Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?” Hyper-Irony and Robot Chicken, Part 2

Here’s Part 1.

To examine how we got from The Simpsons to RC, however, I want to first look at another show—Seth McFarland’s FOX comedy, Family Guy. Family Guy is often criticized for being a rip-off of The Simpsons, and superficially this claim does seem to stand up. Both shows focus on a nuclear family lead by a drunk and ineffectual father and a long-suffering but loving mother. These parents also have a son and daughter who argue constantly as well as a baby who shows uncanny intelligence. The humor is often crude and juvenile and seems to be written for the purpose of making its audience uncomfortable as well as amused.

However, these are only superficial similarities. Family Guy took the hyper-irony game begun by The Simpsons and expanded it to even more ludicrous proportions. The quotationalism of The Simpsons was still linked to the plot in some way, and in many ways enhanced the plot. It acted as a cultural short-hand that cued the audience, if it was properly in the know, how to feel about the situation. For instance, in one of the episodes that Matheson references, “A Streetcar Named Marge,” Maggie and her cohorts attempt to break out of an oppressive daycare. The theme from The Great Escape plays in the background as they seek to free their confiscated pacifiers. This quotationalism is funny, certainly, but it also serves a purpose within the action of the scene. It cues the audience to feel that Maggie is doing something heroic and even adds an element of melodrama to the plot. Many of the other instances of quotationalism within The Simpsons behave in the same way—they are woven throughout the plot of the episode so that the action is enhanced, rather than broken, by the bevy of pop culture references.

Family Guy takes the quotationalism begun in The Simpsons one step further. Instead of enhancing the plot, the quotationalism often takes the audience out of the plot entirely. It also forces the Griffin family to break character, as they act out a brief sketch to illustrate whatever reference or joke has just been made. For instance, in one episode, Peter mentions playing a joke on Ashton Kutcher. The scene then switches to a shot of Peter throwing a tomahawk at Ashton Kutcher, causing him to pass out. Peter then explains that he only hit Kutcher because that is the purpose of his television show—to go around filming himself hitting people with tomahawks. Then the scene ends, and the audience is returned to the regular plot of the show. This parody of Punk’d has nothing directly to do with the plot of the episode and seems to serve no purpose other than to make viewers who get the reference feel “in the know.”

This parody and other pop culture references like it within Family Guy, breaks up the show. Instead of enhancing the plot, it actually detracts from it. The quotationalism of Family Guy is often criticized because it is irrelevant to anything else going on in the episodes. However, the quotationalism can’t be that unfunny, or Family Guy would not be one of the most popular comedies in America. Rather, Family Guy takes the cult of pop culture knowingness begun in The Simpsons and raises it to a new level. In The Simpsons, the quotationalism still had a purpose within the show. In Family Guy, the quotationalism is its own purpose. It references purely for the sake of referencing, and only audience members who are in the know are assumed to be worthy of the joke.

This quotationalism for its own sake is, I believe, the natural progression of hyper-irony in comedy. If everything is a source of  ridicule and the best we can hope for is a constant game of one-up-manship in the rules of a particular ideological discourse, then Family Guy does not try to disguise that game behind a plot. Instead, it blatantly exposes the game and acknowledges that it is being hyper-ironic. The show even mocks itself for its constant breaks in the flow of the plot, as occasionally characters will make a bizarre pop culture reference or mash up and then pause. “I thought we had a clip for that,” Stewie says on one such occasion. “Oh? No we don’t? Never mind, then.” The show makes fun of its own quotationalism, proving that even it is not free from ridicule.

Though Family Guy is fresher than The Simpsons, after nine seasons, it too seems to be stalling. Just as The Simpsons has settled into a particular ideological comfort zone of family values and liberal-leaning politics, so too has Family Guy. For instance, in the episode “Trading Places,” in which Meg and Chris swap places with their parents for a week, Chris eventually becomes so stressed that he has a heart attack. When he revives in the hospital and admits that being an adult is harder than he thought it would be, Lois comforts him with a reminder that he still has his family to help him through difficult times. Many recent episodes have ended with a reinteration of family values, and the Griffins seem to take comfort in the fact that while the world may be cruel and unpredictable, at least they have each other to depend upon. In older seasons, this idea of the importance of the family would be under-cut, and to some extent, it still is. After all, what kind of family does Chris have to depend upon? Peter is a selfish drunk. Meg is superficial. Stewie is too concerned about planning world domination and understanding his sexual orientation to care about anything else. Brian is too busy finding a girlfriend and working on his novel (or drinking and thinking about working on his novel), and while Lois might mean well, she rarely offers real solutions to her family’s problems. However, the episode and many like it, seem to end with the message that even though the Griffins are all flawed, they love each other, and that love is enough overcome their faults. This uplifting end note is becoming a common theme on the series, suggesting that Family Guy may be slowly dropping its hyper-ironic stance for a more touchy-feely message.

