This one's a bit blue
My dad actively reads my newsletter. This may be one he wants to skip, though. Hi dad! I warned you!
Let's Talk About Sex, Baby
Ask any comedian about what their jokes were like when they first started out, and I promise you they’ll say they talked about sex a lot. It’s common knowledge in the industry that fresher comics tend to lean more into sexual jokes than any other topic. I’ve recently gotten really into going to random late-night open mics around Brooklyn, and let me tell you, I can definitively say that’s overwhelmingly true. And I’m not the only one who thinks so. When I interviewed Gianmarco Soresi a while back, he told me that his first real set, which he did after returning to college from taking a comedy class in NYC, was all about sex. “It was very, very sexual — but many comedians from the beginning [are],” said Soresi. “I mean, I must have told stories from every time I had had sex up to that point.”
While I completely agree with the sentiment, I couldn’t help my journalism brain from asking, “Why?” Why did so many new comics go straight for the jugular of sex jokes? What was it about sex that made it so many people’s first instinct? It may seem like a simple answer — every comic talks about sex, so this isn’t anything special! — I wanted to break down the ~psychology~ of why new comics, specifically, reach for jokes about sex at such a high rate.
I think the most popular answer here is that sex isn’t necessarily an easy topic to talk about. It’s taboo! Sure, comedians seem comfortable bringing it up on stage, but I promise you they would not just start spewing it to a stranger in a one-on-one conversation. It feels like an invasion of privacy in a way, regardless of the fact that the comic is allowing you to see it. You’re getting a glimpse into their personal life, and it’s juicy.
“[Jokes about sex] have built-in incongruity,” reads an article from Daily Writing Tips. “Every one of them talks about things that people don’t talk about in polite company. We automatically think, ‘I can’t believe we’re talking about this!’ They don’t fit in with our normal conversations.”
But because there’s that looming societal expectation to be hush-hush about sex, the act of even bringing it up immediately subverts those expectations. And since it’s not something you would just readily share with anyone, talking about sex creates tension in the room. When you add a punchline, it feels less salacious, and the audience feels comfortable letting that tension go through laughter. Everyone’s in on the joke, so there’s a sense of relief that washes over the crowd.
It’s why sex jokes are such a good go-to for newer comedians: They inevitably create that tension that’s then released. It’s a basic principle of comedy, bringing up taboo subjects and subverting expectations, so it’s an easy thing for fresh voices to rely on. People won’t expect you to talk about sex in a very personal way, so you might as well go for it to catch them off-guard.
The other obvious reason that so many new comics talk about sex is that sex is a natural part of being a human. We all get rushes of hormones that make us horny, and acting on those impulses is normal. As Ella Fitzgerald once sang: “Birds do it, bees do it. Even educated fleas do it!” Everyone does it, so talking about it makes it a universal concept that any audience member can relate to. Even people who identify as asexual at least know what sex is. If you’re not someone who actively engages in sex, it’s still a concept you understand. And when you’re a new comic, the main goal is to make as many people laugh as possible, which means casting a wide net with your premises. I mean, sex is the widest net of all! Plus, when you drill down on your own experiences with it, it’s taking something universal and making it specific, which actually tends to strengthen a comedy set. Just as Raanan Hershberg told me when I interviewed him, “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.”
Finally, I think it has to be said that sex is just really funny. Like, the concept, the act — all of it. There’s something so inherently hilarious about it. (If you don’t agree, you need to change the way you look at sex. Lighten up!)
There’s not really a solid answer of where that humor comes from, so why it’s funny differs from person to person. But in my very academic Google search of “why is sex funny,” the most popular reason was that the act of having sex is just so… awkward. We tend to think of sex as this glamorous, almost romanticized concept, but it just isn’t. People fart during sex. People queef. People elbow the other person’s eye by accident. There are so many awkward things that can happen that are hilarious because they’re so contradictory to what we’re led to believe sex is. And subversion? Well, that's funny. It's why people often laugh while having sex.
