Happpyyy Friday everyone!
So for this week, I’m going to be taking a small step back from documentaries for the time being. Even though comedian standups are NOT documentaries though they can still be similar to them. For the most part, within these shows, comedians emphasize stories from their life and highlight the “funny” parts with their expressive personalities. These stories essentially “document” a comedian’s life and can give insight into how they react to certain situations.
In my ENGL 137H/ CAS 138T course this year we have periodically talked about enthymemes. As a short definition, an enthymeme is a syllogism with an unstated premise. So one of the examples my class has been using is “All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore the enthymeme is that Socrates is mortal.”
Now, while watching Bert Kreischer’s comedy show “Hey Big Boy” on Netflix, I felt like I could see this same sort of idea be applied to one of his jokes.
To set up the scene, in the video above, I’m showing you part of a sketch where Bert is talking about how he went into a coffee shop one day and this black cashier was really excited Bert walked in because he recognized him. He was so excited because he knew Bert knew the “best 3 comedians in the game right now.” Hearing what the cashier was saying Bert was hurt to say the least that the cashier didn’t think he was funny. Therefore, he couldn’t help himself to create a joke while the cashier was checking him out for his coffee. After coming in several days with the same set up of the joke, Bert and the cashier had made a bonding connection over the joke and what the punchline meant. The video above is a recap of the interaction between Bert and the cashier on day three.
The punchline of the joke is exactly what is to be the enthymeme in this case. Bert walks up to the cashier to ask what he would like to which Bert says “a venti coffee.” The cashier then continues on and asks, “Room for cream?” Bert then in his creative response says, “No, I don’t want it to know its father,” to which makes the cashier crack up laughing. The underlying enthymeme resides in him saying he doesn’t want his coffee to know its father. Without saying he wants his coffee black (or without cream), the cashier recognizes what Bert says as a stereotypical belief that a black person may not come to know their father. This stereotypical view mainly comes from low-income inner-city areas where many fathers of black children either are imprisoned, have deserted the mother and child or have died due to inner-city violence. Essentially, the venti coffee isn’t going to know its father (as if it was a person), black inner-city kids are stereotyped into not knowing their father, therefore… Bert wants his coffee black. Overall, this racist punchline he is saying is the connection that it is common enough for the black cashier to understand Bert did not want cream in his coffee.
While being quite risky and upfront about what he was saying, in the end, it paid off for Bert as the cashier was more accepting the Bert is a funnier comedian than he originally thought. This gave Bert the satisfaction that he could also be considered part of the “best comedians in the game” for now.
If you guys have not seen any of Bert’s comedy shows I highly recommend watching them. Although I would like to put out a precautionary warning that these shows are INCREDIBLY vulgar and include an abundance of explicit words but none the less, they’re hilarious. If you have to watch one skit of his, you HAVE to watch Bert Kreischer The Machine. Easily this is one of his funniest and most common sketch that he talks about during his comedy shows.
In case you were missing out on some documentary love though, I will be returning back to documentaries next time so just you wait.
Until next documentary…