What's Funnier, "A Funny Thing Happened to ME on the Way…"
or
"…OK, So There's This Idiot who was going to the…?"

Michael Kadish

Well, it's obviously not always the case that a joke is funnier in first person, but it generally is. The main differences in switching the narratorial positions of the jokes are different applications of the different tones for the different jokes. All comedic styles and types generally can, and generally do, use the various narratorial positions for different jokes.

I think I'd better establish some terms. As in literature, there are four types of narratorial positions. There is the first person, as in "So, I walked into the…, We just…"¹ It's either a joke on the speaker, or from the perspective of the speaker. It doesn't have to be true, it just has to be told with "I," "me," "we," or "my."

Then there is the second person. In literature, this second person is pretty awkward. It works mostly in "choose your own adventure" type stories, or works (or, many would say that it does not work) in books like Bright Lights, Big City.

In jokes, second person works much better. The two main types of second person jokes are very common. The first type of second person is the insult;² to use an example that gets under my skin, "Yo momma" jokes, work both if the humor is directed either from the speaker to the audience, or in an act between the comedian and the straight man on the stage. This paper is not specifically about stand-up, but the terms from stand-up comedy will be used. Any insult directed towards the person, his position, his possessions, including, but not limited to the insultee's mother, constitutes second person.

The second form of second person is of the much more laid back, "Did you ever notice…," "Do you remember when…,"³ variety. This is generally considered a bit more sophisticated of the two types of second person jokes. These are also generally questions, but rhetorical. "Do you remember when…," etc.⁴ There are a few variations that are not questions⁵ , but the majority are questions.

This doesn't mean that any riddle is a second person joke. In a normal riddle, the humor lies in either a pun, or cynicism, or the combination of the two.⁶ Some may consider this a second person joke, because it asks you the question. I am of the school that says most riddles are third person. Although it asks you or an understood you a question, the humor is based on something that has no relation to the first or second person. Simply, it matters more at what or whom the actual

punchline is directed. It doesn't necessarily matter what words are used, but merely who the target is. For instance:

If the comedian is a lawyer, the joke is first person. If only the audience is a lawyer, it is second person. Only when neither parties are effected, is the joke third person. Most of the time the pun describes an irrelevant thing. Therefore, most pun riddles are third person.⁷

In both literature and humor, there are two main types of third person narrators, the third person, and the third person omniscient. Most third person jokes are third person omniscient. By telling a joke, a comedian generally tells the people that "this is funny, you can laugh at it." In order to do this, all of the characters are definite, so the comedian is omniscient. If the comedian says that the certain blond was stupid, then, that blond was in fact stupid. Everything is a fact. The comedian has complete authority of what the characters do in the jokes. Nearly any type of humor that relies on the element of the unexpected would constitute third person omniscient. For instance, there is a comedian named Gallagher, whose main act involves smashing fruit with a mallet. The joke is not "look I'm a guy smashing the watermelons," that would be first person. It's the constant shock of the exploding melons that he controls making it third person.

The only non-omniscient third person jokes enter the scene when the comedian is intentionally leaving out details for the sake of the joke. This is only a retelling of a situation⁸ without the story including the presence of the comedian. If the humor of the joke comes from what is left out, but the comedic result is that the comedian comes out as the butt of the joke. The fact is

that the joke is on the teller, regardless of whether or not the comedian says "me," "I," "we," or "my." So, when Dennis Miller brings out something like, "What do Ted Kennedy and Vasco da Gama have in common?"⁹ it's generally a first person joke. The usual effect of such a joke is to make the audience feel differently about the comedian, due to the fact that, in this case, he went over their heads.

OK, the person of the joke is established, more or less. The rules are firm, but they are not ironclad. Comedic styles are a bit more intricate. Actually, there are really only three styles of jokes, and they very often overlap. The three are puns, surprise, and nostalgia.

There are three groups of puns. There is the common one, probably the most trite type of joke, that is just a play on words.¹⁰ They generally give puns a bad name, but the other two types of puns are generally funnier. A pun is a play on words, and so parodies and connections also are in the pun category. By Allen Sherman taking the song "Frair Jaque" and changing the words a little to make it sound like a phone call to "Sarah Jockman," he is creating a pun. Likewise, when somebody makes a comparison between two things, rather than words, it is playing with the words\concepts, and constitutes a pun. So the joke,

is a pun since it plays with the concept of "in common." Physical comedy can also produce puns, if it's a play on the function, so that when Mr. Bean combs his hair with a rake, it is a pun.

