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Planet Funny: How Comedy Took Over Our Culture, by Ken Jennings
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Review
“Ken Jennings hops aboard our thundering avalanche of comedy and surfs it like a pro. Lively, insightful, and crawling with goofy factlings, Planet Funny is for the comedy geek in all of us." (Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette?)“Ken Jennings has done the impossible: he's written an actually funny book about comedy. Ken is brilliant and incisive and the kind of guy with so many smarts that it makes you go, 'Man, that guy's really smart.' Fans of comedy will love Planet Funny and will undoubtedly wonder why I am not mentioned more.” (Michael Ian Black, author of Navel Gazing)“This book is fascinating, entertaining and – I’m being dead serious here – important. The joke-ification of our world affects everything: politics, science, art, literature. And Ken tells the tale with wit and insight, not to mention a couple of fart jokes.” (A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically)“When did comedy become so serious and the daily news become so laughable? In his latest book, Ken Jennings provides excellent insight in detailing how comedy has infiltrated every corner of contemporary American culture - for better or for worse. Planet Funny is an illuminating take on that old cliché: ‘Everybody’s a comedian.’” (Kliph Nesteroff, author of The Comedians)"America’s biggest brain turns his attention to modern comedy — and delivers a book full of humor and insight. As a reader, I’m delighted… and as a comedy writer, I’m annoyed that he understands my field better than I do. Stay off my turf, Jennings!" (Tim Long, writer and producer of The Simpsons)"This book is full of good sense and meaningful interviews, and it would be difficult to find a smarter or more satisfying treatment of a subject so evanescent and idiosyncratic as comedy." (Kirkus, starred review)“Jennings’ holistic, incisive argument presents a strong case that our comedy-first culture is resulting in too much of a good thing. In a punchy, engaging style, he documents humor’s history, evolution and twentieth-century explosion….Planet Funny is smartly structured, soundly argues, and yes – pretty darn funny.” (Booklist, starred review)“A philosophical conundrum Jennings expertly navigates....Jennings’s remarkable research and clever hand make an impressive and highly entertaining work that pop culture enthusiasts will not want to miss.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)"Ken Jennings has achieved what physicists have always said was impossible: he's written a book that analyses the mechanics of humor while being very funny. To paraphrase EB White, if analyzing a joke is like dissecting a frog, in this case the frog is shouting 'Ooh! That tickles! More! Do it again!' (Peter Sagal, host of NPR “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!â€)"An entertaining deep dive into culture... a highly entertaining yet genuinely scholarly look at the evolution of humor." (Bookpage)
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About the Author
Ken Jennings grew up in Seoul, South Korea, where he became a daily devotee of the quiz show Jeopardy! In 2004, he successfully auditioned for a spot on the show and went on an unprecedented seventy-four game victory streak worth $2.52 million. Jennings’s book Brainiac, about his Jeopardy! adventures, was a critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller, as were his follow-up books Maphead and Because I Said So! He is also the author of Planet Funny. Jennings lives in Seattle with his wife Mindy and two children.
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Product details
Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Scribner (May 29, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1501100580
ISBN-13: 978-1501100581
Product Dimensions:
6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.0 out of 5 stars
21 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#83,639 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
As much as I expected to enjoy this book, it was a snoozefest. Jennings' book Brainiac was awesome; Because I said So was decent; and Maphead passable. These 3 all seemed to be written for the general public. Planet Funny, though, is geared toward a narrow demographic, to which I apparently do not belong. He references many personalities and programs that I've never heard of. Some of his patter comes across as inside-joke material, which he doesn't bother explaining to us outsiders. For these reasons, the book was tedious and boring. I skimmed through quite a bit of it. I was relieved to finally reach the last page. I enjoy a laugh or a joke as much as the next guy. But it seems such a waste of a brilliant mind to spend so very much of one's time on comedy podcasts, tv comedy programs, sending & receiving comedic tweets, etc.Upon finishing the book, I wanted to say, "Ken, don't quit your day job." Then I realized, oh crap - this IS his day job.
Remember when Amazon reviews could just be about the thing you bought instead of an attempt to be witty and snarky in hopes of getting a laugh out of some future anonymous person who you'd never meet? That's what this book's about! Also, this review.
Exactly what I wanted from the writer I tell everyone is the king of Twitter. Insightful look into comedy and what it's become.
Fresh, intelligent take on a hard-to-tackle subject
Ken Jennings has proved himself a knowledge repository and dispensary of a wide range of subjects, comedy being the most recent.For someone whose Twitter feed has come to be a vital comic respite to so many, Jennings's Damoclesian dread is evident: At what sociocultural price comes comedy?The writing is typical of Jennings: smart, thorough without being too complex, and funny. This book is a deep dive, full of surprising connections--Cassius Clay's comedic conversion, for example. (The map was meant to be more amusing than accurate, I hope.)If you are a fan of comedy, trepidatious about the unrelenting nature of having a laugh, get this book. You will enjoy it.
