High banter.
Zeitlin, Steve
Whenever my wife and I do something really dumb or spacey, we call
it "Steve and Amanda go around the world in a daze." Like
many, long-married couples, we've developed routines for our own
personal comedy team of sorts. For instance, Amanda and I take a
commuter train home from Grand Central Station. We often arrive at the
station separately and promise that we'll meet at the gate. The
other day I got to the gate with only a minute or two before the train
left--but she wasn't there. I called her on my cell.
"You're not here--where are you?"
She answered, "I'm at the gate."
"Amanda, it's Gate number 35!"
"I am at Gate 35."
Suddenly a passerby tapped me on the shoulder and said, "By
chance, is that the woman you're looking for?" We were
standing back-to-back, less than five feet apart, and we dissolved into
laughter over our unwitting slapstick. Hilarious for an audience of two.
Definitely insider humor.
Every couple that has spent years together probably has a comic and
straight man embedded in their humor and their folklore. In our comedy
routine, I am a fountain of silliness to a bemused Amanda who plays my
"straight man." In every photograph on our vacations, I am
trying to pose as a Roman statue on a sheared off colonnade, or make it
look like the sun is setting in my glass of caipirinha, while Amanda
takes the picture and laughs.
Professional comedy teams themselves are, of course, inspired by
real life. Lucille Ball was already a successful comedienne when she was
offered a sitcom on CBS. She would only agree to do it if they brought
on her husband, Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz. At the time, her producers
thought it was crazy to consider the Cuban bandleader for the
show--"what television audience would believe that you were married
to a Cuban bandleader?" they asked. "I am married to a Cuban
bandleader," she told them. Commentators talk about her wanting to
bring the touring Desi Arnaz closer to home by putting him on the show,
but she must have known from real life that they could be funny
together, with her playing the comic and Desi, the straight man (Kantor
2009).
The idea of which partner will be the straight and which one the
comic can change. The comedy team of George Burns and Gracie Allen, that
from the 1930s through the 1960s took comedy from vaudeville to radio
and then to television, switched their roles at one point. When they got
started in vaudeville in New York, Gracie was the straight woman and
George had all the funny lines. At some point, they noticed that
audiences were laughing at Gracie's straight lines, not at George
playing the fool. So they switched roles with George playing the
straight man, and Allen playing the ditsy lady with all the funny lines.
"For the benefit of those who have never seen me before,"
said New York comedian George Burns, "I'm what is known in
show business as a straight man. After the comedian gets through with
the joke I look at the comedian and then I look at the audience like
this" (rolls his eyes). Then Gracie would tell a joke. For
instance, George walks into their living room and says,
"Those are beautiful flowers."
"Aren't they lovely?" she answers. "If it
weren't for you I wouldn't have them."
"Me? What did I have to do with it?"
"You said when I went to visit Clara Bagley to take her
flowers. So when she wasn't looking, I did."
George pauses to bring on the laughter. "That is what is known
as a pause," he said. "I'm famous for my pauses"
(Kantor 2009).
In the documentary Make 'Em Laugh, the actor Lewis Stadlen
notes that "George Burns and Gracie Allen captured the idea that
men are from Mars and women are from Venus. The idea that two
intellectual concepts will never meet, but they still love each
other." (Kantor 2009). Perhaps the humor is what enables them to
love each other, as it does with many couples.
Whether between comedians on the pop culture stage or partners in
everyday life, high banter is all about being in the moment. When you
are totally at home with another person, you can free associate,
creating riffs that you could never have with anyone else. The online
Urban Dictionary, in which visitors supply their own words and
definitions of urban slang, offers their "top" definition of
banter as a "supple term used to describe activities or chat that
is playful, intelligent and original." Their best example, an old
vaudeville line:
"You, sir, are drunk."
"Maybe so, but you are ugly, and I will be sober in the
morning."