The second style of joke is the surprise. This can be something that is so absurd it is laughed at, but it can also be less strange or chaotic. Whenever swearing or insults are used for the sake of humor, the reason that they can at times command a laugh is because it is an initial shock. The same holds true to nearly the nth degree for sex. Perhaps due to the Victorian age, we find it very easy to

laugh at sex, or anything that comes out of any hole on the human body. (There is the strange exception of breast milk.) It is because people are uncomfortable with the subject, because we get grossed out, that the surprise is funny.

Nostalgic jokes are a bit of a reversal from surprise jokes. You laugh at a nostalgic joke because you know about it, you know that it's true. Jerry Seinfeld, with his "What is the deal with

X?" type humor, is a good example of basic nostalgic jokes. These are generally friendlier types of jokes because they actually build a link between the audience and the comedian. The audience realizes the links it has with the comedian.

Any humorous depiction of frustration can be nostalgic. It doesn't matter whether or not the cause of the cause of the frustration has been shared with the audience. The fact the emotion has been shared is enough to make it fit into the nostalgic joke style. What brings on the frustration may be a surprise, but the actions of frustration are nostalgic.

Another common type of the nostalgia style is the running gag. For example, you may have noticed the page numbers on my pages are not the normal set. They may not come off as enormously funny, but the fact that it could be amusing stems from the continuous approach, from different directions. The page numbers are not a surprise, because once they are noticed, you know exactly where the joke will be. Since you know what will come next, the joke style is nostalgic.

I don't believe I left out any groupings, the groups should manage to encompass virtually every type of joke. Now, to answer the question as to why and when the first person joke works better. Remember, the second person jokes come in generally two forms, the insults, and the "Did you ever notice?" form. (The latter being almost always a nostalgic style joke.) When insulting, the chances are very high that the insultee will not appreciate the humor. Even if the insultee is another comedian, there runs a chance that the audience will sympathize with the insultee. I am sure that I am not the only one who feels sorry for Costello while Abbot continuously attacks him.

It's a great deal easier to use yourself as the insulted one. With the sympathy, the audience can laugh, because the insultee has basically said so. For instance, consider when Louie Anderson, a rather obese comedian, tells why he doesn't trust his father: "My dad told me not to masturbate, or I'd be fat. Now, how did he know I was going to be fat?" Now, if somebody says, "I told my son not to play with himself, or he'd be fat. Sure enough he ways 300 pounds now," it doesn't come off as funny because in the first situation you are being invited to laugh at the comedian, who is offering himself to be laughed at.

There are a small amount of jokes that complement the teller without insulting anybody else.¹¹ Generally, these don't work, but if a comedian can pull off the egotism then the joke remains funny. These are an entity to themselves. If transferred to second or third person, these jokes do not work.

In general, a nostalgic joke works better in first person than in second. The only difference between a second person nostalgic joke and its first person counterpart is the comedian's mention of the personal problems encountered. Like I said, when the comedian mentions personal problems it bridges a gap.

At times, this can make the comedian sound whinier. That basically is the instance in which the joke should not be told in first person. But generally a second person, but especially third person joke, does improve in first person. The joke becomes "real" in first person.

I cannot think of a third person pun that does not improve when told in first person. If you were to hear that a tombstone somewhere reads

it may amuse you, but it'd have a bigger impact if I told you it was my Uncle Phillip in Hoboken who had it carved. The fact that it really happened is often just as funny, if not funnier than the joke itself.

There's even a ranking of how real the jokes are. There's complete familiarity. If you know all of the people involved, the joke is much more alive. A little below that level is the first hand telling concerning people you don't know. For instance, when I was in my senior history class, my teacher often got annoyed that during his constant political rants we would stop taking notes because we all knew he wouldn't quiz us on the information. "You know, when I was a student, my professor never checked our notebooks, or gave us quizzes, yet I meticulously took down every word he ever spoke."

Across the room, a friend of mine, Brandon, without missing a beat, asked "Sir, how do you spell 'meticulously'?"

It would be funnier if you knew my history teacher, or Brandon, but as it is, humor (hopefully) comes across. A lesser level comes out of, what I call, "The Readers' Digest level." If you open Readers' Digest to one of the jokes sections, somebody from Walla Walla, Washington could write in the same story. Generally, the fact that we use our imagination doesn't help. The fact that this person, who we will probably never meet, got paid $400 for offering this lowers the believability of it. Still, it retains some level of believability. For that reason, it remains more humorous than it would be, written as:

The reason the pun from Good Will Hunting works is because the creativity at the time is so

impressive. By telling a pun joke in first person, you are, in effect, giving an example of something somebody "should've said." Those infamous realizations that hit us two hours later, this hero, being told about from an eye witness, actually had one at the right time. That added legitimacy combines with the creativity to make the joke so much better.

