The most that a joke changed my mind was during a dark period in college half a century ago. I felt immobilized by perfectionism, fearing that if I did anything it would fall short and undermine whatever positive impression anyone somehow already had of me. Then I came across G. K. Chesterton's sentence: "If something is worth doing at all, it is worth doing badly." I laughed hysterically by myself for about ten minutes and have felt much better ever since.
I feel like for me, I kind of went through the opposite. When I was a kid, I would learn about a topical issue from like an SNL sketch or stand-up, and then when I was older I would learn what the real issue was, and change my opinion
The best example I can think of for myself is that I used to love Arby’s until The Simpsons made fun of it, and then suddenly I thought Beef and Cheddars were gross.
In terms of political satire, The Colbert Report didn’t change my mind per se, but I didn’t know about the intricacies of campaign finance reform until his fictional run for president bit and I became more engaged on the issue. IMO, that’s where satire can excel: shaping an opinion where there previously wasn’t one.
Not really a joke, but Michael O'Donoghue's statement, "Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy," really made me re-evaluate what's funny vs. clever. Sent me into many of same thoughts about "clapter". Made me question how the commercial segments on Saturday Night Live now aren't really parodies anymore, but really product placement with jokes to make it go down easier. Wonder what Mr. Mike would think of that?
I agree with your basic point about jokes not changing minds. But I also think that reducing it to that doesn’t really refute the idea that comedy isn’t important.
Mostly just tribal and preaching to the choir? I buy that. Carlin’s late work really illustrated that; There are times when he got laughs without even making a joke. That’s a dead giveaway, I think, that you’re coasting and counting on the audience agreeing with you already. I do agree with most of his thinking, but I’ve noticed that conservative humor often strikes me the same way; I’ve heard comics on that side getting laughs just from trotting out a prejudice. That was my dad’s idea of a joke. I’m not sure why I should criticize them but let George off the hook.
I think Carlin was brilliant and endlessly creative; I’m not dismissing his work, just suggesting that it’s not all equally good, when judged as comedy.
It seems to me that the better the comedy, the more likely you are to persuade. Or maybe just move someone’s needle a tiny bit.
As to the issue of whether comedy or satire are important-- I definitely believe my thinking and my character were SHAPED by comics. I listened to a lot of Lenny Bruce as a teen, and a lot of the points he made about hypocrisy and bullshit even among my own tribe really began my habit of questioning even people I mostly agreed with. Bruce also had a kind of romantic love and affection for humanity and for the law, despite his mockery and satire. He believed in us, despite all the obvious reasons he of all people shouldn’t have.
I don’t think any artist or person helped turn me into the person I am, and shaped the way I see the world, more than Bruce. In the short term, it wasn’t so much about him changing my mind about something. It was more a perspective, a complicated way of seeing the world both critically and with love. He got under my skin early in my life. I was raised conservative, but Lenny affected me philosophically and temperamentally more than my family did.
In a more general sense, many comics have helped keep me invested in the terrible human race, because I tend to see even the worst stuff through the lens of comedy, and nothing helps stave off nihilism and depression better than that. I think comedy at its best strikes blows but also encourages us to be tolerant, because sooner or later WE get implicated by the satirical criticism. And this message is more likely to resonate if we’re laughing.
I think this kind of effect is subtle, and may not be such a literal change as immediate changing our opinion about a particular thing. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe ANYTHING does that. That’s not usually the way persuasion works. We’re rarely persuaded in the moment by any art form or argument. Comedy is essential precisely because it changes us eventually, and by the time a change really takes root we probably don’t remember the comic or comics that sparked something in us.
According to experts on how our brains form opinions, it’s all about emotion. We tend to believe we got to our positions though logic but that’s horseshit. We feel things, and then cherry pick evidence and arguments that seem to support the way we already feel about something.
But this isn’t an argument for why comedy isn’t important. This is why comedy sometimes helps where other more serious things don’t. Comedy reaches us emotionally and directly; even when I don’t agree with an implied premise, if i laugh, that comic has scored with me at least a tiny bit. It may not change my position, but it can definitely widen my perspective, and make me less inclined to demonize a person who sees the issue through a different lens.
I hope this is all convincing! I can’t help but think it would have been more effective if it was accompanied by a big boinnnnnng sound.
