What is alternative comedy?
What is alternative comedy? Does such a thing exist anymore and, if so, does it require a new label? As a child, or parasitic growth, of the age of alternative comedy, I wonder what defines it.
When I first saw it, I noticed it was loud and energetic. Bruce Forsyth was also loud and energetic, but the energy of Alexei Sayle and Rik Mayall seemed different, there was a militancy, sometimes a sneer, both real and self parodying. Was it asking mainstream light entertainment out for a fight by the elm tree where Stan Boardman propped his push bike?
I didn’t notice the politics in the first few TV versions I saw. It was the manic intensity that shone through, there was no leaning at jaunty angle on the microphone stand to be seen here. It was slapstick and absurd, this before the next rise of observational comedy. The best observational comedians were of a slightly older generation, the urbane and incisive Dave Allen, and the excitingly sweary Billy Connolly amongst them.
After the violent slapstick and swearing, I started to realise that alternative comedy was political too. This was part of my political education. I wouldn’t need too much nuance until later on in my life. Margaret Thatcher was the despot, surrounded by drooling henchmen and unlickworthy lickspittles. Alternative comedy was connected to striking miners’ benefits and Red Wedge tours. It would be a few years before the “alternative comedians” would be performing at the Royal Variety performance or in the Queen’s back garden. Entertainment would never be the same again…until it was.
Finally, somewhere in the laughter breaks, I realised that the alternative comedian was the author of their own words. Their routines were not necessarily their own experience, but the oddities and spoutings were the product of their own mind. It was their world view, even if it was sometimes not the material world we knew, this could be a planet of their own making.
In the minds of many, alternative comedy was non-sexist, non-racist, self-written, sometimes with a rebel yell. Often, the non-sexist, non-racist element was unspoken, as Rik slammed Ade’s penis in a piano.
Alternative comedy is a term still bandied around, but which performers are alternative and which are mainstream? Does the term offer any real information to a prospective audience member? With so much comedy available, does it need more tags, something akin to the sub sections in a record shop?
“I am looking for some easy listening comedy. Something for my husband and I to relax to while drinking red wine. Have you got a comedian that goes well with Merlot?”
During the Edinburgh Fringe, there seemed to be a new division. There were complaints that, of late, comedy has become about things, and has themes and purpose, and this angered some who wondered what happened to jokes.
What happened to jokes was that those people had stopped looking for the tellers so they could create a fictional reality that they could be cross about. There are plenty of joke tellers, plenty of storytellers, some people who want to try and offer the audience alternative ways of thinking, and others who want to do nothing more than make you laugh by any means necessary.
Is this one of the divisions – the beloved entertainers versus the humorous sociology lecturers? If you stand on stage, is your only desire to make the audience laugh, or are you limited by wishing to make them laugh on your terms? If the audience aren’t going with you, is there a limit to what you can turn to in your box of tricks and confetti?
A couple of months ago, a comedian asked me what was more important for me, “getting an idea across or getting big laughs”, but I hope not to sacrifice one for the other. My plan, sometimes thwarted, is to find a way to talk about the reptilian brain or Darwin’s The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms or the speed of light, and get big laughs. I hope I am not ridiculous in vain.
So, what is alternative comedy? Whatever vestiges are left of the original idea, a media hook for a burgeoning scene, or a Malcolm Hardee poster for an absurd puppet show with Martin Soan, I wonder if it is authorship and the limits of your comedic language being the limits of the world you want to share, unforced by preconceptions or audience demands.
The need to fail when common ground is untreadable with your comedy ethics?
Is alternative comedy what you don’t find funny? If so, then everyone is an alternative comedian to someone (though if you don’t find Laurel and Hardy funny then it is definitely your fault, not theirs).
Over to you.
Robin Ince is currently touring the UK and beyond (US and Australia next year). Click for dates.
