What to Think About Jokes Told by Norm MacDonald
LET’S TALK ABOUT SOME JOKES, AND WHETHER AND WHY THEY WORK.
The Moth Joke
The key to Norm MacDonald’s jokes is to understand that the setup is the punchline.
As explained pretty well in this blog post, most good jokes function on three levels:
There’s the basic setup/punchline, where a short story sets up an expectation based on mutually assumed understandings of the meanings of certain words, and the punchline that subverts that understanding (“What kind of tree has five fingers? A palm tree.”).
Then there’s a second level, where the setup itself causes the audience to expect a certain type of punchline, which the joke subverts by failing to deliver (“Knock knock. Who’s there? Amazon delivery. Amazon delivery who? ...What?”).
Jokes can work on a third level, where the setup causes the audience to wonder why the joke is being told, and/or what expectation the setup is intended to create at all, after which the punchline wraps into a joke-shaped box a much broader statement concerning the nature of storytelling.
Norm MacDonald’s long-form jokes work on this third level. The setup forces the audience to contextualize the joke, because we want to hear it as a joke. So we do the mental homework of making whatever Norm is saying sound to us like a “joke” so that we can have an expectation that the punchline subverts. The punchline does little more than mock us, or congratulate us if you prefer--it’s not clear--for making that effort.
So what about the setup to the moth joke creates or subverts expectations? A lot of things:
The context: Late night tv is an advertising platform. Most guests use it as such. Norm shows up and launches into a three-minute story that viewers, even if they understand it to be a joke, may not connect with or understand at all. That audacity, by virtue of being apparently pointless, is itself a subversion of expectations, a sort of punchline to the joke of late night television.
The word choice and timing, i.e., the technique of joke-telling: Not everyone likes Norm MacDonald, and there are some pretty good reasons not to. He expresses himself in a way that is unique, consistently surprising, often not appropriate for polite society, and occasionally outright offensive. If you want your audience to think carefully about the story--to do that mental labor of making it funny--you need them to be surprised, impressed, and enthralled by the way you tell it.
The subject matter: The Moth Joke is arguably a straight-up three minute critical take on all of Russian literature; that’s certainly an added level to the joke and will enhance the experience if you’ve read any Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy. But you don’t need to know those books to know that Norm’s choice to use these long Russian names is a critical component of the joke, i.e., the fact that you have to wonder why he chose to do that, is part of the joke itself.
Now, we have the punchline.
The key here is that the punchline reminds us--or teaches us, if we didn’t already know--that it’s all been a joke. Indeed, it’s an old, well-worn joke, and we’ve just been watching Norm borrow it as a structure for comedic invention and by extension for his personal philosophy. The classic joke starts with “A moth walks into a podiatrist” and ends with “...because the light was on.” In the middle you have the moth telling the podiatrist why he walked in, and Norm realized that he could do whatever he wanted with that. (I don’t know if the Moth Joke was already employed as a structure for this kind of comedic invention. There are many classic jokes that are used this way; a close analogy apparently more common to professional comedians is the joke explored in the film The Aristocrats.)
The “Dirty Johnny Joke”
I don’t know that this joke is a reference to anything in particular, but it certainly reads like a modern-day Homeric epic: “He had hate in his gut...he fired the kalashnikov with an arcing kind of...like a farmer would with his hay. And sure enough, the men fell like hay before him.”
And then, the sheer glory of the slaughter causes Uncle Terry to ejaculate. As it was with Achilleus, so it was with Uncle Terry.
Like the Moth Joke, the Dirty Johnny Joke uses an overt framing device: the schoolroom discussion of aphorisms. Obviously the Uncle Terry story is leading to some kind of aphorism meant to be compared humorously to “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Part of the joke is that we’ve been forecasted this kind of bland double-entendre based punchline, and we’re being forced into a really meandering route to get there.
So, unlike the Moth Joke, which isn’t really announced as a “joke” in the same way, here we think we know the punchline already. The descent into grotesque violence thus becomes a punchline in itself, because the schoolroom-aphorism-as-incoming-punchline is itself changing and reasserting itself. In other words, we have to do a lot of mental labor to figure out how we could possibly get back to the “punchline” which we gradually begin to worry may not be arriving.
In other words, the setup is the punchline.
But that doesn’t explain why the joke is so good. You could write off the Moth Joke by saying that Norm is the only comedian out there who would tell a joke like that on late night tv, and it’s that audacity that is so surprising and delightful and, well, funny. But here, Norm is telling a straight joke on a media format where it’s far less surprising. For my money, it’s even funnier. And the reason is that mastery of timing and language: there’s just nobody in comedy that speaks so precisely, that uses those words that way, that would think to tell a joke like this.