“I find it funny because it's awkward as all hell, both to watch and to participate in,” user The Great WTF posted on (ironically) Asexuality.org. “Real life sex is awkward, messy, and usually full of strange sounds and even my sexual friends will readily acknowledge that, when they're not caught up in the heat of the moment, sex is a bizarre thing to behold.”
“That,” they added, “and I find male genitalia funny looking and thus anything involving it tends to make me want to giggle.”
To me, it’s just generally kind of funny to think that sex is such an integral part of so many people’s lives, but it’s literally just, like, sticking a body part into someone else’s body part. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I think that’s funny as hell. Plus, also, The Great WTF is right — penises are funny-looking.
Talking about sex is a solid go-to for comedians both new and experienced, so it makes sense for fresher faces to lean into it. Plus, there’s something to be said about the fact that, since so many established comedians talk about it, newer comedians are more likely to talk about it as well, as they’re mirroring those who have found success. But what really makes it such a popular topic for comedians who are just starting out is that it’s fail-proof. If you get up there and make a joke about sex, someone’s going to find it funny. Sure, maybe it’s a joke a 12-year-old boy would tell, but I guarantee you at least someone (who is also not a 12-year-old boy) shares that humor. And if it’s a more nuanced joke? There’s someone out there to appreciate it, too. Even if your joke about sex is just plain not funny, it’s still funny.
“Once I understood the nature of humor, I realized that dirty jokes are cheap humor. Not merely low-class or coarse, but cheap in the sense that they don’t cost much,” notes Daily Writing Tips. “Because every dirty joke is incongruous, dirty jokes get a laugh even if they’re poorly told, even if they wouldn’t be funny if the subject matter were different.”
New comics want to get laughs — that’s kind of the whole point of doing comedy. And if you want to go for something that’s guaranteed at least one chuckle, you know what they say: sex sells (comedy).
Interview with a Comedian: Ike Ufomadu
The first time I saw Ike Ufomadu perform, I was entranced. Before he even started speaking, I could feel the spark of something hilarious. And when he did start speaking, he delivered. At that show, he pretended to be some sort of professor giving a lecture. It may not sound funny, but I can vouch for it; I've never been so enthralled by a lecture before in my life. I had the pleasure of seeing him again recently, and this time, he presented a slideshow of questions he has about things. And again, I couldn't look away.
Ufomadu has something so special and so unique — something I haven't seen before. It makes sense, since Ufomadu's path to comedy wasn't necessarily traditional. Growing up, he was a shy kid who wasn't really the class clown type. Then, in sixth grade, he participated in a speech tournament, which included acting categories. He got laughs and a ribbon, "and it felt good," he says. He then dove into speech and theater, knowing early on he wanted to be an actor. While studying acting in college, he had a few "pivotal turning points" that led him to comedy, including studying at a theater dance program in Bali, after which he developed a desire to write. It eventually occurred to Ufomadu that he could take the way he played around off-stage and use it on-stage. He started to seek out different places to try out material, which led him to stand-up open mics, where he met comedians and eventually plunged into the industry.
I had the pleasure of chatting with Ufomadu about a range of things, from how late-night shows inspire him even though he didn't watch them growing up to his favorite voice to use on stage. Check it out below!
How would you describe your comedy?
Let's see. I don't think I've ever been particularly good at answering this question. But I would say I guess I try to lean into absurdity, absurd thoughts or absurd ways of like interacting with an audience or approaching an audience. I like being surprised when I see other performers, and I think I try to maybe make opportunities for people to be surprised or kind of taken a little off guard and in a fun way.
You’ve worked on both TV and movie sets. Do you have a preference between the two?
