Can It Be Learned?

Can comedy be learned?

I’m really out of my element here. I probably should just shut up now. But being the risk-taking type, I forge ahead.

How many times have I sat through a funny sermon, read a funny book, watched a funny movie, and after the guffaws stopped, said to myself, “Gee, I wish I could make people laugh. What a gift that would be to the world.” That’s how I look at the comedy gene: a gift God deposits in certain people to be shared with others.

But then, I’ve always thought that about artistic talent, too. You either have it or you don’t. So I never even tried to learn to draw. Middle-aged and my sketches still look like the stuff taped to kindergarten walls. And there’s the missing mechanic gene. I just let my husband assemble anything that comes into our home in multiple pieces. The tech geek gene? Again, his job. Math gene? Born entirely without one. (That’s why we major in English …)

But I picked up a book recently, Writing the Romantic Comedy by Billy Mernit (c 2000, Collins, Imprint HarperCollins), that has made me rethink the whole born-with-something-missing notion. I have learned that comedy in all forms—movies, books, stand-up, television, radio, etc.—shares predictable, repeatable elements. Tension. Conflict/Crisis/Resolution. Threat of loss. Shared pain. Surprise. Then I picked up The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You're Not by Jon Vorhaus (c 1994, Silman-James). There, between the jokes, I read about the fundamentals of humor. More important, Vorhaus confirms what Mernit says: Comedy must contain certain elements, and anyone can learn the elements and apply them to any entertainment medium.

That provoked memories. Sitting in art class at L.C. Curtis Junior High in Santa Clara, Calif. learning about the color wheel: primary and secondary colors and how to use them to complement or contrast. Sitting in cooking class learning about the elements of a properly baked cake: leavening to make it rise, egg as a binder to keep it from being too crumbly. Oddly, I took that cooking ball and ran with it―baking is second nature to me. But I ignored what I was taught in art class because by age 13 I had already determined that I had no artistic talent. No gene.

The confluence of these three lessons (writing comedy, creating works of art, baking), bolstered by the encouraging words of Mernit and Vorhaus, has given me pause when it comes to all the things I’ve said that I can’t do. What else have I failed to attempt because I was convinced I wasn’t given the gift? Perhaps there are many gratifying pursuits that I’ve missed merely because I didn’t know that you can break them down into simple, concrete elements.

Maybe, maybe not. I’m not going to quit my day job to become a stand-up comedienne (that’s not risky behavior, that’s starvation). But reading books such as Mernit’s and Vorhaus’ has opened my mind a little to at least trying something new. Thank you, gentlemen.