The other day, the wife was watching some standup comedy on Netflix when I walked by, and she asked me to stop and watch for a couple of minutes. Apparently the joke was funny. Maybe it was, but those two minutes also taught me why I don’t like the genre. It’s the low “bit rate”.
Recently I read this book called The Design of Everyday Things. Among other things, it talked about why most people prefer reading to listening – because reading is much faster. We read at approximately 300 words per minute, while we can listen to a maximum of 50 words per minute. So minute-for-minute, you get a lot more information (in terms of words) from reading.
Which is why podcasts are hard to listen to unless you’re combining them with another activity, such as driving or commuting or exercising. If you’re only listening to a podcast and doing nothing else, you’ll get bored. Because the rate of information flow is low. In that sense, a good podcast offers much more than words – there will be information embedded in the voices, tones, any accompanying music, etc. so that more information can be transmitted to compensate for the low bit rate.
The same thing applies to video as well – the rate of flow of words is much lower than text, but the visuals more than compensate for it. In fact, good movies and shows (in my view) are those that overwhelm your senses with a high rate of flow of information that they keep you engrossed and occupied, and deliver “high information”.
So coming to standup comedy – the reason I don’t like it is because of its low bit rate. Most standup comics speak at a rate slower than Atal Behari Vajpayee, possibly because they want (canned) laughter during each of their pauses. So standup usually goes at well under 50 words per minute.
And there is nothing to compensate for this low bit rate. Visuals are flat – just a person standing on a stage and talking. There is very little action. In the samples that I’ve sampled, the jokes are nice but nothing extraordinary. And there is no information content – it’s just jokes for the sake of it. Finally, you are expecting to be told jokes all the time, and so there is no surprise in the timing of jokes.
So if it were up to me (I’m no standup comic, so it would be never up to me), how would I change it to make it more interesting? The first thing would be to convey additional information through the visual. The low verbal bit rate seems to be endemic to the genre, so that might be hard to change. So adding further information through better visuals can help.
Props might be a good first addition (from my experience with NED Talks, lecture demonstrations were very very well received). Better sets, maybe. Maybe some music (Shekhar Suman already had this with the “rubber band” on Movers and Shakers all those years ago). Anyway, I’m least qualified to comment on this except as a non-customer!
There’s one thing I’ve never understood about standup comics, though – why do they never use collar mikes?
I don’t agree with you at all, not keeping Indian stand-up scene in mind (which is still quite nascent/less-diverse), but generally speaking:
A stand-up is not a TED Ed video, hence words per minute or “bit-rate” isn’t a faithful parameter.
Some stand-up artist talk faster than others, but that doesn’t mean they are funnier. Though, for a slower comedian, every line has to be funny/concise/hard-hitting.
Silence is just as important, allowing audience to chew on the joke. Consummate artists utilizes even the silence by staying in the moment with their physicality/expressions/mannerisms.
Physicality/mannerism is integral part of stand-up. If you pay close attention, you’d find that almost every comedian includes that on some level.
Most importantly, Stand-up is an art-form best experienced live, which you didn’t take into account.
P.S. If you’re not a Sorkin fan already, you should give it a try, I’m sure you would like his body of work.
Hmm. How do you rate mime..