I know that not everyone is so impressed by this joke. And when I talk to people about it, it’s usually that they find the joke too vulgar and violent and they’re not entertained by its audacity as a joke-qua-joke. And I admit that being impressed by a joke is not per se the same as finding it funny--although, if “funny” derives from being surprised and delighted, being “impressed” is certainly not far off. But, to those who don’t see this joke as a masterpiece, I say this: try to tell this joke in public. Sure, a lot of us can pull off a passable impression of other comedians; it’s how most comics get their start. But see if you can remember all those phrases Norm MacDonald uses, the little pauses. See if you can tell it without sounding like a crass little asshole. See if you don’t shorten it because your audience is becoming uncomfortable with the length and violence of it, and start heckling you to get to the point. It is damned impossible, in real life, if you’re not Norm MacDonald, to bend the universe into a shape where this joke makes any sense, where you can tell this joke without making people hate you. Norm MacDonald, through sheer tyranny of will, had to create the universe where this joke exists.
A Nearly 13-Minute Joke
Note: this is from Norm’s 2011 special, “Me Doing Standup.” The youtube clip is not high quality, probably not authorized, and you should absolutely go straight to the source on this one.
The prevalent style of comedy these days is to tell a long-form story, always purportedly true and usually autobiographical, with many digressions (“call-backs”), ending with a poignant, pithy summation that may or may not be a button-like punchline. Indeed, an entire hour-long special can function this way, as a single story--or even two and a half hours, if you’re Gary Gulman and you need to talk about your, and America’s, debilitating journey into mental illness (shoutout, Gary, great show).
This type of comedy, while often compelling, rarely employs traditional “jokes” with setups and punchlines and a subversion of expectations. It’s more often a storytelling device, a way of structuring the audience experience so that a comedian’s collection of “bits” can cohere into an hour-long show that enhances his or her brand. Likewise, this helps the comedian’s distributor (Netflix, Comedy Central, HBO, etc) identify a consistent theme and perspective of the show so they can tailor their marketing efforts.
Take this in-depth analysis of the structure of an Ali Wong special. It has math! It shows how Ali Wong’s show spirals around three central conceits: getting older, marriage, and pregnancy. Within those, there are a few story-like bits, ranging from a few seconds to several minutes long, each perhaps radiating a few quick setup/punchline-type jokes. The show arguably boils down to the revelation--a sort of punchline--that contrary to her initial braggy jokes about entrapping her business-school-educated “catch” of a husband into marriage, the husband has in fact entrapped her in a marriage to which she brings the financial stability. It’s a subversion of expectations, kind of, but notwithstanding our understanding of artistic license, the humor here is inextricable from the implication that we’re hearing a true story. The humor doesn’t come from any expectation derived from the structure and subject of the joke itself, it comes from an apparently true story being told, which has a surprising-yet-heartening ending. (Which is, in a way, Ali Wong’s brand.) I’m not sure I’d call it a “joke,” just a funny story.
(And, digression--the article linked above describes this structure as a result of Ali Wong’s “genius.” Ali Wong is extraordinarily funny, for sure, and I love her perspective and the choices she makes, the stories she chooses to tell. What the article does not do is perform the same analysis upon any other standup comedy routines. If it did, it would find that many of the most popular comedians alive employ this same structure, for the same reasons. Are they all geniuses? I don’t think so--that’s like saying Norm is a genius because he uses the moth story as a structure for a joke about joketelling. He does, but the genius element has more to do with the way he uses the structure to subvert our expectations--i.e., by doing something nobody else is doing. Technical proficiency of the kind identified in this article bears at best a tangential relationship to the artistic techniques that make Ali Wong an unusually compelling comedian. What is interesting about the article is that it applies a type of analysis commonplace in criticism of other art forms but, to its own detriment, unique to comedy.)
But if you are Norm MacDonald, you are definitely telling “jokes,” quotation marks intended. His humor is not autobiographical. There is no easily brand-able theme here in the subject matter (although, on a non-surface level, his jokes do communicate something important, in this case concerning the relationship between the news media and violence against women). This is just a joke that very pointedly asks us to do the mental labor--as above--of considering whether the joke, or its subject matter, can possibly be funny. The brand is simply “jokes,” told in a particular way that nobody else alive can replicate.
What’s different about the Nearly 13-Minute Joke is the context. The Moth Joke and the Dirty Johnny Joke are funny in part because they are told in a moment when a long joke is per se unexpected, if not wildly inappropriate to the medium. But on a comedy stage, a joke of some kind is required, (although very few standup comedians have told traditional, impersonal setup/punchline jokes since Bob Newhart and Lenny Bruce stepped out of that box in the 1950s).
