You know, some of the answers I've gotten on other threads somehow drifted into the theme of humor: what is humorous, what is not.
Cruel things make us laugh. We make jokes about fat people, about people of other races, about handicapped people. If we are honest, we all have laughed at at least ONE non PC-joke in our lives, and laughter is a good thing.
But is the nature of what makes us laugh, maybe the nature of our own perversity, staring back at us?
Scott is a very funny writer. Tell us your secret, Uncle Orson, when you make us laugh, are you just pointing out our own piccardy? Is the last laugh on us?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: Cruel things make us laugh.
More precisely, some cruel things may make us laugh. Some non-cruel things also make us laugh. And some cruel things are so cruel that we do not laugh.
Laughter is not merely -- thank God -- a measure of perversity.
Posted by Puffy Treat (Member # 7210) on :
Self-depreciation humor does exist. As does humor of the absurd.
Humor that comes from mockery of pain turns many off. Just like gross-out humor isn't everyone's cup of tea.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
I don't like jobs about fat people or ethnic jokes or things like that or himiliation... But I do like South Park for some reason.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Himiliation?
"Yo mounta so big, she got snow on her ankles." "Yeah? Yo mounta so craggy, gotta send a team of Sherpas to find the soap."
Posted by Jeesh (Member # 9163) on :
Cruel things are rarely funny, and only to a lesser cruelty. Cruel is just plain, well, cruel. They are usually only funny to cruel people, who then release a chain of "Mwahaha's" on us. Someone tripping and falling into a lake is funny. Someone triping and breaking their arms is not funny.
Then again, I do laugh when Homer attacks Bart...
Posted by Elizabeth (Member # 5218) on :
Jeesh, I disagree. I think cruel things are often quite funny, though I am not a cruel person. People who love horror movies are not necessarily horrible. (nor are they warped, or cruel, or into the occult.) I am not a first grader, but I am still attuned to potty humor. People are weird, and their in differences in humor prove that.
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Robin Kaczmarczyk: You know, some of the answers I've gotten on other threads somehow drifted into the theme of humor: what is humorous, what is not.
Cruel things make us laugh. We make jokes about fat people, about people of other races, about handicapped people. If we are honest, we all have laughed at at least ONE non PC-joke in our lives, and laughter is a good thing.
Incongruity makes us laugh. The things you mention only make us laugh when they're unexpected. When they're used in context, they aren't funny at all.
You, for instance, were kind of funny when I first saw your posts. I couldn't really believe someone was acting like that. The incongruity of it made me laugh. Now... you're just not funny.
Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
It's funny that I saw this--I've just read The Name of the Rose, where one of the primary debates is whether or not laughter and comedy are good things.
Posted by airmanfour (Member # 6111) on :
I think it's funny that Robin has a girl's name. While that's not nice, it's funny. To me. It'd be less funny if he was less irritatingly goofy.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I see it like this:
Lots of things happen that are not good. Some, not all, of those things also make us laugh.
If we stopped laughing, the bad things wouldn't stop happening. We would just have one less way of dealing with the pain, and that would not be a good thing. Not by a long shot.
How many times have you been in a situation where your only two options were to either laugh or to cry?
Laughter can be very therapeutic, and is one of many ways of dealing with uncomfortable/painful situations.
It is a tool...no more, no less. As with any tool it can be misused. Laughter can cut as well as heal, as we all know.
But life without it would be intolerable, at least to me.
Posted by Robin Kaczmarczyk (Member # 9067) on :
Laughter is the best medicine.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
What are you, Reader's Digest? Posted by Chris Bridges (Member # 1138) on :
No, then it would have been "Lftr = Bst Mdicn".
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
No, that is the title of one of their weakly features....not an ChrisAbridged book. Posted by Jeesh (Member # 9163) on :
Elizabeth, as you said, people have differences in humor. Different degrees of cruelty can be funny.
Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
Robin's not a girl?
Posted by Jeesh (Member # 9163) on :
Posted by Joldo (Member # 6991) on :
Such cruel humor, laughing at my confusion. Obviously, it is evil.
Posted by Robin Kaczmarczyk (Member # 9067) on :
I.. Oh, jeesh... Why DID my parents give me a girls' name?
I wonder in what point in history Robin became a girls' name? Was it after Hood's travesties? Was it the Boy Wonder's yellow pajamas?
I'm betting Robin as a girl name is pretty recent.
Posted by Jeesh (Member # 9163) on :
I knew you weren't a girl. I just find it funny.
There was this one boy in my class. His name is Ravin. (Ru-veen) The teachers never got his name right and called him Raven, thinking he was a girl.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
Hmm, branded with a "girl's name", or named after a pit. I think I'd prefer being called Ravin (RAY-vin) over (Ruh-VEEN). But that's just me.
Anyway, I've never thought of "Raven" as specifically a girl's name anyway.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
People called Raven always have long black hair.
Although... I don't s'pose that really tells you anything about the gender of the owner of the hair.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
Robin was a guys name 40 or 50 years ago.
More than one guy, even. Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
quote:Originally posted by Teshi: People called Raven always have long black hair.
I beg to differ. Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Ayn Rand had an article on Humor ALWAYS being a distructive force that I read some years ago. It bothered me because it's so obviously wrong.
Then again, maybe she didn't find Puns funny....
Pix
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
Pix, I'm not sure she said that. From everything I've read about her, she had a sense of humor. I think she differentiated between what she would have considered low humor (Q: Why did the monkey fall out of the tree? A: It was dead.) or stuff she considered to be mockery, but she held wit to be quite appropriate and nice.
No, I don't imagine she'd have liked puns very much, though word play like Dorothy Parker's definition of "horticulture" might have tickled her.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Lisa: I'll have to dig that article up again. It was in dead-tree format though so I won't be able to send you a link.
Who knows? Maybe I read it wrong.
BTW, she also said that humor, as a destructive force, wasn't ALWAYS a bad thing if the thing you were destroying was an evil thing.
Pix
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
Well that's certainly true. Mocking fascists would have been right up her alley.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
I read a paper that did a pretty good job of explaining when something's funny. (It was linked here from someone laughing *at* it, for talking about humor seriously.) It said you need these things, IIRC: a violation of the way things ought to be; a reason that it's not so bad after all; and these things must occur to the person at about the same time.
Which may explain why babies laugh at peek-a-boo. It's "wrong" in their world for Mommy to disappear, but it's not so bad because she's just not visible right now. If she stayed gone, it wouldn't be funny at all.
Posted by erosomniac (Member # 6834) on :
quote:Ayn Rand had an article on Humor ALWAYS being a distructive force that I read some years ago. It bothered me because it's so obviously wrong.
Pix, you traitor! How dare you, an admitted Libertarian, disagree with our queen and matriarch!
Who's next, Robert Heinlein?!?!
(In case it wasn't clear, I'm kidding.)
Posted by TheGrimace (Member # 9178) on :
Will B, I think that's a good way of summing up humor... it allows for the portions of humor that are more offensive to some, but also for those things that are not negative or harmful to anyone.
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Will B: I read a paper that did a pretty good job of explaining when something's funny. (It was linked here from someone laughing *at* it, for talking about humor seriously.) It said you need these things, IIRC: a violation of the way things ought to be; a reason that it's not so bad after all; and these things must occur to the person at about the same time.
Which may explain why babies laugh at peek-a-boo. It's "wrong" in their world for Mommy to disappear, but it's not so bad because she's just not visible right now. If she stayed gone, it wouldn't be funny at all.
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Pix, you traitor! How dare you, an admitted Libertarian, disagree with our queen and matriarch!