Topical Sketches

My most favorite type of comedy just so happens to be the staple of any news comedy or late night comedy show- topical comedy.  Programs like The Daily Show and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno depend on topical comedy to make the show work.  This type of comedy is great because it takes what’s going on in the news and current affairs and spins it to create comedy.  That way, if you know what’s going on in the world, you can get in on the joke.  With that being said, the opposite is true as well- if you have no idea what’s happening in the world around you, topical comedy can easily go over your head.  Also, it dates really fast, if the jokes aren’t made in a certain amount of time after the world-happenings, then the joke could be lost or not have as much of an effect.  So I guess topical comedy is my motivation to actually watch the news, be aware of things going on in the world around me, and stay on my toes.  Alright!

When it comes to writing topical comedy, I’m more familiar with the sketch aspect of it, of course.  In order to write a topical sketch, many people take events and tweak a form of them, a lot like parodies do.  Programs like Mr. Show often used this technique, like in their sketch about East Coast versus West Coast ventriloquists.  This sketch came out during the height of the rap rivalry between the two coasts of the United States and exchanged rappers for ventriloquists.  The sketch is still funny, but it was obviously much funnier when it came out- see what I meant about being easily dated?  Another way to write sketch comedy is to take a real-life celebrity, narrow them down to a specific quality of them, see what a person like that would do in a particular environment, and then insert the celebrity back in.  For example, Saturday Night Live does a great topical sketch that sometimes appears during Weekend Update called “Get in the Cage.”  They take a celebrity, in this sketch it is Nicholas Cage, they narrow him down to a quality about him- he’s the man who gets really intense and yells a lot, see what that particular person would do in a situation like having a segment where he discusses acting with other actors, and then insert Nicholas Cage right back in it.  This particular sketch is great because it’s funny all on its own.  If the sketch centered on an eccentric actor who is obsessed with trying to be in other movies and shouting at his fellow actors, then that’s a quality start.  But the fact that it is Nicholas Cage, it becomes much funnier.

Unlike what may define many other types of comedy, topical comedy does not necessarily need to reach everyone in a particular crowd or even have a comedic lifespan of a long period of time.  That's what's kind of awesome about writing it- you don't have to worry about reaching everyone at once or making something that will stay funny forever.  Awesome.