Straight man (stock character)
The straight man is a stock character in a comedy performance, especially a double act, sketch comedy, or farce. When their comedy partner behaves eccentrically, the straight man's response ranges from aplomb to outrage, or from patience to frustration. They make their partner look all the more ridiculous by being completely serious.
In Vaudeville, the straight man's name usually appeared first and he usually received 60% of the take. This helped take the sting out of not being the laugh-getter and helped ensure the straight man's loyalty to the team. The role is still found today in sitcoms. In the manzai comedy of Japan, the straight man is called tsukkomi.
Examples
Straight man
Straight man may refer to:
Double act
A double act, also known as a comedy duo, is a comic pairing in which humor is derived from the uneven relationship between two partners, usually of the same gender, age, ethnic origin and profession but drastically different in terms of personality or behavior. Often one of the members of the duo—the straight man, feed, dead wood, or stooge—is portrayed as reasonable and serious, while the other one—the funny man, banana man or comic—is portrayed as funny, less educated or less intelligent, silly, or unorthodox. If the audience identifies primarily with one character, the other will often be referred to as a comic foil. The term "feed" comes from the way a straight man is wont to set up jokes and "feed" them to his partner.
Despite the names often given to the roles, the "straight man" need not be humorless and it is not always the comic who provides the act's humor. Sometimes it is the straight man who gets the laughs through his or her sarcastic reactions to the comic's antics, as was often the case with Stewart Lee's deadpan, reasoned reactions to Richard Herring's more ridiculous antics in their pairing. Where the "straight man" serves no personal comic purpose but acts as a device to make the "comic" look good, he is known as a "stooge". This is sometimes considered a derogatory term. Most often, however, the humor in a double act comes from the way the two personalities play off each other, rather than from the individuals themselves. In many successful acts the roles are interchangeable.
Straight Man
Straight Man (New York: Random House, 1997) is a novel by Richard Russo set at the fictional West Central Pennsylvania University in Railton, Pennsylvania. It is a mid-life crisis tale told in the first person by William Henry Devereaux, Jr., the unlikely interim chairman of the English department. Notable moments include the chairman's hiding in the rafters as the faculty vote on his dismissal, his threat of killing a campus pond duck every day until the department receives a budget, flirtations between faculty and students, satires on academic scholarship and stardom, and love and health in the season of grace. It is rumored that the material for this book came from Russo's experiences teaching at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Southern Connecticut State University or at Penn State Altoona.
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