As anyone who has tried standup comedy can tell you, being funny is a lot harder on stage. Lots of people will concede they’re “situationally funny” or some variation of that phrase, by which they mean they’re astute and witty and expressive and daring enough to delight people who aren’t expecting a subversive outburst in an ordinary interaction. When you stand on a stage and say that you’re going to tell a joke, you need to say or do something several orders of magnitude more surprising and subversive to get the same reaction you can get from farting at a dinner party.
In this context Norm MacDonald excels. And there was a time when I thought the Nearly 13-Minute Joke was one of the funniest things I’d ever heard. But the thing about standup comedy is that it requires such a level of surprise and subversion that, by design, it just can’t age well: we laugh, we absorb it, then we can’t hear it again and be surprised and delighted and enlightened. We change and grow, and forget who we were when we were so shocked by that story and that perspective.
And this is where we hit the limit on Norm’s comedy and even his career, because when the context isn’t part of the joke, the joke gets caught in its moment of time and it has a shelf life. And when your “brand” is this type of joke and the way you tell it, your brand has a shelf life (as all comedians do--but personal/memoirish stories have a longer life and sustain a long career more easily than jokes-qua-jokes that rely on individual performative technique). Unlike the Moth Joke and Dirty Johnny, the Nearly 13-Minute Joke is rooted in a particular cultural moment that has expired.
To put a point on it, in a #MeToo world, this joke does not seem thoughtful enough about violence against women. Or perhaps at this point, the white male perspective on rape, even the look-how-clever-I-can-be-at-making-taboo-subjects-funny-but-really-I’m-not-an-asshole-I’m-just-such-an-old-school-talented-comedian angle that’s more the trade of, let’s say, Bill Burr or Louis CK or Anthony Jeselnik or a million others, is just not something we need to see or valorize. Yes, you can make it funny and compelling, but why do you need to tell that story?
Moreover, reflecting on where things went with Louis CK, can we really trust that the comedian who tells this joke is not an asshole, and is worth winking along with? I mean, I watched Louie obsessively. I saw Louis CK live, in a spiral-structured show that culminated with a the joke that “Now we all know the holocaust was bad, but maybe there were enough Jews.” And, because the joke was delivered perfectly and it was the perfect culmination of a well-organized show on an interesting theme, I laughed at that joke so hard I had stomach cramps for days (true story!). And I went on to watch episodes of Louie where women try to leave the Louie character’s apartment and he slams the door on them and physically blocks their way and tries to kiss them to change their minds, and I thought those scenes had a strange perspective on the character but I thought Louie had earned the benefit of the doubt to wink at me. And then I heard the rumors, and his denials, and then his admission and his misleading apology and his offensive attempt at a comeback.
After that, I’m not the same person who laughed at the Nearly 13-Minute Joke. And it’s not that I don’t see the genius of the joke; I still understand why it was funny. But does Norm get the benefit of the doubt?
In 2018 Norm got a Netflix talk show of his own, his own equivalent of a late night program. I’d followed his talk show podcast and usually liked it, so I was prepared to like this. In the marketing runup to the release, Norm managed to blunder his way through well-intentioned but very poorly executed comments on Louis CK and people with disabilities. In the Netflix show, there’s a moment where he seems to kiss Jane Fonda hard, on the mouth, without her consent; the most charitable way to put it is she seems unprepared and a bit confused and just goes along with it.
I don’t think Norm MacDonald is a bad person. I doubt he’s done anything Louis CK-level harmful, much less Weinstein or Cosby-level. By all accounts he’s not interested enough in building sexual or institutional relationships to even sustain a consistent career, much less build the kind of personal empire that encourages managers, attorneys, and other hangers-on to collaborate in your gaslighting the women that dare to complain about your sexual assault. No, Norm is just a strange man from an older generation who has an interesting perspective and mannerisms that probably are the direct cause of his career success, but are becoming problematic for reasons he doesn’t really understand or want to dig into.
So the Nearly 13-Minute Joke, for me, encapsulates why I can believe Norm MacDonald is one of the most talented and interested comedians ever, and at the same time why there’s a limit to his charms. I love a joke that jumps up its own ass with metatextual commentary about the existence of jokes. I love jokes that go to dark places and make me think differently about my culture and my language. But ultimately, for standup comedy to work, I have to keep feeling surprised and delighted, and even for a true “joke” teller like Norm rather than a storyteller like Ali Wong, that surprise and delight comes from my belief that I’m communicating with a real person, someone who I feel comfortable paying money, putting up on a stage and adoring. Norm gives us precious little of the “real” Norm; he doesn’t tell “true” stories about his life for the most part and doesn’t even pretend to, and so the most revealing element of the jokes is the mere fact that he chooses to address some subjects instead of others, and address them from a particular perspective. I now feel like I know the guy who makes those choices--I know quite a few, in fact. It’s not surprising or delightful anymore.