I spent Thursday night laughing my head off in the front row of the eclectic and intimate Foundation Room of the House of Blues in Fenway. It was the perfect outing for a Thursday night date — a free comedy show by some of Boston’s funniest.
I laughed. A lot. There was no doubt about it. However, I quickly noticed that each burst of laughter that poured out of the crowd was one of those “HAHA haha ha… ha… hmmm” laughs where you’re hysterical at the beginning and then it fizzles out with a discouraging internal analysis of the joke, hence the “hmmm.”
What I mean by that is this: modern comedy really isn’t funny. It’s actually so sad that we laugh at how sad it is, thus poking fun at the hilarity of our current fate. Isn’t it crazy that so many people all find the same things funny? Clearly we are all coming from similar places and despite our extremely diverse lives, comedy can actually create bridges between people. The jokes that get the most reactions are the ones based on contemporary love lives, modern racism and the disaster that is our federal government.
First up: love. Many sociologists say that modern love has become impossible to find. As Tinder notifications pull us out of the world around us, giving us access to thousands of lonely singles, we’ve become incredibly picky. Instead of dating the nice guy down the street, our realms have expanded so that we can now date someone across the city, state or even the world, all thanks to modern technology. Now you may think that this would help more people discover love, however it has actually had the opposite effect. We have way too many options. Why settle for the nice guy down the street when you could find your soulmate in Iowa?
We love to joke about this. We love to laugh at the freakish dates we’ve had with freakish people, or even hilariously miniscule flaws that are immediate turn offs. But above all, we love to joke about our own loneliness, provoked by unrealistic expectations we have of other people.
Next up, we have the wonderful Cheeto that sits at the head of our government. In one election, we’ve set this country back about fifty years. We might be heading into nuclear war. People are dying in protests, in hate crimes, in attacks of police brutality, in increasingly terrifying natural disasters and in capsized rafts crossing the tumultuous Mediterranean, all while our fool of a president tweets and tweets and tweets. Hilarious.
This brings me to our third source of amusement: modern racism. A Latino comedian Thursday told the story of when he cut his wrist while preparing food. He called his medical insurance company to complain after they refused to cover his hospital bills as his incident was labeled as “self-inflicted harm.” When he told them it actually happened when his knife slipped while cutting an orange, they apologized and said “we absolutely cover work-related injuries.” Enough said.
While I left the show feeling light-hearted and giggly, comedy certainly takes shape depending on our political and cultural environment. It’s interesting to monitor the morale of the general public based on the sadism of modern comedy spurred from the moment. Laughter is the best medicine after all, and in particularly dark times, it’s important to seek such relief. Is getting your news from memes actually a coping mechanism?
So my advice to you is this: next time you’re looking for some comic relief at a stand-up show or elsewhere, don’t think too hard about those “HAHA haha ha… ha… hmmm” moments. Just laugh them off.
Correction: A previous version of this article neglected to include the location of the show as the House of Blues in Fenway. The current version reflects this change.
