Topic 7: Humor

1. Tangent: The Powerpoint Topic 7: Humor

2. You Know What Humor Is • “The quality of being amusing or comic, esp. as expressed in literature or speech.” • There are many different types of humor, all with different executions. • The success of humor largely depends on the audience. • There’s also a lot of overlap between types.

3. Incongruity Humor • Incongruity Theory: “Humor is perceived at the moment of realization of incongruity between a concept involved in a certain situation and the real objects thought to be in some relation to the concept.” • Translation: I’s funny because it’s not what you expect. • Ex: The peasant scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS_1bzaj2fw

4. Physical Humor • More commonly known as slapstick. • “Comedy based on deliberately clumsy actions and humorously embarrassing events.” • Very visual-dependent. • Criticized for desensitizing viewers to violence. • Ex: Tom and Jerry.

5. Cringe Comedy • “Humor drawn from placing characters in the most embarrassing situations possible, or having them say the most awkward or offensive thing possible at all times.” • Extremely prominent in modern television. • Ex: Pick a sitcom. Any sitcom.

6. Ironic Humor • Verbal irony: Intentionally worded statements that imply a meaning in opposition to their literal meaning. • The most common type of ironic humor. • Situational irony: “Incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.“ • Overlaps with the previously mentioned incongruity humor. • Dramatic irony: A character speaks or acts erroneously, out of ignorance of some portion of the truth of which the audience is aware. • Ex: Into the Woods.

7. Allusion Humor • Humor that exists because of a reference to another work within a work. • This is why pop culture references are funny. • Ex: Several from Back to the Future: • George: Who are you?  • Marty: [wearing radiation suit] My name is Darth Vader. I am an extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan. [makes Vulcan salute]

8. Gallows Humor • Alias black comedy, morbid comedy or  schadenfreude. • “Joy in the suffering of others." • At its core, gallows humor is bad things being treated in a satirical manner while still being portrayed as bad. • "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall in an open sewer and die.“ • Mel Brooks, explaining the phenomenon.

9. Randomness Humor • Banana. Banana banana. Banana, banana banana. Banana, banana? Banana! • Piiiiiiiinapple. • Humor that’s surreal, absurd, unexpected, unpredictable, nonsensical, and/or incongruous. • Closely related (and often overlapping with) gross-out humor. • Ex: Roughly 34% of the Internet, and 47% of anything preteen boys find funny.

10. Parodic Humor • “Comic imitation often intended to ridicule an author, an artistic endeavor, or a genre.” • Note that parodies are not necessarily humorous (ex: Lord of the Flies is in fact a dark parody of Jules Verne’s Two Years Vacation – they have the same setup, but drastically different outcomes), but in the majority of cases, they are. • Ex: A Very Potter Musical for the Harry Potter Series, Men in Tights for the Robin Hood mythos, the Scary Movie series for horror tropes.

11. Other Points of Interest • The Rule of Three: While dramatic things often come in sets of three, comedy also utilizes this often. • Ex: A brick joke/running gag appearing 3 times in total. • The K Rule – Apparently, words with a “K” sound in them are inherently more funny than words without one. Hard “G” sounds also qualify. • Ex: Kangaroo. Kidney. Kookabura. Guacamole.

12. The “Brevity is the Soul of Wit” Challenge • You have up to 500 words to utilize one type of humor effectively enough to make your reader legitimately laugh out loud. • You can attempt to use more than one, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Quality over quantity. • I have probably forgotten at least one type of humor. If there’s one I didn’t mention that you wanted to use, just ask. • Cosine: Draw a short, newspaper-strip-style comic showcasing a type of humor. • Or you can draw me something involving bananas, pineapples, or floating skulls. Your choice. • Banana!