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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: What makes something funny?
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
In an attempt to explain to somebody what was funny, I found I had no idea. Then of course the whole thing gnawed at my mind (as it still is). A little googling found various theories, the top three (as near as I can tell) being:
- Incongruity -- things that don't belong together, or unexpected twist
- Superiority -- mocking, making fun of others
- Relief -- resolution of intentionally built-up tension
What do y'all think? Are there jokes/funny things that don't fit any of these categories? Do you have other categories that don't fall under this list?
In particular, I was thinking of a category of something like "recognition" -- e.g. where you are presented with something that seems odd but then you realize it describes the way you do things. Or does this fall under resolution or incongruity?
So, what do y'all think? What makes something funny?
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I think your 3 points are pretty good. I have a friend who's a stand-up comedian, and he's very keen on the idea of 'no victim, no comedy', in other words, that there is an aggressive or sadistic component. There is some truth in this, but not the entire truth about humour.
Freud had the interesting idea that humour releases stuff that is normally forbidden, and again, I think there is something in it, but not the whole truth. Remember Princess Diana jokes, after she died?
Here is my contribution - a dyslexic man wandered into a bra. This combines a certain amount of sadism - mocking dyxlexic people, and a certain amount of the surreal - the idea of going into a bra, plus just basic word-play, bar/bra.
[ 24. February 2013, 23:57: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think your 3 points are pretty good. I have a friend who's a stand-up comedian, and he's very keen on the idea of 'no victim, no comedy', in other words, that there is an aggressive or sadistic component.
This completely discounts wordplay, for one thing.
Or consider the following, which isn't totally knee-slapping, but chuckleworthy to me:
That was so funny that when I read it, I snorted Diet Coke out of my nose. Which is odd because I was drinking tea.
This is clearly of the "incongruity" sort -- but there is no victim here. The humor is not in the misfortune of the guy with soda coming through his sinuses, but rather in the twist at the end.
[ 25. February 2013, 00:02: Message edited by: mousethief ]
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Yes, I agree about word-play, this sort of fits into the Freudian view, if you accept that playing is often forbidden for adults, whereas comedy allows us to play naughtily. But again, only a partial insight.
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
Word-play is a form of incongruity. The listener expects one word and hears another.
Moo
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
MT--
I think of your recognition category as "me, too!" humor. "You know what it's like when..." Kind of helps unite people. I think it's especially good when someone who's different from the audience makes it clear that they're human, too.
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
Yes - timing. The quick quip has to be timed exactly right to have the assembled company laughing.
Some have a knack for this, many don't.
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Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Timing, phrasing, attitude. Not only can some tell jokes better than others, at times the same person who can be funny isn't.
I've seen the same comedian kill and bomb the same bit.
Two comedians who are masters of the unexpected turn are Emo Philips and Steven Wright. Timing and phrasing are also part of their stock. Whereas Eddie Izzard is more about the story. All three deal in absurdities.
It is difficult to define humour. You can lay out a formula, have two people follow it and achieve very different results.
There is also perspective. Mel Brooks' famous quote delineates that.
quote:
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Topicality comes into it.
A horse walks into a bar. The barman says "I'm sorry, we don't serve food."
A month or so ago, that would just have got blank stares. At some future date, it may do so again - because there is nothing intrinsically funny. It's effect comes from juxtaposing the familiar against a novel background, creating a new meaning.
It's the same thing as appending a stock phrase like "As the actress said to the bishop", the creation of a double meaning is somehow funny.
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
You might have to be careful about who tells the joke. Peter White, a visually impaired presenter, won a Red Nose Day stand up competition between radio 4 presenters by telling blind man jokes. What if he wasn't visually impaired, would the response have been the same? I spent many years working with visually impaired people, I have a visually impaired twin and know lots of blind man jokes but I would be very choosy about who I told them to.
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
I’m of the opinion that incongruity and relief are both special cases of superiority, where the comedian highlights themselves as the victim. No victim, no comedy puts it rather well, even if the victim is the comedian, or – in a lot of cases – those people who aren’t clever/quick/erudite enough to get the joke.
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
I think a good explanation has to look at group behaviour.