I can't think of a specific example but I had to vote yes on the poll. If a specific joke hasn't changed my mind then at the very least comedians like Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle have widened my perspective on how a black man views America. Their comedy is a much better vehicle for perspective then any lecture, book, essay, article I've ever come across.
I’ve never had a joke change my mind, but I’ve had comedians change the way I think about comedy. Before going batshit crazy, Jimmy Dore made a great point about comedy being about punching up, not down. And Todd Glass, on his podcast, talked about how he changed his views and ideas about what makes good comedy. That really struck a chord with me.
Not necessarily one joke, but two Firesign Theatre albums - Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers and I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus - significantly widened my lens.
This piece, written during the debut season of SNL in 1975, offers two parts of the equation: The comic revealing their “true self”, and a “surplus of education” in the US beginning post WW II:
So I guess I agree with your theory, and lay it at the feet of an expanding cadre of “knowingness” that was once revolutionary, and now is old hat.
(An interesting faceoff that was contemporary to this article was Charles Schultz being annoyed by Doonesbury because it wore its politics on its sleeve, and thereby couldn’t be timeless. There, the “knowingness” wasn’t replacing something compartmentalized and schlocky, and the accusation was that the “knowing” work was too shallow!)
You could certainly say that Carlin was truer to himself once he started going on college tours and literally letting his hair grow out, but how “true” to himself were his jokes, or his presentation? Maybe each persona was a facet of himself that was “true”?
I will say that, with Carlin, his observational humor crystallizes things that you may have already noticed, but didn’t bother to interrogate far enough to reach other bizzare, possibly uncomfortable conclusions. And when you compare it with Seinfeld, who was inspired by Carlin, there’s clearly *something* different in their jokes’ impacts. But maybe that’s the “true self” thing? Seinfeld intentionally makes himself a cipher, after all.
This seems to be a very American phenomenon. Just as US sitcoms generally have a moral at the end of each ep and UK ones don't - and shows like Seinfeld and IASIP are so *pointedly* amoral that IMO they only serve to reinforce my point - a high percentage of American comedians since Lenny Bruce seem to have decided it's more important to save the world than make it laugh, while British standups prefer to stick to observing that having kids disrupts your sleep schedule and rain is annoying. And while I prefer America for standup on the whole, I just have no interest whatsoever in the full-bore Carlin "angry secular preacher" model. To quote Norm yet again, comedians aren't modern-day philosophers, modern philosophers are.
I had to take a few days to mull this over. My answer to this question is multi-leveled. When I was a young kid, the impressionable mush between my ears I think actually was greatly influenced by jokes. While my granddad was a Racist SOB and my folks pretty conservative, my reading of MAD magazine at 10yrs old pretty much subverted any of their influences. A few years later, National Lampoon entrenched this rebellion even further. But was it from just one joke that changed my mind away from that? No. It was more like a firehose of jokes. Which of course plays into Mike's point, no one joke can change a mind. I think that in the same way propaganda works, you need a barrage of jokes, satires, and comics to alter one's perception for better or worse. It all depends on who's feeding you the jokes. It was rumored that Joe Stalin could always raise a loud round laughter, and then a change of heart, amongst his commisars ...right before he ordered them all shot.
The poll's closed... But, yes, maybe more like a series of jokes, and - or a series of similar jokes heard a number of times - followed up by research and contemplation, has changed some opinions.
In order for this to happen, though, it seems a person must already be somewhat openminded and abiding at a certain level of consciousness.
The long tradition of art, literature, humor, philosophical discourse, spiritual teachings, and literacy itself has had wonderful moments - but doesn't seem to be expanding consciousness quickly enough to turn the terrible tide.
Social media and new media has had a fun time undoing the artistic and philosophical progress humanity has made so far in only two decades
Despite the adage of "You cannot reason people out of positions they didn’t reason themselves into." I think you can definitely laugh people into a position they didn't previously have. (Or explain a concept to them that sticks.)
After hearing "Everything is amazing and nobody is happy" I finally understood Hedonic Adaptation.
A poll: Has a joke ever changed your mind?
I think the question is, has anyone saying ANYTHING ever changed anyone's mind?