A legitimately funny look about why the forces driving our increasingly funny culture might not be so... funny. (Sorry, it was a regular book, not a thesaurus.) In a world where politicians and corporate Twitter accounts and shampoo bottles and everyone else seems to feel the need to try and make us laugh, Jennings does a great job of examining why we have to live in this hellscape and how we can escape. Just kidding, we can't.
The book reviews the history of comedy mainly in the USA. It tells the stories of hundreds of comedies (and comedians), but if you are not already familiar with these comedies, you will face some difficulties enjoining the text.
I greatly admire Ken Jennings. So much so that when, after his Jeopardy! triumph, he made a speaking appearance at a nearby outpost of the University of Michigan, I was first in line to attend. When he began accepting questions from the audience, I asked him, “Now that you’re a celebrity, do you plan to run for public office?â€The audience gasped that I would have the temerity to ask such an insolent question, and Jennings was visibly not amused, although he did mutter an admission that he had been approached by a party — he wouldn’t say which, although I later learned it was Chuck Schumer and Harry Reed. Nevertheless, I still think that he’s the guy who proved that It’s Hip to be Square (which would make a fine title for a song). Imagine my disappointment, then, upon finding this to be a tedious book.You have likely lived through a dreadful situation such as being invited to the house of a co-worker for a dinner, and their teenaged son or daughter dominates the conversation with a detailed account of a comedy movie they’ve just seen. (I have endured several such ordeals, usually from a subordinate trying to dodge his assignment.) But much of this book is Jennings recounting not just one movie or one stand-up comedian, but almost every comedy and comedian, dating back to Aristophanes. How he manages to acquire an encyclopedic knowledge of all Jeopardy! categories, when he apparently spends all his time watching Comedy Central, is beyond me. I watch very little TV, so most of the many names he drops are unknown to me, but I fail to see how much more entertaining the book could be even if you are familiar with all of them.The book begins with the premise that everything has turned into comedy — from commercials for insurance companies to church signs to edible food packaging — and he maintains, “When everybody is a comedian, nobody is.†But the bulk of the book does nothing to advance this argument, it simply wanders about in a desultory manner mentioning comedies and comics to no point.I was ready to give the book a one-star rating, but somehow, it improves as it goes along. Beginning with Chapter Eight, “Mirth Control,†a history of censorship of comedy, he actually reaches some conclusion from his examples. Chapter Nine starts out slow, but he does make some good points about modern politics. It’s a relief that Ken Jennings is not as straight-laced as one might assume, and on page 223, he refers to demagogue Bill O’Reilly as “a radio blowhard.†Jennings seems to favor science and social benevolence, and I got the impression that his politics may be congruent with those of Bill Maher. (Perhaps he’s even more sensible, though, as Maher is a rabid anti-vaccination zealot.)The history of comedy in the later chapters introduced many names from the past I was unfamiliar with. But I was disappointed that there was no mention of Petroleum V. Nasby, a favorite of Abraham Lincoln. (In my youth I used >Plutonium< V. Nasby as a pen name. When people asked me what it meant, I would reply cryptically that it was related to something found in Lincoln’s pocket after he was shot.)Taking time out from Planet Funny, I looked-up both Fanny Fern and Marietta Holley, two women authors who Jennings says were celebrated in their day. Unfortunately, nineteenth-century American humorists were limited to only two types of humor: absurd exaggeration (which seems to be Ms. Fern’s forte — only it’s *feminist* exaggeration, perhaps a redundancy) and rural patois written phonetically (sometimes called “eye dialectâ€), the stock of Ms. Holley. Charles Dudley Warner, Josh Billings, Petroleum V. Nasby and the lesser-earlier Mark Twain all relied on patois and are thus not much fun to read today, so it was disappointing to find that Ken Jennings had overlooked someone whose writing is yet entertaining, George Ade (1866-1944) — newspaper columnist, novelist, playwright, poet; a true original who is still readable.A cultural milestone which Jennings missed is Jackie Gleason’s “The Honeymooners.†Before that show, women in comedy were uniformly portrayed as ditzy, untrustworthy, lovable but daffy and irresponsible. Women drivers were a common topic of stage comedians and jokes. (“But officer, I was only *going* one way!â€) The most popular program on ‘50s television featured Lucy and Ethel engaged in some wacky scheme, only to have it backfire on them. Then Lucy would begin bawling, like a child person.Beginning with The Honeymooners and forever after, every comedy show instead depicted the wife as sage: mature, but with a smart mouth on her. The husband is now the scheming doofus and often a blowhard with a temper, too. (On Seinfeld, George Costanza had the temper and bluster, and there was a goofy Ed Norton-character from across the hall who made the same clown entrance.) That Jennings mentions all these third-rate comedians and shows but overlooks The Honeymooners is a major lapse in any book on comedy. Of course, at the time of Gleason’s death, it was abruptly decided that his temperamental character threatening to hit his wife (“To the moon, Alice!