That said, Kersands had more black fans than white, and his popularity resulted in theater owners relaxing their segregation policies. As a result, many blacks, particularly in the north, opposed his act. Kersands’s act affirmed many of the worst stereotypes of the slow-witted Sambo character seen in white minstrel shows. Still, that joke underlines his complicated legacy. One could only image the response to his billiard-ball trick. “The slightest curl of his lip or opening of that yawning chasm termed his mouth was of itself sufficient to convulse the audience,” said an observer. Famed vaudeville comedian Tom Fletcher wrote, “In the South, a minstrel show without Billy Kersands is like a circus without elephants.” Though he eventually wrote the lyrics of the song that led to Aunt Jemima becoming a pancake icon, Kersands’s greatest gifts were physical. None was more popular than Billy Kersands. The fight for fair representation of black people in comedy continues to this day, over a century and a half later however, white minstrel shows would soon fall out of fashion in favor of black minstrel shows, burlesque, and, eventually, vaudeville.Īfter the Civil War, minstrel shows starring white actors in blackface fell out of favor and in their place arose a number of bllack minstrels. The influence of the joke, and white minstrel shows in general, on the form is complete and total, but it shouldn’t be ignored that the goal was affirming white supremacy. It was a precursor to the vaudeville two-man act, and thus a precursor to essentially all future comedy. Bones.” Rhetorical question-and-answer bits like “Why did the chicken cross the road?” were performed as a rapid-fire dialogue between the three. Likely it began as a folk joke that the Christy’s adapted.) The group is credited with inventing or at least popularizing “the line,” the name for the three-man act that would be the focus of the first of a three-act minstrel show, with the “interlocutor” in the middle, between “Mr. (An 1847 issue of The Knickerbocker magazine is credited as the first to print the joke however, it is unclear where the joke started. “Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side” was one of a handful of riddle-gags frequently used by Christy’s Minstrels, a group of blackface entertainers, formed by Edwin Pearce Christy, who would go on to become the most famous minstrel troupe ever. This includes the first joke most Americans learn as children, which has its roots in 19th-century minstrelsy. The history of the country cannot be separated from the fact that it was built on the backs of black slaves, and the history of modern comedy cannot ignore that it started with white men in blackface. Minstrel is considered the original sin of American show business. They are listed in chronological order, and you can use the timeline on the left to jump to different eras or specific jokes. With that preamble out of the way, here are 100 More Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy. Alex Jung, Abraham Reisman, Andy Beckerman, Naomi Ekperigin, Andy Evans, Bridget Flaherty, Halle Kiefer, Jenny Jaffe, Elise Czajkowski, Ramsey Ess, Jake Kroeger, Matthew Love, Katla McGlynn, and Dave Schilling. The list was put together by Jesse David Fox, Bill Scheft, Dan Pasternack, Yael Kohen, Mike Sacks, Christopher Bonanos, Hunter Harris E. Of course, the greats have had multiple dimensions to their influence, but our objective with this list is to tell more stories, and that meant no repeats. We’ve also decided, with very few exceptions, not to duplicate anyone from the first list. Unlike last time, non-American acts were eligible for inclusion if their work was popular at the time in the United States and had an influence on specifically American comedy. A joke, as we used it, is a unit of comedy. This time we considered passages from novels, cartoon images, and even pieces of art. On this list you’ll still find traditional setup–punch-line zingers and acts of physical comedy, but we no longer demanded that a joke be performed. Between that and some difficult omissions the first time around - Martin and Maude, Monty Python and the Kids in the Hall - we realized a second edition was warranted, one that pushes the bounds of what could be called a “joke.” While we feel like we succeeded in that mission, we also came away wondering if the scope had been too limited - if there were jokes outside the sphere of stand-up, sketch, radio, TV, and film that helped establish what we think of as comedy today. Last year, when we were putting together “ The 100 Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy,” our goal was to present a list of jokes that captured the entirety of capital-C comedy.
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