Humor and Satire on Contemporary Television

Animation and the American Joke

Silas Kaine Ezell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317119401
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines contemporary American animated humor, focusing on popular animated television shows in order to explore the ways in which they engage with American culture and history, employing a peculiarly American way of using humor to discuss important cultural issues. With attention to the work of American humorists, such as the Southwest humorists, Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, and Kurt Vonnegut, and the question of the extent to which modern animated satire shares the qualities of earlier humor, particularly the use of setting, the carnivalesque, collective memory, racial humor, and irony, Humor and Satire on Contemporary Television concentrates on a particular strand of American humor: the use of satire to expose the gap between the American ideal and the American experience. Taking up the notion of 'The Great American Joke', the author examines the discursive humor of programmes such as The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, King of the Hill, Daria, American Dad!, The Boondocks, The PJs and Futurama. A study of how animated television programmes offer a new discourse on a very traditional strain of American humor, this book will appeal to scholars and students of popular culture, television and media studies, American literature and visual studies, and contemporary humor and satire.

Chapter 1
Irony and Incongruity in American Humor

Over the past twenty-five years, primetime animated television programming for adults has come back from the dead. In fact, these programs have ascended from upstart novelty to an established staple of broadcast and cable programming. After the 1960s saw the run of The Jetsons and The Flintstones end, many wondered whether or not animation targeted toward adults during primetime would ever again be viable. That mindset changed with the success of Fox’s The Simpsons in 1989. After over 500 episodes of The Simpsons and a proliferation of animated television series designed for older audiences, doubts about animation’s long-term sustainability in television programming have been laid to rest. Moreover, contemporary animated programs have become a part of the public consciousness, largely because of their use of controversial humor that engages with various political and cultural issues in the American collective conscious. Given their prominence, it now might be reasonable to assess their place in the pantheon of American humor. More specifically, it might now be the time to ask whether or not they belong in the same conversation as celebrated humorists such as Mark Twain, Washington Irving, and Kurt Vonnegut. Animated programs from The Simpsons to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block of programming have drawn the attention of critics who have recently begun to recognize their parodic and satirical contributions to the postmodern landscape. However, the bulk of this critical attention is placed on the postmodern qualities of animated programs and how they fit into the history of television. This neglects to account for the ways in which they participate in a long tradition of American humor that preceded them.

Humor animated television programs are not created in a vacuum. Though animated programs may seem vastly different from their comedic ancestors in their method of displaying humor, a closer examination reveals some striking similarities. They are informed by a version of American humor that began with the first English settlers and continued to evolve as new writers added different perspectives. For this study, I will explore a particular strain of American humor and consider how the most successful animated television programs not only continue in this strain, but also adapt the strain to their distinct postmodern style. The commonalties among animated programs, the subjects they explore, and the tools they use to explore those subjects indicate a particularly American way of constructing jokes about American life. Specifically, American humor possesses a critical, often ironic, strain that highlights the incongruity between the rhetoric that promises equality, wealth, and prosperity in American culture and the failure of America to fulfill those promises. Animated programs have taken these same jokes and put them into a different format and context. A study of how these shows participate in the traditions of American humor is important because it illustrates the flexibility of American humor and how it can move from the spoken word, to sardonic wit in the written word, to the animated series. Additionally, the function of animated programs reveals how little American humor has changed because of the continued existence of this gap between expectations and reality in American culture.

Humor is not confined to the comedic. It can appear in the most serious of works, as exemplified by Shakespeare’s use of the gate porter as a source of humor in the midst of a murder scene in Macbeth. It can rise from physical pratfalls or complex social satire. Humor can produce a myriad of physical and emotional responses—belly laughs or a cold, knowing sneer of superiority. Laughter and humor have long puzzled thinkers and theorists largely because they are subjective. Thomas Hobbes theorized that laughter is primarily a form of cruelty by which one asserts superiority over others. Twain believed it to be one of mankind’s most potent weapons against the despair of the human condition. Freud believed humor and laughter serve as release valves that jettison the anxieties that build in the human psyche, which grants humor the ability to heal psychological trauma. Others have posited humor is produced by incongruity, by identifying the way that things should be against the way things are. Thus, context becomes important in humor, because what is incongruous in one culture might be normal in another. The divergent views on the uses of humor illustrate the complexity of writing about such a topic, a complexity amplified by the accuracy of each divergent views.

