Wouldn't it be great to turn everything that interests you into top quality comedy that interests everyone else? This may be an impossible goal, but to me getting closer to it is worth the effort. A few of you know I performed a show about philosophy at the 2008 Fringe. Most of you don't know because it was, by and large, a failure. I spent a lot of time summarising the theories of Plato and Kant when everyone was waiting for gags. It was like putting an elephant through a mincing machine. My writing skills were not up to turning the material into a sausage string of jokes. For every chippolata of chortling there was a huge indigestible tusk of exposition. (For any vegetarians reading, no animals were harmed in the making of this extended metaphor.) Although I'm still groping towards a solution to this problem, I think part of it lies in two approaches. First, I should find whatever is absurd, strange or just plain wrong in what I'm talking about and emphasise that. Second,I should create analogies that encapsulate the subject in an accessible way. I can combine these two approaches to create analogies in the form of jokes.The people who have a fuller understanding of the subject matter can appreciate the attempt to talk about it, whilst the people who don't can get the gist of it and laugh at the same time. Because jokes always set up expectations and then suddenly thwart them, I call these comic analogies 'twisted nutshells'. (I hope this metaphor has brought any veggies back on side.) I've been thinking about ways of creating twisted nutshells after reading about something called 'conceptual blending'.
Conceptual blending, as the name suggests, is the process of blending one concept with another in order to create a third that is related to, but different from, the other two. In 'The Way We Think' by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner the authors go into detail about how this process works. According to them, it is something we do subconsciously most of the time in all sorts of endeavours. If we do it subconsciously then why read about it? Most of us can speak and understand our native language without conscious effort, but not everyone is a Shakespeare. Some of us aren't even Dan Brown. Some people have such a good conscious grasp of the language that they can use it so much better than the rest of us. So explicitly understanding the principles of conceptual blending can help us build on our natural ability to hopefully become, with practice, more expert. I'm not going to discuss all the principles of conceptual blending now. The aspect I'm interested in here involves taking large, complex concepts and blending them with a more accessible concept to understand them - in other words, a metaphor or analogy. Consider this example they discuss which refers to the Monica Lewinsky scandal:
If Clinton were the Titanic, the iceberg would have sunk."
The scandal, which involved a long political and legal process involving many people, is compressed into an analogy involving an encounter between one ship and one iceberg. This is more accessible to us as it is a simpler, physical process and the Titanic story is common knowledge. All the opponents of Clinton are compressed into one iceberg. This is the nutshell part. In this analogy, contrary to our expectations, the Titanic survives.This is the twisted part. It reflects the face that despite being impeached Clinton survived the scandal and completed his second term in office. Perhaps it won't have them rolling in the aisles, but it is at least amusing. As I said before, at this stage I'm groping toward a solution to creating funny out of difficult ideas. (What is it about Clinton that makes me harp on about groping?) By modelling the mental process involved in creating this twisted nutshell joke, we can understand how to create some of our own. So what is it?
The scandal, which involved a long political and legal process involving many people, is compressed into an analogy involving an encounter between one ship and one iceberg. This is more accessible to us as it is a simpler, physical process and the Titanic story is common knowledge. All the opponents of Clinton are compressed into one iceberg. This is the nutshell part. In this analogy, contrary to our expectations, the Titanic survives.This is the twisted part. It reflects the face that despite being impeached Clinton survived the scandal and completed his second term in office. Perhaps it won't have them rolling in the aisles, but it is at least amusing. As I said before, at this stage I'm groping toward a solution to creating funny out of difficult ideas. (What is it about Clinton that makes me harp on about groping?) By modelling the mental process involved in creating this twisted nutshell joke, we can understand how to create some of our own. So what is it?
To create the kind of conceptual blend I call a twisted nutshell we need somethings called mental spaces. A mental space is a scenario or subject. In a conceptual blend there are four types of mental space: two input spaces, a generic space and a blended space. I shall explain how they work with reference to the Titanic joke.
1) One input space is the Lewinsky scandal and all its goings on.
2) A second input space containing the story of theTitanic - the ship sinks.
3) A generic space which tells us what the two input spaces above have in common. In this case 'things in conflict'.
4) The blended space which contains some elements from the other three, integrated to give us the statement 'If Clinton were the Titanic...' etc.