I don't think I have a hard and fast preference of one over the other. It is kind of I think coming from theater and kind of doing shows for a while. There was just an interesting learning curve going into more film and TV projects. And I guess sort of getting — which I guess I’m still doing — used to performing without much feedback from anyone around you, since that would ruin the take. There's so much shorthand that I just had no idea existed on film and TV sets that is starting to feel like, okay, I can kind of understand the language of it. But when that first happened, I was like, well, there's so much lingo that I just had no idea existed.
Do you prefer doing those kind of live, in-person performances where you do receive that immediate feedback? Is that something that you feel is really instrumental to your work?
I do. I mean, I guess the short answer is yes. I really enjoy the immediate feedback. Let me not say immediate, because sometimes there's, I don't know, the silence — but I think yeah. On a theoretical level, and on an actual level, the idea of people coming together and doing something together is very interesting and good, but also it feels like there's so many ways of just playing around with the relationship between the person who's on stage and the people in the audience. It's a fun thing to play around with. I don't think I'll get tired of it.
You’re known, in part, for doing these kinds of faux talk shows. Is there something specific about the talk show format that’s so intriguing to you?
I didn't really grow up watching talk shows and didn't have a particular interest in them, but I remember, maybe a few years after college, sitting down and watching Letterman one night, and I think it just struck me as like a peculiar thing that, like an actor, he was also on stage, but he had to wear a suit and sit down at a desk just to make jokes. If you're in a theatrical context, if, at the time, it felt like, oh, if a performer’s on stage, and they just talk to the audience directly, it's like, oh, whoa, the fourth wall is broken. But then, if you're watching a talk show, it's just very normal. So, that was one thing. I guess it struck me.
I didn't know he was working for CBS, which is this big company. It just felt like, oh, so he's like showing up to work and sitting down at this desk, and his job is to tell these jokes and talk to people. And then, at a certain point, he’ll leave work. … I started to wonder: If someone were to make a character or persona, it was the type of person who really wants to make people laugh, but feels that they can't do it unless they're wearing a very fine suit and have a very nice desk to sit down, and what kind of person would that be? The initial thought behind those talk show projects was kind of exploring that, exploring that idea — the person who wants to laugh, but can only go about it in this very sort of formal fashion.
Did that contrast create a sort of absurdity that you found interesting? Or was it just the deconstruction of, you know, who is this person?
It was a bit of both, I think. it also feels kind of close to home in a way of, I think my personality can be kind of sort of dry and tends towards the serious. … Like, in high school, I feel like I didn't really come off as a class clown, but I would maybe make the person next to me laugh and then people would wonder what happened and would be like, “Oh, Ike said something. No one else knows what happened.”
I found this kind of mixture of the seriousness of wearing a suit with the silliness of telling jokes to be an interesting contrast, that sort of side by side. From the perspective of a play with like a beginning, middle, and end that's done on a stage, [the] talk show [format] was like… there's not really a plot, so to speak. From that reference point, it feels like it's very normal, because people watch it. But from a particular point of view, it's like, why is this normal? Why do people tune in to watch this person on stage who is themselves but also not exactly themselves?
Do you find inspiration or comedy from the subtleties of things versus the more obvious aspects?
I think it depends, but I do like finding familiar things and kind of making them strange a little bit, and in some fashion making people confront … things that are taken for granted — not just that other people take, but me too. [Things that] all of us people take for granted. How can I make us not take it for granted?
Something that really struck me about your comedy, and probably why I love watching you so much, is that there is this kind of overall sense of seriousness, but there's also an overarching comedic tone to it that carries throughout. What makes it so unique is that the structure of the seriousness doesn’t really devolve at all. There are no cracks in it, it just maintains this mix of serious and funny the whole time. I'm curious how much of that is your own seriousness and how much of it is heightened in some way?
It's somehow both things at once. It is me, but it is also a persona at the same time. … I think something I find interesting is just what it does, how things shift once someone is in front of an audience versus not being in front of an audience. Just the simple fact of like, standing in front of people with a microphone seems to bring out something different or heightened? I like playing with that, with what that line is between the person and the persona, and almost stripping it, trying to strip it down to its fundamental level.