I can enjoy wordplay, tension relieved, and incongruity, but they don't necessarily seem funny, just pleasing. I start laughing if they happen amongst friends. And they don't just 'happen' they are offered in what frequently becomes a humour session. The times I remember laughter being most intense, to the point of making breathing difficult, were mostly in my late teens and early adulthood amongst peers, as we formed friendships and worked out how to be a group together.
The type of humour that needs a victim clearly works in that it gets laughs and creates, for the majority, a feel good effect. I want nothing to do with it, though. Comedians like Milton Jones, Stu Francis and Eddie Izzard demonstrate that it's not necessary to have victims. But does the victim type of humour point us to the social function of humour, without which we have nothing more than wry amusement, and might as well look at anagrams and crossword clues?
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Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So, what do y'all think? What makes something funny?
How about educated people using expressions such as "y'all" in order to sound like plain folks?
Seriously (?), culture and language play huge roles, and the only thing I can think of which everyone in the world finds funny is farting, which transcends all language and culture barriers.
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
This is clearly of the "incongruity" sort -- but there is no victim here. The humor is not in the misfortune of the guy with soda coming through his sinuses, but rather in the twist at the end.
It's not just any incongruity. That would be surrealism. It's a particular kind of incongruity that consists of switching from one congruity to another. What's going on (*) is that there's a conflict between two sets of expectations: the real world expectation in which people snort drinks onto computer keyboards, and the internet expectation where people type that they've done so as a way of saying something is funny. And the joke starts using the second code and then switches to the first.
(*) talking about humour is never funny because it is impossible to do so without explaining jokes.
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
It's personal too, isn't it? I cringe at 'humour' which involves any kind of cruel taunt, nor do I laugh at practical 'jokes' which intentionally make someone look foolish.
I love to laugh with people, not at them
But I have no idea how to explain what's funny! ![[Smile]](smile.gif) )
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Niteowl
Hopeless Insomniac
# 15841
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
It's personal too, isn't it? I cringe at 'humour' which involves any kind of cruel taunt, nor do I laugh at practical 'jokes' which intentionally make someone look foolish.
I love to laugh with people, not at them
I have to agree with this and "cruel humor" seems all the rage today.
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Seriously (?), culture and language play huge roles, and the only thing I can think of which everyone in the world finds funny is farting, which transcends all language and culture barriers.
Haha!
Farting is another thing that school teachers have to deal with, both their own and the children's reactions to each other's. If I were an inspector I'd have a small fart bomb to set off and see how well the teacher deals with it.
(When I *have* to fart in class I make sure it's behind an obnoxious child, the I move swiftly away so that they get the blame ![[Snigger]](graemlins/snigger.gif) )
Some kids are excellent at saving farts for the most disruptive possible moment!
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MSHB
Shipmate
# 9228
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Farting is another thing that school teachers have to deal with, both their own and the children's reactions to each other's. If I were an inspector I'd have a small fart bomb to set off and see how well the teacher deals with it.
Allegedly the oldest known joke, dating from ancient Sumeria, is about the impossibility of a man having a young wife who didn't at some point fart while sitting on his lap:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7536918.stm
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I have a friend who's a stand-up comedian, and he's very keen on the idea of 'no victim, no comedy', in other words, that there is an aggressive or sadistic component. There is some truth in this, but not the entire truth about humour.
A good counter-example is Milton Jones, who builds his act around word-play, surrealism and sheer silliness - with the occasional little hit of 70s-style political incorrectness just for fun. The first time I saw him, the friend I was with seriously worried for my health, I was laughing so much.
Example: "My grandfather was a professional burglar, which was odd because all his children became armed police officers. He died recently, surrounded by his family."
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
Some words/ letter combinations seem to be inherently humorous eg thing beginning in 'sn' - snooze, sneeze, snigger, snog, snort.
I corpse completely over fluff and spoonerisms - like the one in a medical soap -
'Scalpel'
'Scalpel'
'Suture'
'Suture'
'Hypodemic nurdle'
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I have a friend who's a stand-up comedian, and he's very keen on the idea of 'no victim, no comedy', in other words, that there is an aggressive or sadistic component. There is some truth in this, but not the entire truth about humour.
