And on that farm he had a shaggy dog!
Mary Douglas’ example of the “shaggy dog story” reminded me of the unassumingly masterful (in my opinion, at least) construction of many Norm Macdonald jokes (97). In these two extremely drawn-out condensation and displacement jokes, Macdonald plays with his role as a comedian, finding the real humor not in the jokes themselves but in the “total situation” of the absurdity of their fruitless convolution in such a tiresome format (Douglas 97). Much like the power of Harpo’s nonsense, playing dumb is essential to Macdonald’s comedic persona. It ascribes him with a somewhat nebulous innocence that he often retains even when joking about subject matter that would be the making of more “tendentious jokes,” to use Freud’s term (Trahair 116). Macdonald’s self-awareness of his social positioning as a comedian differentiates his jokes about subjects as charged as Hitler and 9/11—subjects that are more often than not low-hanging fruit that veer much more sharply into cheapness at best and profound offense at worst—from the attempts of other comedians. Macdonald builds the joke around his own feigned cluelessness, not the atrocities themselves. His aloof old man persona with a strangely unplaceable sparkle-in-the-eye mysticism and the tension between impishness and innocence, all not entirely unlike Harpo, invite us to laugh at and relish in ridiculousness more generally. The charged content is not itself comic but is instead a device wielded to provide the joke with amplitude in an Aristotelian sense, and in a Freudian sense to heighten inhibitions to then amplify “the cathexis which is to be liberated” (Aristotle Part XIV; Trahair 121). We know we should not laugh at these matters, and any impulse to do so is almost certainly from the discomfort of the tightening reins of our self-censorship rather than actually finding them humorous. Macdonald’s toying with these feelings pulls the reins so taut they cathartically snap as we displace this energy at Macdonald himself.
Works Cited
Aristotle. Poetics. Translated by S. H. Butcher, Macmillan & Co., 1922, Internet Classics Archive, n.d.,
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.html.
Douglas, Mary. “Jokes.” Implicit Meanings; Essays in Anthropology, Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp. 90–114.
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.
Theres a great quote from Norm MacDonald from a Larry King interview on the very topic of playing dumb, I’ll include the link below. I think it says a lot about how there is a really interesting link between the themes of catharsis and the Shaggy Dog mode of joke telling.
I feel that the old man persona, as you so rightly describe it, is exposed at the underwhelming punchline of these long jokes. The punchline, i.e. ‘Because the light was on’, etc., shows how unique the storytelling of his long jokes are. The laughter doesn’t necessarily come from the joke being anti-climactic but realising that as the audience we have fallen for the act of Norm MacDonald as a clueless old man.
(sorry for rambling but Norms my GOAT)
You hit the nail on the head characterizing his aloofness, but I also think that Norm excels at the disordering effect that jokes can have as described by Mary Douglas on page 102. Norm uses his specific vocal qualities to suggest that he has no idea where his joke is going, that he is just a weird guy who likes wasting people’s time, only to cut through with a remarkably clever or quick-witted comment. My favourite example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whN9JJ74dPw
If you’re interested in other examples of comedians who find humour in the ‘total situation’ as opposed to the condensation/displacement jokes themselves, check out my blog post from week one on Stewart Lee. His routines are more centred on a shared sense of awareness with the audience that invites mutual and explicit deconstruction.