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Metacomedy, which is to say comedy about comedy and its construction, has been a hit ever since Andy Kaufman. But it has gone viral in the new millennium, especially on Comedy Central's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.
John Hodgman, in particular, has employed metafiction with skill and hilarity. His Tuesday appearance on The Daily Show to talk about his new book, More Information Than You Require (clip embedded), was a lesson in unmasking comedic and marketing blueprints.
Rather than plug his book outright, Hodgman took the opportunity to strip away the pretension of Daily Show's promotional circuit, going so far as to use Jon Stewart's default praise, "Fascinating," against him. Several times.
For his part, Stewart has sometimes squeezed metacomedy dry, as have his less interesting peers on Saturday Night Live, who too regularly disrupt skits by laughing at or calling attention to their own jokes. On SNL, this postmodern practice has felt like a lobotomy in progress: Rather than relying on audience members to provide laughter, the cast has often supplanted them by breaking down sketches into self-referential exercises in circularity. The comedians, in effect, become their own audiences.
That's a strain of uncritical, too-easy metacomedy that really needs to go gently into that good night. But Hodgman and, more importantly, Colbert are paragons of the practice, regularly taking apart comedic pretension and replacing it with sharp, smart satire that evolves comedy past what Kaufman created when he was skewering his audiences and challenging their patience to the point of insurrection.
"Jon deconstructs the news, I falsely construct the news," Colbert recently explained to the crowd at the New Yorker Festival, and that is the reason the faux news shows have each succeeded as both comedy and news programs. Straight reportage or promotion, as Hodgman illustrated, is so 20th century.
See also:
- Video Pick: John Hodgman Discusses Hobo Culture, Soylent Green
- Q&A: John Hodgman on Perfecting the Illusion of Expertise
- *Daily Show *Couple Lands CBS Sitcom
- Colbert Report's Fourth Year Starts With Smithsonian Nod
- 'Truthiness' Could Swing Stephen Colbert Into Marvel White House
- I Am Not a Jerk, Says Stephen Colbert