The most that a joke changed my mind was during a dark period in college half a century ago. I felt immobilized by perfectionism, fearing that if I did anything it would fall short and undermine whatever positive impression anyone somehow already had of me. Then I came across G. K. Chesterton's sentence: "If something is worth doing at all, it is worth doing badly." I laughed hysterically by myself for about ten minutes and have felt much better ever since.
I feel like for me, I kind of went through the opposite. When I was a kid, I would learn about a topical issue from like an SNL sketch or stand-up, and then when I was older I would learn what the real issue was, and change my opinion
The best example I can think of for myself is that I used to love Arby’s until The Simpsons made fun of it, and then suddenly I thought Beef and Cheddars were gross.
In terms of political satire, The Colbert Report didn’t change my mind per se, but I didn’t know about the intricacies of campaign finance reform until his fictional run for president bit and I became more engaged on the issue. IMO, that’s where satire can excel: shaping an opinion where there previously wasn’t one.
Not really a joke, but Michael O'Donoghue's statement, "Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy," really made me re-evaluate what's funny vs. clever. Sent me into many of same thoughts about "clapter". Made me question how the commercial segments on Saturday Night Live now aren't really parodies anymore, but really product placement with jokes to make it go down easier. Wonder what Mr. Mike would think of that?
I agree with your basic point about jokes not changing minds. But I also think that reducing it to that doesn’t really refute the idea that comedy isn’t important.
Mostly just tribal and preaching to the choir? I buy that. Carlin’s late work really illustrated that; There are times when he got laughs without even making a joke. That’s a dead giveaway, I think, that you’re coasting and counting on the audience agreeing with you already. I do agree with most of his thinking, but I’ve noticed that conservative humor often strikes me the same way; I’ve heard comics on that side getting laughs just from trotting out a prejudice. That was my dad’s idea of a joke. I’m not sure why I should criticize them but let George off the hook.
I think Carlin was brilliant and endlessly creative; I’m not dismissing his work, just suggesting that it’s not all equally good, when judged as comedy.
It seems to me that the better the comedy, the more likely you are to persuade. Or maybe just move someone’s needle a tiny bit.
As to the issue of whether comedy or satire are important-- I definitely believe my thinking and my character were SHAPED by comics. I listened to a lot of Lenny Bruce as a teen, and a lot of the points he made about hypocrisy and bullshit even among my own tribe really began my habit of questioning even people I mostly agreed with. Bruce also had a kind of romantic love and affection for humanity and for the law, despite his mockery and satire. He believed in us, despite all the obvious reasons he of all people shouldn’t have.
I don’t think any artist or person helped turn me into the person I am, and shaped the way I see the world, more than Bruce. In the short term, it wasn’t so much about him changing my mind about something. It was more a perspective, a complicated way of seeing the world both critically and with love. He got under my skin early in my life. I was raised conservative, but Lenny affected me philosophically and temperamentally more than my family did.
In a more general sense, many comics have helped keep me invested in the terrible human race, because I tend to see even the worst stuff through the lens of comedy, and nothing helps stave off nihilism and depression better than that. I think comedy at its best strikes blows but also encourages us to be tolerant, because sooner or later WE get implicated by the satirical criticism. And this message is more likely to resonate if we’re laughing.
I think this kind of effect is subtle, and may not be such a literal change as immediate changing our opinion about a particular thing. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe ANYTHING does that. That’s not usually the way persuasion works. We’re rarely persuaded in the moment by any art form or argument. Comedy is essential precisely because it changes us eventually, and by the time a change really takes root we probably don’t remember the comic or comics that sparked something in us.
According to experts on how our brains form opinions, it’s all about emotion. We tend to believe we got to our positions though logic but that’s horseshit. We feel things, and then cherry pick evidence and arguments that seem to support the way we already feel about something.
But this isn’t an argument for why comedy isn’t important. This is why comedy sometimes helps where other more serious things don’t. Comedy reaches us emotionally and directly; even when I don’t agree with an implied premise, if i laugh, that comic has scored with me at least a tiny bit. It may not change my position, but it can definitely widen my perspective, and make me less inclined to demonize a person who sees the issue through a different lens.
I hope this is all convincing! I can’t help but think it would have been more effective if it was accompanied by a big boinnnnnng sound.