A good counter-example is Milton Jones, who builds his act around word-play, surrealism and sheer silliness - with the occasional little hit of 70s-style political incorrectness just for fun. The first time I saw him, the friend I was with seriously worried for my health, I was laughing so much.
Example: "My grandfather was a professional burglar, which was odd because all his children became armed police officers. He died recently, surrounded by his family."
The grandfather is the victim - literally! He is the butt of the joke. No banana.
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
Doesn't count if he's a fictional grandfather! (Jones is also known for a routine in which he clocks up a ridiculous number of grandfathers by telling a joke like the one I quoted, and then beginning the next with, "My other grandfather ...".)
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Doesn't count if he's a fictional grandfather! (Jones is also known for a routine in which he clocks up a ridiculous number of grandfathers by telling a joke like the one I quoted, and then beginning the next with, "My other grandfather ...".)
Yes it does. Of course it does. The victim in all jokes is made up. Irish jokes are the perfect example. The Irishman is always the butt of the joke and is never a real person. He's the victim.
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
The victim in all jokes is made up.
The best jokes are ones constructed so that the victim is getting his just desserts. For example the man who thinks he can conceal his flatulence by sitting close to his host's dog and blaming it on the innocent creature. It seems to be working: every time he farts, his host says "Rover!"
Finally, after as many iterations as the joke can stand, the punchline is "Rover! Come over here before he shits on you!"
The victim is too proud to admit to and ask pardon for his flatulence. Therefore it's acceptable to laugh about his discomfiture when it transpires his transparent ruse has failed.
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Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
The victim in all jokes is made up.
I tried to edit this line but flood control rules prevented me. I think what I tried to say is in a traditional - invented - joke, the victim is as imaginary as the circumstance.
Observational humour based on reality has a "real" victim.
In either case, there is still a victim.
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
Posts: 2118 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: Nov 2006
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
Mind you, just the idea of someone shitting on a friend's dog is quite funny. Not sure why.
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Doesn't count if he's a fictional grandfather! (Jones is also known for a routine in which he clocks up a ridiculous number of grandfathers by telling a joke like the one I quoted, and then beginning the next with, "My other grandfather ...".)
Yes it does. Of course it does. The victim in all jokes is made up. Irish jokes are the perfect example. The Irishman is always the butt of the joke and is never a real person. He's the victim.
Yeah, you've got a point. And I so wanted that banana.
How about, "When I was a kid, my parents made a lot of sacrifices for me. They were druids."? (Another Jones classic.)
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
I would say Milton Jones himself is the victim ("look at me... aren't I odd?") He’s mocking himself by having Druids as parents who made sacrificial offerings on his behalf.
We can do this all day. No more though. Let someone else have a go.
The last time this sort of thread was raised Mousetheif bailed because he felt that debating with someone who thought there was always a victim wasn’t the best way of spending his time. He thought it was “immoral” in some way to be able to find a victim in ANY joke.
[ 25. February 2013, 12:03: Message edited by: deano ]
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
Being funny hasn't always been regarded as a good thing in British society. Even well into the 20th century, P.G.Wodehouse wrote an (hilarious) essay describing how "humorists" were looked down on by "real" writers. And I'm sure I remember once reading an old book on English style (it might have been an early Fowler's Usage) that was decidedly sniffy on the subject. IIRC the book listed each genre of humour (satire, wit, sarcasm, etc), and the victim of the genre, and I think it was precisely because humour did have a victim that it was looked down on.
I don't think the book mentioned farts.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I don't think victim jokes are the only kind, but they do seem common in British stand-up now. But I suppose there is a kind of gentle observational type humour, but perhaps there is some kind of victim here, not sure.
Slap-stick is interesting, as the comedian turns himself into the victim really, doing a pratfall and so on. Miranda Hart is kind of into that, and gets a lot of criticism for it, for being silly.
Which reminds me - being silly is one of my favourite kinds of humour. But not just any old being silly.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Is there a victim in this?
Visitor being shown around a private hospital, finds a man masturbating in his room. 'What on earth is he doing?', she enquires. Doctor explains, 'oh, he has a tight scrotum, and has to get rid of sperm daily to avoid pain'. OK, she accepts that, and then moves along to the next room, to find a nurse giving a patient a blow-job. 'Good grief, this is unnecessary, isn't it?', she exclaims.