So why have The Simpsons and Family Guy gone soft? I believe that their nature as  situation comedies prevents them from upholding their hyper-ironic cynicism for too long. Because both shows involve a regular cast of re-occuring characters, these characters and their relationships must develop in some way after a period of time. After all of their wacky adventures and mishaps, how could the Simpsons or Griffins not have a strong bond with each other? In twenty-two minutes they undergo some sort of crisis, resolve it, and return their world to normal. In some sense, the love that they have for each other is enough to get them through any kind of trouble, simply because at the end of each episode, they must have re-established their normal lives so that they will be ready for the next episode. The nature of the situation comedy forces them to find some sort of ideological ground, even if it is a tenuous one.  Chris, voiced by Seth Green, can depend on his family, because the medium in which he exists insists that he can.

But another show involving Seth Green does not have such limitations, which brings us to the next progression of hyper-irony: Robot Chicken. Unlike situation comedies, sketch comedy is under no compunction to always include regular characters and plots, thus it does not become entangled in requiring those characters to grow or change in some way. It is neither required to force its quotationalism to conform to their plots nor does it need to break a plotline to include it. Its quotationalism is purely for the sake of comedy, but it avoids the criticism that plagues Family Guy. Because nothing about sketch comedy is required to be constant, it avoids the risk of settling on some ideological platform, and instead may freely mock anything and everything. Sketch comedy appears to be hyper-irony’s most suitable medium.

What makes Robot Chicken different from other sketch comedies, such as SNL, however, is that it relies entirely on hyper-irony for its humor. SNL contains multipe parodies of popular culture and current events, but these sketches usually exist to convey some sort of message. SNL also relies on physical comedy, absurdism, and its audience’s ability to relate to uncomfortable social situations for humor. Quotationalism is a large source of its comedy, but it is not the only source. And there are lines that SNL will not cross. RC, however, leaves no sacred cow unskewered. It exists purely to under-cut and then to under-cut its own under-cutting.

In some sense, hardly any of its material is wholey original, because nearly all of its sketches references at least one form of popular culture. The Simpsons and Family Guy may borrow from popular culture, but they also feature their own original characters and plotlines. RC is almost entirely intertexual. It plays the pop culture referencing game better than any other contemporary show, but that is because sketch comedy is the natural progression of hyper-irony as comedy. There are multiple playlists on YouTube consisting of just the cutaway gags from Family Guy. Why bother with regular characters and a plot when the best bits are quotational? Unencumbered by regular characters and their relationships, which must be held together in some manner for the show to continue and thus demand a commitment to some sort of ideology, RC may be as irreverent as it likes. (The fact that it is shown on Adult Swim of Cartoon Network, a cable channel that runs adult-themed cartoons at early hours of the morning also helps, as unlike The Simpsons and Family Guy, it is held to much looser standards of censorship.) It holds to no higher authority, even its own, and its medium allows it to move fluidly from one subject of mockery to the next.

Robot Chicken, then, is the culmination of comedy in our postmodern society where there is no ultimate source of authority or truth. It is a show where every source of understanding is constantly put into question. It engages in a rapid-fire battle of pop culture analogies with its viewers, challenging them to get the references quickly before it moves on to the next sketch. We may not be able to ultimately know anything, but we can at least prove that we know how the pop culture game works and we can play it better than anyone else. After all, in a society where all authority is questioned, the old rules no longer apply. The old jokes, like “Why did the chicken cross the road?”, are no longer funny. Instead of attempting to remake the old, we must make something completely new from what’s left of the past. We’re not entirely sure what we are now or where we are, and like the robot chicken, all we can do is sit back, watch the whole experience, and laugh.

Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?: Hyper-Irony in Robot Chicken, Part 1

“Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“I don’t know. Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“To get to the other side!”

Everyone knows this joke, so much so that it is no longer funny. And yet, is has become a sort of symbol for comedy. Though no one laughs at it, it has almost become synonymous with the word “joke.”

It is also the beginning of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim show Robot Chicken (RC) created by Seth Green and Mathew Senreich. In the opening, a mad scientist (we know he’s mad because his hair is messy and he has a maniacal grin on his face) finds a chicken, presumably dead, in the middle of the road. The opening obviously references the classic joke that no one finds humorous anymore. However, in this version of the joke, the chicken has failed to complete its passage across the road. In fact, it is lying dead in the middle of the road. The old joke has been left incomplete, perhaps even died itself. The mad scientist takes the chicken back to his laboratory and rebuilds it as a cyborg that is half machine and half organic. A melodramatic voice announces, “It’s alive!” Then the scientist forces his resurrected creation, a la A Clockwork Orange, to watch the comedy sketches that comprise the show.

In just the opening, we see exactly what RC’s take on comedy is, as well as what it sets out to do to with comedy.

