I’m in a state of emotional distress. Let’s see how this goes.
Bo Burnham did not deserve the audience he got Friday night.
Audience members uneasily groaned at many of Burnham’s envelope-pushing jokes. Burnham had to explicitly tell the audience his song “Straight White Man” was ironic to get the politically correct college crowd to embrace him. A heckler named Barrett makes me wish free speech in newspapers applied to the F-bomb more often.
Burnham ended his show with “Can’t Handle This.” In it, he says he’s scared. He fears his audience. He’s torn between pleasing us — we’ve dedicated our night to seeing him — and staying true to himself as an artist.
Stand-up is difficult. In stand-up comedy, the audience has all the power. Burnham even said, “the audience-performer relationship is a prison” for him. In exchange for attention and an audience, Burnham has to put his integrity on the line and submit to a crowd of hundreds. And he’s been discussing the guilt he feels about his success for years. “Art is Dead,” from his comedy special “Words Words Words,” discusses commercialism’s detriment to art. “We Think We Know You” from “what.” describes how Burnham is perceived as arrogant for his highbrow, intelligent comedy. And in “Can’t Handle This,” Burnham seeks closure by telling the audience not to pursue a life of performance.
But the audience kind of spat in his face Friday night.
Part of the problem is political correctness has gone too far, a problem which runs rampant throughout college campuses — he excluded his song “Kill Yourself” on Friday for that reason. But the real problem lay in the audience: the self-absorbed, identity-seeking, emotionally misguided students who need to interrupt a show or lay judgement on a comedian because they’re not willing to give up their spotlight. Oops, I’m getting salty.
And, surely, this disrespect partially comes from the stress of college. On a Friday night, many students just want to unwind and not indulge in provocative, introspective humor. Understandable.
In an interview, Burnham mentions students who embrace political correctness tend to be “irony-deaf in exchange of not being bigoted” as they’re “coming into their morals,” so he’s sympathetic to the culture. But I’m at UF to learn. I’m here to push limits and question norms in the pursuit of comedy — and mechanical engineering or whatever. To me, irony is the root of comedy, and when students cower at the mention of suicide or racism without hearing what an intelligent, progressive, feminist, professional comedian has to say through irony and subversion, I see so much opportunity wasted.
There’s a fundamental difference between the content of a joke and the message a joke conveys. In an effort to be politically correct, folks will disregard a joke with edgy content even if the joke conveys a progressive, positive message. There’s this perception that joking about something devalues it; you can’t joke about rape because it downplays the magnitude of rape, or it turns rape itself into a joke. A well-constructed joke does neither of those things, and joking about something doesn’t make those two accusations inherently true. This is why comedy gets a bad reputation, and that’s why I want to shed some light on it. Political correctness is a good thing: Y’all just do it wrong.
We can learn so much from Burnham’s work. No other artist has had the bravery to step in front of a crowd and tell them he’s terrified. No other artist risks his stage presence to deconstruct his own jokes for an audience. But you have to trust his sense of humor. Respect the position he puts himself into in order to make you laugh and think.
Opinion: Get over yourselves, embrace irony and laugh, jackasses.
Tune in next week for a less aggressive column. Probably.
Michael Smith regrets being a UF mechanical engineering sophomore. His column appears on Tuesdays.
