Humor. What's funny?

Factual Questions
1

Hi there. Long time reader, first time poster. I won’t bother babbling, so I’ll get to the point. What do you guys find funny? I mean, what makes you laugh? Really laugh?
I do have a motive for all of this: I’m researching humor for an art thesis. A sort of critique. The problem is, is that what I find “funny” someone else might find offensive. For example, as schticky as it sounds, I can’t help but laugh outloud when someone slips and falls. Even more so when they hurt themselves. And even MORE so when they’re old. I don’t know. I’m from New Jersey. We laugh at other peoples misfortune. Plus, I’m a jerk, which helps.
This thesis, of course, is going to take a lot of work, and I’m positive that if I stand up and deliver a speech on short order fry cooks in Tampa, people who pump gas for a living (who wish to be called “Petrolium Export Engineers”), and the precious few who have had the honor of being employed by a catsup factory, I’m going to get creamed (the above are jobs that I find EXTREMELY hilarious). Some guys just don’t have a sense of humor (all those who have no sense of humor need not respond). Thank you. -BA

“Arrow!” said the bowman. “Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!”

2

Last winter, I was in Trenton. I was at a gas station. While the guy was pumping my gas, this fry cook from Tampa walks up to me and asks me if I have a sense of humor, or if I am a jerk!! Then I remebered that I was late for my job at Hunts, and I ran back to my car. But I fell and broke my hip! And I’m 77 years old!!

HAHAHAHAHA
boy, BLACK ARROW, if only you had been there…

3

really good irony is priceless.

4

Wasn’t it Mel Brooks who said something along the lines of:
“Tragedy is me slipping on a banana peel.
Comedy is you falling down a man hole.”

5

I didn’t see a question. But Im an art major & funny is in. I would do something more along this, as it touches on an usually nontouchable topic:

“He who can laugh at his own jokes shall never cease to be amused.”

6

I heard “somewhere” that the essence of comedy is setting people up to believe they are going to see or hear one thing, then surprising them with something unexpected, usually in a non-tragic way.

Break down and analyze most jokes that you think are funny, and you can see that premise at work to a certain extent in just about every case.

But then, what’s the fun in doing that?

“In much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” - Ecclesiastes 1:18

7

Well, Henri Bergson (and you’re going to have to mention Bergson in your thesis) said that something is funny when someone is acting in a mechanical manner, and this is suddenly revealed by a break in the action. Thus he argued that walking down the street is mechanical, but slipping on a banana peel shows the person is human and thus we laugh.

Of course, I think Bergson missed the boat by a mile.

I prefer the (unstated) assumption of Michael O’Donoghue (Mark Twain also seemed to feel this way): humor is built on pain and humiliation. Someone or something is always the butt of the joke and we laugh because we feel superior to the butt. Some examples of this are obvious – ethnic jokes, blonde jokes, etc. Others are less so. Sometimes we ourselves are the butt of the joke, and we laugh because at the time of the joke, we feel like we were foolish previously.

Two major classification of jokes don’t fit this. Puns are not based on anyone getting hurt, but merely by juxtaposing two different words in a novel way. Other jokes do use the juxtaposition, but usually to show someone or something is a fool.

The other is something I call the “miracle joke,” where a character effortlessly performs something that’s obviously impossible. Buster Keaton did this a lot (the house facade falling on him and missing because of the open window, the motorcycle chase in SHERLOCK, JR.). I suppose it could be argued that we’re the butts for thinking the wrong thing.

Be sure to give me a footnote. :slight_smile:

“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx

Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman

8

Funny is Steve Martin. Why? Because he can maintain the straight face while delivering the most stupid lines…I have no idea…

“Do or do not, there is no try” - Yoda

9

Robert Heinlein (that dirty old man) was of the opinion that we laugh because it hurts if we don’t. In the funniest jokes, someone is getting hurt.

I’m not too sure about that.

I sold my soul to Satan for a dollar. I got it in the mail.

10

You guys have missed the humor in irony, which is often victimless humor. It certainly doesn’t depend on someone being hurt, but more on the circumstances.

Arrow, are you going to make a distinction between humor and wit? The two are different but not mutually exclusive. For instance, Jerry Lewis relied on acting like a spastic moron for his laughs, which puts him in the category of slapstick humor. But Monty Python used slapstick humor with generous doses of cerebral humor, in other words, wit. A lot of Python’s humor requires thinking, or at least an appreciation of language (The Dead Parrot Sketch is an example of this. It simply wouldn’t be funny to see a disgruntled customer wanting to return a dead parrot unless all those wonderful words were woven in).