In an interview from 2018, you said that you didn't like the label “comedian,” because you felt like it didn't encapsulate everything that you did. I saw “comedian” is now in your bio on your website — though it’s along with a few other descriptors. Do you feel like you need to use that multi-hyphenated label because of the idea that “comedian” doesn’t cover everything you do?
At first [it was] because my background wasn't as a comedian and because when I started performing I wasn't particularly inspired by comedians. I'd watch stand up, but I wasn't someone who watched stand up and was like, oh, I want to do that. …
These ideas for performing came out of this sort of almost experimental theater trajectory. The ideas happened to be entertaining but [were] kind of like, how can I play around with the relationship of forming an audience or the space that everyone's in — like deconstructing what it means to like for people to see a show and to be the one who's being seen. So I think for that reason, I think when I thought about the word comedian, there's like a little bit of like, I'm not sure if that exactly communicates what I want to do. And then I was also a little afraid of if I say that, will I start to do something that I'm not sure I'm actually trying to do right now.
Over time, … I don't know why it was such a loaded or loaded label or something, but it feels less constricting now. I was talking with another performer-musician, Jen Goma, years ago now. And if I'm remembering correctly, we were talking about how these kinds of titles or labels are almost like coordinates for people. Rather than thinking of it as like, this is who you are, it's like, if you want to find me, [I’m] on the at the corner of comedian and musician or, I don't know, an actor and painter or whatever it is. It's almost like coordinates for the audience to kind of find you or maybe where you're at. So, I guess “comedian” is a good coordinate? Yeah.
Who are some of your influences, comedically or otherwise? Who in the larger sphere has kind of influenced your work and your life up to this point?
It's kind of a weird list. I remember being really just kind of fascinated-slash-entertained by these old Andy Williams Christmas specials. Going back to the line between the person and the persona, he just was so earnestly celebrating Christmas with his actual family, but they’re on television for millions of people. I think that started a feeling of a certain kind of fascination with that person/persona line. I really liked watching old Tonight Shows — Johnny Carson and Steve Allen. The idea of the host and what that is seems like such a position of responsibility almost, to be the host of a show — especially when it was first starting. Which is interesting, that sense of responsibility to entertain people. … Andy Kaufman, I really like watching. I think he kind of bridged the gap a bit between sort of more theatrical things and more comedic things. And Mr. Rogers, I liked the kind of care for the viewer that seemed to come across on the screen I think those are the go-tos when I think of influences.
I'm curious, do you feel like you have a sense of responsibility to your audiences when you're performing now? Or is it just that that breakdown of responsibility is humorous?
I think it's kind of both. There is something that's kind of fascinating and funny about feeling a responsibility to provide humor. I'm trying to think of why it's fascinating.
You don’t have to pull out a longer answer if that's it! You don’t need to feel any responsibility in this interview by any means.
Ok, great. I think, if people are coming to see you, of course, you hope to deliver something that is [funny]. [There’s] the responsibility not only to deliver something that's funny, but also that's funny to you as well. Hopefully, you're entertaining both yourself and the audiences you're performing to.
What’s a joke you love that either never lands or lands really inconsistently?
The first thing that comes to mind—it's also just because I'm still kind of working out what exactly it is. It's gonna sound very basic, but I'll sometimes just start speaking like a Kennedy improvising some kind of speech. And then I never know when to stop. And sometimes it doesn't really land, but I really enjoy speaking like that, and that will overtake any consideration for the fact that no one is laughing.
Ufomadu's film Inspector Ike is screening in LA at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema on April 15th and 16th. You can stay up-to-date on where he'll be performing by checking the calendar on his website. You can also find him on Instagram and Twitter.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Saturday Night Dead?
