https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=859613
:: throws pie at ScarletNinny ::
In fairness to FP (and he’s soooo deserving of it), I sometimes watch sitcoms from the 1960s and am baffled that adults found them entertaining.
It wouldn’t occur to me to ask for an explanation, though.
This is a pit?
I’m gonna go down to the quarry and throw banana peels in there.
Rants require more than just a link.
Maybe the jokes (like the ones involving a haddock, or a tapeworm) get old and worn out by all the old comics. Hey, it’s not like everyone heard the remedy for knowing what you take for a haddock. And they get repeated in films and TV shows back then.
But the stooges (Moe, Larry, Curly-- don’t start with Schemp loving here…) are always, ALWAYS funny. I just downloaded classic episodes for my trip to east coast and I enjoyed guffawing at 32,000 feet, something those guys never got to do. Single cameras and a boom mike were the only technology available for enhancement (later ADR/ better Foley). “A Plumbing We Will Go” and “Idle Roomers” are two of the funniest shorts in existence.
For me, the essence of all slapstick is Schadenfreude, which I think is the main reason human beings can laugh at all. Mel Brooks said something like, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when someone else falls through a manhole!” I always fear I’ll be on a FAIL video by waking in the wrong door and falling on my face at a store on a security feed. Even if I saw myself doing that, I’d chuckle.
I don’t understand this pitting, tbh.
16 posts and you’re already starting threads in the pit and using a term (why do hyoo-mons…) that was prevalent here a couple years back? Who were you before the banning?
SockedupNinny is gently poking FP over his perceived cluelessness, for only a complete dunce could fail to see the humor in slapstick.
Well, this thread is falling town like a ton of bricks on the OP’s head.
hahahahahahaha! [walks into a rake]
I think FPs thread was silly (as is this pitting) but regarding the above, most sitcoms I watch today baffle me as to where’s the funny.
I understand the source… I participated in the “slapstick” thread myself. What I don’t understand is why the question makes FP pittable. I recently asked “Is Imagine Dragons rock 'n roll?” which, by this lowered-bar standard, is also pittable, as well as these lower hanging fruit:
“Which show most prominently features phones?”
“Is there such a thing as a ‘All Star Professional Heist’ team in real life?”
“Come one, come all for the ranking of French Fries!”
FP’s question touches on changing societal norms, the evolution of comedy, and that slapstick has been incorporated into a number of mediums so that, nowadays, it’s not just “slapstick”. The Kramer example from Seinfeld is a good example… he was mostly slapstick, but subsumed into a larger venue.
Are we going to have a Pit thread for every thread opened anywhere else?
I PIT… the guy who started the Fraggle Rock thread! And that Dick Van Dyke thread really ticks me off… who’s with me? [fuming] Now there’s a TV discussion that references Scooby-Doo! And… Alex Trebek?!? To the Pit with the lot uh ya!
If you thought that F-P was trolling or even clueless, it could’ve gone in the Omnibus Troll discussion. Or you could’ve posted to the slapstick thread and said “Of COURSE it’s funny. Here’s why…” I just hope this doesn’t become a thing.
At the risk of having a serious discussion that really belongs in that other thread:
I don’t think Schadenfreude explains it, because “it’s only funny until someone loses an eye.” In slapstick, we don’t laugh when someone gets hurt or has bad things happen to them, we laugh when someone gets hurt or has bad things happen to them and they end up okay.
It’s funny when Curly gets poked in the eyes or bonked on the head, because in a few seconds he’ll be good as new. It’s not funny when someone gets poked in the eyes and is permanently blinded, or when someone gets bonked on the head and ends up in a coma. It’s funny when Wile E. Coyote gets run over by a train or falls off a cliff, but it’s not funny when that happens to a real person—unless they somehow get through the experience unharmed.
That, I think, is the real difference between tragedy and comedy.
Guessing should be the direction this thread takes.
The Three Stooges is (are?) humorous? Cite?
But seriously, weak pitting.
I was wondering why someone who only signed up a couple of days ago was already pitting someone.
We’ll know I’m right if this whole thread is cornfielded.