Lisa Trahair describes Freud’s idea of an “innocent joke” as “exhibitionism or the desire to show ‘show one’s cleverness,” and that making such jokes is “the talent of those who have a ‘special personal aptitude” (Trahair, 117). I find the exclusivity of the innocent joke to be pretty silly since the example that Trahair uses is spoonerisms, which is switching letters around for comedic effect (like saying Tuck Fumbull if we were to be playing Trumbull in a sports game in high school), but more importantly that Freud says “the most innocent jokes of all are verbal jokes … which make use of condensation purely for reasons of technique” (Trahair, 116). Thus, enter the greatest SNL skit possibly of all time — “New Paint.”
When this skit came out in 2019, I tried to explain the skit to my friends in AP English Literature and could not stop laughing long enough to get the words out. The skit follows a couple, played by Kristen Stewart and Beck Bennett, and their sister, Aidy Bryant who has recently repainted her room using expensive Farrow and Ball paint. Throughout the skit, Aidy pronounces “colour” as though the U was not silent (coloor) and it becomes clear that Aidy afford this level of paint (SNL).
It seems to me that this might be considered an innocent joke, utilizing condensation as a technique of creating the joke. The skit unravels as more an
d more details about Aidy come to light, such as Kyle Mooney who’s been hanging out in the backroom, and it gets more and more ridiculous. But even as many new plot points are introduced, the funniest part will always be her pronouncing “co
lour” phonetically. It hits its peakwhen she pronounces “squalor” in the same way that she’s been pronouncing “colour,” and the ridiculousness of the whole sketch is cemented.
“New Paint” YouTube, uploaded by SNL, 3 Nov. 2019,
Trahair, Lisa. The Comedy of Philosophy : Sense and Nonsense in Early Cinematic Slapstick, State University of New York Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/st-andrews/detail.action?docID=3407430.
This is a great example of how a small joke like a mispronunciation can grow and become hilarious even if it generated a smaller laugh initially. Watching this skit made me think of Schmidt in ‘New Girl’ and how his frequent mispronunciations become one of his quirks that make audiences love him and find him so funny. I think this demonstrates how even the smallest of gags can become running jokes and key to certain comedy shows and characters.
It’s interesting to see how repetition of altered words can add to the comedic elements of a scene or influence an actor or character’s star image. Even other SNL skits such as Jebidiah Atkinson’s (Taran Killam) weekend updates and reviews deploy similar techniques. In this skit, verbal jokes do not have a strictly tripartite structure and are instead made by both elongating words as well as condensing them, making the smallest mispronunciations laugh and joke worthy.