The attempt to identify specific characteristics of American humor in conjunction with the aforementioned theories of humor has led to some debate. American humor is known for having certain distinguishing qualities, although this is not to say that these qualities are exclusive to American humor alone. Indeed, Joseph Boskin writes, “Humor’s texts, in at least several instances, often transcend national boundaries” (Rebellious Laughter 2), and many cultures have thrived on the use of incongruity and irony in their humor. Nevertheless, many critics who have studied American humor acknowledge that a particularly American joke exists, one which holds the nation’s origins, politics, racial and cultural diversity, and defining ideals to both playful and scathing scrutiny. Nancy Walker concedes that America’s shared humor also has different factors based on the differences among Americans:

To speak of ‘American’ humor, then, is to assume that these factors and more have produced both themes and forms which address a particular cultural experience that is widely shared. But it is important also to acknowledge significant differences within this experience for the diversity that is one of America’s distinctive qualities has in turn produced much humor expressive of these differences. (What’s So Funny? 8)

So what, then, can we say is a definitively American trait in humor? Some, such as Christopher Morley, have argued for a more tragic definition. Morley notes that there exists “some essential hardness or sharpness of spirit” in American humor (qtd. in Dudden xv). Others, such as James Thurber, have argued that Americans “prefer the gentle to the sharp” (qtd. in Dudden xvii). A general survey of popular American humorists reveals that both men have a point. America’s most popular humorists include Irving, Twain, Sinclair Lewis, Vonnegut, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert, none of whom were afraid to hold up American’s most cherished ideals and institutions to satire. On the other hand, Americans have also shown a capacity to gravitate to “safe,” humor; for example, humorists and comedians such as Artemis Ward, Jay Leno, and, most recently, Jimmy Fallon, have enjoyed popularity specifically because their humor rarely rattles any cages.

Though both Thurber’s and Morley’s perspectives have merit, the bulk of critical attention on American humor investigates Morley’s notion of a more cruel humor that emphasizes the incongruity between America’s ideals and its reality. For example, most critics who have attempted to identify characteristics of American humor assert that American humor revels in the use of incongruity based on the overarching concepts of “the American Dream” and “American Exceptionalism,” and the tendency of American humorists to deflate such notions. Anglican clergyman H.R. Haweis was among the first to note this incongruity of rhetoric and practice when he observed that “the shock between business and piety” was one of the roots of American humor (79).

Once American humor began receiving critical attention, critics would continue to develop Hawais’s observation of its incongruity, though they would vary on exactly how humorists displayed it. Constance Rourke argues that the Yankee, the first uniquely American comic figure, “developed the habit of self-scrutiny” (89), which implies a recognition of incongruity. On the other hand, Jesse Bier observes that “the comedians’ love-hate relationship to America is resolved either for sentimentalism or contempt, with only infrequent genuine love matches, because of the character of the national experience” (458). Many critics agree that a streak of violence pervades American humor, one which writers often used to critique the contrast between America’s lofty promises and the dire reality. Observing the tendency towards violence in American humor, William Keough suggests that much of America’s humor comes from disillusioned idealism (6).

Perhaps the most direct definition of American incongruous humor was posited by Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Rubin argues that critics have often ignored American humor’s importance in exposing the gap between American ideals and American realities. While he acknowledges that incongruity is present in the humor of other nations and other time periods, he asserts that America’s particular brand of incongruity is unique because of its promises and rhetoric. Rubin writes,

Out of the incongruity between mundane circumstance and heroic ideal, material fact and spiritual hunger, democratic, middle-class society and desire for cultural definition, theory of equality and fact of social and economic inequality….between what men would be and must be, as acted out in the American experience, has come much pathos, no small amount of tragedy, and also a great deal of humor. Both the pathos and the humor have been there from the start, and the writers have been busy pointing them out. This, then, has been what has been called ‘the great American joke,’ which comedy has explored and imaged. (113)

The American joke, then, is the realization of a great irony in a nation whose most cherished document speaks of the equality of man while many of its signatories owned slaves, or a nation that idealizes the power of the common man while the rich man continues to buy influence. I argue that animated television programs can be placed in Rubin’s particular definition of American humor, alongside the Southwest humorists, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Pryor.

