Tis the season of commencement addresses, and celebrities are in hot demand – especially celebrities with some connection to your school. The University of Virginia brought comedian Stephen Colbert to address the new class of 2013, because he’s a funny guy, and because his wife went to UVa. Stephen himself, so he says, was not admitted, even as a transfer student.
Colbert’s speech mostly hit the mark. As a former student, administrator and teacher at UVa, I’d have to give him a “B,” because his jokes about UVa were mostly the usual clichés, though delivered in his trademark style and appreciated by the audience. And he was under-rehearsed, muffing a number of his lines because he misread them. Or perhaps he was hung over from partying with the students the night before? His long Jefferson quote at the end was read in a way that indicated he had no idea of the meaning of what he was saying; they were just words.
Nonetheless, for some good topical humor about the University’s embattled president, and for some funny callbacks, he deserves the B instead of what they used to call a “gentleman’s C” at Mr. Jefferson’s University.
Humor is risky, of course; on the one hand, what if they don’t laugh? And on the other, what if you offend? Colbert did a good job treading that line, between pablum and words that might shock the parents of the graduating class.
Colbert’s effort suggests a few rules of the road for humorous public speaking:
1. Humor is its own justification. If the audience laughs, you succeed. That’s the only test of funny that matters. So worry about propriety after you test how hilarious your lines are. Humor is all about stepping on toes and over lines, after all.
2. But know your audience. Colbert only attempted one mildly off-color joke, and it was a gentle one. He stepped back from the R-rated stuff of his late-night show. He knew his audience: a commencement crowd is packed with both graduating students and their parents, younger siblings, grandparents and Aunt Minnies. Don’t lay down any humor that would embarrass the audience in front of you more than it would tickle their funny-bones.
3. In comedy, timing is everything. Colbert fumbled a surprisingly high number of lines in his speech, perhaps because he was reading from a script rather than his usual teleprompter. And possibly he was under-rehearsed. The fumbles threw off his timing, robbing the lines of their humor and the audience of its laughs, even though it was ready and willing to laugh.
4. So rehearsal is even more important for humor. When delivering a funny speech, you can get away with all kinds of mistakes, provided you still look like you know what you’re doing and you have follow up lines prepared. The only way to get that kind of self-assurance is through rehearsal and experience. You can’t afford to look like you’re doing it for the first time. That will make both you and the audience tense, and tense people don’t laugh. Colbert projects the self-confidence one would expect of a seasoned pro, and it helps enormously, even when he blows a line. His brand is funny, and the audience will laugh at him if he just shows up and embodies his brand, even a little.
5. Beware the trap of local knowledge. Colbert fell squarely into the trap of local knowledge – he projected precisely the amount of insider information one would expect of a competent Googler. So he hit on all the standard UVa issues that 5 minutes and a laptop would bring up. The problem with that approach is that 95 percent of the speech could have been given any time in the last 30 years, give or take. Except for the topical jokes about the President, all of his humor was redolent of superficial knowledge.
Don’t Google your audience, or the town, to find local knowledge. Get a local to tell you what’s going on. By the time it’s on Google, it’s already passé.
Colbert uses the techniques of a comedian – irony, the rule of threes, callbacks – with the proficiency of a pro. His stage presence is, of course, extraordinary. A little more local insight and a little more rehearsal, and he can get an “A” on his next commencement speech.
Watch on YouTube Colbert UVa Commencement »
I think you’re a bit hard on Mr. Colbert for his superficial knowledge of happenings at UVa. At least he made an effort to tailor his speech to that university.
In my job I’ve heard dozens of commencement speeches and the majority of them could have been delivered verbatim on any college campus in the country. Speakers didn’t bother to say anything unique about the college or the class but just seemed to be on the commencement speaker circuit, hopping from one graduation to the next.
Worse yet….some of them thought what they were saying really mattered and so talked too long.
I’ll give Colbert credit for making the effort.
Hi Patricia — Thanks for your comment. It may interest you to know that there’s a long tradition of political figures using commencement addresses to give important policy speeches. The best example, perhaps, was President Kennedy’s commencement address to American University, in which he called for nuclear peace and perhaps turned the tide in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Kennedy made a few comments directed to American at the start, but then focused on peace. It’s one of the greatest speeches of the 20th Century. I think commencement speeches can be about the students, or about something else. They just should strive to be good speeches.
Thanks, I think. I’m sure you did not intend to sound condescending but that’s the way your reply came across to me. In any case, commencement speeches offer plenty of fodder for those who love speeches and speechwriting.
Hi, Patricia — glad you checked in. I certainly didn’t mean to be condescending; I was just debating the question of how targeted a commencement speech should be, and trying to point to the long tradition of virtually ignoring the audience in front of the speaker (which is normally a fatal mistake!). Commencement speeches are like sermons in that sense — they have two audiences, the congregation, and the ages.
You raised an interesting question with point one.. and it made me recall Colbert’s most famous speech, the one in front of George Bush at the Washington Correspondents Dinner. He didn’t draw many/any laughs from the room, which was uncomfortably silent. But the room wasn’t his actual audience — like Borat, he was playing a character, and his real audience was watching on television and YouTube. I wonder which audience Colbert is playing to with his Commencement addresses?
Hi, Andrew — Good to hear from you and thanks for reminding me of that Correspondents Dinner speech. You bring up an interesting point, which I puzzled over in watching the speech – to my eye, Colbert was somewhere between himself and his act. I’ve seen him a couple of times in public settings speaking for himself, not his character, and audience often seem disappointed with him because he’s not obviously funny.
I agree btw, he was off. I think you are right about the teleprompter.