Observational comedy is a form of
humor
Humour (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) or humor (American English) is the tendency of experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humorism, humoral medicine of the ancient Gre ...
based on the commonplace aspects of
everyday life
Everyday life, daily life or routine life comprises the ways in which people typically act, think, and feel on a daily basis. Everyday life may be described as mundane, routine, natural, habitual, or normal.
Human diurnality means most peop ...
. It is one of the main types of humor in
stand-up comedy
Stand-up comedy is a comedy, comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian, a comic or a stand-up.
Stand-up comedy consists of One-line joke ...
. In an observational comedy act, the comedian makes an observation about something which is common enough to be familiar to their audience, but not commonly discussed.
Such observations are typically presented with the phrase "Have you ever noticed...?"
or "Did you ever notice...?"
which has become a comedy
cliché
A cliché ( or ) is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was consi ...
.
Analysis
British comedians
Richard Herring and
Jo Caulfield
Josephine Caulfield (born 26 September 1965) is a British actress, writer and comedian.
Biography
Born in Wales to Irish parents, she was brought up in Derbyshire and Leicestershire, England.
At 17, Caulfield moved to London. For two years ...
wrote in an article that observational comedy relies upon the fact that the observation is "universally familiar" but that it "won't necessarily have been consciously noted by your audience", arguing that the statements can be neither too obvious nor too obscure.
Similarly,
Eddie Izzard noted that a comedian's observations need to be relatable in order to be successful.
claims that "it takes a good observational comedian to tell you what, exactly, is the 'deal'" with the phenomenon they are observing, and describes ideal topics for observational comedy as "those banalities and fragments of minutiae lurking just below the threshold of perception".
Observational comedy has been compared to
sociology.
History
Although observational comedy became popular in the United States in the 1950s,
one author suggests that even much older jokes commented on human nature in comparable ways.
Shelley Berman
Sheldon Leonard Berman (February 3, 1925 – September 1, 2017) was an American comedian, actor, writer, teacher, and lecturer.
In his comedic career, he was awarded three gold records and he won the first Grammy Award for a spoken comedy reco ...
was one of the pioneers in the field.
Other influential observational comics include
David Brenner,
George Carlin, and
Jerry Seinfeld
Jerome Allen Seinfeld ( ; born April 29, 1954) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, and producer. He is best known for playing a Jerry Seinfeld (character), semi-fictionalized version of himself in the sitcom ''Seinfeld'', which he ...
.
A 1989 ''
Los Angeles Times'' article wrote that Seinfeld is "clearly the standard of excellence in observational comedy", while
Judd Apatow called Seinfeld "the greatest observational comedian who ever lived".
The British observational comedy tradition began with the Irish comedian
Dave Allen's performances in the early 1970s. More recently,
James Acaster has developed a form of "uber-trivial" observational comedy, which has been described as a spoof of the traditional observational form.
References
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Comedy genres
Observation
Stand-up comedy