GAG

Indicating a humorous action or remark intended to provoke laughter, the word gag is commonly interchangeable with joke. Gag is idiomatic to professional comedians, who use it in preference to the layman's term joke to describe the main elements in comic routines. It describes comic expressions, whether verbal or physical. Both involve the buildup of an expected outcome with a surprising but understandable (comic) detonation. As with jokes, gags can be “canned” (built on preexisting jokes) or “spontaneous.’” Improvisation (or the illusion of it) is a distinct feature of all stand-up comedians. The etymology of gag is unclear, though some have claimed connection with a joke's ability to make people struggle for breath (i.e., “to gag”). This entry discusses verbal and physical gags and how they have been used in various sorts of entertainment throughout history.

Partly because of the popularity of the French Canadian television series Just for Laughs: Gags (first aired on Télé-Québec in 2000), the term today is often understood to refer to a visual joke or “sight gag,” without any text at all. Using a hidden (“candid”) camera technique, with silent format and no translation required, the original series has been used internationally, purchased for airlines, and much copied in other countries. As with verbal jokes, the two constants of humor (situation and character) characterize sight gags and an implied narrative is communicated without words. All great stage and screen comedians have employed visual gags as part of the time-honored traditions of comedy, from Aristophanes and Plautus, through commedia dell’arte to the greats of silent film, such as Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, and Charlie Chaplin, followed by Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers, and the British Monty Python team. According to Noël Carroll (1996), Thomas Edison's first peepshows included clowning, and the first Auguste and Louis Lumière film (1895) featured a prankster who hosed the gardener's face. Increased mayhem in sight gags followed in early films, exemplified by the comic debacles of the Keystone Cops and the ubiquitous pie-in-the-face routine. A favorite film gag of Australian actor-comedian Geoffrey Rush (b. 1951) is taken from Chaplin's short film The Idle Class (1921). This classic example involves the actor being told by his wife to give up drinking or she will leave. A back shot of Chaplin shows his shaking shoulders as he (presumably) weeps—but as he turns to the camera, he is revealed to be smiling happily while shaking himself a cocktail.

Physical dexterity is necessary for all sight gags and for visual comedy in general. Today this is exemplified on screen by actors such as John Cleese, Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy, Jackie Chan, and Johnny Depp, all of whose mime skills and modern slapstick style are very evident. Similar physical humor is also found across Africa, where sight gags and physical comedy are a traditional part of several dramatic forms. Equally, modern stand-up comedy has its place in Japan alongside manzai, a traditional style of double-act comedy involving a straight man [Page 254](tsukkomi) and a funny man (boke), who speedily swap exclusively verbal gags around misunderstandings, double-talk, and puns. The contemporary Japanese solo stand-up act has its own traditional monologue form, rakugo, or “sit-down comedy” which involves the narration of both visual and verbal gags.

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