Puns are rather black and white. Most of the time, a parody is funniest if a friend of yours did it and you know the original. Furthermore, the more complete the parody, the better it is. Seeing, say, Weird Al Yankovitch, performing one of his parodies, even on TV, is funnier than just reading the lyrics.

When a joke is a surprise joke, it's a little different. First person jokes make the joke more vivid. Therefore, any image is stronger. If the punchline of a joke involves some bodily waste, telling the joke in first person will make the joke much more disgusting, and the humor could be lost to the impact. How much you paint the negative situation of an event is an important thing to consider. Remember the cliché, "someday you'll look back on this and laugh." If you describe a situation as you truly felt it at the time, the humor could be lost. On the other hand, the fact that it happened to you makes it funnier. The balance has to be found when the shock joke has the option of evoking any other emotion.

When it comes to swearing or anger, first person is ideal. Seeing the speaker vent his frustration works well to add to the humor. There really is not a limit too this. As long as the comedian is inviting the audience to laugh at him, any amount of anger, well, up to physically attacking an audience member, has been shown to be humorous.

As I said, the element described by "you'll be able to laugh at it later" is rather incredible, and it in itself shows how first person can work so much better. For example, most people when reading this paper would not be amused by my page "numbering." But, it would work as a punchline much better, later on, when "Well, there was this one student I had at Ben Gurion, and on every

paper he left out page numbers, so finally, on his last paper, the idiot went berserk. On one page he wrote the Hebrew number, then the next page spelled it out in English, then in Hebrew, then in Spanish, then Arabic, then a mathematical formula, then the corresponding element, then a fraction of a dozen, the guy on the ten dollar bill, the eleventh president…" is told, it would probably get a few chuckles. The idiocy of the situation isn't important. The power of telling it as having actually happened makes it much funnier. Remember, a first person joke doesn't mean "I did," it means "I was there." Unless the joke is about an actual sexual encounter, nauseating material, or initially has an amount of descriptions worthy of Thomas Hardy, the surprise joke generally will be much more appreciated in first person.

Nostalgic jokes are a completely different story. By offering a nostalgic joke in first person, it physically alters the persona. A racist joke is nostalgic, because the implication is that you already knew that the stereotypes are true. If you realized that the certain type of people would lead to this. Since it already is set that this type of people act this way, and both the comedian and audience shares the notions of the stereotypes, the joke is not going to surprise anybody.

Telling an offensive joke in first person can make the bigotry more apparent. Consider:

The difference there is subtle, but the second one should offend more people. Here's a better example:

See, now both of those are, or at least should be, very offensive. The first hand account, however, can make it worse. Observe how much worse:

The first hand telling came off as offensive, even though it used actual places, while the third person telling used the racially insensitive term. The first person sounds much more serious, while the third person sounds as if it should be shrugged off.

This isn't always the case, the familiarity can make the joke more acceptable.

The third person sounds cold and cynical, while the first person comes off as a bit depressing. The difference is the tone. In the first one, the tone comes off as insulting, In the second one, the idea has a bit of sympathy. A normal nostalgic joke will prompt laughter at how foolish things are and come off remarkably well in first person. The whole point of the normal nostalgic joke is to realize how foolish something is. So the fact that the comedian and the audience shared it makes it better.

OK Now, look how stupid that looks in third person.

It's nowhere near as humorous. The personal element is gone. You need at least some personal element in there:

Reality adds a better touch.

I saw this interview show, "Inside the Comedy Mind," where Alan King was interviewing Joan Rivers. According to Joan Rivers, back when she was doing stand-up in the fifties, there were rules. "Like, if you did a mother-in-law joke, you had to have a mother-in-law." I don't quite understand why such honesty would be a necessity to comedians. Many of the comedians at the time were not exactly altruistic (Lenny Bruce, say) but you can understand that they didn't want comedians to exploit this technique. It's very potent. Perhaps they wanted the comedy to come from different people, and presumably, the different people would be able to tell newer jokes. I'm not sure why they did it. But by establishing this rule, the jokes were limited. First person can make a joke a lot more powerful.

"Vots he goink to do?"

Her sister answers, "Ee's goink to focus."

"Bot of us!?!"