Matt Rife’s Crowd Work Therapy

Why comedy is therapeutic

I saw Matt Rife’s crowd work on Netflix. It is therapy because it isn’t beholden to a script. Let me clarify that. Not beholden to the socially acceptable script. You don’t make fun of a person’s attire. In comedy, the comic draw attention to the horned boots and makes fun of it. You curse to their face. Everyone laughs. Even the one made fun of! He loves getting riffed at. He paid premium to be in the front row so he can be part of a new joke invented right at that moment. Crowd work!

Irreverence is the comedy’s script. In the framework of comedy, all the things you want to say but cannot for the maintenance of civilization you can say. Which is why comedy can be more therapeutic than therapy. You can say more in comedy.

A woman shares her fantasy and its morbid. The therapist must listen empathetically, and its powerful because deep listening doesn’t happen on a daily basis. Listening itself is healing. But the therapist can’t offer a moral comment. In crowd work, however, the comic can deliver a moral comment through a joke. The joke is funny because what one wants to say but cannot say is spoken, a taboo is committed padded with a punchline. It is both scandalous and safe. And the moral comment in a laughter is not sheathing any judgment. Laughter is an invitation to accept the common human depravity. Seriousness creates a false separation between us and them. We the more serious one is also more moral. Laughter has no division. The one laughing is also the joke. The comic is likeable when the comic knows that he is also the joke.

Life is a joke.

More to the point.

The human being is a joke. A great joke.