ITP Class Blogs
For 2×2 this week, I decided to reinterpret an earlier assignment, and name it Mister Foley.
The idea is that, given a certain silent video clip, you could add your own soundtrack, using one or more of the sound files provided.
Some very respectable people – philosophers, psychologists, sociologists – have tried to explain what makes humor humorous. There have been serious studies of “the laughter response.” These academics’ papers and theories manage to describe certain types of humor, but they do not succeed at creating a surefire recipe for humor. Perhaps we should give the task to comedians… but please, not my father.
Since 1951, the discussion has been organized into three main schools of thought: superiority, incongruity, and relief theories.
Humor often evokes feelings of superiority. From the physical comedy of Charlie Chaplin to the embarrassment comedy of The Office, we like our comedy to deliver an equal amount of pleasure and pain.
Philosopher Thomas Hobbes defined the theory this way: “the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.”
Karl Groos cautions us not to take the superiority method too far: “we laugh at all sorts of littleness, discomfitures, unworthiness and so forth, provided that they are not serious enough to excite compassion, to offend our sense of decency or evoke other incongruous feelings.”
A more recent twist on superiority theory, called inferiority theory , claims that when we make fun, we’re not so much laughing at someone as laughing with them. That is, when we find humor in another person’s shortcomings, we are actually empathizing with him and realizing that we too are less than perfect.
Relief theory claims that humor involves a build-up and release of energy. One of its main proponents is Sigmund Freud . Freud, of course, believed that people are bursting with pent-up energy, most of it sexual. His theory would seem to suggest that the most anxious and repressed people would enjoy joking the most – although this is clearly not the case.
Other theorists, including Herbert Spencer, cite the buildup of tension that occurs as the joke is told. The punchline acts as a release mechanism for the expectations built up by the telling of the joke.
Spencer’s theory is not far-off from the incongruity theory espoused by many humor theorists. In fact, the three schools of thought contain plenty of overlap.
Incongruity theory is the most influential theory of humor. It describes humor as a situation in which you are led in a certain direction, then suddenly, given a surprise. John Moreall describes humor as taking amusement in a cognitive shift.
The first philosopher to describe this type of humor was Aristotle. He even (over-) explains the inner workings of a pun: “The effect is produced even by jokes depending on changes of the letters of a word; this too is a surprise. You find this in verse as well as in prose. The word which comes is not what the hearer imagined.”
Incongruity is more nuanced than simply surprising your listener. Take the following knock-knock joke, for instance: “‘Knock knock.’ ‘Who’s there?’ ‘Banana.’ ‘Banana who?’ ‘SPF 30 sunblock.’” Not funny. I created a set of expectations, then supplied a different resolution – but in this case, the “twist” didn’t make any sense. To succeed, an incongruity joke must change the context of what led up to it, achieving a new meaning. The new information must jibe with the preceding information, but in an unforeseen way.
So far, we’ve explored three theories of why humorous things are funny. Another area of research focuses on the specific content that makes a joke funny.
Henri Bergson wrote, “there is no comic outside of what is properly human.” There is nothing inherently funny about a rock or a stick, the laws of the universe, or the normal order of our daily lives. A rock isn’t funny until it’s a pet rock; a stick until we’re using it to hit someone.
Luckily, L.W. Kline supplies a list of comic gold. Animals are funny, especially when small, doing the work of another animal, or doing something human. People are funny when they’re too short, too fat, or too ugly. Awkward and inappropriate actions are funny; so is mimicry. Clothes, whether too fashionable or too unfashionable, are funny: “it is well known that we laugh at the dress of foreigners and they at ours.” Customs and manners are funny, particularly when violated. And finally, language supplies plenty of opportunities for humor, including malapropism, punning, misuse, and dialect.
The problem of humor is a timeless and a placeless one. In a study conducted across 186 societies, researchers found no society that was completely humorless (although they found the Aleuts somewhat dour). What’s more, they found that the subjects about which people joke could be classified according to a universal schema.
In general, humor depends on an understanding or culture shared between joker and audience. The range of things that you can joke about depends on how restrictive the society is. In various times and places, it might be perfectly acceptable or completely taboo to joke about a religious leader, different race, the opposite sex, the elderly, the handicapped, the mentally unstable, or the President.
After examining theories and even content of humor, we are no closer to discovering a formula of funniness. Thinkers have been pondering the subject since the beginning of recorded history, but in no time or place have humans come up with a surefire joke-producing recipe.
Maybe a sense of humor is just one of those things – as my dad would say, you either got it, or you don’t.
Works Cited:
I was tempted to take the 2×2 metaphor to the extreme by creating animated GIFs the size of AIM buddy icons — 48×48 pixels. They’re tiny, and the stories they tell are barely stories at all. But I do think they qualify as 2×2s. We’ll see what the class has to say.
Feel free to use one as your buddy icon. Nothing would make me prouder.
The input I got from class was to add a sound track, or perhaps a choice of different sound tracks. I’d like to do so when I revisit this assignment.
Watch it here.
The audio is excerpted from public radio show This American Life, episode 218 (entitled Act V). It’s about a group of high-security prisoners getting ready to perform the fifth and last act of Hamlet.
I’ve called it Hamlets because the role of Hamlet is split among four prisoners, one of whom appears in this clip.
Go ahead, watch it.
Here’s the writing prompt. Listen to my response below.
“I know your phone number,” he said.
“Ha ha. I’ve got your number,” she said.
“You don’t know my number,” he said.
“‘Course I do… (646) my ass,” she said.
“Shut up,” he said.
Written down like that, it doesn’t make any sense. But in context it was perfectly clear.
Here’s how I would write it as a dialogue:
“But I do know your phone number,” he protested.
“Ha ha,” she said evasively. “I’ve got your number.” She turned away and picked up the remote control.
“I’ll bet you don’t know my number,” he pressed.
“‘Course I do,” she said absently, flipping through channels. She thought again of the way he had stumbled through her phone number, which the dry cleaner used as a password. “(646) my ass,” she said, shaking her head.
“Shut up,” he laughed.