In the 1994 comedy film Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,
the titular character discovers that Lieutenant Lois Einhorne had gender confirmation surgery
and that she was previously known as Ray Finkle, a disgraced Miami Dolphins kicker. As Ventura previously had some brief romantic
contact with Einhorne, he becomes disgusted with himself that he kissed a trans woman. At the climax of the film, Ventura exposes
Einhorne – both her role in the missing Dolphins mascot and her personal history – by
stripping away her clothes and pointing out that she had not yet had bottom surgery. This information alone is enough to both disgust
and terrify all the hardened police officers. The film does not nail down the terminology
well, and though Einhorne is referred to as a man and not a trans woman, the scene is
nonetheless transphobic. Such transphobia still exists in popular media
today, although most blockbuster films in 2020 would probably not be as overt or center
so much of the comedy of the film around mocking a trans woman, partially due to changing values
and partially due to fear of backlash. When critics and audiences say that comedy
ages poorly, scenes as these immediately come to mind. The idea being that comedy ages poorly due
to the progression of society. However, this is only one way in which comedy
movies age so rapidly. It's simply the most obvious. The concept of comedy aging poorly is not
new, as it is well-understood among comedians and comedy writers that it does, in fact,
consistently happen but not always well-understood why. Who better than I to answer this question
– someone who has never been funny, not even once, by accident. But what I lack in humor, I make up for in
the twin abilities of reliably charting data and coming to reasonable conclusions, my two
sexiest qualities. Join me (won't you?) as I ruin everything
because I had nothing better to do this week. I will limit these observations to movies
only as far back as the early 80's, within my own lifetime or “Quantum Leap rules.” In the 1994 comedy movie Dumb and Dumber,
Harry and Lloyd are accidentally responsible for the death of their criminal companion. They feed him peppers, not realizing that
he has a condition that would make this fatal. Upon his death, Lloyd looks up at the diner
and says “Check, please.” This is an example of an overused line in
a comedy movie: jokes, quips and sight gags that were contemporaneously fresh but have
since been used and reused too many times since and date the jokes retroactively. This may have garnered laughs in 1994, but
now that “check, please” has been used so many times in other films since the release
of this Dumb and Dumber, revisiting this film can't illicit the same response. In fact, one could argue that by the time
Dumb and Dumber made this joke, it was already overused. It was done in So I Married an Axe Murderer
a year prior in 1993, Robin Hood: Men in Tights in the same year, and many times before this,
including twice in the 1987 film Spaceballs. There are a number of other instances of this
one joke, and worst of all, there is little variation to it. The same joke, told differently or told with
some kind of twist can mix it up, but “check please” happens with such regularity and
such consistently that it is amazing that it lasted as long as it did. In 2020, audiences will rarely hear “check
please” as a comedy line because comedians and writers have wisely moved on. This is not simply a matter of “cringe”
or consensus that this is now a hack line. Laughing is involuntary, and as a formula,
it relies on surprise. An overused joke can no longer surprise any
us. The same joke told to someone who has never
heard it will illicit a laugh. Here's a joke. A stranger sees an eunuch walking down the
road alongside a woman. The stranger asks the eunuch “Is she your
wife?” and the eunuch tells the stranger that eunuchs don't have wives. So, the stranger says “Oh, so she's daughter!” If you have never heard this joke before,
you may have laughed or at least smiled, but this joke is literally ancient. It's from “Love of Laughter” -- the oldest
surviving collection of jokes, dating back to roughly the 4th century. The actual age of the joke is not relevant
to whether or not it's funny. Instead, it's more like...how many miles the
joke has on it for you personally that determines its wear and tear. Whether or not it has been overused in a culture
and whether or not the surprise is gone. “Check please” – the joke itself – was
never “bad.” It's only been used and reused so many times
that it has gained a kind of cultural normalcy – a neutrality – something that is not
surprising and therefore not funny anymore. The joke, on its own and in a vacuum separated
from this overuse, is funny and follows a basic theory about humor, that being humor
often involves the realization of incongruity – a mismatch – between a concept and a
situation. “Check please” works as a joke because
of the incongruity of concept and situation. The concept is that saying “check, please”
in a restaurant is a neutral ending to the dinner and is precipitated only by the meal
being complete and with no other contributing factors. The situation is that there is a contributing
factor this time, usually a ludicrous one such as in the case of the restaurant scene
in Dumb and Dumber. The neutrality of the statement combined with
the ludicrousness of what happened immediately prior is the realization of incongruity and
why it's funny. It's why people laugh, even if they are not
charting why, over-examining it and further ruining it, like I am, right now. Humor as surprise is both the reason why the