'He has better health insurance'.
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
How about educated people using expressions such as "y'all" in order to sound like plain folks?
'y'all' (in Virginia we say 'you all') is a regional dialect variation. It is used colloquially by people with all levels of education.
I have noticed non-Southerners on the ship using it. I assume they do so because it is useful to distinguish between the second person singular and the second person plural.
Moo
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TomOfTarsus
Shipmate
# 3053
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Is there a victim in this?
Visitor being shown around a private hospital, finds a man masturbating in his room. 'What on earth is he doing?', she enquires. Doctor explains, 'oh, he has a tight scrotum, and has to get rid of sperm daily to avoid pain'. OK, she accepts that, and then moves along to the next room, to find a nurse giving a patient a blow-job. 'Good grief, this is unnecessary, isn't it?', she exclaims.
'He has better health insurance'.
I'd say the victim here was definitely the nurse.
My family's style definitely tends to the victim/self-deprecating style. Mt brother-in-law is always saying how "anyone else can tell a joke and the whole room falls out laughing, but if Tom tells the same joke, everyone just looks around at each other all disgusted."
A fine example of incongruity, I think, with no victim: My wife & I were working on something together, but facing away from one another , and she said, "Hand me that doohickey, please." To which I replied "You mean the jigger?" and she said "yes" and I handed her precisely the tool she wanted. When we realized what had just happened, we laughed for a good while. That's what 37 years of marriage will do for you.
But you didn't. You'd have probably had to have been there. Either that, or it was just me telling the joke...
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
That's a nice example of a sort of in-group joke.
I think sometimes the victim is the listener, who is meant to be shocked, startled, and so on, by an outrageous joke. This reminds me of Hitchcock, who, some critics claim, perpetrated a series of black jokes on the audience.
This is a classic kind of absurdist joke:
Patient: Doctor, I keep thinking I'm a dog.
Psychiatrist: OK, just get on the couch, and I'll have a look at you.
Patient: I'm not allowed on couches.
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
I would say Milton Jones himself is the victim ("look at me... aren't I odd?") He’s mocking himself by having Druids as parents who made sacrificial offerings on his behalf.
He is not mocking himself, I would not say he is mocking anyone. If you must think in the negative, what might be mocked is preconceptions. In reality, it it the unexpected which causes the laughter.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I was just checking with a psychoanalytic colleague as to what current thinking about jokes is, and he sounded quite keen on connecting it with horror, as permitting the forbidden to be seen, e.g. dismemberment of bodies.
So jokes, dreams, and horror, all reveal to us stuff that normally is inhibited, but is now disinhibited, particularly sadistic and masochistic stuff. I would add to this the absurd.
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IconiumBound
Shipmate
# 754
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Posted
What makes something funny? At the base of all humor is the element of surprise. Something deviates from the normal or expected and, surprise, you laugh.
The simple knock, knock joke illustrates this: "Knock, Knock," (expected normal response) "Who's there?" (normal answer)"Orange", (normal response) "Orange who?" (unexpected answer} "Orange you glad to see me?"
This is a victimless joke; unless you count the answering person as a victim.
Posts: 1318 | From: Philadelphia, PA, USA | Registered: Jul 2001
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I was just checking with a psychoanalytic colleague as to what current thinking about jokes is, and he sounded quite keen on connecting it with horror, as permitting the forbidden to be seen, e.g. dismemberment of bodies.
So jokes, dreams, and horror, all reveal to us stuff that normally is inhibited, but is now disinhibited, particularly sadistic and masochistic stuff. I would add to this the absurd.
Hence, I suppose, the (anecdotally) famed "dark" humour of people who live and work close to society's taboos: nurses, undertakers, mortuary workers, clergy, and so on. We spend our days on the boundaries of what our culture considers acceptable, so we're most likely to drag those dark things into the light in the form of macarbre jokes.
Possibly.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I
- Incongruity -- things that don't belong together, or unexpected twist
- Superiority -- mocking, making fun of others
- Relief -- resolution of intentionally built-up tension
[...]
...recognition...