The Good: Experimentation
We're slowly making our way to the end of this column, as both the pros and cons list of Saturday Night Live still being on-air get smaller. And with that comes some looser pieces, as not every reason is going to require narrative explanation. The thing about SNL is that it’s created in a visual medium (duh), so to really understand it, you have to watch it.
This installment will focus on one of the reasons that’s hard to explain in words: Experimentation. Something that SNL has done so beautifully, in so many ways, is experiment with format in a way that a lot of other shows of the time (and honestly, of now) didn’t. They weren’t afraid to do something completely different. I mean, for starters, just the concept of SNL and the format of the first show were new and groundbreaking for both TV and comedy. But on top of that, the show has, throughout the years, offered up comedy formats that aren’t necessarily what you may think of when you think “comedy.” And that’s for the better.
Again, this one is hard to write out an explanation for, so I’ve compiled a few videos that I think exemplify this sort of experimentation I’m describing. And to clarify: I’m not saying that no one ever did this kind of stuff but SNL, or that they were the first. What I’m arguing for as one of the reasons that Saturday Night Live is still around is that, because it’s a landing ground for comedians and writers of so many different backgrounds and experiences, the content they put out comes in many shapes and forms. There’s the opportunity to play around with how things are shown, and when you do that on a show as major as SNL, it then in turn shapes the world of comedy and how things are done.
You’re probably like, “Isabelle, what? Literally, what are you talking about?” Fair enough. I think the best example I can think of is TV Funhouse, which ran from 1998 to 2008. The segment took the idea of cartoons and made them funny and subversive for adults. This includes bits like The Ambiguously Gay Duo and The X-Presidents.
It also includes one of my favorite SNL sketches ever: Christmastime for the Jews.
The segment took something so embedded in our culture — cartoons, Rankin/Bass movies — and flipped them on their head. It allowed for something new. Think about Robot Chicken, which aired in 2001. I have no idea if it was inspired by the work done on TV Funhouse, but I imagine that having content in the cartoon format on such a major network TV show at least helped pave the way for its popularity.
Another example, which I will always jump to talk about, is The Lonely Island. I think we all know at this point that The Lonely Island was something so new and exciting when they started dropping digital shorts on SNL. They took something that was still so unexplored — the internet — and brought it to our TV. And in turn, it went back to the internet and created a whole separate ecosystem online. Digital shorts were such a turning point for the show, and allowing the group to explore things like comedic music videos was something totally experimental and fresh.
The last example I’ll throw your way is the fact that, in the beginning, Saturday Night Live was airing Albert Brooks films as a part of the show. These were separate-from-the-show pieces filmed by Albert Brooks that were then thrown in at the end of the episode. And while I know a lot of people weren’t fans of that segment, there was something so exciting and experimental about it. The films were somehow both totally SNL and not at all SNL at the same time. It was experimental in form and placement, and it opened up avenues for more short films. I would argue it’s what paved the way for the digital shorts that the aforementioned Lonely Island eventually created.
There are so many examples I could talk about when it comes to SNL being an avenue for experimentation in comedic formatting. Throughout the years, it’s not only created sketches that stick in our minds, but ones that challenge what we know about comedy and what comedy even is. It’s hard to say a show like that shouldn’t still be airing. And while I’d argue that experimentation looks different in the modern age of the show (I’d point to things like those stupid musical sketches that John Mulaney popularized or the recent in-depth character work), it’s still there, and it’s still impacting the comedy community at large. As long as comedy is weird, SNL will keep experimenting with different concepts and formats, which can only make the show better — and keep it on air.
The Comedy Showcase
1. Marcel the shell with shoes on is getting a movie, and the trailer just dropped. (And I cried watching it! What the heck!)
2. Netflix's Standing Up, a dramedy that follows four stand-up comedians in France. While it's fictional, it's a really interesting look into both French culture and the country's comedy scene.
3. The Comedians Keeping Jokes Alive in Wartime Ukraine by Yaroslav Druziuk