joke initially worked, the surprise of the incongruity, and the reason the joke no longer
works in a culture that has heard it before – the lack of surprise due to overuse. The same can be said of “That's gotta hurt”
and other myriad of other overused comedy lines. “Check please” is two words of dialogue
and can therefore age quickly, but sometimes entire concepts and situations are repeated
enough to age quickly. An example of a comedy concept and situation
combination that aged quickly is the novelty of hip hop being performed by someone who
is not expected to be a hip hop artist or enthusiast. Robin Hood: Men in Tights featured a hip hop
group that breaks from their incredibly basic rhymes to sing something more at home at a
renaissance festival. The Wedding Singer from 1998 had an elderly
white woman performing Rapper's Delight. Both Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
and Austin Powers: Goldmember featured Dr. Evil performing hip hop. Not only is this concept and situation combination
overused by today's standards, it could be argued that it was old by Goldmember, released
in 2002. The novelty of hip hop had worn off, and the
music genre had simply become mainstream years prior. The entirety of this recurring joke is that
the audience was not expecting the character to be interested in the genre of music. No other genre was used to this effect so
frequently in 90's comedies. Speaking of Austin Powers, the trilogy of
films is painful to watch in 2020, but part of the reason why is not actually its own
fault. It suffers from an inverse of the overuse
problem. Instead of utilizing overused jokes within
the movie, Austin Powers is uncomfortable to watch due to the overuse of jokes specific
to Austin Powers outside of the movie – either through mocking parody or sincere appreciation. Most notable, this comes in the form of Powers'
many catch-phrases. [Yeah, baby.] Powers' catch-phrases briefly became part
of the language for a few years during the craze, much in the way that “d'oh” from
The Simpsons is now said even without thinking of that particular reference or the origins
of the word. “D'oh” can be used casually. Unlike d'oh, the Austin Powers catch-phrases
were too specific to the trilogy to have the same lasting power and cannot be said as casually. By the time the third movie premiered, the
jokes and catch-phrases being repeated outside the movie became stale, resulting in the final
movie not having the same impact. As a culture, we overused the catch-phrases
rather than too many movies overusing them. There were only three, after all. Similarly, this happened to Borat, a very
successful comedy from 2006 that has retroactively been ruined due to both parody and sincere
admiration. The only comedy gained from saying a Borat
catch-phrase so many years after its debut is comedy about how unfunny and stale the
catch-phrases have become. It's not the fault of the film that it was
so popular and so quotable. Nevertheless, Borat is now hard to watch for
reasons that exist primarily outside the film. Reference humor operates under the same formula
as most other comedy, the incongruity here being a reference to something familiar in
an unfamiliar context. One problem with reference humor is when the
incongruity is paper thin, such as characters from Scary Movie simply repeating the “wassup”
Budweiser commercial verbatim. There is almost no incongruity if the parody
is nigh indistinguishable from the original. Another problem with reference is how poorly
it ages. A commercial, for example, is usually not
something revisited for future generations the way classic movies always stay in the
popular consciousness or how television shows get rebooted for new audiences. Scary Movie is intended for young adult audiences
in the year 2000, but young adults in the year 2020 will either not understand the reference,
or if they do, will probably cringe about a gag that their parents already found stale. So, are all comedy movies doomed to age poorly? Not necessarily. There are ways to future-proof a comedy, at
least to some extent. Trends in comedy change, and those are impossible
to predict, but there are some steps that can be taken. For one, referencing whatever is popular in
the same year as the release of the comedy should be avoided. For another, if a joke in Movie B been used
before in Movie A, using it in Movie B will help propagate it to some unrelated Movie
C, causing Movie B to age poorly and not even hold the distinction of being the first. And finally, in terms of humor that mocks
a marginalized group that was socially unprotected during the time of the comedy's release, maybe
just don't mock a marginalized group even if society has not yet caught up. Historically, this realignment in values and
eventual protection of the marginalized group is inevitable. People sometimes say “You know, the only
minority we can mock these days is [blank].” and then they proceed to do that, not realizing
that this is temporary. Maybe try being ahead of the curve instead
of desperately trying to mock marginalized people while you can still “get away”
with it, just a thought. All movie genres age due to advancements in
special effects, changing styles of acting and such, but for all the reasons mentioned
here, comedy may have the most hurdles. But it can be better, it can work. It just requires a little added care.
That eunuch joke got me.
Ots a sorrow he only went with jokes from the 80s onwards since there are some cases prior of jokes that have aged in a espectacular way for example the monty python ones are extremely funny to this day
Anyone know what this 'Love of Laughter' book he's talking about is. Can't find it on google.