LITTLE ROCK — No moment in popular culture is more charged and anxious than when a stand-up comic battles with a heckler. It usually ends with a knockout insult and a huge laugh. But when things turn ugly, as happened several times recently, it can expose the gap between comedians and patrons who see this clash very differently.
In a now notorious incident, the comic Daniel Tosh directed an off the-cuff rape joke at a woman challenging him at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles. The details of the joke are in dispute, but a post from an anonymous audience member set off the controversy, describing how Tosh’s premise - that rape jokes were funny - earned a rebuke from a woman shouting, “Rape jokes are never funny!” He responded: “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by, like five guys right now?”
Days later, a heckler ended an exchange with Tammy Pescatelli, a veteran comic, by tossing a wine glass at her at a club in Jacksonville, Fla., scratching her cornea. When Pescatelli tried to have the attacker arrested for assault, she said the police officer told her: “You should expect it. These things happen at a comedy club.” The next day, a heckler threw a drink on Eddie Griffin at a club in Pleasanton, Calif.
Like the police officer, audiences generally see heckling as a standard and often hilarious part of the live comedy experience. Comedians loathe hecklers, and even those who see dealing with them as part of the job also tend to think the lines of decency shift when responding.
The stand-up Elayne Boosler has written: “The rule about heckling is this: You fire at a cop, get ready to die.” Richard Pryor once stabbed a heckler with a fork at Cafe Wha?, according to Comedy at the Edge, by Richard Zoglund. Others see heckling as a violation of the contract between artist and audience.
As comedy gains status as an art form, tension between comics and hecklers will probably only increase. After all, other performers don’t have to so consistently put up with patrons who feel it’s appropriate to disrupt their work. I only saw this happen in the theater once, when an audience member shouted in protest during the original Off-Broadway production of Oleanna, David Mamet’s play about sexual harassment. But the more relevant comparison might be to politics.
Politicians on the stump are often shouted down. President Barack Obama was interrupted during his State of the Union address by a congressman who thought he was taking a stand. Like politicians, comedians are expected to respond without derailing their presentation.
But comics don’t get points for winning an argument. Their job is to be funny, and in a clash with a heckler, the biggest laughs go to the harshest insult. In the case of Tosh, the issue is complicated by the understandable sensitivity to rape jokes, which are ubiquitous in comedy right now.
Though the incidents with Pescatelli and Griffin have largely been ignored, Tosh, who has a higher profile thanks in part to his Comedy Central series, Tosh.0 was the subject of widespread outrage from critics. Even as he apologized, clumsily, on Twitter, colleagues like Patton Oswalt, Jim Norton and Amy Schumer came to his defense, which surprised some and made the controversy even bigger.
“Among many comics, getting heckled is viewed almost like being physically attacked,” the stand-up Erin Judge explained. “Judging a comic by his or her response to a heckler is seen as unfair. And among many feminists, the necessary response to a culture of violence against women is vocalization: Speak up, speak out, talk back. So this is a collision of two cultures I’m a part of and their taboos.”
Many comics might also be sympathetic to Tosh because they understand that live comedy requires repeated public failure.
Most comics develop material in front of crowds. Tosh in a club is not exactly analogous to a preview performance of a play, but it’s close.
“Not supporting or criticizing anyone’s material, but I don’t feel totally comfortable with nontelevised stand-up being scrutinized so much,” tweets the comic Morgan Murphy, who added that comedians in a club should be allowed to “make mistakes.”
Most critics are not absolutists about rape jokes: There are comedians who have told ones that aren’t cruel or threatening. But behind most successful jokes are many bad early versions.
And yet, comics shouldn’t fool themselves. Everything Tosh says onstage is open to criticism. He’s an artist responsible for his words. But just as the Internet has fundamentally changed journalism and politics, the old rules of comedy no longer hold.
Once upon a time you could save your risque material for the clubs, then clean it up for bigger rooms or television.Now your audience can shift in an instant. Comics should know that when they make a joke about rape, they have no idea who might be listening.
“I’m worried about comedy,” Pescatelli says. “This society would have never allowed Carlin, Pryor, Dangerfield, with what he said about women? Rickles? Forget about it. These people would not have had careers.”
Clubs could do more to protect their performers with security as well as improve the relationships with patrons. The Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village e-mails audience members about their experience, in part, to let them express discontent, said its booker, Estee Adoram.
“People will get offended,” she says. “But if you tell comics what they can and cannot say, the whole art form is compromised.”
This romantic notion that stand-up is the last completely uncensored place has taken a beating online, but comedians believe strongly in the importance of exploring limits.
“If you go into comedy with too many filters and restraints, you won’t find out what you want to say,” says the comic Tig Notaro. “When you go to see someone who has a loose cannon mouth, typically that’s what you are going to get.”
The reality is patrons are not always that informed. Some just want a fun night out or to see a famous person. This is particularly tricky for stand-ups whose fame stems from television shows. When Michael Richards attacked a heckler using racially biased language, millions of Seinfeld fans saw an entirely different side of the man who played Kramer.
The laughter of live crowds is actually a more egalitarian metric than is approval from gatekeepers in late-night television or Hollywood. It’s also more amoral, because we often laugh at things we aren’t supposed to: tragedy, tastelessness, violence. It might be that part of the reason audiences like heckling - or at least loudly respond to it - is the threat of looming disaster.
It’s important to remember that the people onstage are trying to do their job.
“I can’t defend Daniel’s words because I didn’t see the joke, but sounds like he was trying to make a funny situation out of an embarrassing one,” Pescatelli says. “Look, we’re at work. I’m trying to make a living making people laugh. I’m a mother. And this is what I’ve got to put up with ?”
Style, Pages 27 on 07/24/2012