THE DEPARTMENT OF ASTRONOMY ORREN C. MOHLER PRIZE LECTURE

p i e c e
p i e c e

Friday, Sept. 15, 2017

Reception 2 pm

Lecture 2:30 
– 
4 pm

Dr. Julianne Dalcanton

Professor, University of Washington 
Department of Astronomy

 Michigan Union

 Pendleton Room, 2nd Floor

 530 S. State Street

 Ann Arbor, MI 48109

by

Should you require any reasonable accom-
modations please contact Stacy Tiburzi at 
734-764-3440, or stibu@umich.edu.

6B — Thursday, September 14, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Comedy for a Twitter age

The 
founders 
of 
LinkedIn 

certainly never envisioned “Being 
funny on the internet” as an 
acceptable headline for a profile 
on their social media platform 
— but here we are. People tweet 
two-bit one-liners, people get 
paid for tweeting two-bit one-
liners, people consider tweeting 
two-bit one-liners their day job 
— and nowadays for good reason. 
Amateur 
Twitter 
comedienne 

Kelly Oxford turned a few years 
of tweets into TV pilots bought by 
CBS and NBC, as one example. The 
paradigm shift in modern humor 
that has come thanks to the advent 
of social media remains hard to 
wrap one’s head around, but trying 
to chronicle the ways in which 
the art and form of comedy have 
adapted is an earnest place where 
we can start to understand it all.

With a genesis in countless 

hours 
of 
caffeine-fueled 

brainstorming, 
Twitter 
was 

birthed as an alternative, short-
form 
communication 
tool 
for 

podcasting startup Odeo. But what 
started as a meager sketch of ideas 
became significant enough for 
employees of Odeo to ditch their 
initial aspirations and turn Twitter 
into their bonafide dayjob.

And 
despite 
the 
founders’ 

audacity in making Twitter their 
everyday focus, pinning down 
the actual purpose of the service 
was still a task at hand for them 
— co-founder Evan Williams was 
interviewed in 2009 saying “[with] 
Twitter, it wasn’t clear what it was. 
They called it a social network, 
they called it microblogging, but it 
was hard to define, because it didn’t 
replace anything. There was this 
path of discovery with something 
like that, where over time you 
figure out what it is.”

Considering Evan’s words, it 

starts to get easier to understand 
why Twitter has assumed such a 
significant space in the realm of 

modern entertainment. There’s 
some beauty to find in the notion 
that the Twitter we know is 
fundamental to the culture we live 
in, and that the Twitter we knew 
is significant to a culture that has 
come and gone — all at the hands 
of the general populace. Twitter’s 
democratization of culture has 
forced the service into wearing 
many hats in regards to how it 
serves the public sphere — from 
breaking news, to proselytization, 
to citizen advocacy, to (most 
importantly) 
being 
a 
fertile 

breeding ground for anything 
and everything our generation 
finds humorous and entertaining 
nowadays — and thus, it serves as 
the all-encompassing anchor of the 
millennial zeitgeist.

Thanks to the character limit 

of tweets, messages and jokes had 
to be poetically succinct to gain 
any traction — and leveling those 
constraints on creatives gave birth 
to a completely new approach 
to joke structure and humor. In 
came fleeting phases of memes 
and one-liners, all with shelf lives 
of no more than a few weeks. 
Andy Warhol’s notion of everyone 
having their 15 minutes of fame 
became an undeniable reality as 
people’s eyeballs shifted from HBO 
standup specials to their timeline 
as a source for their laughs — and in 
that process, unconventional stars 
were born too.

When a standup comedian is 

funny on Twitter, it doesn’t come 
as much of a surprise (people 
we conventionally find funny 
remaining funny on other mediums 
isn’t a terribly novel thought). But 
what has come as a surprise are the 
many amateur personalities that 
have used Twitter as an exclusive 
medium to cultivate their craft 
and comedic brand (despite their 
audiences only knowing them 
for crass usernames and crudely 
drawn cartoon profile pictures, 
among other things) — and those 
personalities are changing what 
it means to be a mainstream 
comedian nowadays.

Take Brandon Wardell. If you 

don’t know him for his semi-
unintelligible tweets or how he 
looks as if someone brought an 
anime stock character to real life, 
you might (directly or indirectly) 
know him for the many memes he 
has created or popularized (does 
“Dicks out for Harambe” ring a 
bell to you?). His rise as a comedian 
couldn’t be more different than 
the veterans who came before 
him, either. Thanks to a small 
PR bump after being featured 
as an opener on a Bob Odenkirk 
stand up tour, Wardell amassed a 
following on Twitter for regularly 
publishing absurdist humor that 
touched at the (pretentious, vapid, 
materialistic, etc.) fundamentals 
of being a millennial. He performs 
on occasion in his current home 
of L.A., but his online presence 
still remains his bread and butter. 
Wardell told Rolling Stone in 2016 
“Twitter is ... the purest form of 
expression that I have. There’s 
something super-visceral about 
Twitter. It’s just a lot of like brain 
vomit.”

And it’s that reason why Twitter 

comedy resonates so well with 
today’s population. Comedy used to 
be constrained by a set of concrete 
conventions regarding structure, 
content, delivery and the like — 
and to some extent, the legacy of 
those constraints still linger. But 
the Twitter age has deconstructed 
what it means to be “funny” — 
and with that, the craft of being a 
comedian as well. Comedy as an 
art form is still going through its 
early stages of transition thanks to 
the age of social media, and how we 
see personalities like Wardell (and 
others) flourish is yet to be clearly 
determined, but if there’s one thing 
that can be concretely drawn from 
these observations, it’s that humor 
acts as a common plane for a 
culture to find commonality in. 