Some things are humorous because they surprise us or look funny. Some things are humorous because they are some mental gymnastics involved. The ability to have one’s mind grasp the way a concept has been skewed, and is therefore funny, adds another dimension to the humor.

The Dave-Guy
“since my daughter’s only half-Jewish, can she go in up to her knees?” J.H. Marx

11

“Funny isn’t watching someone act crazily, but watching someone watching someone act crazily.” - John Cleese

This quote is what I’m looking for, a sort of “humor in truth.” I mean, what’s funny about “watching someone watching someone” is that who you are watching is genuine, truthful. It’s the language, body, spoken, or otherwise that is funny. I guess what I hope to do is take a truth, a humorous (sp?) truth, and manifest it in something plastic, permanent, yet still hold the humor and “funniness” that the original truth had. In other words, if you don’t “get” the joke, you don’t “get” the work of art.

Example (a poor one, but bare with me): 7-8 years ago was the first time I heard about a certain “organization” that went by the acronym “NAMBLA.” After being explained to me what it was by a fellow classmate, and being an adolecent, I burst out laughing. It was just too funny. “National Man/Boy Love Association?” I asked, “Yep,” came the answer. I didn’t believe my ears. This was obviously some sort of urban myth or inside joke that radio personalities use when discussing the age of consent in Delaware (which I heard is 12, but that’s another matter).

Cut to about a month ago, when this memory popped into my head at work. On a whim, I decided to type into Netscape the web address “www.nambla.org,” and to my, well, shock, the official web page of NAMBLA appeared on my web browser. I sat there, horrified. Then, hilarity ensued. I just could not believe what I was looking at. I was laughing so hard I was crying. I said to myself, “is this for REAL?!”

But of course it was. THAT’S what makes it so damn funny. Now, imagine that humorous truth embodied in a T-shirt that stated, “I [heart] NAMBLA” with the web address printed underneath it. Now imagine someone walking down the street with said such T-shirt on bared for all to see. That’s funny. THAT’S what I’m looking for.

I have another example, but my post is long enough as it is, and what, tell me, can follow a rant on NAMBLA? -BA

“Arrow!” said the bowman. “Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!”

12

Hmmm… Your company doesn’t have net monitoring software, does it? No, no reason. Just wondering. :slight_smile:

It is too clear, and so it is hard to see.

13

Funny is whatever makes you laugh.

I think Data had problem with this on Star Trek once… I don’t recall how he finally figured out the answer, however.

Yer pal,
Satan

14

My tuppence: most humour depends on a reversal of expectations. Part of that reversal is seeing something that would be painful or hurtful in real life, but is obviously fake for the theatre/movies/tv (like the slip on a banana peel… in real life, you don’t laugh when someone falls.)

Guy walks down the street and drops a cigarette. It is not funny to see a down-and-out hobo scrounge for the butt, but it is funny to see a high-society dame do so.

The expectation is that high-society folks behave properly and well, so it’s funny to watch them throw pies at each other. The expectation is that a person buys a live pet at a pet shop, so it’s funny to see someone return a dead parrot. The expectation is that assembly line workers do a mechanical job, so it’s funny to watch Lucy and Ethel stuff chocolates in their mouths to keep up. Its’ funny to see Katherine Hepburn try to convince the police chief that there are, indeed, leopards in Connecticut. Or to see Harpo pull a lit blowtorch out of his pocket.

Sometimes it’s a reversal of dramatic convention/cliche, like people standing in queue to slap a hysterical passenger.

Sometimes it’s reversal of verbal expectations, like Gracie: “She is the man who owns the grocery store’s sister.” Or did you see the new pirate movie? It was rated Arrrrr.

But I think reversal of expectations is usually underlying the humour.

15

No one mentioned satire. This is not an expectation reversal - and it doesn’t require anyone getting hurt (except maybe the ego of the original).

16

What this thread definitely proves is that explanations of humor aren’t funny.

Except for that Monty Python sketch where they hit each other with pies.

17

There is actually a significant amount of research in the field, actually. You can read texts by people like Henny Youngman and Larry Wilde that discuss, reasonably intelligently, how to define humor and how to create humor. This sounds boring, but these are funny people at heart.

