Oh Humor, You're Such A Fickle Creature

So, I've blogged that humor is audience-dependent and time-sensitive. Now, while reading for my final paper, I've also learned that "we are all condemned to parody, for we can do no more than parrot another's word as it comes to be our turn to speak it" (Dentith, Parody, 3).

How many things have to go exactly right for a piece of comedy to succeed? The audience has to be in the right frame of mind, that is, primed for laughter. The material has to be timely so that it can be of interest, and that means that jokes must constantly be re-written to adapt to the newest demands of the audience. At the same time, however, the comedian is saying nothing new; instead, the joke has to be refreshed into an utterance that meets all these other demands while still pulling from a general pool of past comedic (or non-comedic) performances.

Are other genres this demanding? And what is it that allows some things to remain funny years later (and out of their contemporary contexts) while others fizzle in weeks?

It made me think of some contemporary poetry. Obviously, we have an affinity for poetry that can lasts centuries; it doesn't necessarily have to be timely. However, is it possible to make it too timely to survive into the future? I'm thinking of a poet named Terrance Hayes, who I think is a tremendous writer. He visited one of my creative writing classes when I was an undergraduate. His poems have a lot of cultural references: Wal-Mart, song titles, hip hop artists. I wonder if this timeliness (which adds a lot to them in their contemporary context) can be a liability for posterity? Does humor always have to skirt this line?