â€) was making light of domestic violence and is thus impermissible, so Gleason, like Bill Cosby, is now a non-person whose name may not be spoken, but his influence lives on in Family Guy, Last Man Standing, and most obviously [fill in your favorite show] all with smart women but foolish men. So Lucy (or “I Married Joan†or “My Little Margie†or Gracie Allen, et al.) behaving like the village idiot is not sexist, but Jackie Gleason mock-threatening his wife, though made obvious that he never will, is somehow considered unacceptable.As the book goes on, more good points are made (how serious rock music takes itself (here, I have to refrain from mentioning my many favorite humorous rock bands), but I believe that, perhaps because of his spiritual beliefs, Ken Jennings misses the most basic and fundamental point about what comedy has become.It must be obvious, especially after reading this book, that most stand-up acts are not at all funny. Some big-name acts such as Dave Chappelle are obviously talented, but this book led me to reflect on what they’re really doing. A prime example of what change took place is the late George Carlin, who after his first heart attack, stoped doing coke and stopped telling jokes and began preaching. Obviously he was not preaching for the Lord (“When will Jesus bring the pork chops?†was part of his old routine), but instead he was preaching the gospel of secular humanism.And when I say preach, I mean precisely that. Watch a video of Billy Sunday, but with the sound off. The Rev. Sunday, when in his prime, had the same mannerisms as George Carlin — poised on the apron of the stage, crouched as if he were ready to pounce; wild hand gestures. Obviously George Carlin never witnessed Billy Sunday (1862-1935) work a crowd, but Carlin nevertheless picked it up somewhere, and he became a great preacher.Ken Jennings calls out the “edgy†comedian Daniel Tosh for doing a rape joke. I had never heard of Tosh before, so I listened to his routine, and I can state the obvious — Daniel Tosh is not at all funny, but like many stand-up acts, he has gone “beyond funny.†He seems to be preaching a stern brand of eugenics, and the people who attend his sermons are urbanites who have no interest in the traditional values of having a family and raising kids. I don’t disagree with his attitude, but I have no interest in hearing someone parrot what I’ve already accepted.I suppose this makes me a lapsed atheist, but the people who pay to hear Daniel Tosh sermonize have the atavistic need to sit in a room with a like-minded congregation and have someone shout about all the values they have in common. It’s an affirmation of ones identity, just as the Wahabbis congregate at their mosque and the imam shouts that their collective way of thinking is the best and most enlightened. But, warns the preacher/imam, it is threatened by the infidels who must be attacked! Thus, the disciples of Daniel Tosh likewise engaged in cruel attacks on comic writer Lindy West, who was critical of Tosh for making a rape joke (pg.243). Death to the infidel ! She is not one of US!Perhaps it’s because Ken Jennings already has his Christian faith and a place to congregate with like-minded fellows, that he hasn’t noticed that comedy has become a religious service of its own, with formalities and practices every bit as ritualized. The only major difference between religious worship and comedy is that instead of shouting “amen!†or “hallelujah!†those who approve of the stand-up preacher’s message make uniform laughing noises during the call-and-response ritual. I don’t mean to show disrespect for anyone’s faith, but it is a plain fact that, in general, attendance at organized worship has declined over the years, while fellowship at comedy clubs has increased at the same rate.All this strikes me as obvious, and in Planet Funny, Jennings has already observed (as have many others before him) that late in his career, Lenny Bruce was not funny, but people would pay to hear him lecture on the blatant injustice and hypocrisy of our legal system. Richard Pryor stopped being a comedian and began lecturing on how African-Americans are superior to the square, old-fashioned white majority, a model all other black comedians have since followed. White audiences seem to enjoy being told that they are awkward, uncool oppressors. They have sinned, O Father, but they shall repent! But if caucasians don’t wish to participate in a ritual of wallowing in guilt, they can always join Jeff Foxworthy in a celebration of the joy of belonging to >us!< — of being a redneck. Hail yeah! That’s us!Rock concerts were once the primary replacement for religion in providing the tribal, hive, herd, group solidarity experience of We're All in This Together, but that’s limited to young people, and you can attend comedy services while completing your Twelve-Step program.Ken Jennings spends pages and pages talking about comedy without coming to the obvious conclusion that comedy is now an expression of identity, and it has replaced religion as a means to gather together and experience a feeling of unity — that, yes! This what we believe in! This is us! Our identity! Amen!On the other hand, I suppose that none of this would have occurred to me had I not read this book, so I have to give it a decent rating, despite its dullness.
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