Interview · moment 13 of 16
Critics vs. Working-Class Audiences: Do People Just Want to Laugh?
from An Exotic Beast · #131
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
5 minGuest
Tim argues critics are elitist and disconnected from working-class audiences who just want to laugh, not see comedy 'subverted,' and needles Zinoman about condescending to blue-collar people, leading to a debate about ethnic humor and who really understands it.
- 44:11Tim defends the Drew Michael special to comedians despite their off-record hatred of it.
- 44:43The special would have worked better with a live audience present, since people thought he wasn't telling jokes.
- 45:10Nobody actually goes to a comedy club hoping for perspective instead of laughs—people want to be funny, not subverted.
- 46:19Comedy critics present a false choice between being funny and subverting form, when subversion is often the essence of punchlines.
- 47:10Working people go to comedy to laugh because they have real jobs and real problems, not to watch wealthy people indulge themselves in Brooklyn.
- 47:38Tim responds to accusation of condescending to working-class people by claiming to be working class himself.
- 48:29Critics don't understand ethnic humor because they went to Harvard and Yale and never worked blue-collar jobs where every ethnicity jokes about each other.
- 49:01The interviewer acknowledges Tim has truth in his argument but uses comedic exaggeration to take it too far, which is why he's funny but also why his argument is shit.
Drew Michaelcomedy criticismHBO