You know, I would have expected Bill Hicks’ name to come up during this conversation.
Bill Cosby with eating chocolate cake for breakfast.
I can't think of a specific example but I had to vote yes on the poll. If a specific joke hasn't changed my mind then at the very least comedians like Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle have widened my perspective on how a black man views America. Their comedy is a much better vehicle for perspective then any lecture, book, essay, article I've ever come across.
I’ve never had a joke change my mind, but I’ve had comedians change the way I think about comedy. Before going batshit crazy, Jimmy Dore made a great point about comedy being about punching up, not down. And Todd Glass, on his podcast, talked about how he changed his views and ideas about what makes good comedy. That really struck a chord with me.
Not necessarily one joke, but two Firesign Theatre albums - Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers and I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus - significantly widened my lens.
This piece, written during the debut season of SNL in 1975, offers two parts of the equation: The comic revealing their “true self”, and a “surplus of education” in the US beginning post WW II:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1975/11/24/a-crack-in-the-greasepaint
So I guess I agree with your theory, and lay it at the feet of an expanding cadre of “knowingness” that was once revolutionary, and now is old hat.
(An interesting faceoff that was contemporary to this article was Charles Schultz being annoyed by Doonesbury because it wore its politics on its sleeve, and thereby couldn’t be timeless. There, the “knowingness” wasn’t replacing something compartmentalized and schlocky, and the accusation was that the “knowing” work was too shallow!)
You could certainly say that Carlin was truer to himself once he started going on college tours and literally letting his hair grow out, but how “true” to himself were his jokes, or his presentation? Maybe each persona was a facet of himself that was “true”?
I will say that, with Carlin, his observational humor crystallizes things that you may have already noticed, but didn’t bother to interrogate far enough to reach other bizzare, possibly uncomfortable conclusions. And when you compare it with Seinfeld, who was inspired by Carlin, there’s clearly *something* different in their jokes’ impacts. But maybe that’s the “true self” thing? Seinfeld intentionally makes himself a cipher, after all.
This seems to be a very American phenomenon. Just as US sitcoms generally have a moral at the end of each ep and UK ones don't - and shows like Seinfeld and IASIP are so *pointedly* amoral that IMO they only serve to reinforce my point - a high percentage of American comedians since Lenny Bruce seem to have decided it's more important to save the world than make it laugh, while British standups prefer to stick to observing that having kids disrupts your sleep schedule and rain is annoying. And while I prefer America for standup on the whole, I just have no interest whatsoever in the full-bore Carlin "angry secular preacher" model. To quote Norm yet again, comedians aren't modern-day philosophers, modern philosophers are.
I had to take a few days to mull this over. My answer to this question is multi-leveled. When I was a young kid, the impressionable mush between my ears I think actually was greatly influenced by jokes. While my granddad was a Racist SOB and my folks pretty conservative, my reading of MAD magazine at 10yrs old pretty much subverted any of their influences. A few years later, National Lampoon entrenched this rebellion even further. But was it from just one joke that changed my mind away from that? No. It was more like a firehose of jokes. Which of course plays into Mike's point, no one joke can change a mind. I think that in the same way propaganda works, you need a barrage of jokes, satires, and comics to alter one's perception for better or worse. It all depends on who's feeding you the jokes. It was rumored that Joe Stalin could always raise a loud round laughter, and then a change of heart, amongst his commisars ...right before he ordered them all shot.
The poll's closed... But, yes, maybe more like a series of jokes, and - or a series of similar jokes heard a number of times - followed up by research and contemplation, has changed some opinions.
In order for this to happen, though, it seems a person must already be somewhat openminded and abiding at a certain level of consciousness.
The long tradition of art, literature, humor, philosophical discourse, spiritual teachings, and literacy itself has had wonderful moments - but doesn't seem to be expanding consciousness quickly enough to turn the terrible tide.
Social media and new media has had a fun time undoing the artistic and philosophical progress humanity has made so far in only two decades
Despite the adage of "You cannot reason people out of positions they didn’t reason themselves into." I think you can definitely laugh people into a position they didn't previously have. (Or explain a concept to them that sticks.)
After hearing "Everything is amazing and nobody is happy" I finally understood Hedonic Adaptation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUBtKNzoKZ4&ab_channel=LisaZielinski