As I embark on this endeavor, I will focus on a select few shows. With the exception of a series or two that maintained relatively short runs, the shows I have selected are among the most well-known. My reasoning for this is simple: for every animated show that has been successful, many more have failed spectacularly. The programs that have enjoyed sustained runs often tap into the public imagination, which can partly be attributed to their ability to maintain American comedic tropes. For this reason, I will focus on more recognizable series that have had successful runs while drawing national attention for their active participation in continuing the construction of “the Great American Joke.” This study is also not meant to be a comprehensive catalogue involving the various trivia for these programs. Other scholars have ably provided intricate analyses covering the depth and breadth of these programs. My aim is to contextualize the overall ethos of the programs within an American tradition of humor with the use of some apt examples from each program that illustrate how these shows fit into that tradition. In particular, I will examine the discursive critical practices of The Simpsons (1989-Present), South Park (1997-Present), Family Guy (1999-Present), King of the Hill (1997-2010), Daria (1997-2001), American Dad! (2005-Present), The Boondocks (2005-2014), The PJs (1999-2001) and Futurama (1999-2003; 2010-2013).

Not coincidentally, these are also the shows that have enjoyed extended runs; in fact, many of them are still on the air at the time of this writing. More importantly, in their own way these animated programs offer a more significant critique than traditional sitcoms, a critique that as Darrell Hamamoto notes, often “puts into sharp relief the irrational, oppressive, hence risible aspects of American society” (153). Certainly, early television sitcoms, and many contemporary programs, espoused a heavily veneered promise of a white American middle-class utopia. If not clinging to this vision of American wholesomeness, television today is populated by reality television programs that offer little intentional insight into the problematic issues in American culture. Many animated programs, however, seek to highlight such issues and disrupt idealized constructions of American life.

By examining animated programs’ subversive parody of more traditional television, one can already see a parallel between animated programs and American humorists of the past. Both undermine the mediated versions of reality in the popular traditional fictions of their times, and in some cases they enjoyed a measure of popularity themselves. Humorists such as Mark Twain, H.L. Mencken, and Sinclair Lewis wrote humorous work that often stood in opposition to the best-selling fictions of their eras. Certainly they enjoyed popular success, but they also stood as alternatives to sentimental fictions and dime-store novels that reinforced traditional values or provided escape in melodramatic scenarios. So too do animated programs subvert the medium that produces them, television. And their critique is not just limited to sitcoms; one can also see critiques of television dramas, talk shows, and so-called “reality” programming. Just as a segment of 19th century readers gravitated to the humor of the Southwest humorists, Mark Twain, and Ambrose Bierce instead of a popular market flooded with sentimental fiction and morality tales, so too do a large segment of viewers flock to animated television shows because of their satirical commentary.

The satirical energy of animated programs is not surprising when one examines the dominant forms of satire since ancient Greece. Ralph Rosen argues, “For every poet who sought to entertain audiences with sober and earnest perspectives on the world, it seems that there was always another just as happy to ridicule or ironize traditional pieties, or test the limits of decorum, all in the service of drawing laughter from an audience” (3). Typically, satirists put their mockery and ridicule in a form that would be recognizable to the audience, making timely parody a vital part of satire. Thus, satire has long been characterized by its mimicry of dominant genres, with satirists using parody, the imitation of a work of art, to criticize society.

