I laughed so hard I nearly had an brain aneurism

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Sculptor
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I laughed so hard I nearly had an brain aneurism

Post by Sculptor »

I've been reading a bit of comedy theory, as you do. And came across this.
I love Stewart Lee, and have seen him often on stage. He's written books of academic interest and has a deep understanding of his craft. He has often criticised PC, though often very ironically. Anyway the punch line is great. Reading from:
Comedy Has Issues
Lauren Berlant and Sianne Ngai
U of Chicago Press Journals

" Lee had been working as an arts journalist, the story goes. He was excited to interview the director Ang Lee because Ang Lee had just directed The Hulk (2003), and he, Stewart Lee, had since childhood followed the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby comic character ...

To “put [an interviewee] at ease” at an interview’s start, Stewart Lee says, he often tells a joke (H, p. 91). On this occasion—a telephone call between the comedian in London and the director in New York—the joke is this: “And I said, ‘I said, Ang Lee … you have … you’ve directed the Hulk film. You must be very excited and proud. But, erm, don’t make me anglee. You wouldn’t like me when I’m anglee.’” Ang Lee’s response to this is: “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” (H, p. 92). Multiple variations on this exchange—the comedian’s joke plus the director’s aggressively flat request for its repetition—reprise in this seven-minute bit. The awkward reluctance with which the Stewart Lee character is forced by Ang Lee to repeat the initial joke—a performance of foot-dragging shame that provides hilarious affective counterpoint to the repetition of the words “very excited and proud”—leads to demands for explanation that veer between Stewart Lee’s insistence that he’s punning on the Hulk’s tagline, “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” and Ang Lee’s insistence that his name doesn’t sound a bit like the word angry. Ang Lee tortures Stewart Lee by refusing to accept the alibi that “it was just a stupid joke” (H, p. 92).

But because of the toggle between r and l that English speakers parody as a stereotypical feature of East Asian English, when Ang Lee asserts his view in Stewart Lee’s monolog he demonstrates Stewart Lee’s claim, pronouncing angry as Ang Lee, which to Stewart Lee establishes the justness of his pun and also Lee’s racial innocence or cluelessness, take your pick: “My own surname is Lee, I’ve had thirty-six years of fun with that syllable” to which Ang Lee insists that, in collapsing angry onto Ang Lee, Stewart Lee is “anti-Taiwanese.”30 “And then in the end he went, ‘Don’t make me anglee, you wouldn’t like me when I’m anglee!’ And I said, ‘You’ve proved my point, you fucking Taiwanese idiot!’” (H, p. 94).

Quoted from https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/f ... 086/689666
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