Time Rhythm and Stress
The characters timing is purposely not always appropriate, with speaking over interviewees and sometimes having long pauses in acts. Although the long pauses are deliberately there, they are often only in-between acts and not during. The rhythm of his speech and song has no correlation, with him speeding up and slowing down at no particular mile stones. His rhythm in song is not coordinated very well with the melody, but he wants it to be rough and to create reactions from the audience to laugh at how bad the act is, or to cause other emotions such as anger.
For the character Tony Cifton the time taken to say a phrase does not depend on the number of syllables but on how many stressed syllables it contains, however most of his are not stressed, so when he does make an effort to stress all syllables in a word it stands out from the rest. Stressd words often come into place when singing and speaking, these words are often the main words of a joke or song, he stresses them by pronouncing them fully and raising or exaggerating his voice.
Acts performed by lounge singers are meant to be packaged, organised and structured however Tony Clifton wants the audience to see his act as chaotic, spontaneous and unplanned which he achieves by being structured, organised and having a packaged act, he just does it in a different way.
Intonation
Andy Kaufmans’s character uses pitch , to convey surprise, and to change a statement to a question. He uses all intonaions for his act, but he has two main intonations that he uses often. Firstly in speech the Rising Intonation is used where the voice increases over a period of time, for example when he gets to the end of a joke he gets louder and louder and starts to shout, such as the joke below which is also in the appendix.
‘Woah somebody’s is wearing a lot of perfume round here
must be that time of the month - huh?’
(Andy Kaufman, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)
On both lines the pitch rises towards the end and the bold words are where he shouts the words. He uses this as it makes the joke clearer and the punch lines are towards the end which they are then neatly structured to make it obvious which is the part to listen to.
When singing uses both Dipping Intonation where his voice falls and then rises and Peaking Intonation where his voice rises and then falls. Which he uses strongly in the beginning of song ‘I will survive’. This is shown in the lines below, with the rising pitch in blue and the falling pitch in red:
‘First I was afraid
I was petrified
Kept thinkin I could never live
Without you by my side’
(Andy Kaufman, I Will Survive)
He uses intonation to keep the song entertaining as if it was just one pitch used throughout the song it would make it sound drowning and boring.
Voice Quality
The quality of his voice is not the best, which is what Andy Kaufman is trying to achieve as he wants it to be amusing not an every day voice the audience would come across. The voise has three main qualities that stand out, firstly it is very naisily which is a reflection of his accent, he is always speaking from the nose and never from the chest which gives a higher pitched voice leaning towards attribuses of a female voice. Secondly his voice is rough with a hoarseness effect which is “more coman in male speech and singing” this attribute may be put on because it reflects the smokey surroundings the character performs in and he is also known to be a heavy smoker and drinker himself. Thirdly his voiceis very vibrato, it is very ‘grainy’ with regular wavering especially in his singing in the such repeated word ‘surviver’ at the end of the song where the vibrato is very exaggerated.
The voice is made up of many more attributes which are less obvious but equally important of creating this fictional characters voice, including the tencing of the throat muscles to give “an ambulances shrieking siren…which the sound is used, to become ‘aggression’, ‘represion’, ‘excitement’ and a hoast of other meanings which can be said to include the idea of ‘tension’”.
(Theo Van Leeuwen (1999) Pg 131)
Ths can also be seen by using the ‘key table’ in the appendix’. Andy Kaufman sings certain words breathy which he does purposely for an comedic effect, he takes a noticable breath before he sings a word and sings it in seperate syllables. At the beginning of the song he sings the first few lines while breathing outwards giving that part of the song a calmer effect than the rest, although he does not use any of these breathy attributs in his speech. He also differes from being loud to quiet especially when singing which is also partly connected to his breathing. He likes being spontanious with soft and loud in speech and song, it keeps the audience alert and it is all part of the act to surprise the audience.