There are others as well. Such as maybe:
- irony
- exagerration
- innuendo (Though innuendo might be a species of irony)
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
No victim, no comedy puts it rather well, even if the victim is the comedian, or – in a lot of cases – those people who aren’t clever/quick/erudite enough to get the joke.
Another species of irony I think. Saying something that means one thing to one person, or in one context, but another to another. Like dramatic irony, where the audience know what's going on but the characters don't. I don;t think "victim" is the right word though. Jokes don't have to be nasty.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I was just checking with a psychoanalytic colleague as to what current thinking about jokes is, and he sounded quite keen on connecting it with horror, as permitting the forbidden to be seen, e.g. dismemberment of bodies.
So jokes, dreams, and horror, all reveal to us stuff that normally is inhibited, but is now disinhibited, particularly sadistic and masochistic stuff. I would add to this the absurd.
Hence, I suppose, the (anecdotally) famed "dark" humour of people who live and work close to society's taboos: nurses, undertakers, mortuary workers, clergy, and so on. We spend our days on the boundaries of what our culture considers acceptable, so we're most likely to drag those dark things into the light in the form of macarbre jokes.
Possibly.
Yes, and some disasters trigger their own flush of jokes - for example, after the death of Princess Diana, there were some pretty macabre ones.
And of course, there tend to be fashions in disability jokes - there were a whole bunch of Alzheimer ones a while ago; blind jokes are fairly common; also some startling amputee jokes recently.
However, these are not the only kind of jokes!
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TomOfTarsus
Shipmate
# 3053
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Posted
It's probably been done before and likely the subject of its own thread, but I wonder, with the nature of humor frequently "on the edges" as Adeodatus noted - almost as a coping mechanism - or off-color, or focusing on our stupidity or lack of understanding - what about the humor of God (Father, Son, Spirit)?
All that seems to show up in Scripture explicitly is the Lord laughing at the plight of His enemies, i.e. Ps. 2:4 - "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision."
Is anybody familiar with things Jesus said that may have caused (good natured) laughter in his hearers? This could vary by culture, of course, but oftentimes, it's terribly difficult to read emotions into the way things are written in Scripture.
I LOVE to laugh, and I think It's a pretty universal human trait - but if it's not a part of the character of God, then, is it sinful? IS even our cleanest, truly funniest jokes part of our "falling short of the Glory of God?"
Is this a derail or a new thread or should we just stay here?
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By grace are ye saved through faith... not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath ... ordained that we should walk in them.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Tom of Tarsus
Interesting points, and I think some humour deals with shameful stuff. For example, I have seen an analysis of disability jokes, which argues that they express our sense of triumph over the disabled.
Now, normally, such feelings are inhibited and considered very shameful. But via humour, they are released.
Of course, not all humour is like this, but you can argue that we are enabled to release the 'dark side'. Whether this is sinful, I'm not sure; you could argue on the other hand, that harbouring such thoughts is more shameful. Hence, some argue that humour is cleansing. Not sure.
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
The best black humour comes - imho - from the armed forces.
My brothers company sells the Royal Navy some bits and bobs to make nuclear submarines, and he told me that when the men on the subs are practicing launching the Trident missiles, they refer to it as a "fission mission".
Love it ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
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TomOfTarsus
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# 3053
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Posted
You know, among the release of "inhibited feelings" - I was being trained by so U. S. Special Forces one time (The "Green Berets") as a young College guy in ROTC. As we were working on care, disassembly, cleaning, and re-assembly, we fell to talking with them about weapons, boobie traps, etc. - this was Vietnam Days - and one of them said something to the effect of hanging a couple of claymore mines at 45° in front of a family's picture window, rigging them to the drawstrings of the drapes, and catching them in the crossfire on Christmas morning. How positively ghastly evil can you get? It's very distasteful to me right now just to recount it.
And yet for some reason, amidst uncomfortable shifting by my classmates, I exploded into gut-busting laughter to the point of tears! The Green Beanies were ready to enlist me on the spot! And my classmates are just like - well, let's just say I didn't have a benchmate for the firearm re-assembly course...
