Authenticity and Comedy

Live, Laugh, Lorezepam

The good news is, to be authentic, you don’t have to be enlightened and have spent decades meditating under a cherry tree. It’s not the same as being an authentic person, or living your most authentic life, or any phrase that might appear in cursive under a picture of a waterfall.

I am not an authentic person in my day to day. I am a meek person that avoids confrontation. I’d never tell someone they were annoying me, in fact I’d prolong a conversation with them unnecessarily so they wouldn’t think that I thought they were annoying. Then I’d end up dating them for 3 years so they didn’t think I was rude. The awareness of the awkwardness is where the authenticity lies. It’s the constant questioning of one’s actions, and realising they are driven in most cases by animalistic instincts, and that we are all driven by these exact same impulses. Authenticity is relatability.

I’m not technically rich, but I do have a lot of shit that I don’t need, and I refuse to share with others.

Maria Bamford

Most people, except for the very enlightened act in a way that is at odds with their true intentions in order to be liked and to fit in, to be sexually attractive, powerful, unseen. It’s a comedians job to point out these inauthentic moments and make fun of them.

Authenticity is the life-drawing of comedy

Of course comedy can be about bloody anything, but I truly believe to excel as a comedian you have to nail this part first. If you just go forth without this foundation, I predict for you a comedic-life of funny accents, changing the words to popular songs, differences between cats and dogs, puns and other “heard it before!” hacky BS. You can get very good and being a hack, hacks perform with big energy and are great at “doing voices”, but you’ll only be liked by dummies in the end — and yes they are a renewable resource, but what’s the point really? Do you want to be a factory line worker or own the mother-flipping factory? I know lots of people don’t care, they just want that sweet, sweet laughter — but who’s laughing? You should aim to get every single person laughing, from the dummies on their phones at the front, to the up-tight lefties, Edge-lord McIncel, Christians, to the groaning heard-it-all comics at the back. Use this space and time to do something meaningful, not just re-hash some old stereotypes!

Nobody knows the absolute truth, except cats and they’re pretty tight lipped about it.

I believe authenticity, at least in artistic terms is the answer to the question “what do I really mean?”. It’s the questioning of one’s words and actions, and acknowledging the driving force behind them. It’s not as simple as the truth, because nobody knows what that really is, it’s different for everyone. Comedy, at it’s best, can make you feel very connected to your fellow humans. At its worst, it can make you feel very far apart from your fellow humans, mostly the one on stage.

I’ve realised my type is me but better. Which I think is okay, I just need to find somebody who wants himself, but much much worse

Simon Amstell

We tend to like people who are authentic, those people that aren’t putting on an act, they’re just being themselves, because they make us feel like we can be ourselves too. We can tell when people are pretending, and ironically most people pretend because they want to be liked — they think if they show their actual personality people won’t like them, but this is wrong thought brought about by a lifetime of marketing and wrong-thoughted adults and guardians in our lives. It’s brought about by marketing telling us we have to be tough, silent, laugh at salad, pretty, wacky but most of all — not ever rock the boat.

Never should we cause a fuss, or get noticed in any kind of negative way. That’s why the biggest form of pretending is “I’m fine”, “I’m cool with this” — I do that one a lot. And the trouble when you pretend in any way and don’t say why, is people will probably project something horrible on to you. If you feel one thing but act in another way, congratulations — you’re being creepy!

Be the dick joke you want to see in the world

It’s important when you start your comedic journey to have no expectations. Completely free yourself with the type of comedy you would like to do, and just be willing to discover what that might be by analysing your own real thoughts and feelings. It’s nice to have favourite comedians, but your comedy might not turn out anything like theirs — and that’s great! You just be you, anything else is pretentious. In art, effort is ugly.

That’s not to say your jokes shouldn’t heighten to the absurd, but the kernel should be true, evoke emotion and be authentic. If you really hit on that quality your jokes should write themselves. I find when I’ve hit on a fully authentic truth to write about, I’m filled with a kind of electricity that propels further ideas out of me (good or bad), and I’m usually in a situation where I have to edit back rather than think of more. If I’m not filled with energy by my idea, then the reason is usually that the initial idea isn’t coming from an authentic place, rather it’s something I think I should be writing about, or that I think I want people to hear jokes about. It’s usually a sign that I’m being pretentious.

Don’t be pretentious, be authentious!

That’s not to say the idea isn’t any good, it struck me as interesting enough in my amazingly creative brain after all! But the authentic part of the idea probably lies underneath the pretension and bullshit — and it might not paint you in the best light, and for comedy that’s great. Pointing out your own pretentiousness can be a very funny and vulnerable thing to do. You can easily get to the authentic kernel by simply exploring your idea more. Poor comedy writing is often just an idea that hasn’t been examined in enough detail.

For example, around Brexit time 🙁 I figured “Oooo I should really write a very cutting Brexit joke, after all I’m a British person living in Germany! I must have loads of interesting and effective things to say” and try as I might, the ideas never flowed. I had to ask myself:

Do you really care about Brexit?

As a whole, no. Politics are boring to me, and it’s been talked about a lot — I’m a bit sick of hearing about it to be honest.

So why do you want to talk about it?

I’m British and I guess people expect me to have an angle on it.

Do they? More likely people don’t care if you died

Harsh.

Perhaps this is salvageable. How does Brexit affect you personally?

Well, I might have to get a visa.

What’s wrong with that, loads of people have to.

Well they’re… Foreign!

SO ARE YOU HONEY

Yeah but they’re foreign foreign.

You son of a bitch

AND I might have to learn German!

OMG you suck. So you’ve haven’t learnt the language of the country you’ve been living in for 8 years!?

No mam.

And I suppose you don’t care at all about all the “foreigners” in the UK who will be forced out of their homes?

I mean I don’t lose like loads of sleep about it.

So let me get this straight, you’re an over-privileged piece of shit who thinks they’re somehow owed some kind of special status because they were born white in a rich country. You think you can trot around on a muscular white horse that shits blue passports, and as you canter and rear up past all the “real foreigners” at the “naughty” immigration office where they only have squat toilets. Then the bloke off the Augustiner beer bottle beckons you through and leads you to the British embassy where after an exquisite high tea, you’ll be personally pardoned by Angela Merkel, have a gold stamp put in your passport that gives you permanent residency in every country in the world and infinite speedy boarding. You’re given a Luger, and permission to shoot on sight anyone that tries to speak to you in German.

That’s the gist.

As my friend Neil Numb put it more concisely:

If you don’t know what is happening in the UK with Brexit, basically they’re voting on whether I have to learn German

Authenticity is often just asking yourself over and over — why do I care? How does this affect me? What’s underneath the bullshit? What am I hiding? Even if it makes you out to be a terrible person. So much of comedy is saying — hey, we’re all terrible people sometimes and it’s okay. It’s okay to be a vulnerable human being.

Thanks for reading! This is part of my as yet unpublished book “The Authentic Comedian”. I’ll be releasing more chapters and exercises in due course. Please get in touch if you’d like to know more.