Characteristics of Andy Kaufman
Andy Kaufaman’s acts are all based around realisim. He liked to be introduced as a song-and-dance-man as he felt being classed as a comedian put pressure on his audience to laugh. Besides, sometimes they didn’t laugh and he wanted it that way. Andy worked hard to create real reactions, he wanted people to laugh from the gut, get sad from the gut or get angry from the gut, and that’s what he was best at.
The character Tony Clifton mirrored on his looks, voice attributes and personality. He often wore a seventies-era gold lamé tux, he was overweight and the sort forever doomed to play tiny clubs and open mike nights however as he was a fictional character he ventured into other areas such as television where his acts where more scripted. The main part of his act was to sing and interact with his audience. His singing voice was concidered awful to many, and his humur in bad taste but that was the main part of his actand people grew to like him.
His act is inbertween spontaneous and prepared, where he knows what songs he will be singing, he knows what jokes he will be resiting but he also has small interaction with his audience; which is normally a relevantly small group. His character often asks the crowd questions but does not wait to listen for there answers and does not often respond to them as shown in the transcription, when he does coraspont to the audiences answers it could be questioned if some members of the crowd are in on the act.
Andy Kaufman is trying to create this fictional character influenced by gangsters and wise guys but still having a uniqueness. He achieves this by playing around with creative language to create this character, some of these attributes include; impersonations of other characters, repeated sentances and words giving the act a more real and genuine effect. Contributing to this point are his stuttuers, thinking pauses and umm’s throughout his acts this can be seen using the ‘Key’ and transcription in appendix One and Two. He uses jokes and brings the audiences into them by using them as his punch lines by also used marked vocabulary which is often inappropriate and and unexpected, this is shown below:
‘I think you sat in some cottage cheese
Oh pardon me, that’s your ass’
(Andy Kaufman, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)
As shown his jokes also use such attributes as sarcasm and mockery.
Andy is well known for playing many characters and many people to this day are unsure who the real kaufman was.
Bibliography
Andy Kaufman (Year Unknown) Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Audio Clip
Full Transcription - Appendix Two
Andy Kaufman (Year Unknown) I will Survive, Audio Clip
Full Transcription - Appendix Three
Theo Van Leeuwen (1999) Speech, Sound, Music. London, Macmillan presses Ltd
Milroy, James; and Lesley Milroy (2005). Autobiography in Language: Investigating Standard English, 3rd Edition, London: Routledge
, THE TONY CLIFTON STORY, Author Unknown, 18/04/2007
William J. Hardcastle, John Laver (1999)
Appendix
Appendix One – Key Table
Below is Key which I have used to help stress the attributes of Andy Kaufman’s speech: to be used in appendix two and three.
Appendix Two – Performing ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’
Hey, how you all doing?
Where you from?
Yeah yeah yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
Woah somebody’s is wearing a lot of perfume round here – must be that time of the month - huh?
Yeah I know all the tricks
Hey how you doing?
You having nerrr
Are you enjoying the pasta carbonara
Appears as if you are
Woah hey, look out
I think you sat in some cottage cheese
Oh pardon me, that’s your ass
Appendix Three – Singing ‘I Will Survive’
first I was afraid, I was petrified
Kept thinkin I could never live without you by my side
But then I spent so many nights thinkin how you did me wrong
And I grew strong, and I learned how to get along
And so you're back, from outer space
I just walked in to find you here, with that sad look upon your face
I should've changed that stupid lock, I should've asked you for the key
If I'd have known for just one second you'd be back to bother me.
Go on now go, walk out the door,
don’t turn around now, cause you're not welcome anymore.
Weren't you the one who tried to hurt me with good-bye,
You think I'd stand it, you think I'd lay down and die.
Oh, no not I, I will survive,
As long as I know how to love, I know I'll stay alive
I've got all my life to live, I've got all my love to give
l will survive, I will survive, I will survive, I will survive, I will survive, I will survive, I will survive, I will survive.
Word Count: 2,151
