"Poets...were not expected to use prefabricated material. If a poet did echo bits of earlier poems, he was expected to modulate this into his own 'kind of thing'" (Ong, 21).
"Only beginners or permanently poor poets used prefabricated stuff" (Ong, 22).
If one simply replaces the word poet with stand up comedian and the word poems into material or more specifically other comedians material, it is easy to see the similarities that first struck me. As a general rule in the stand-up community, it is very much discouraged to use another comedian's material. Offenders are known as hacks, and are often black-balled by the entire community. see these links for some examples of this in real life:
Dane Cook accused of stealing jokes:
(note: I know alot of people who are fans of Dane Cook...I'm not trying to go after him or anything. But it is true that of the many stand-up comedians I have talked to ALL of them consider him a hack)
Carlos Mencia accused by Joe Rogan:
Basically Joe Rogan calls out Mencia for being a fraud (i.e. he's not really mexican, he's actually from Honduras, his name is not Carlos but Paul I think anyways, and he stole jokes and the comedian he stole them from confronts him)
However one argument that is easily made by comedians accused of stealing material is the commonality of what's funny. For example think about relationships between men of women...like married people don't have sex or are miserable. The argument is that comedians generally can notice the same things as funny in society but they go after it in different ways. Thus comedians are drawing awareness to the same thing but doing their "own kind of thing" as Ong is talking about.
Like the oral poets, a stand-up comedian's bit is based on a formulaic system that is memorized and is also made on the fly depending on the response of the audience. Also, pieces are altered, added, or deleted based on what the comedian guesses will work (that is make people laugh and not be pissed...for example not the best idea to make fun of Butte in Butte, but GREAT idea in Bozeman or anywhere else in Montana).
Thus often every performance of a stand up routine will be different every time, but also very very similar because of the original memorized formula.
There is however a difference between a stand-up performance and a blonde joke or a chicken crossed the road joke or a knock-knock joke. These kind of jokes depend upon a strict (yet flexible) formulaic structure.
George Carlin writes in his book When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?
"A GENERIC JOKE: A person goes into a place and says something to another person. The second person says something back to the first person, who listens to that and then says something back to the second person. The thing he says back is really funny."More or less, jokes depend upon this formulaic structure even to simply deviate from it. For example: many jokes can be explained in two ways, but not all, it would take too much thinking right now for me to uncover them all.
An event is presented, the listener is led to believe that a certain occurrence will happen, and another occurrence happens that the listener did not see coming and thus it is funny.
Two men are out golfing. Upon seeing a funeral procession in the distance, the man driving the golf cart stops, steps out, and removes his hat, while the other man watches in confusion. When the procession is finished and out of sight, the man puts back on his hat and gets in the cart and starts driving as if nothing had happened. The other man says "why did you do that?" The man says, "well I was married to her for 30 years, I figured it was the least I could do."
What's funny in the joke is that the listener did not see the conclusion coming and the irony of "the least you can do" is realized, as a man is literally doing about the least he can do when his wife dies.
This is interesting and I think I will try and get back to this later...
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