ANAY KATYAL

Managing Arts Editor

COURTESY OF MEGAN GANZ

It’s Always Sunny in AA: 
Alum Megan Ganz talks 
comedy and the art of TV

As a current student in SAC 

311 (Screenwriting for TV), 
I’m always wondering how, 
exactly, people break into the 
industry. TV writing would 
be, in this writer’s opinion, the 
best job ever. But someone’s 
done it — and from Michigan, 
no less! Megan Ganz is an 
alumnus who writes for “The 
Last Man on Earth” and is 
a producer on “It’s Always 
Sunny 
In 
Philadelphia.” 
I 

reached out to her to figure out 
how, exactly, she pulled it off, 
and to learn more about a day 
in her life.

Where are you from, and 

when did you graduate from 
the University of Michigan?

I am from Kalamazoo, but 

I was born in Ann Arbor while 
my father was finishing up 
dental school at the University. 
I graduated in 2006.

What activities did you 

take part in at Michigan that 
helped to start your career 
in comedy? Have you always 
been interested in working 
in comedy?

I wrote for the Michigan 

Every Three Weekly which 
was a huge help to the start 
of my comedy career. Both 
Mad Magazine and The Onion 
contacted 
the 
E3W 
about 

internship opportunities, and 
I applied for both and those 
were my first two jobs in 
comedy. The internship at The 
Onion eventually lead to my 
first full-time writing job as a 
staff writer.

I have been interested in 

comedy for as long as I can 
remember — since my father 
first showed me Marx brothers 
movies when I was six years 
old. When I was a teenager, my 
mother bought me a collection 
of Onion articles, and from 
that day forward I wanted 
to specifically write for The 
Onion. But writing for TV 
wasn’t a goal of mine until 
much later in life.

What was your first job in 

the industry? How did you 
end up where you are now?

My first internship was at 

Mad Magazine during the 
summer between my junior 
and senior years. They were 
the first ones to pay me for a 
joke. It was an idea for a fold-
in drawn by Al Jaffee, and 
I framed the check (after I 
cashed it, of course). After I 
graduated, I moved to New 
York for an internship at The 
Onion. Eventually I was hired 
to the writing staff and then 
became an editor. During my 
time on staff, we wrote a story 
about “This American Life,” 
which resulted in Ira Glass 
doing a piece on The Onion. 
Some agents in L.A. heard me 
on that “TAL” episode, and 
they called me, and that’s how 
I got agents. They convinced 
me to start writing packets 
to try to get hired to a TV 
show. After three years with 
The Onion, I left for a job 

at Demetri Martin’s sketch 
show, 
“Important 
Things 

With Demetri Martin.” That 
moved me out to L.A. and into 
TV writing. At that time I was 
a huge fan of “Community,” 
which was still in its first 
season. I knew Donald Glover 
in New York, and I started 
watching the show because 
he was on it. My agents 
submitted me for season two, 
and that lead to my first job on 
a sitcom. After “Community,” 
I went to “Modern Family” for 
a few years, then “It’s Always 
Sunny in Philadelphia,” and 
now I write for “The Last 
Man on Earth,” which is what 
I’m supposed to be doing 
instead of responding to these 
questions. (Shhh... don’t tell 
my boss.)

Which 
shows 
do 
you 

currently work on?

Right now I am writing for 

“The Last Man on Earth” 
until February, at which point 
I’m planning on returning to 
“Sunny” for their thirteenth 
season.

What’s your favorite part 

of the job?

Just writing jokes. It’s not 

a big enough part of the job. I 
spend most of my time sitting 
around a table talking, trying 
to come up with storylines or 
conflicts between characters. 
Very 
little 
time 
is 
spent 

pitching actual jokes, because 
you can’t put icing on a cake 
before you bake it.

TV writing/producing is 

often described as a dream 
job. Have you always found 
that to be the case, or are 
there any drawbacks?

It is a dream job. That aside, 

whoever said, “If you do what 
you love, you’ll never work a day 
in your life” was a liar. I work 
plenty of long, hard days. And 
I spent years writing comedy 
and not being paid for it. But I 

love what I do, so it’s worth the 
struggle. When you truly care 
about what it is you’re doing, 
the lows are pretty low. But the 
highs are spectacular. And at 
this point I’m not qualified to 
do anything else.

Why do you think TV 

(and, specifically, scripted 
comedy) is seeing such a 
creative surge?

Well, the easy answer is 

because there used to be three 
channels and now there are 
hundreds. 
You 
don’t 
even 

have to sell a show anymore, 
you can just post it online 
and people will find it. But 
the more complicated answer 
might have something to do 
with 
the 
current 
political 

climate and how much people 
want and need to escape from 
reality.

What do you see as the 

future of comedy on TV?

The future of comedy won’t 

be on TV. It will be on the 
internet. Gone are the days 
when people rush home to see 
their favorite show when it 
airs. People don’t want to wait, 
they want to binge, so I think 
shows will have fewer episodes 
per season and probably end 
after three seasons instead of 
nine. But what do I know?

What are your favorite 

shows to watch right now?

Oh 
boy. 
I 
watch 
way, 

way too much TV, even for 
someone who works in TV. A 
very short list would include 
“Veep,” 
“Kimmy 
Schmidt,” 

“Game of Thrones,” “Atlanta,” 
“Bob’s Burgers,” “Episodes,” 
“Rick and Morty,” “Last Week 
Tonight,” “Law and Order: 
SVU,” “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” 
and “Friday Night Dinner,” 
which 
is 
a 
great 
British 

show I love. That’s not even 
counting how many times I’ve 
rewatched “30 Rock,” which is 
probably too many.

NABEEL CHOLLAMPAT

Senior Arts Editor

TV
NEW MEDIA

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