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By grace are ye saved through faith... not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath ... ordained that we should walk in them.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
TomOfTarsus
Nice example. Yes, it's one way we have of dealing with unpleasant or nasty stuff, including the stuff inside ourselves - turn it into humour, laugh at it, and maybe it dispels the horror of it. If you grimly squash it, you are in danger of getting into a kind of obsessive repression, which leads to obsessive thoughts. I will not think that! Oh too late.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
There are others as well. Such as maybe:
- irony
- exagerration
- innuendo (Though innuendo might be a species of irony)
I think you could argue that all of these are incongruity. Irony is an incongruity between expected and actual meanings of words. Exaggeration between normal limits and the exaggerated quality in the joke. Innuendo, as you said, is probably a species of irony.
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So, what do y'all think? What makes something funny?
How about educated people using expressions such as "y'all" in order to sound like plain folks?
Personal attacks belong in Hell. You know that.
quote:
Originally posted by deano:
The last time this sort of thread was raised Mousetheif bailed because he felt that debating with someone who thought there was always a victim wasn’t the best way of spending his time. He thought it was “immoral” in some way to be able to find a victim in ANY joke.
I'd say what you are doing is pretty much tautological. If a joke doesn't have a natural victim, you can always keep redefining "victim" beyond any resemblance to the dictionary meaning, just to keep your principle alive. For instance say that the person telling a pun is the victim. It's a species of redefining the evidence if it doesn't fit your theory. It's a parlor trick, and it palls quickly.
[ 25. February 2013, 19:14: Message edited by: mousethief ]
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Another old idea is that humour subverts the rational control of the ego. So, where we normally expect decorum, the comedian is a kind of licensed fool, who allows a little riot, a little anarchy and upset to the normal order.
Of course, it varies hugely in tone, from the polish of Pope's 'Rape of the Lock' to the jollification of 'Mrs Brown's Boys' (British and Irish TV).
I think it's rarely revolutionary, that is, actually proposing the overthrow of the hegemony, but sort of chips away at the edges, and gives us the fantasy of disorder and misrule.
Here is one of the lords of misrule - Kenny Everett - all in the best possible taste, as he swished his strapping and stockinged thighs, and revealed his knickers. (Of course, he was a Tory).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkqxagJglaI
[ 25. February 2013, 19:42: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
Sorry for being a bit technical, but how about considering "funny" more generally as "a violation of cognitive prediction that requires/allows no consequent action/correction"?
There is clear neuroscientific evidence for dopamine circuitry in the brain, which basically seems to trigger on a mismatch to expectation, i.e., which seems to compare the actual state of the world against some kind of ongoing internal prediction of what the world should be like - and emphasizes any discrepancy.
Now, normally that mismatch is translated into action or correction, and so this is usually discussed in decision theory. But what if one gets the novelty dopamine flash, but that is not required, or indeed suppressed? Maybe then laughter is our way of getting rid of that impulse to deal pro-actively with the mismatch.
So if you drive a car and you hit an icy patch, you do not laugh. You desperately struggle to regain control (take action to re-match observed car behaviour to prediction of regular driving). If someone tells you how they hit an icy patch and almost hit a tree, you also do not usually laugh. Rather you commiserate and curse the bad weather, following through on predictions about the internal state of the person you are talking to and what they might need now.
But if someone talks about an imaginary person hitting an icy patch, slamming into a tree and then drops a punchline to top it off (the punchline takes away any serious purpose, like considering good driving styles in winter) - what is there left for you to do? Your world state prediction has totally bombed, your system is awash with dopamine, you must do or correct something - but there is really nothing that comes to mind. So you laugh.
I think this sort of integrates the incongruity and the victim aspect. The incongruity part is obvious, that's simply a description of where the predictive system failed. But the victim part also falls under this. For here we run into errors of our social prediction system. The stand-up comedian relentlessly mocking himself (or their family/partners) on stage triggers all sorts of social alarms in us. People do not really talk about themselves or their loved ones like that. Or if they do, they usually needs some immediate help. Does this person need a hug? But no, it's a guy on stage, and I cannot actually stop him from mocking himself. So I laugh.
Anyway, it's a reasonable speculation... and possibly a testable one.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
The guy on stage is also likely to mock the audience, some quite gently, some savagely, and I guess we delight in its suggestion of misrule, as I call it. A little chaos is good for the soul.
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