QUIPS ARE GOOD SOMETIMES

a comedic ramble by danny

i love humor. i love comedies. i love anything that can make me laugh hard enough. i especially love anything that can make me cry one minute and let out a water logged shout of laughter the next. i love when a work of art knows when to pile on the bits and when to somberly guide your hand away from the joke that you wish they would make if only to release that tension in your chest.media that uses humor effectively, either as a knife or a soft blanket, makes my world go round. i live for a well-placed quip or gag even in a drama. but it has to be well-placed!

in recent years i've seen a lot of criticism of the quip, the joke, the goof, what have you. quip here being defined as a snappy, one-line joke that's usually trying to be clever (and sometimes succeeding). Mainstream Media TM has a habit of falling back on the dreaded quip without a care in the world for the narrative ramifications. not only are there too many, but they're ill-timed and take the viewer out of the moment 9 times out of 10. and when you're constantly seeing media made to keep beating that dead joke horse until it stops spitting out money praised and recommended, people who are critical of corporate schlock understandably recognize that the use of humor is one of the myriad of problems with it.

but sometimes they then direct their ire at the existences of quips and one-liners and witty jokes in general, which i get, but makes me sad as a quip lover. your anger is real but it is misplaced! the joke isn't the problem, it's the timing/the delivery/the mood. it's the writing not the writing device. don't dismiss humor completely from an emotional narrative or label all snappy jokes as bad for the fiction!

the thing people are trying to pushback against by critizing the quip is the marvel-movie-fication of art. by that i mean, media that can't let more than 3 lines go by without some witticism or joke or insincere look at the camera like "get a load of this wacky premise". art claiming to not be comedies but can't survive without the injection of an unnecessary bout of unseriousness even at the most innapropriate of moments. the reason i call this a "marvel-movie-fication" is because marvel movies are especially guilty of this. taking the inherent ridiculousness of superheroes as a concept and going "well we've gotta make fun of this so our audience knows how silly it is that they're eating it up" instead of trying to approach it with any modicum of real emotion and depth. even when marvel movies get close to a point where they're treating their characters and their lives (and feelings) seriously, they ruin it with an ill-timed fourth wall break or a "well that just happened."

marvel-movie-fication doesn't happen because something has jokes in it, though. marvel-movie-fication happens because something has jokes in it that undercut moments that the audience is supposed to take seriously. it has jokes in it that are not used to provide a fun moment of levity or laughter, but instead so that the art can make fun of its audience for daring to try to have an emotional reaction to something. so the art can go "why do i even exist lol. you're so dumb for enjoying me." when you meet a piece of fiction where it's at, you're buying into the reality of its world. its saying "this is how life works. imagine if you lived with these rules." marvel-movie-fication says "haha idiot why'd you buy into that?" even though it fully expects you to keep buying in.

you can absolutely include quips without undercutting the emotion you're trying to build. you can make jokes, frequent jokes even, without dismissing the reality of your characters and their world. during moments of tension, let the audience stew in it. during moments of extreme emotion, make the audience confront the feelings and the consequences of the feelings. don't make a fourth-wall-breaking wink at the camera when something would be considered "silly" in our world if it's not supposed to be silly in theirs.

and next time you want to complain about a misplaced bout of humor, instead of blaming the joke, blame the person who decided that it needed to be put there.