Currently, for better or worse, television is among the dominant modes of entertainment in contemporary culture. Americans spend hours daily in front of the screen, making it a new hub of the family as many families eat dinner around the television rather than the dinner table. Airing on a lower tier cable network, South Park averages approximately three million viewers for each new episode, sometimes even reaching as many as five million (Johnson-Woods 8). Even after a 27-year run, ratings for The Simpsons have remained relatively unchanged at around six million viewers per new episode. Added to these ratings are the increasing opportunities for people to watch clips of these shows on the internet. In contrast, the sales figures of even the most esteemed postmodern satiric novelists pale. Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 has sold approximately 10 million units (Pearson), and it has taken three decades to reach that number, and many buy the book because it is required for a class. This is not to argue that animated television shows are superior simply because more people see them or that the novel has lost its satirical power or relevance in the landscape of American humor, but rather to emphasize the tremendous influence animated satire demonstrates by its ability to manipulate the most popular medium. Originally, satire was limited to the poetic form; it then moved into theatre and the romance as those genres developed. Now American culture revolves around the television, and though animated programs are not the only source of parody and satire there, they are perhaps the most iconic.

Furthermore, American humorists have always used popular venues to dispense their humor. Twain and the Southwest humorists before him used dialect, the travel narrative, and the novel precisely because they were popular. Using these forms allowed them to critique various American institutions to a broad audience. Kurt Vonnegut relied on science-fiction motifs in his humor because the genre was becoming more popular on television and film. Because many children grew up watching animated programming on Saturday morning and after school, animation became a popular venue for satire.

The dialogue among critics who analyze animated television focuses primarily on their contributions to postmodern political and cultural satire or discussions of their significance in the history of television. The debate centers on the ability of these programs to subvert the dominant ideologies of capitalism and Christianity in America, which on some level certainly implies the tragic incongruous tradition in American humor. Leaving Springfield, a collection of essays edited by John Alberti, examines the extent to which The Simpsons provides an oppositional reading of dominant culture. Jonathan Gray also provides a comprehensive analysis of parody and intertextuality in The Simpsons in Watching with The Simpsons. Editor Robert J. Arp’s South Park and Philosophy, Toni Johnson-Woods’s Blame Canada, and Editor Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock’s Taking South Park Seriously all analyze how the satire and humor of South Park subvert the sacred cows of American culture, while Ted Gournelos’s Cultural Studies and the Tao of South Park combines an analysis of South Park with other satirical programs (The Boondocks among them) to evaluate the importance of such programs in the post-9/11 political landscape. Judith Yaross Lee’s study, Twain’s Brand, examines how Mark Twain’s brand of humor manifests itself in contemporary culture today and uses The Simpsons as an example, but her analysis is limited only on one humorist’s particular influence on one program. Meanwhile, more comprehensive studies of animated television provided by M. Keith Booker’s Drawn to Television, Editors Carol A. Stabile and Mark Harrison’s Prime Time Animation, and Michael V. Tueth’s Laughter in the Living Room, all examine the satirical and humorous possibilities that exist in animated television programs.

All of the aforementioned studies are vital to explaining animated television’s role in the postmodern landscape and the importance of their satire in contemporary culture. For the most part, critics agree that though animated television’s post-modernity leads to slippery interpretation, it is valuable for their attempts to critique American institutions, more stringently than the typical American television sitcom, which usually abstains from making serious commentary on social issues.

As valuable as the studies are, they often ignore the ways that these shows use their platform as popular jester to subvert and criticize America’s dominant institutions and visions of itself. Though a handful of articles briefly mention the similarities between these shows and those of past American humorists, no one has fully explicated the ways in which prime t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• 1 Irony and Incongruity in American Humor
• 2 Frontiers, Suburbs, Politics, and Poop: Setting, Episodes, and the American Carnivalesque in the Southwest Humorists and Animated Television Programs
• 3 No Laughing Matter: The Relationship between American Humor and American Collective Memory
• 4 African-American Multiculturalism in The PJs and The Boondocks
• 5 The Unkindest Cut: Animated Television and Postmodernism
• Conclusion: Irony and Nihilism: Postmodern, or American?
• Bibliography
• Index