: "I get depressed a lot, but I would never kill myself — mainly because I have a student therapist, and I don't want to fuck up her GPA." It consistently gets groans. I do it anyway. So much of stand-up is having the audience decide what jokes make it into your set. It's the only art where you have a focus group so early on in the process, so it's good to have a couple just for you.
Hershberg is taping his special at the Comedy Cellar on April 11 at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. He also co-hosts the podcast Joe & Raanan Talk Movies with comedian Joe List. For more, check out his Instagram or Twitter.
This interview was conducted over email. It has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Saturday Night Dead?
The Good*: SNL Used To Be Better
It’s a common complaint among people who don’t like Saturday Night Live that the show is terrible now, but that it was much better back when (purposely ambiguous: some people would say the ‘70s, some the ‘90s, some the ‘00s, etc.). That idea, though, comes from the fact that, when you look back on SNL episodes, you’re only remembering the parts you thought were funny. Why would your brain remember a sketch that you thought was very much unfunny?
That bias means that it’s hard to argue that SNL really was better back when unless you can prove that the funny outweighed the bad. Even if you’re someone who rewatches old clips you enjoy, you’d have to also expose yourself to the bad bits to be able to fairly judge each episode — and in turn, each era.
“Those who say things like ‘worst Weekend Update anchors yet’ have had their perceptions skewed by the fact that their exposure to the truly bad stuff of years past is limited,” notes Indiewire.
Exactly why people tend to favor older eras could be contributed to a few different things. One popular theory is Reddit user u/Fargaluf’s “Saturday Night Live Theory of Memory.” They posture that, if you ask someone when Saturday Night Live’s “golden age” was, “9 times out of 10 they'll name a period that corresponds to their adolescent/teen years.” The theory goes on to assert that the funniest years of SNL tend to be when someone starts watching it, because they’re more likely to remember the first sketches that made them laugh while forgetting the ones that didn’t. U/Fargaluf also said that any era given for when the golden age existed is inherently wrong because there’s no right answer. There’s always going to be a lot more bad in the show than you remember.
“Take your answer for ‘What was Saturday Night Lives golden age’ and watch an entire episode from that period online,” says u/Fargaluf. “Most of it will suck.”
Another reason for the bias is because a lot of people only remember one or two things about the older periods — as if they’re the only things that mattered about those years. You love Adam Sandler, so those years were amazing. You’re a fan of how Chevy Chase did Weekend Update, so that period was fantastic. How could you top impressions like The Church Lady? You have to agree that was hilarious.
That minutia ends up defining the whole era. And because you’re so focused on those few things, it’s also easy to forget about the things that weren’t so funny or written so well.
“It's always interesting to me how people remember only the best parts of their favorite era (myself included),” wrote Reddit user u/Pipes_of_Pan. “The Golden Era, for example, has some great moments but the skits are all incredibly long, tedious, and meandering by modern standards.”
It also can’t be ignored that Saturday Night Live receives a ton of press nowadays. And take it from a journalist: Nothing gets you views like things that suck. Hate clicks always trump interest or support clicks. If a sketch is bad, or the content is argued as bad in some way, you’re going to hear about it. The more you hear SNL is bad, the more you’ll start to think it — that’s just psychology. Eventually, when you hear Saturday Night Live, you’ll only think of those bad things. It’s the reverse effect from what we’ve been discussing — the amount of bad you remember outweighs the good. When looking back, why would you remember the kind of press the show got? Naturally, you’d block it out as much as you’d block out unfunny sketches.
The truth of the matter is that you can point to any number of reasons that SNL is bad (I mean, that’s what we’ve been doing here), but you can’t say it has declined in quality by any means. Each era of SNL is defined by its own sketch styles and cast members, and saying any one is better than the other is too subjective of a way to look at it for it to hold any kind of weight. Saturday Night Live is always going to have been the “best” during a period that meant a lot to you, whether it was the first you watched or you just found a specific cast member really funny. And naturally, you’re not going to remember the stuff that fell flat from the years you love, because you don’t love that part of it.
And that’s okay! There’s no consequence for remembering a specific SNL time period more fondly than what’s happening now. As long as you acknowledge that every era — heck, every episode! — of the show had bad things along with the good, and that the one we’re in now ebbs and flows in the same way as every other, then there’s no harm done.
“The new ones do have the occasional gem, and will be remembered in the future just as fondly as Bassomatic or More Cowbell, or Debbie Downer,” said Reddit user u/Mega_Dragonzord.
You shouldn’t let your passion stop you from watching current seasons. Keep an open mind and see whether it’s really as bad as you think. You may even find one or two things that make you laugh and that aren’t that bad.
* Yep, two good things in a row! I never said there wouldn’t sometimes be an uneven balance between the two.
The Comedy Showcase
Here are some things I enjoyed that I hope you will, too!
1. Taskmaster won a National Comedy Award for Best Comedy Entertainment Show, and Alex Horne gave the acceptance speech (as written by Greg Davies).
2. Keenan Thompson has officially been in 1,500 sketches during his run on SNL!
3. Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin, aka the creators of I Think You Should Leave, are writing a new TV show called "Computer School."
BONUS! 4. Comedian Connor Ratliff hosts Dead Eyes, a podcast about a time when Tom Hanks told him (indirectly) that he had dead eyes. After years of running the show, Tom Hanks will actually be on the show, and Ratliff will no doubt finally confront him about the level of his eyes' aliveness.