Exaggeration plays a big part in much humor; the punch line is usually absurdly ridiculous - to think that someone would be THAT stupid, or THAT naive:

Said to a laborer digging a hole “Hey, are you digging out a hole over there?” “Nah, we’re digging out the dirt - we’re just leaving the hole.”

Truth plays a big part in humor as well:

“We don’t mess with Italians because it’s too hard to sing ‘We Shall Overcome’ with a mouthful of cement.” (Nipsey Russel)

Puns have been mentioned before, but many times the pun is combined with other constructs:

“My wife will buy anything marked down - last week she brought home an escalator.” (Henny Youngman)

Irony is big, too. There are plenty of situations in life that are completely disjunct:

“I stopped at a gas station to use the bathroom and the door was locked. The attendant said the key was inside the station. I went inside - everything was wide open: the station, the cash register, everything…but the men’s room was locked.” (Rodney Dangerfield)

And, of course, it’s always easy to generate a laugh because of our human condition"

“I w-w-w-went d-d-down t-to the r-r-r-radio st-t-ation to see about g-g-getting a j-j-job.” “Did they hire you?” “N-n-nah; t-they s-s-said I was t-t-too t-tall.”

And, of course, cruelty and pain is always a good topic:

Two polish women were hiding in what remained of their home. A band of soldiers came by and threatened to rape both women. “Please” cried one, “don’t rape my poor aged mother!” To which the mother replied “Hey - a pogrom is a pogrom!”

There is a lot that is considered funny. And, there is the constant reminder that it is not only the situation or story that is funny, but the way it is told that is funny. The “Mama’s Family” series of sketches had very few ‘jokes’ - they were just funny because of the funny people that were so disfunctional.

18

To me, comedy doesn’t have to be dirty and full of curse words. I personally like George Carlin the best, but he is dirty and rather political at times, but he presents it in humorous ways. Guys like Jerry Seinfeld who aren’t really ever dirty are good too, plus he talks about everyday life and what happens to most people. Cartoons such as the Simpsons and Futurama usually use satire to make it funny. The most important aspect of funny to me though, is improvisation. Anything you can do “on the fly” and make up and is funny, is genius. Hope this helps.

“The idea of a walk-in closet sounds frightening. If I’m ever sittin’ at home and a closet walks in, I’m gettin’ outta there.” ~George Carlin

19

Oh I forgot, check out George Carlin’s “Brain Droppings” That should help too.

“The idea of a walk-in closet sounds frightening. If I’m ever sittin’ at home and a closet walks in, I’m gettin’ outta there.” ~George Carlin

20

ZenBeam, now THAT would be funny; losing my job because I was caught looking into child porn propagana. To tell you the truth, it would be worth losing my job just for the story!

As for satire, I enjoy a good episode of the Simpsons now and then (although lately the show has been going down hill). But satire usually needs an extra component, a certain knowledge about the thing being saterized. To be honest, the funniest jokes, I find, from the Simpsons and Futurama and Seinfeld, etc., are the snappy one-liners (especially the ones from Homer). These are the jokes that seem “spontanious,” on the fly.

Example: my favorite episode of Futurama is the one where Bender joins the “Church of Robotology.” Prof. Farnsworth complains, “why couldn’t Bender choose a more mainstream religion, like ‘Oprahism’ or ‘Voo Doo?’” This line gets me everytime someone says it, and most of these one-liners are usuable in socially awkward environments. They add to our society.

As for “Funny is whatever makes you laugh,” I have to agree, but again, what I find funny, others might find offensive. Now, whether or not I actually CARE if I offend someone, that’s funny as well.

A friend of mine is just like this. He laughs at other peoples misfortune, to the point of taking a perverse glee in it. I consider him quite evil. But BOY! Are his stories FUNNY AS HELL!!! I mean, I can’t see him cuddling a puppy, let alone a girlfriend. He is pure poison. He’s viscious. But he’s great at parties. Someone mentioned that Steve Martin is funny; I think it’s because he’s a jerk. He is. But he’s a funny jerk. Maybe, when we see Steve Martin being a total asshole, we wish we had the balls to treat people similarly? But why do I find that funny? Just a thought. Thanks. -BA

“Arrow!” said the bowman. “Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!”