Judith Roof makes an epic joke of novel proportions regarding comedy scholarship in The Comic Event: Comedic Performance from the 1950s to the Present. After all, “what is the difference between a joke and the analysis of a joke? Something like two hundred pages,” asserts, or jokes, the author, Judith Roof (7). In a sharp overview and analysis of a myriad of American comic events spanning nearly 70 years, Roof takes to task her own pert challenge of “talk[ing] about the comic event without wrecking it [comically]” as a critical writer (5). Roof overcomes the obstacle of many critical writers by: first, theorizing comedy as “an ‘event,’ a set of circumstances arranged (or that arrange themselves) to gather to a ‘cut,’ a moment of perception, to a conscious or even unconscious recognition of something, or to something that maybe even sneaks up and produces an effect […] without anyone exactly knowing the cause;” and second, Roof writes performatively in a way that establishes the book as a comic event in its own literary virtue (1). In this review, I summarize themes that emerge in The Comic Event: Comedic Performance from the 1950s to the Present, describe the aesthetic contributions of Roof’s stylized analysis and theorizations on comedy, and compare Roof’s approach to comedy with scholars in communication.
Judith Roof opens The Comic Event with a thorough prolegomenon that surveys theories and insights on humor and comedy through theories in philosophy, psychology, theater, English, and more. This introduction presents what might be the ultimate punchlines or arguments of Roof’s “scholarly stand-up” (Price). Opening the first page of the book, Roof states that “this book will always have been too late, too after the fact” (1). Whether the comedian uses strategic and timely delays in delivery, or how we understand comedy in retrospect; timing, is but one of the insights on comic events that is emphasized in the prolegomenon. Notions of reflexivity within comedy through self-consciousness and performative self-reference are also introduced and then expanded on and repeated through analysis in the pages that follow Roof’s introduction. The characteristic comedic dynamics of multiplying and expanding implications of comedy is also explained as “never singular, but always an iteration that keeps on iterating, reverberating, resonating, jittering through discourses, events, associations long after its telling performance is past” (32). At the end of the prolegomenon, Roof aptly strategizes her response to her own “pert challenge” to decidedly “speak about comedy without wrecking it […] via side comments” (37). Side comments change the “imaginary distance between performance and audience and in doing so produce the illusion of depth in an incipient meta-theoretical mise en abyme” (11). Through Roof’s aesthetically performed asides, both her arguments and theorizations about “comedy [are] always a fait accompli” (25).
Roof’s writing is structured in the form of a comic event and structured in a way where her arguments build “bit by bit, to increasing combination” in a way where they “do not exist in a hierarchical structure” but dynamically intermingle in the “recognizable tactics in a comic event” (36). Therefore, rather than chapters, The Comic Event is divided into bits which are comic events themselves, with a setup and payoff and references to the bits before it. Within each bit, Roof uses examples from mainstream comedy and culture, both past and present, to establish comedy as a complex narrative performance and a paradox loaded with potential for a multiplicity of cultural understandings. Each bit expands on the central themes set up in the prolegomenon. Twelve bits are present in Roof’s book, that each name comic events – sometimes a bar joke, sometimes a sitcom dialogue, sometimes a repeated line through a popular late-night comedy show – but there is always a set up and always a cut, and “hopefully a comic moment” (47). Bit II, in particular, begins with a classic joke: “A priest, a rabbi, and a giraffe walk into a bar. The bartender looks up, and says “So what is this, some kind of a joke?” (47). As Roof dissects the joke for its comedic elements and mechanics within the bit, the mention of the joke performatively sets the context for the final cut of the entire book. The book closes with a joke that reverberates and echoes as comic events do. As Roof explains in the pages prior to the last, the final joke is referential to the rest of the jokes, bits, and ideas throughout The Comic Event. Alone, it bears explanation. However, in building theory and providing accruing in-depth analyses of comedy, Roof hits the audience with the ultimate punchline. As such, Roof’s performative and aesthetic writing provides a way that scholarly critics might learn to organize or receive theory with a little more self-reflexivity, consciousness, and a newfound patience for seemingly fragmented thought with a conclusive comedic/intellectual payoff.
The book jacket to The Comic Event provides that Roof is a “Professor of English and William Shakespeare Chair in English at Rice University, USA” with experiences in performance studies, gender studies, and narrative theory. While The Comic Event is an illustrious example of performative scholarly comedy that performance studies readers will appreciate in its aesthetic organization, the voice of The Comic Event and the voices and performances discussed throughout the book do feel headless and bodiless in their analysis. The focus throughout is on the language and comedic discourse which may be reflective of Roof’s background in English. Roof cautions the headless and absentminded disavowal that is characteristic of comedy in the prolegomenon, and she does touch on the performance of bodied impressions, caricatures, and “white face” in Bit V. However, for performance studies readers interested in embodiment, The Comic Event would best be used alongside other texts that underline bodies in comic performance. Roof explains and strategically selects jokes that can still be understood as jokes printed on the page despite coming from sitcoms and comedy shows that are typically both seen and heard. But other comic events that are retrospectively humorous not just because of their verbal language and content, but because of tone, nonverbal delivery, and embodied performance, will not have easily made it into The Comic Event. The analysis of these comic events that gain their humorous effect because of what can only be known through other non-verbal experience is missing.
Overall, Roof provides an in-depth explanation on the self-conscious, self-referential, dynamic, and strategically timed features of comedy not just through analysis of popular comic events from the 1950’s to present, but also through a performative doing that demonstrates her expertise on the comedic form. Performance studies audiences interested in reflexivity in comedy would greatly appreciate the joke that Roof makes of comedy scholarship, or rather the scholarship she makes of jokes.
— Reviewed by Christina-Marie Magalona, University of South Florida
Christina-Marie Magalona is a Ph.D. communication studies student at University of South Florida, Tampa. Her academic areas of interest are in performance studies, narrative, critical cultural studies, and identity in/through stand-up comedy and media. She earned her M.A. in communication studies from California State University, Long Beach, where she researched, discussed, and performed interactive scenes on socio-political issues such as homophobia, sexual assault, racism, and inappropriate pursuit.