We need to figure out how we use spaces 1 to 3 in order to create 4. Here we need to bring in an idea of Sally Carter's who wrote The Comedy Bible. When we're looking at our subject, we need to ask ourselves questions about it. She advises us to ask what is weird, stupid, scary or hard about the subject . Greg Dean in Step By Step to Stand Up says something similar when he writes that we should ask what negative opinion we have about aspects of the subject. I also like to ask what is absurd about it because it's a word that stimulates my imagination when it comes to comedy. However, I think it's a matter of personal taste as they all add up to the same thing. With regard to the Lewinsky scandal, the absurd thing is that Clinton remained president despite being impeached.The last president to be impeached was Nixon who subsequently resigned. Because this is contrary to what should have happened, this is the essence of the twist. All of this is part of input space 1).
Next we have to describe the situation in a general way without reference to the outcome. 'Things in conflict' covers this. Clinton, Kenneth Starr and his other political opponents can be thought of as so many things in conflict.
Now we create the second input space. Here we want to create a version of the generic space that is at a more human scale. We want the scenario to be accessible, involve as few elements as possible, and to happen in a relatively short time and a small space. It should also be as physical as possible. In this case, the scenario that was selected was the Titanic disaster. The scenario is accessible because it is common knowledge. It happened between just two things, the ship and the iceberg, and it was a simple physical action: one thing struck another and sank.
Finally we make the blended space. Clinton and his opponents as 'things in conflict' are linked through the generic space to the Titanic and the iceberg respectively. But note that we use the twist in the first input space to modify the scenario in the second: the Titanic survives. Remember what I said about two spaces blended to create a third: the blended space is related to, but different from, the other two in that it contains the Titanic and iceberg from the second, but it is modified by the twisted outcome of the first.
Here is another example that I will deal with more briefly in order to reinforce the idea. It's a joke by US comedian Lee Camp:
"Saying we have unemployment because we have no money is like telling someone they can't build a shed because we've run out of inches."
Let us run through the spaces and their construction:
Let us run through the spaces and their construction:
1) First input space is the US economy which is so vast it is impossible to envisage. The absurdity, as Lee Camp sees it, is that money is merely a unit of measurement and we are letting it rule us rather than be a tool.
2) A generic space expressing the first without reference to the outcome. It could be something like 'productive labour' and 'units of measurement'.
3) A second input space containing more human scale elements. In this case 'building a shed' and 'inches' for 'labour' and 'measurement' respectively.
4) In the blended space we have shed building and inches given the same twisted relationship Lee Camp sees between unemployment and money. We have the gist of the absurdity using elements we can get a mental fix on.
Here are some I tried myself:
"Why are the parties who believe in the free market also the ones who want us to love our country? It's like having a prostitute who demands a cuddle."
1) Input space containing conservative ideology that contains neoliberal economics including privatization, abolishing welfare, etc and yet an absurd requirement of patriotism: saluting flags, swearing allegiance, etc.
1) Input space containing conservative ideology that contains neoliberal economics including privatization, abolishing welfare, etc and yet an absurd requirement of patriotism: saluting flags, swearing allegiance, etc.
2) Generic space 'things in a monetary relationship' and 'things in love'
3) Second input space. I reduced the number of elements to two people. An purely transactional relationship between two people that is easily comprehensible is sex work. An easily comprehensible loving relationship is a romantic one.
4) The blended space in which, according to the contradictory demands of conservatism, the transactional relationship of prostitution is twisted by the expectation that it should include emotional elements.
"In quantum physics, when two subatomic particles interact the laws of cause and effect do not apply. It's like getting a blow-job before you've painted the house."
This is an example where human scale means not explaining something large with something small, but by taking the smallest scale thing there is, subatomic physics, and explaining it with something bigger.
This is an example where human scale means not explaining something large with something small, but by taking the smallest scale thing there is, subatomic physics, and explaining it with something bigger.
1) Quantum interactions between particles where large scale physics does not apply.
2) Generic space: 'things interacting'
3) Second input space: we already have just two things, but to put it on a more human scale I have two persons in a long-term relationship.
4) The blended space in which the stereotypical give-and-take of married life is twisted by the breakdown of cause and effect from the first input space.
Ideally, a twisted nutshell takes the odd relationship between things and represents it on a human, more accessible scale that highlights their absurdities in a punchy way in order to get laughs. Hopefully, it does this whilst also conveying a little information about the things discussed. Note that I have, through the alchemy of conceptual blending, explained an aspect of the highly abstruse subject of quantum physics through the medium of a dick joke.
In future blogs I shall discuss other aspects of conceptual blending and how it has helped me write other kinds of jokes. In the meantime, I would be very keen to have feedback on what you have read here, especially if you have tried out the technique yourself.