Just like the robot chicken, the show itself is a combination of the new and the old. Despite their crude humor and ever-current pop culture references, in many ways, the RC sketches are no different than previous forms of comedy. They are incredibly brief, some lasting merely a second or two, but comedy, unlike drama, is a fast-paced medium. A joke can’t have a long lead-up, otherwise the audience will become bored. Stand-up comics often offer jokes that are one-liners before moving on to new material. Sketch comedy is also not new in television. The Ed Sullivan show and others like it offered their viewers a wide variety of entertainment, and if audience members found one act boring, well, another, more interesting one would soon follow it. Monty Python’s Flying Circus also bombarded its viewers with comedy sketch after comedy sketch, some sketchs being very brief and others weaving themselves throughout the show. Saturday Night Liveoften focuses on short sketches that parody some form of popular cutlture. RC uses this same technique. Its humor is quick, with little build-up or introduction. As soon as we’ve seen the joke, we’re on to the next one, and if one sketch fails to satisfy, well, a new one will be on shortly. The humor itself would probably have shocked and disgusted Ed Sullivanviewers and may be too risque for even Monty Python or the not-yet-read-for-Prime-Time players, but the style in which it is presented is not unlike old-time variety or sketch comedy shows.

The humor itself often relies on parody, either by stretching the object of ridicule to its ludicrous extreme, such as the militarism of George W. Bush or the violence present in U.S. television, or by inverting a well-known pop culture phenomenon. (The kind and loving Care Bears become racists promoting ethnic cleansing.) The show, like most comedy, also often relies on stereotypes, such as the recurring nerd character, who may be brilliant but cannot overcome his social awkwardness to find a girlfriend. Parody, in any of these forms, is nothing new. Even the ancient Greeks used parody to critique their social institutions, so parody is nothing new to comedy.

Though RC is not completely new, it is also different from any show that has come before it. And in the opening, the mad scientists does not remake the chicken only to have it complete its road-crossing journey. Instead, the old seems to be thrown out in favor of a new one. The chicken may be resurrected, but the joke itself is not. As John Cleese might say, “And now, it’s time for something completely different.”

In many ways, RC is a response to our postmodern, technology-driven lives. The chicken itself is half biological, half machine, just as we have built our lives around our machines. We carry phones with us everywhere that can connect us to the internet in a matter of seconds. We check our emails daily, if not hourly. Cars, buses, and airplanes carry us to our destinations. Our homes can be heated or cooled, regardless of the temperatures outside. We are a sort of cybog, a robot human that is so reliant on technology that it might as well be physically attached to us. RC is responding to that change. Our lives are fast-paced, and require a fast-paced television show. After all, one RC episode only lasts fifteen minutes, while other shows are at least half an hour long. We expect web pages to download in seconds, we express ourselves through 140 characters on Twitter, and we want our entertainment to be as immediate and brief. RC delivers with bite (or byte?) sized humor.

However, to say that RC is merely pandering to an audience whose attention spans are stretched thin is to miss the show’s full significance in the evolution of comedy. Specifically, the show relies almost entirely on what Carl Matheson called “hyper-irony.” In his article “The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony, and the Meaning of Life,” Matheson tracks the changes in American comedy up until The Simpsons, which he cites as the first show to make use of hyper-irony, often through quotationalism, a “rapid-fire sequence of [pop culture] allusions” used in “a constant process of under-cutting.” One cannot understand the humor of The Simpsons, he asserts, unless one has a thorough background in popular culture.

For those of you who don’t have the time to read Matheson’s argument, I will summarize it thus (Although, seriously, go read it. It’s entertaining, well-written, and academic. A rare combination, indeed!): What makes The Simpsons different from the shows that came before it that referenced popular culture is that The Simpsons lacks any sort of moral agenda. It does not parody or allude to popular culture in order to promote any sort of values, be they liberal or conservative, but instead merely references for the sake of referencing. Matheson’s explanaition for the continuous use of allusions is that in our postmodern society, all authority is in question and we lack a solid place in which to put our faith. In such a social climate, Matheson asserts, contemporary artists often go back to the past for inspiration. However, because even history if one of the forms of authority in question, this inspiration from the past is often under-cut. What results is a constant flow of references, and those who can catch the most references are lucky enough to be “in the know.” They are members of what Matheson calls “the cult of knowingness.” This cult is built, Matheson claims, by the idea that even though there may be no ultimate truth, one can demonstrate one’s superior understanding of a set of intellectual rules. The point is not to have a depth of knowledge, but to have a broad understanding of a variety of ideological positions…and popular culture. One then proceeds to tear down any sort of ideological ediface that claims to have an understanding of ultimate knowledge. In other words, anything and everything is up for grabs as an object of parody. However, in the process of tearing down every source of ultimate truth, the show itself lacks any sort of ideological ground to stand on.

The Simpsons may have begun to maximize quotationalism and hyper-irony in comedy, but the show has since stalled. Both society and The Simpsons have changed since Matheson’s essay, and the show is now something of family-values comedy with liberal-leaning politics. While it paved the way for many of the popular comedy shows today and has had a huge influence on American entertainment, it has not been able to uphold its hyper-ironic stance for twenty-two seasons. I believe that the nature of The Simpsons as a situation comedy prevents it from being able to uphold a hyper-ironic worldview indefinitely, and that shows in sketch comedy form, like RC, are the natural progression of hyper-ironic comedy.

Stay Tuned for Part 2!