Why Don't Comedians Want to be "Funny"?

"“My clowning, as the world calls it - and I dislike the word clown, for I am not a clown - may have esoteric meanings. I prefer to think of myself as a mimetic satirist.”

Thus proclaims the great comedian as he backs off in distaste from his own talent. The year is 1920 and the speaker is Charlie Chaplin, at that moment the most famous, even beloved living human being on Planet Earth. He can do no wrong. It is not enough. Charlie will not rest until the world accepts him as a serious artist.

Here is where it begins: The figure of the funnyman for whom “funny” curdles in the harsh light of success. Within Chaplin’s high-flown locutions is the DNA of every subsequent comic genius who has insisted he’s more than that, from Jerry Lewis to Woody Allen to Robin Williams to Jim Carrey.

The current specimen is Judd Apatow, the writer-director of “Funny People.” Apatow’s 2004 breakthrough, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” was about a 40-year-old virgin (Steve Carell). “Funny People” is about a comedian with cancer. This is what the culture calls artistic progress.

Perhaps the culture is mistaken, though. Or is it the comedian who errs? Who decides that laughter is a lesser response than the sigh or the sob? Why isn’t the gift of transfixing audiences with delighted surprise, with forging new connections from the absurdities of life, with undercutting pretentiousness and reminding us of the shock of the real, not considered a profound thing?

Perhaps the answer lies in a comedian’s psychological profile. The stereotype, of course, is of the class clown who will do anything for a laugh, with laughter standing in for attention and attention standing in for love. The competitive drive that fuels a racing mind can mask deep insecurity, always feeding, always hungry.

That drive can create great comic art out of isolation, resentment, and self-pity: Think of all the “little men,” before and after Chaplin, who have gotten laughs from exacting revenge on the pompous and complacent. The jesters of popular culture, comedians speak truth to power, but they can still hate themselves for not fitting in. That self-loathing can be expressed thusly: If I’m good at this, it must not be worth doing. Thus the bid for respect; thus Richard Pryor making “Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling.”

The more self-aware comic artists have made the desire to be unfunny their subject from time to time, with mixed results. Allen’s 1980 “Stardust Memories” remains one of his ugliest works, with the filmmaker painting as Diane Arbus-like freaks those fans who spurned his vapid Ingmar Bergman imitations (by which I mean “Interiors”) and clamored for the “old, funny Woody” to return."