In improv we have the concept of a ‘bag’. A ‘bag’ is a joke which is not funny in itself but is funny because it is designed to be shocking and offensive and hence creates humour by its unexpected occurrence. Generally we try to avoid ‘bagging’ because
- It is an easy, cheap laugh;
- They tend to stop a scene in its tracks and
- I feel the best comedians have always been those that can be put on a Saturday morning TV show for kids and still be genuinely funny.
The comedy God Mr Richard Herring recently wrote about ad-libbing in standup. His example has to be the most outrageous bag in the Universe. Sexually, morally and religiously offensive. At least it wasn’t racist :). Given the subject of the set it wasn’t out of place however.
It did raise an interesting point. People think ad-libbing is hard. Far from it. Given an object and an action it should be fairly easy to come up with an example of someone who shouldn’t be performing that action. Everyone has a large bank of shared knowledge about people, experiences and objects so merely moving to the opposite side of the database, so to speak, for comic effect can’t be that hard can it?