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The Uneasy Relationship Between Mental Illness and Comedy

by | December 14th, 2012

I had to take a Xanax to write this article. My anxiety makes it hard to start; my depression and self-doubt make it hard to come to any conclusion. And so, in classic neurotic fashion, I begin with skepticism:

“Are you SERIOUS?" Marc Maron asked me, presumably rhetorically, upon hearing my reason for calling him. I don’t think he was trying to be mean. It seemed like genuine disbelief.

I told him that I was. That I believed — in the face of countless evidence to the contrary — that mental illness was an obstacle to good comedy and not a tool for its deployment. That there exists a culture now where 20-something guys use comedy as their only means of therapy, and that this is corrosive. I don’t mention myself — just vague young comedians.

“I’ve seen a lot of miserable guys do pretty amazing stand-up,” Maron said. He’s probably invited them all on his podcast at this point.

That mentally unwell people are drawn to comedy hardly seems controversial. Why wouldn’t a narcissist want to have a spotlight on him in front of a crowd of strangers? Plenty of vulnerable people are drawn to, say, Scientology; why wouldn’t some of them instead be drawn to the equally expensive cult that is the Upright Citizens Brigade?

I agree with, I assume, every other Splitsider reader: slightly crazy people make comedy more interesting and weird and dangerous. But something about the coziness between instability and comedy seems increasingly off to me. I tell Maron that I am worried about young comedians using humor in the place of actually confronting their problems. That it’s acting as an avoidance tactic. READ MORE

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