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Andy Davis, an L.A.-based scholar and performer who stages
burlesque comedy shows based on his doctoral research into theater
history, plays the straight man with his friend David Springhorn in
sketches they call Doc and Stumpy's Burlesque Shows. A classic
vaudeville line made its way into their own high banter away from the
stage--"that joke just never gets new."
The great comedy teams are reacting and improvising with each
other, as well as responding to the audience. Amanda and I are huge fans
of Saturday Night Live, which we struggle to stay up to watch every
Saturday night. An entire volume could and should be written on the
folklore of Saturday Night Live, focusing on the improvisatory
humor--the banter shared and created by the writers, as well as the
banter improvised by the comics on the live show One particular favorite
was watching comediennes Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph riff off each
other as Betty Caruso and Jodi Dietz on their local TV show, Bronx Beat.
Betty: "Its bananas! The whole world is bananas. You know what
I say? Live your life cause the world is gonna blow up!"
Jodi: "She's right. Enjoy your family, enjoy your
friends, have a glass of wine."
Betty: "Have two glasses of wine, have 10 glasses of wine.
What do I care? What am I? The police or something?" ("Bronx
Beat" 2007).
If you're not in the moment, the world of high banter will
slide right past you. High banter is a key ingredient of folk culture
and family folklore. It's also the essence of the poetry duels that
Amanda and I have studied in different parts of the world. Both on
street corners and stages, poets riff off each other in rhyme,
participating in traditions ranging from extempo in Trinidad, desafios
in Portugal, contrasti in Italy, freestyle rap in the US, and
repentistas in Brazil. The banter between couples and others is also
reminiscent of what happens when jazz musicians riff off one another.
It's a key element of comedy as it evolved from local humor to its
days on medicine and minstrel show stages, vaudeville and burlesque,
sitcoms and reality TV--and back into the living room.
For everyday couples, moments of high banter are often enshrined in
story--written about or retold. The balance for any creative person is
to be both in the moment--with no notion that the banter might make for
a good story--and later realizing that--aha! --it will make a good
story, then shaping and telling the tale to friends or on paper when the
time is right.
The Steve-and-Amanda-Go-Around-the-World-in-a-Daze stories are told
with great flair by Amanda. In our comedy team, I am the quipper and
Amanda is the storyteller, who retells the incident afterwards to an
outside audience. Most recently, Amanda attended a the biannual Cousins
House Party at the beach in South Carolina, which brings together the
women cousins of her generation for a three-day bash of drinking,
joking, and telling stories. The humor rests on a lot of insider
knowledge. For instance, many of the Dargan/Edwards cousins are known
for generations of wide hips. Amanda told the story of our high banter
that followed my purchase of a maroon shirt that had an especially large
collar.
Amanda: "You shouldn't wear shirts with big
collars."
Steve: "Why?"
Amanda: "They make your head look small," she teased.
Steve: "Your hips make my head look small."
It was her cousin Martha's story, though, of a riff between
herself and a burly, tough guy in a supermarket that took the comedy
cake at the House Party, enshrined forever in the Dargan cousins'
folklore. Amanda's cousin Martha was in the supermarket, when she
heard a loudmouth cursing at his companion. Martha shook her head and
said, "Mister, what is your problem?"
"My problem?" he shouted. "I don't have a
problem."
"Mister," she said, "your problem's your
mouth."
"Lady," he retorted, "your problem, your butt."
So here's to high banter, the humorous jazz that occurs when
we riff off one another, improvising in those you-had-to-be-there
moments where the timing is perfect and conversations are elevated to
the point where, as Cole Porter put it, "It's delightful,
it's delicious, it's de-lovely."
Works Cited
"Bronx Beat," Saturday Night Live, NBC, Season 32,
Episode 10, January 13, 2007.
Kantor, Michael (Director). Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business
of America. United States: Ghost Light Films, Inc., and Thirteen/WNET,
2009.
Steve Zeitlin is the founding director of City Lore in New York
City. Photo by Martha Cooper.