Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious
The Neo-Futurists have a knack for finding the funny in even the most serious issue. That’s one reason their late-night hit Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind has been running continuously for almost 12 years.
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The Neo-Futurists have kept their aesthetic purity and scrupulously maintained their on-the-fringe stance. None of them has gone on to star in a sitcom or appear in a movie with Adam Sandler–or even, I suspect, dreams of it. And their material remains sharply political in a progressive, Green sort of way–exactly the kind of comedy that doesn’t interest the entertainment industry, which prefers apathetic, self-absorbed centrist comics who never tire of joking that the political system isn’t worth participating in or gleeful right-wingers such as National Review columnist and Comedy Central game-show host Ben Stein, who encourages his conservative cohorts to participate in politics.
In explaining how he’ll approach answering these questions, Allen makes no bones about the fact that he’s studying the “nature and method of comedy” and that by the end he’ll make a previously funny joke “an excruciating experience.” In a moment of Beckettian wit, he quips that he’ll “put the final nail in the coffin of comedy forever.”
Every time these three attempt to approach one of Allen’s questions seriously, the discussion degenerates into comic chaos. In a long section making fun of scientific experiments Riordan and Bayiates test the hypothesis that laughter results whenever anyone onstage states, “Take off your shirt!” Pushing their method to the most absurd limit, the two end up turning on the audience, barking at individuals, “Take off your shirt!” and noting dutifully on a clipboard that they get laughter whether or not the person takes his or her shirt off.
