Kapica begins by defining cringe comedy as what it is not. "It is not 'shock comedy.' It is also not 'anti-woke comedy,'" he says. And while he has a lot more to say about the latter, the point that he emphasizes is that cringe comedy is not 'punching down.' "'Anti-woke comedy' is 'punching down' comedy. And we all know which direction we're supposed to punch, right?" he asks rhetorically.
"Cringe is not shock, and it's not anti-woke. It is a unique, abjectly beautiful, absurd beast," Kapica concludes. But it's still best to explain it by comparing it to 'shock comedy.' The latter, according to Kapica, is about "saying the quiet part out loud." It's about braveness and the audacity to cross lines, and shock comics often pride themselves on being contrarians.
"Shock works precisely because its artisans are bold, daring, and singular," Kapica tells Bored Panda. "They take full ownership and responsibility – and rightly suffer the consequences should there be any." He gives stand-up comedian Daniel Tosh as an example. "Shock is offensiveness for offensiveness's sake. Often, because the shock comedians own and bear the brunt of [the] backlash, they are rewarded by fans. [Like] Howard Stern."
"But shock is not cringe," Kapica clarifies. "Cringe does not emerge from a reversal or distortion of a premise, nor does it emerge from oppositional stances. Cringe does not point out incongruity. It breaks incongruity."
Let's look at this from the perspective of constructing a joke. It starts with a premise that is not funny, and then it's the comedian's job to deliver the punchline by breaking the audience's expectations. Cringe starts with a funny situation or premise and pushes it to a breaking point until it becomes unfunny – or awkward. "Cringe starts with laughter and then turns that laughter against the one who is laughing," Kapica explains.
But that doesn't mean that cringe comedy is foolproof. Those who use cringe risk alienating their audience. "This is the audience that gets angry and walks out on Andy Kaufman for being intentionally, relentlessly unfunny," Kapica says. According to him, cringe comedy is successful when it comes full circle. "It starts with laughter, turns the laughter to cringe, and then returns the cringe to laughter."
He gives the film Borat (2006) as the most famous example of cringe in movies. It works and is so successful because the film directs its comedic ire and cringe at Americans, not the Kazakhs. "Borat's premise is inherently funny (from a subject position of superiority); however, the cringe ultimately reveals the lunacy of American exceptionalism."
Other examples of cringe include The Eric Andre Show and I Think You Should Leave. "Andre is gonzo absurdism at its finest," Kapica says. "I Think You Should Leave puts it right there in the title." Andy Kaufman is an progenitor of comedic cringe. Kapica also points to Jerry Lewis' films from the 1960s and the 'Fix My Hat' scene in The Ladies Man (1961). "The hat scene in The Ladies Man (1961) is pure genius cringe," Kapica says.
But cringe is risky business, Kapica observes. Comics who choose to dabble in it need to do so with care, as audiences might interpret it as debasement and perhaps the lowest form of comedy. "We like to believe that punching up or punching down is obvious, easy to spot. No one really wants to be Biff Tannen [from] Back to the Future," Kapica says.
"But systemic prejudices can easily be traded on in ways that not only perpetuate negative comedic tropes but reinforce underlying, supremacist worldviews. Cringe is arguably the riskiest form of humor, so its merchants must be hypervigilant with regard to intent in order to avoid such reinforcement."
What matters is the comic's or comedy writer's intent. "Free speech is the red card used by those who have been accused of dispensing bigoted humor. 'Just a joke.' 'I don't really mean it.' Except bigoted humor has nothing to do with free speech. It has to do with intent," Kapica tells us.
"If the intent is to elicit laughter at the expense of someone else's being, then it's hack comedy. If the intent is to complicate, transform, defend, speak truth to power, or even self-immolate, then the source of the cringe and laughter is freed of ethical transgression."
Kapica has written about American comedian George Carlin and is currently working on a book about his rhetorical genius. For Carlin, nothing was off-limits. But in his comedy, he always strived to go toward justice, and he always committed to punching up.
Kapica quotes Carlin's 1990 HBO Special, Doin' it Again: "It's the context that counts. It's the user. It's the intention behind the words that makes them good or bad. The words are completely neutral. The words are innocent… It's the context that makes them good or bad." He says that the same is true when it comes to cringe: intent and context matter.
