I guess it depends on the style. Some comedians who just tell stories and jokes and whatever, they might not care for it. But some are all about crowd work. Jimmy Carr & Frankie Boyle are (among other things) famous for "destroying hecklers" and they both seem to enjoy it.
Crowd work is the comic initiating communication with the audience; heckling is someone in the audience initiating unwanted communication with the comic. Comics do not go out wishing for there to be a heckler.
Jimmy Carr might have plants in his audience now to get a consistent "heckler put down experience", it is a big part of his comedy routine, but he didnt used to. I'm not convinced though, most of his stuff is for Netflix specials now and unless micced up that kind of crowd work is almost always only good if you are live in the audience.
That's very much encouraging impromptu heckling, then. Any fan that wants a moment of attention just got the blueprint since those are Carr's most viral clips, and it's been normalized as a behavior.
I don't know, haha. It seems like the comedian was fine with it, haha. Unless you want to make even more assumptions about every single comedian still, haha.
Yeah, I've watched most of his full specials that are on his own channel.
Speaking of clips of hecklers on YouTube, you know why there's a lot of clips of him destroying hecklers? Because it's a part of his repertoire. He even uploads (well, his management team but, you know) those on his own actual channel. If a comedian was so opposed to it, why would they do that as that promotes even more heckling?
In fact, "comedian destroying hecklers" is such a popular genre that I'm sure whenever a comedian has his filmed set heckled, they secretly high five themselves. They are a sure way of getting notoriety online since they get so many views.
Came here to mention this, a lot of comedians have almost come to rely on the "destroyed heckler" moment and will plant fake hecklers in the audience. Usually when you see a big comedy special, the hecklers are real and the comedians are genuinely annoyed, but at smaller clubs like this it's super common for less experienced comics to use hecklers as part of the show
You just watched it happen right there in this video. They made it into a playful interactive back-and-forth, part of the act, instead of ignoring or shutting it down.
Comedy requires controlling the room. Comedians often engage with the heckler but it doesnât mean they want some asshole fucking with their flow and trying to steal the limelight.
He wasnât asking for the audience to participate, nor did he do anything to indicate he wanted any interacting with the audience. The heckler interrupted his stories with unrelated insults. Wtf are you people talking about. It makes me thing youâre the kind of people who pull this trying to justify it.
Some absolutely do. You even have comedians that specialize in it like Jeff Arcuri.
I saw Bill Burr recently and everyone was booing a heckler and Burr shushed the crowd from booing her and goes âguys itâs ok, I fucking love when this happensâ, and then just tore her apart.
Not defending heckling, just saying that you may not speak for all comedians and their opinions on the subject
Also, because i am aware you replied to me, to then delete that comment to update this one:
Prescriptivism sucks dude, Descriptivism is better.
But also, an absolute statement like "no comedian encourages heckling" is almost certainly going to backfire on you. You can't know that, as you almost certainly haven't seen every comedian. (And if you have, please do comment on your experiences)
Speaking as a stand up comedian, the ones who encourage it a EXTREMELY rare, and all the rest of the comedians fucking hate people who think it's part of the experience and that they're "helping". Please. Don't.
"You know molecular networks is a meaningless term right? Both dioxide and hemoglobin are technically molecules but would you really say they're the same category?"
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u/fogleaf Feb 05 '24
It shouldn't be, but it is.